Weekly Crop Commentary - 01/10/2025

Wes Bahan
Vice President, Grain Division

Good afternoon. This week will be quick and to the point. The USDA dropped yields for both corn and beans in today’s reports. This was not expected by the trade at all. I have not seen a January crop report not be a market mover in one direction or another. The drop in Ohio corn by almost 10 bushels per acre year over year is a big number, but not one that should be shocking. The drop of beans by almost 14 bushels per acre year over year was somewhat shocking. That was steeper than most had anticipated. Now the markets need to figure out where they want to go from here.

Winter wheat plantings in Ohio came in at 660, which is up 27% from last year. Actually, this is higher than the year wheat could have been sold for $11.00. Today’s reports have provided a nice opportunity to lock in old crop bushels at some very profitable levels. Please have goals in mind and stick with the plan. Have a great weekend.

Haylee VanScoy
Director of Grain Purchasing

Wow! What a Friday afternoon, full of target offers hitting. You guys sure kept us busy. The January WASDE report did not disappoint with a majority of the market moving changes attributed to the supply side and the higher-than-expected US yield cuts. We saw a 3.8 bpa drop in corn from 183.1 to 179.3, as well as a 1 point drop in beans to 50.7 bpa. No changes were made on the demand side for beans, however corn did see a 50 mil bu decrease to feed and a 25 mil bu decrease to exports.

As for South America production, it remained unchanged in today’s report. Harvest has begun this week in Mato Grasso, which is their largest production region in Brazil, so over the next few weeks we’ll see the market shift its focus to harvest progress and weather. Speaking of weather… stay safe out there this weekend with more snow moving in again anytime. Sounds like it won’t amount to as much as earlier this week, but still a good night to stay in and watch the Buckeyes beat those Longhorns!

Lou Baughman
Grain Merchandiser, Kenton (Region 1)

A big report today with a few surprises. First, corn and bean stocks were down quite a bit that led to the yield for corn to be cut 3.8 bushels per acre and beans a bushel per acre. Now, the market is getting nervous with the corn ending stocks at 1.540 billion bushels, which is 10.2% of the projected use. They don’t like it to get below 10%. If there is a weather problem this season, it could lead to more concern with corn than beans because South America is starting its harvest. Everyone be safe this weekend.

Steve Bricher
Grain Merchandiser, Urbana (Region 3)

It is January crop report day. I am not going to go into all of the details as you can find them elsewhere. We did receive a few surprises in the report today which saw us move the market higher. We will now have to wait for the March planting intentions before the next big market mover.

Export sales today were not good, and I do not expect them to improve with the large to record crops coming out of South America. Today soybeans are a dollar a bushel cheaper in Brazil than they are here, not good for exports. If we see these numbers continue or get worse, we could see beans IMPORTED into the southeast this spring, as it will be cheaper to import beans than rail them from the Midwest. You can say that they should not do this, but if you or I needed beans, and we could save 1.00 a bushel, we would do the same thing.

Looking today with the new crop corn soybeans spread, I do not see us adding soybean acres this spring, I know today neither looks great, but corn looks better. If the crop ends up being as big as the market believes in South America, we could see them work more acres to corn, just something to keep in mind as you make planting and marketing decisions on next year’s crop.