Mark's Market Talk for November 3, 2025

Last week was somewhat crazy in the markets, especially the bean market. Earlier in the week stories of the Chinese buying US beans prior to the big meeting made great fodder for the traders. It turned out that they had bought some cargos for nearby shipment. Early in the week the river and PNW basis levels narrowed up, that said someone was taking grain shipments. The amount of bean buying that was agreed on with Trump and Xi was good, however the 400 or so million bushels for this year still falls short of the original USDA export number given earlier this year. US trade groups have been working hard to cultivate grain sales to other countries, so we are not so dependent on China. This is a wise move as China continues to invest in South American infrastructure. It appears their intent is to make that area their own grain producing region and further shut the US out of the Chinese trade. As this develops, we need to move more manufacturing back to our country and produce more “made in the USA” products. We have allowed too many jobs to be exported. This also means our workforce needs to step up and take the jobs this move would produce. Somewhere we have lost sight of the fact that every able-bodied person should have a real job and not sit at home waiting for public assistance. Back to the grain markets. December corn ended last week 8 cents higher. For the month of October corn was 16 higher. We are price competitive in the world market, and we continue to see corn leaving our border. The government shut down has affected a lot of things. One of the missing reports is the export sales report. All grain companies are required to report their sales to foreign countries timely. The USDA then issues the large sales as they happen. Without this information the trade is depending on private sources to account for this. It might be accurate, but it means more coming from the USDA. January beans had a great week and closed 55 cents higher. They were 95 cents higher for the month. Those that sold beans early in the harvest season have long faces, but they were selling against the chance there might be an 8 in front of the bean price. That could have easily happened had a trade agreement not happened. Those still holding beans will need to be cautious, they don’t get too bullish. The world is still full of beans and demand is only half of the equation, over production is the other half. The US production was good this year. Right now, the conditions in South America are pointing to another good crop. We keep coming back to the same solution and that is biofuels. Our government needs to get fully onboard and help this industry. We have the demand, the feed stocks, and the know how to make all this work. However, while we sit on our hands countries like Brazil are moving forward in this arena. We cannot afford to let them lead the world in producing biofuels.