Agriculture is one of my favorite "long term" themes as a crowded planet modernizes - but the recession has certainly hit the names in the sector more than I thought; I thought these would be a bit more recession proof. In the first few days of the week, 2 under achievers of late - Mosaic (MOS) in fertilizer and Monsanto (MON) in seeds/herbicide have reported and despite disappointing numbers have not been hammered. In fact Mosaic rallied after its report Monday evening but then again as we noted - by midday yesterday almost every stock was up. At some point all the bad news will be in these stocks, but it is unclear if that point is now. The fact this sector has NOT participated in the "kill the dollar, buy any commodity related stock on earth" is also troubling - the only commodity sector somewhat similar is natural gas and even there its more about the raw commodity that has stunk; not the individual corporations whose stocks have STILL been run up even as the commodity languishes.

First, with Mosaic they reported yet another poor quarter but as they have done the past 3 quarters in a row they promise things will improve a quarter or two out. Considering they've been wrong for nearly a year, it is hard to believe their forecasting skills now - but yes, at some point things will be rebounding in their sector as farmers worldwide rebound.

• Mosaic Co., which makes plant nutrient potash and fertilizer, said Monday its fiscal first-quarter profit fell nearly 92 percent, hurt by lower market selling prices for its some of its products.
• Revenue dropped 66 percent to $1.46 billion from $4.32 billion
• Earnings for the three months ended Aug. 31 slid to $100.6 million, or 23 cents per share, from $1.18 billion, or $2.65 per share.
• Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, on average, had predicted a higher profit of 35 cents on revenue of $1.54 billion.
• Sales of phosphate fell 69 percent and sales of potash dropped 66 percent.
• Additionally, the average price for phosphate fell 73 percent and the average potash price dropped 22 percent.
• The company cited "significant" declines in selling prices for phosphate and potash, as well as reduced potash sales volume compared with a year ago.