Mark's Market Talk for October 6, 2025

Last week was a very active harvest week across the midwest. Dry and warm weather has sped the crop up tremendously which has allowed everyone to hit harvest hard. 3 weeks ago, some producers were having trouble finding crops dry enough to harvest, now they are finding corn and beans have dried too much. Corn dryers may be done for the year as it looks like a repeat of last year. For the week December corn was down 3 cents, while November beans were 4 cents higher. Last Tuesday, prior to the government shutting down, the USDA released their September stocks report. They throwed more bearish numbers at the corn market. They estimated the corn stocks number 200 million bushels higher than the average trade guess. They revised the 2024 crop yield higher to do this. That put the ending stocks number at 1.532 billion bushels, which now becomes the beginning number for the new crop year. Had the government not shut down, the USDA would have released their October WASDE report this Thursday which would have contained some actual yield numbers. Now this report is postponed for the time being and we will trade on the news that screams the loudest. The stocks report was just a touch friendly to beans as it lowered the carryout by about 9 million bushels to 316. However, bean yield reports have been better than expected and without China buying our beans we may be in for some tough times. President Trump has said he will take care of the American farmers. He admits his tariff policies have been especially hard on agriculture. He is pledging to use some of the billions we are collecting in tariffs for direct payments to farmers. It sounds like there will be an announcement this week concerning how much will go to producers of different crops. Long term we need to build new trade partners and expand other uses for our crops. Last week California approved the use of E15, which could open new buyers of higher ethanol blends. Year-round use of E15 has been approved but has been slow to get going. Clean aviation fuel was to be the new poster child of the biofuels, but nobody wants to tackle the tax subsides that are needed to get this off the ground. Meanwhile Brazil is boosting their production and are slowly cornering the market. In the end direct payments to farmers will be pocket change, we need real solutions to the surplus of grain we raise in this country. Though we hesitate to ask Washington to fix this, we need congress and the President to support all American made products. We lead the world in agriculture production and food processing; it is time we were rewarded for this.