Corn: Tariffs and rumors of tariffs have certainly been difficult for the corn market which has surged this year up until about February 20th when the talk of US tariffs started the corn market to go down. A 75 Cent drop in the price of corn is nothing to sneeze at. There has been a small recovery of $0.25 within the last week. Clearly though, one market opportunity has passed, hopefully another one will come along. We will see what will happen on March 31st when the USDA releases their Prospective Planting report. Earlier the USDA had said that the US farmers would be planting 94 million corn acres this year, that’s up about 4 million acres from last year. Private estimates have been a lot higher in fact even close to 97 million acres as December 2025 corn futures were buying acres into February. As of now, the market is saying it has enough corn. However, we all know corn markets are fluid and change is a constant. The May 2025 corn contract is currently priced at 8.75 cents below the July 2025 contract a neutral indication of old crop corn demand. Seasonally, we know that corn prices tend to peak in early June and bottom out in early October. The May 2025 corn futures contract is at the 29th percentile of the past five-year price distribution range.
Soybeans: Soybeans do not necessarily corner all the bad news with regard to tariffs and oversupply. The old crop has been holding at $10 which is significant and somewhat surprising to many traders. However, with the Chinese being the big buyer and having applied tariffs on US soybeans it just makes it all very difficult. There’s lots of downside potential on the beans. It’s almost been a default that soybeans are going to lose the acreage war with corn in the United States and we’ll get an update on that in the March 31st USDA report. For instance, if we go much lower than 3 million acres less than last year, we might see some fireworks. However, there is a 380 million bushel carry out on American soybeans stocks which is significant. However, as always those carry out stocks can be cut down or built up depending on crop weather this year. The May 2025 soybean contract is currently priced 14 cents below the July 2025 contract considered bearish for soybeans. Seasonally, soybean prices tend to peak in early July and bottom out in early October. The May 2025 soybean contract is currently at the 20th percentile of the past five-year price distribution range.
Wheat: It’s that time of year again when weather might be a consideration with regard to the wheat market. Dry weather in US wheat country is a bullish factor for wheat prices, but funds are short wheat. USDA had actually increased the US wheat ending stocks from 794 million bushels in February coming in at 819 million bushels. This is negative for wheat prices, but they seemed to shrug that news off especially with dry weather concerns in the United States. In Ontario, it might be too early to say but the SRW wheat looks good in the southwest of the province. Wheat prices have rebounded lately and as always are helped by the much lower Canadian dollar. Ontario farmers will have to weigh whether $7.00 wheat prices for July will still be there when the weather gets warm.
