Mark's Market Talk for September 15, 2025

The USDA released their September WASDE report last Friday. If you remember back to the August report, they added 3 million acres of planted corn and reduced the soybean acres by a couple of million. That caught everyone by surprise, but we traded through it. On Friday they added 1.3 million more acres of corn and 200,000 acres of beans. The other primary crop acres held steady, so you have to dig deeper into the report to find where these additional acres came from. Producer confidence in the accuracy of these reports has been lowered in recent years. Adding 4.3 million acres to corn in August and September shows they have a problem with timely information. It might make sense in a delayed planting season, but that was not the case this year. They did lower the corn yield almost 2 bushels down to 186.7. They also increased exports by 100 million bushels, so the carryout dropped 7 million bushels to 2.11 billion bushels. This tells us we will probably stay in the same trading range we have seen in recent weeks. The ramp up in harvest pace has cost most areas 5 to 10 cents in basis levels. The deferred months are giving carry for those that can hold on till December or longer. December corn ended the week 10 cents higher. All of that was earned Friday after the report. As mentioned, the report also raised the bean acres some. They dropped the bean yield .1 bushel down to 53.5. They lowered bean exports by 20 million bushels while they raised the crush by 15 million bushels. The carryout increased 10 million to 300 million bushels. Though they lowered exports some. They did not address the fact there are no Chinese bought beans on the books at this time. For the week November beans gained 19 cents. The bean harvest is just getting started so yield data is very limited. A big question out there is whether the dry August weather has reduced yields more than some think. We will have a better handle on that within the next couple of weeks.