Five charts to consider ahead of the 2025-26 US crop season

 The 2024-25 marketing year may still be in progress, but it is never too early to peek into the future.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Friday published unofficial U.S. supply and demand outlooks for 2025-26, which starts on Sept. 1 for corn and soybeans and June 1 for wheat.

These forecasts are tentative and could even be subject to major changes by May, when USDA releases its first official 2025-26 projections.

But there are a few items worth exploring in the meantime.

USDA pegs combined planted acres of U.S. corn, soybeans and wheat at 225 million. This is roughly equal to a four-year average and is driven by a healthy 94-million-acre corn prediction.

But final combined area for the top three U.S. crops has not exceeded USDA’s February prediction in eight years. This is potentially reflective of the shrinking pool of available acres, which could limit or prevent upside for this year.

At least three of these acreage slides within the last seven years are explainable by poor planting weather (2019, 2022) and the pandemic (2020).

In just two of the last seven years, 2020 and 2023, have farmers in March reported a larger three-crop acreage than what USDA had slated in February.

U.S. corn farmers produced back-to-back record yields in 2023 and 2024. Ironically, both results were actually disappointing versus USDA’s initial trend assumption.

In fact, U.S. corn yield has fallen below USDA’s trend for seven straight years, causing some market frustration as high initial yields may lead to an overstating of supplies early on.

USDA set the 2025 trend at 181 bushels per acre, above last year’s record 179.3. However, strong U.S. corn plantings typically involve a lot of additional lower-yielding acres from outside the main Corn Belt, and this could be a drag on the national yield.

More acres equal more corn output, but it is important to see the impact of overall yield. Taking USDA’s 94 million acres and exchanging the 181 bpa for last year’s yield would reduce 2025 output by about 150 million bushels.

The U.S. has been exporting record volumes of soybean meal thanks to expanded processing capacity and less competition from domestic soybean exporters.

USDA expects U.S. soymeal exports in 2025-26 will hit yet another record of more than 16 million metric tons. However, the 2% yearly growth rate would be the slowest in four years.

About 57% of the 2025-26 U.S. soybean crop is expected to be processed domestically, the highest non-trade-war share in 18 years. Soybean exports are seen up 2% on the year despite a negligible rise in production, something of which analysts are already suspicious.

U.S. meal exporters’ increased presence in the global market could be threatened if the U.S. drastically cut soybean acres. A rebound in Argentina’s soy crop could also bite, as it has been a few years since the top exporter has recorded truly solid harvest results.

USDA predicts 2025-26 U.S. corn and soybean ending stocks to rise 28% and fall 16%, respectively, versus 2024-25. But a lot can happen between now and August 2026.

This marks the sixth consecutive February in which corn stocks for the upcoming cycle were seen rising on the year. Interestingly, final U.S. corn ending stocks were higher than USDA’s February estimate in just one of the last eight years (2019-20).

This could be linked to lofty corn yield goals, but an underestimation of demand during higher supply years also factors in.

However, there is not a clear pattern for soybean ending stocks as the final outcomes versus February have been mixed in recent years.

Analysts fear that large speculators’ massive net long position in Chicago-traded corn could cause a significant selloff in futures, though history indicates that funds do not usually eliminate such bullish corn bets so quickly.

However, there are some atypical forces at play, namely the U.S. tariff threats against major trade partners. CBOT corn futures plunged nearly 5% between Thursday and Friday as the March 4 deadline for tariffs against top U.S. corn buyer Mexico loomed.

Corn fell more than 4% in the week ended Feb. 25, and money managers reduced their net long position in CBOT corn futures and options to 337,454 contracts from 353,533 a week earlier. Considerable selling is thought to have occurred on Thursday and Friday.

Aside from trade uncertainty, an even bigger U.S. corn acreage at the end of March along with potentially favorable weather for corn crops in South America continue to be top threats for corn bulls.