The markets have been waiting for some direction, and they got it in last week’s WASDE! The expectations were for lower stocks and yield, and the government again went the other way. Corn prices collapsed to close 24 cents lower on Monday. After a few days of lower trade, they managed to stabilize and mount a small rally to end the week, 21 cents lower in the March contract and 22 cents lower in the May and July contracts. The funds ended the week short 98,158 corn and long 27,485 soybean contracts.
There were a few bearish surprises, with the biggest being an increase in corn yield of .5 bushels per acre to put a new record yield of 186.5. The USDA also raised harvested acres by 1.3 million. The combination of higher yield and acres resulted in a production increase of 269 million bushels from December to 17.021 billion, a new record high that well exceeds the previous record set in 2023 by 1.7 billion bushels. If the increase in production wasn’t enough to send the markets lower, the USDA made sure it went that way by increasing December 1 stocks by 300 million over the average trade guess while leaving ethanol and exports unchanged. The only positive to demand was an increase in feed and residual use by 100 million bushels which I believe should have been lower based on cattle numbers.
USDA 2025 Harvested Acres (Million acres)
| USDA Jan 2026 | Average Trade Est. | USDA Nov. 2025 | |
| Corn | 91.300 | 89.974 | 90.047 |
| Soybeans | 80.400 | 80.280 | 80.313 |
USDA 2025 Yield (Bushels per acre)
| USDA Jan 2026 | Average Trade Est. | USDA Nov. 2025 | |
| Corn | 186.5 | 184.0 | 186.0 |
| Soybeans | 53.0 | 52.7 | 53.0 |
USDA 2025 Production (Billion Bushels)
| USDA Jan 2026 | Average Trade Est. | USDA Nov. 2025 | |
| Corn | 17.021 | 16.552 | 16.752 |
| Soybeans | 4.262 | 4.229 | 4.253 |
USDA 2025/26 US Carryout (Billion Bushels)
| USDA Jan 2026 | Average Trade Est. | USDA Dec 2025 | |
| Corn | 2.227 | 1.972 | 2.209 |
| Soybeans | .350 | .292 | .290 |
| Wheat | .926 | .896 | .901 |
Last year’s report caught the trade by surprise dropping corn yield. This year they caught us by surprise by raising yield and acres. Having been in this business for close to 30 years I guess this is something I should be accustomed to, but optimistically don’t expect to happen. The difference in the two years is that there were a lot of signs pointing to higher acres this year and we had no reason to expect lower yield given what we witnessed this fall.
Agree or disagree, these are the numbers we will be dealing with for the next year. The market will now turn its attention to South American weather and planting intentions in the US this spring. I don’t see a lot of room for demand to increase this year, so the markets job now is to discourage corn acres this spring if we want to see next year’s carryout under 2 billion bushels.
Upcoming reports
| Date | Report |
| 1/19/2026 | No Markets MLK Day |
| 2/10/2026 | Crop Production |
| 3/31/2026 | Grain Stocks/Prospective Plantings |
