Weekly Crop Commentary - 02/14/2025

Briana Holtzman
Grain Merchandiser, Upper Sandusky (Region 2)

President Trump’s tariff talk has been the main headline again this week. He started off the week mentioning plans to put reciprocal tariffs in place and rounded out the week by revealing his plan for said tariffs. They are mainly placed to bring large trade countries to the negotiating table, instead of hitting them with instant tariffs. He uses these as a negotiation tool, and so far, it seems to have gone well with Mexico and Canada.

There was nothing substantial about the February WASDE report this week, with the entire report showing unchanged figures from January. USDA did cut the Argentine soybean estimate, but increased Brazil’s – offsetting this cut and then some. While we have not been happy about this extremely cold weather, wheat markets certainly are due to global crop concerns as a result of the frigid temps. They have rallied the second half of this week as the US has yet another cold snap coming and Russian wheat has not had the snow cover for insulation. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Steve Bricher
Grain Operations Manager, Urbana (Region 3)

Happy Valentine's Day. If you did not get your better half, or significant other, something and hope for a dinner reservation tonight, good luck. We are halfway through February and also halfway through setting new crop insurance rates. I have not seen an update but without looking I would say corn is similar to a year ago and soybeans are one dollar per bushel less.

The markets have been range bound for the last several weeks. There is not much news out here today to make them go one way or the other. The news we seem to be receiving is on repeat resulting in the markets treading water. The farmer has slowed his selling without new price levels to get some more grain to move out of his bins.

We will need to keep an eye on Washington as policy comes out over the next few weeks. The new crop prices are still telling us that we should see an increase in corn acres in 2025. If this happens, and we have a good growing season, will 4.75 December futures look good come harvest time? We will have to wait and see.

If you are using the Heritage Portal App, you will see, or have seen some new features recently. If you have questions give us a call and we can work with you on utilizing those features.

Lisa Warne
Grain Merchandiser, Marysville (Region 4)

Happy Valentine’s Day! Again, this week, corn is looking to close higher than the previous Friday’s close. We had some summer-delivery $5 corn offers hit today at Marysville. If you have a price target in mind, consider having an offer in place because sometimes those will fill outside of office hours. Soybeans have set back a little since their fresh high last week but are ending the week on a good note.

For the second week in a row, wheat had the biggest gains. As I mentioned last week, global weather concerns are giving wheat a bump. Today, the headlines added France’s concerns to the list. Even here in the U.S., there’s worry about winter kill in the west. We’re not quite back to the highs we saw in October, but let us know what you’ve got to market and we can help keep an eye on it for you. Have a great weekend!

Ralph Wince
Grain Merchandiser, Canfield (Region 5)

Good afternoon. The story today in the grain markets is the wheat futures. Today is the highest July25 CBOT wheat has been since Oct 18th of last year. Global wheat and corn stocks from the major exporters in the world are at a generation low 9%, making it very tight and leaving little room for problems. The wheat traders have taken notice of that here today, and as I write this article, we have July25 CBOT wheat up 22¢. This is a story that we will want to continue to monitor over the next couple of months.

Yesterday, President Trump rolled out his plan regarding reciprocal tariff’s. This means that many countries already charge the U.S. tariffs on products we sell going into their country. President Trump wants to level the playing field and this is definitely getting some attention. For example, Brazil charges an 18% tariff on U.S. ethanol, preventing it from entering the country. Reciprocating that tariff might very well bring Brazil to the negotiating table to work towards an agreement to reduce or eliminate the tariff. This would make it possible to see an increased flow of U.S. produced ethanol into Brazil. That’s just one example.

Lastly, if the wheat markets continue to work higher this may be what we need to pull the March25 CBOT corn contract past the $5.00 resistance level that we continue to see. March corn hit a high today of $4.9975. That is as close as we have been to the $5.00 mark. Continue to watch what is going on in the markets and give us a call. Have some working offers out there. I hope everyone has a great weekend and again thanks for everything you do with us.