Weekly Crop Commentary - 03/07/2025

Wes Bahan
Vice President, Grain Division

Good afternoon and welcome to March. It always feels good to have February in the rear view mirror. Daylight savings time starts this weekend, so don’t forget those clocks. 

The markets seem to be full-on uncertainty at the moment, and rightfully so. We don’t seem to have any idea from one day to the next if tariffs are going into effect and what ramifications we can expect. We are still a solid 8% ahead of pace to reach the USDA projections on corn exports, and 3% ahead of the pace needed for soybeans. On the soy product side, bean meal and oil also continue to be ahead of schedule on sales. Ethanol margins continue to be in the black and that is continuing to allow large crush numbers each week. Crush margins for beans continue to be stuck in a range for now. 

Bird flu cases seem to be on the decline, however I’m not sure they had anywhere to go but down. Almost 15 million birds have been disposed of in our state alone since the outbreak began. That has done some rationing of corn and meal usage, but we will see what the USDA says at the end of the month when quarterly stocks are revealed. Will the prospective planting report confirm what the ag forum stated earlier? Will we see 94 million acres of corn get planted? We have some regional shortages to overcome, but in the full scope of things we aren’t running out of grains or oil seeds. 

We are in the sign-up process for Average Price Contracts, so if you have any interest please reach out to your local originator. Thanks and have a great weekend.

Steve Bricher
Grain Operations Manager, Urbana (Region 3)

March came in like a lion and has eaten away at the grain markets for the first part of the month. The corn market retreated 75 cents from its high on February 18. There are many factors, a lot of which have been discussed over the winter, as to why the corn market was rising from harvest lows last October. The market likes stability but we have not had that over the last few weeks. Can we retrace it back to 5.00 May futures? Maybe, but it will take some time and a bullish reason for the markets to get back to those levels. It does seem that the farmer has sold the rally in January and February, so my guess is that he is going to close his bin doors for a while until he sees a number that he likes again. 

We will have planting intention at the end of the month and if ground conditions allow, I am sure we will see soybeans planted in 5 to 6 weeks. I still have to wrap my head around putting a soybean in the ground before corn, my grandpa surely would not have understood.

Soybeans have made a similar move to corn, losing 1.00 but as of Friday morning, we have recovered 40 cents of the downward move. I still have a hard time figuring out why soybeans need to make a big move higher. South America is going to produce a 220 MMT crop, the US is not competitive in the world market, and livestock numbers are down around the world. We will have to see what planted acres are at the end of the month and if that allows prices to move higher.

You need to get offers in so that when the market gives you a chance to sell at price levels you want, you won’t miss the opportunity. As we have seen over the last few weeks, it does not take long for a market to get away from you.

Lisa Warne
Grain Merchandiser, Marysville (Region 4)

After eight straight days in the red, corn has finally seen three consecutive days in the green to end the week. I’m hoping this indicates we’ve established a bottom, but there’s still the April 2nd reciprocal tariff date hanging over our heads. Yesterday morning, after talks with the Mexican president and flak from the automobile and other industries, the president announced he would remove the tariffs against Mexico for the remainder of the month on USMCA goods. With Mexico being such a big buyer of U.S. corn, this gave the market a nice boost that is carrying over to today. At first, Canada was not mentioned in this announcement but was later confirmed to have the same delays as Mexico.

Old crop soybeans are down a few cents today as the market recovery slows, but the new crop is holding steady, as it can’t risk losing any more acres to corn. Soybean export numbers continue to dwindle as buyers head to Brazil for their freshly harvested supply. While we’ve had on-again, off-again tariff headlines, no export sales have been canceled due to them so far. At this point, the supply and demand tables haven’t been overly affected, but we will get an update from the USDA on those figures on Tuesday with the monthly WASDE report out at noon. Have a great weekend!

Ralph Wince
Grain Merchandiser, Canfield (Region 5)

Good afternoon. Where do we start today? The markets have been a roller coaster ride as of late. Let’s start with the corn market. Fundamentally nothing has changed here in the marketplace but we all are aware of how much we have lost in the front month of May corn contract. We saw a high of 5.1875 on 2/19/25 only to see that fall to a low of 4.4250 on 3/4/25. That was a -.7625 drop in just a matter of 9 trading days. Traders basically were saying "Get me out". The last we traded as 4.4250 versus May futures was on 12/19/24. Since that low here this week we have added back +.26 bu as I write this. So, the question I keep getting asked is "What do I do?". Time has taught me to step back and take a breath. Arlan Suderman, the Chief Commodities Economist from StoneX still believes that the tariff situation between Canada & Mexico will end sooner rather than later. Even though the tariffs will hurt the U.S. he believes that Canada & Mexico’s economies will be hurt worse than ours. He thinks both countries will come to the table to discuss it sooner rather than later.

The soybean story is a little different. This is the time of the year that the U.S. loses its soybean export sales to South America and this year is no different. South America beans are coming off and the size of the crop overall will be plentiful. Our concern will be if this lingers on with China into next fall it could be a problem. What I did find interesting about President Trump's speech on Tuesday night was that he carved out some time to speak directly to the American Farmer. He is very much aware that rural America helped propel him into the White House and it appears that he will not hang the farmer out to dry. So, what does that look like? I think it is too early to say, we will just have to sit back and see.

Finally, I want to put a plug out for our Averaging Program for Corn, Beans, & Wheat this 2025 crop year. I believe this is a great tool to help raise your overall weighted average for your crops. It also takes the emotion out of whether I should contract some bushels today or wait. We get to price bushels every day between the dates we have set the averaging program up for, the cost is only .01 per bu, and there is no double-up. Please give any of us a call to discuss this program with you. Have a great weekend and remember to turn your clocks back 1 hour when you go to bed on Saturday night.