Last month’s Pro Farmer Crop Tour offered the first comprehensive, field-level look at 2026 corn and soybean crop prospects. Now, it’s USDA’s turn.
USDA’s September Crop Production Report due to be released at 11 a.m. CDT on Friday will be the agency’s first this year to utilize objective yield data, offering a look into planted population, ear counts and implied ear weights. USDA’s Aug. 12 report relied on farmer surveys, satellite data and crop condition ratings to come up with a 180.2 bushel yield estimate. Following the Crop Tour, we pegged the average U.S. national corn yield at 173.2 bushels per acre. We don’t expect USDA’s September report to match our estimate, but the direction of travel should be down from the agency’s August estimate.
The question is: By how much?
Corn outlook
What do we think USDA’s September report will show? Our findings on Crop Tour pointed to lower ear counts and smaller ears, both of which will be accounted for in the upcoming report. Historically, our findings on ear counts track closely with what USDA reports. Analysts polled by Bloomberg expect yield to fall to 178.1 bu. per acre in Friday’s report. Still, some firms, such as StoneX who pegged yield at 182.9 bushels, see rising crop prospects from the August estimate. Our analysis of crop conditions indicate corn yields could hold near steady, but USDA was below that benchmark in its August estimate. Harvested acres are expected to be unchanged, bringing production estimates down 235.6 million bushels to 15.777 billion bushels on average. The drop in production led to analysts cutting their ending stocks expectations to 1.511 billion bushels from 1.653 billion previously.
Seeing the average estimate still far above our Pro Farmer estimate is not surprising. Our goal was not to predict where USDA would peg the crop in September, but rather to estimate where the final production figure for 2026 will be. USDA is not likely to be that aggressive in its September estimate, as ear weights are still a big unknown as how the crop will finish is yet to be seen. Typically, USDA does not move yield by more than two bushels in September report. There is no doubt the crop has changed since Crop Tour as weather turned hot and dry across much of the Corn Belt. Some of that is certain to be taken into account, but how it impacts final ear weights remains a key question we do not yet know the answer to. But remember, record ear weights have propelled yields to record the past two years, so how the crop finishes is paramount.
Soybean expectations
USDA will update it soybean production figure as well, but analysts are not expecting much of a change. The average analyst estimate in the Bloomberg poll pegged yield at 52.4 bushels per acre, down from 52.7 bushels in August and below the Pro Farmer estimate at 53.3 bushels. Harvested acres are estimated unchanged from August at 85.8 million acres, bringing production to 4.492 billion bushels, 27 million bushels below USDA’s figure a month ago.
Given the heat and dryness over the past several weeks, a drop in expected yield is not surprising. Objective data will play a role in USDA’s figures, but it is still too early to get a good grasp as to where soy yields will end up.
Analysts pegged new-crop ending stocks at 291.4 million bushels, down 28.6 million from USDA’s August figure, more than surpassing the expected drop in production. Some of that change is due to lower projected ending stocks for the 2025-26 marketing year, while the remainder is due to lower production. Analysts did not make much change on the demand side of the balance sheet despite China’s persistence in the export market.