Grain Comments: 03.24.26

Good morning. It’s a classic turn-around-Tuesday so far this morning at the CBOT, with the grains and meal trading in the green after finishing lower on Monday and the beans and oil trading in the red after finishing higher. We’ve talked about it now for weeks, but yesterday is a prime example of the headline risk that exists in the markets today due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, and is a prime example as to why risk management needs to stay front and center. Rallies and sell-offs both will continue to go too far, too fast, which keeps longer term price direction difficult to forecast. Corn futures to start Tuesday are trading unchanged to a penny higher, soybean futures are trading 5-7 cents lower, and the Chicago wheat market is trading unchanged to a penny higher also.

📅 Today’s Reports: API Energy Stocks

• Select state winter wheat progress data released by the USDA yesterday afternoon showed generally declining conditions across the belt over the past week. KS wheat in the G/EX category was seen at 46% vs 52% last week, while the OK crop dropped from 18% to 14%, and the CO crop dropped from 29% to 24%; TX was up 1% on the week to 16%. USDA will resume releasing regular weekly crop progress data for the season two weeks from yesterday on Monday, April 6th.

• Speaking at an Agri-Pulse conference in Washington D.C. on Monday, EPA head Lee Zeldin said his team was considering all stakeholder feedback as it works to release final RVO rulings, but that the agency was in the final stages of getting the mandates ready to be published and they would still be finalized by the end of March. “We want to get it right,” said Zeldin. The comments raise the odds that an announcement is made at the White House’s Celebration of Ag event on Friday, though this has still not been confirmed.

• The EU’s MARS (Monitoring Agricultural Resources) unit said on Monday that winter crops across the bloc are gradually restarting their spring vegetative growth under generally favorable conditions, saying that adequate soil moisture levels and mild late-winter temperatures across a lot of the growing regions have set the table for a good start to the spring season. Regional concerns include February frosts through parts of Poland and the Baltics, excessive moisture in parts of southwestern Europe, and drought concerns in northeastern Europe.

• Export data from the Brazilian government put out on Monday shows the country’s daily soybean export pace through the first three weeks of March was down some 18% from the rate seen during the month last year, citing logistics issues tied to the Iran war and phytosanitary disagreements with China as reasons for the decline. Data shows shipments through the first three weeks of March at just 633,400 MTs.

• Sources familiar with the matter say Australian wheat farmers are set to plant less area this year due to ongoing concerns over the ability to source fertilizers and as prices remain subdued due to abundant global supplies. Australia harvested its third largest wheat crop ever last year, and typically begins planting winter crops sometime in April.

• Models are in better agreement this morning on the timing of a coming cold front that will bring some moisture/storms and another cool-off in temps with it, but are otherwise little changed from solutions produced on Monday. This front looks to work out of the north Thursday night and into Friday and then work through most of the area east of the Mississippi into Friday evening. The EU model this morning has total precip ranging from a half inch to an inch generally for a strip from north-central MO east into WV/PA, with some local amounts both above and below this range possible.

• There remains good agreement on this drier pattern not lasting though, as anomaly maps into the first week of April from both the EU and the GFS are hot and wet for most all of the US, but especially through the Corn Belt. Should daytime highs (and maybe more importantly nighttime lows) allow soil temps to continue rising, the combination of rain and sunshine could allow for a decent early-season planting window to open up into the middle of the month amid soil moisture levels that are generally still below normal.