Mark's Market Talk for September 22, 2025

We had an up and down week and ended lower last week. December corn lost 7 cents while November beans were 12 lower. We saw some good corn export business, but that was not enough to get the bulls excited and outrun the large yields that are still expected. Harvest pressure is already pushing corn basis wider and we are only getting started. The funds have bought back part of their short position and are currently 80,000 contracts on the short side. There has not been enough harvest yet to give the trade a good handle on whether the USDA yield number is correct. We will see more actual data in the next couple of weeks. All last week the bean traded was waiting for the Trump/XI meeting which was originally to be a face-to-face meeting. It appears it was a Friday phone call instead which dealt primarily with TikTok instead of trade issues. This caused the bean futures to retreat quickly to close down 12 cents after being higher all morning. This was another kick in the pants of American producers. We are not only fighting tariffs and trade deficits, we are also battling the Chinese doing all they can to protect the investments they have made in South American infrastructure. It appears their goal is to limit their purchase of US beans to little or nothing if they can buy them elsewhere. Perhaps it is time we as Americans buy our goods from someone other than China.