Weekly Crop Commentary - 02/28/2025

Haylee VanScoy
Director of Grain Purchasing

As we round out the week and month's end, the grain markets appear to be struggling. Yesterday, we had a first look into the 25/26 crop year with acreage and yield numbers published from the Ag Forum. For corn, they are projecting 94.0 mil acres of corn with a yield of 181.0 bpa compared to last year’s 90.6 mil acres and 179.3 bpa. The corn market has had a hard time digesting those numbers, along with low export numbers this week and the impending tariffs to be enacted next week, which has pushed spreads wider for the time being.

On the other hand, bean projections came in at 84.0 mil acres vs 87.1 mil ly and 52.5 bpa yield vs 50.7 ly. In the world market, there’s no shortage of beans as South America is on the precipice of another record crop, so will the market be able to buy more U.S. bean acres or are they happy with that number? We’ll see how things shake out over the next month between South American harvest progress and the USDA prospective planting report as we prepare for spring planting.

Don’t forget that there’s still time to RSVP for our virtual grain market webinar, Tuesday March 4th at noon. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Briana Holtzman
Grain Merchandiser, Upper Sandusky (Region 2)

The markets this week followed the same pattern every day it seemed. They would start up in the morning and then fall fairly far during the afternoon and close down. Today was no different. The story, it seems, is the lack of a true fundamental story. There is nothing major to feed the bullish market this week.

We had a great turnout for our Grain Outlook Meeting in Upper Sandusky on Wednesday night! Thank you to everyone who braved the rain to join us! As a reminder, enrollment is now open for our Average Price Program for corn, wheat, and soybeans! If you are interested in enrolling wheat bushels, the deadline is coming up quick on March 19. The Average Price Program is a great way to diversify your marketing plan for New Crop bushels. If you are interested in enrolling bushels or finding out more information, please contact your grain merchandiser!

Steve Bricher
Grain Merchandiser, Urbana (Region 3)

It is already the end of February. It seems like most of the really cold weather is behind us and now we are in mud season. If the weather cooperates, we could see something in the ground in 45 days or so.

The corn market has had a really rough week. We have setback close to 40¢ in March futures. There are many reasons for the setback, but as mentioned several times, a bull market needs to be fed with bullish information every day, and right now, there is not much bullish information to feed the rally. It seems as though the farmer is going to put a lock back on his bins until he sees better prices or needs money.

Soybeans have not seen quite the setback, but we did not see the rally that we saw in corn, South America is rolling through harvest, and we have not seen any reports that say it is not going to be a big crop. Today, soybeans shipped from South America are way cheaper than U.S.-origin beans, so we are not going to see much export for several months.

You need to get a plan together when and if we get a rally this spring to get old crops cleaned up and some new crop on the books. We still have new corn crop values over 4.00 for harvest. If we have the crop that people are thinking, 4.00 corn come fall could look like a very good number.

Lisa Warne
Grain Merchandiser, Marysville (Region 4)

Oof. What an ugly week for the grain market. Bearish news and uncertainty from all angles have the bulls tucking their tails this week. May corn futures are down over 6.7%, more than 30¢ since last Friday. May soybean futures are also down more than 30¢, at nearly 3%. Wheat took the biggest hit, down over 7%, more than 40¢. To ease the brutal news, basis levels have strengthened as we rolled from the March to May futures.

The managed money funds that were buying into the market since the January 10th crop report have been taking profits this week after a number of disappointing headlines. Export sales were dismal, coming in below even the lowest expectations. The Ag Forum released the baseline acreage numbers with corn at 94 million (90.6 last year) and soybeans at 84 million (87.1 last year). Granted, these figures are not based on farmer surveys, but it gives the USDA a starting point for calculating the S&D tables for the new crop year. Add on top of that bearish news, the looming tariffs for Canada, Mexico, and China that may begin next week. Although, there are rumors they could get punted again to April. The uncertainty has traders on edge. Oh, and it’s month-end, another reason for profit-taking. All these factors led to a negative week. If we see the market turn back around, it may not be a bad idea to sell into any possible rallies. Have a great weekend as we head into March already!