Mark's Market Talk for March 24, 2025

We saw mixed markets last week as May corn was 6 cents higher while May beans were down 6 cents. Most of the proposed tariffs have been put off till April, giving all sides some breathing room while they work this out. The big March USDA report is out next Monday, and it will be a mover. Everyone seems to agree there will be a lot more corn planted, somewhere between 4 and 5 million more acres. Meanwhile they expect about 4 million less acres of beans to be planted. So, what happens if they are right? Normally you would think that the price of corn will go down and the bean price goes up. The corn price may go down some more, but probably not a lot before we see what the planting season looks like. Today the western corn belt is on the dry side while the eastern states are somewhat wet. Winter reminded lots of people last week it wasn’t over so the hope for early planting is on hold right now. We depend on large export sales of both corn and beans, and they have slowed a bunch for both commodities. The funds sold off corn and bean futures again this week and are long about 100,000 corn contracts and are short about 20,000 bean contracts. Both are at levels we could rally with the right spark which could be a delayed planting season. It’s early to even talk about such but the importance of early planting is a bigger deal than it used to be. The cold tolerance scores on today’s hybrids are so much better than they used to be. More soybeans are also being planted earlier than they used to, and the yield results favor this. Therefore, planting dates will have an impact on the crops, regardless of how many acres we plant.