- Corn producers: Advance old-crop sales... July corn futures have struggled to break above the downtrend from the May highs. While production concerns persist for 2026 and 2027, demand has seemingly topped out for old-crop, leading to reduced prospects for strength. We advise producers to sell another 10% of old-crop stocks. You should now be 70% sold on 2025 production. Cash only marketers should be 30% forward sold on expected 2026 production. Hedgers should be 10% forward sold with an additional 40% coverage via December $4.80 puts.
- Soybean producers: Advance old-crop sales... Prices have stalled above the psychological $12.00 mark with little followt hrough strength out of the multi-month sideways range. China demand remains tepid with an advancement of old-crop purchases seeming unlikely. We advise producers to sell 20% of old-crop stocks to get to 90% sold. Cash only markets should be 30% forward sold on anticipated 2026 production while hedgers should be 10% forward sold with hedges on an additional 40% of expected production.
- Wheat producers: Advance 2025-crop sales... The market has worked in the favor of holding old-crop stocks, but the end of the marketing year is just ten days away. We advise all wheat producers to sell 20% of 2025-crop to get to 90% sold in the cash market. We will advise selling remaining stocks over course of the next week and a half. World production remains an unknown in 2026-27 amid urea flow disruptions and a large drop in acreage, prompting patience on new-crop sales. You should already be 30% sold on expected 2026-crop production.
- Cotton producers: Finish old-crop, advance new-crop sales… Cotton futures have set back from multi-year highs amid demand concerns. We advise producers to take advantage of the historic rally and close out 2025 stocks, selling the remaining 10% of gambling stocks. We also advise cotton producers to sell 20% of anticipated new-crop production to advance 2026-27 sales to get to 60% forward sold.
Check our advice monitor at ProFarmer.com for updates to our marketing plan.
North Dakota State University economists on Wednesday estimated that China’s retaliatory tariffs cut U.S. agricultural exports to the country by $14.9 billion on an annualized basis.
Soybeans accounted for the largest absolute decline, according to NDSU’s monthly Agricultural Trade Monitor, falling from $12.6 billion in 2024 to $3.1 billion in 2025. Several other major commodity groups fell by 80 percent or more, including corn, wheat, coarse grains other than corn, tree nuts, and cotton. Livestock and processed categories declined by smaller percentages but still saw meaningful drops, including beef, poultry, hides and skins, pork, hay, and dairy. Of the major commodity groups, only seafood products posted a modest year-on-year increase between March 2025 and February, the report said.
Total agricultural exports dropped from $24.5 billion in 2024 to $8.4 billion in 2025 as the U.S.-China trade war raged. China re-entered the market for U.S. soybeans after President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met in South Korea in late October.
The White House said last week’s Trump-Xi summit saw Beijing agree to buy $17 billion a year in U.S. agricultural goods in addition to a previously agreed 25 million tons a year of soybeans. Beijing hasn’t affirmed either figure, but the framework would employ shipments of $28 billion to $30 billion depending on soybean pricing, the NDSU economists wrote.
When it comes to what implementation might look like, the report said the U.S.-China Phase One agreement reached in January 2020 following the 2018-19 trade war offers a precedent. The economists wrote:
- Phase One was followed by a period of robust recovery in bilateral agricultural trade, with U.S. exports to China reaching a record near $38 billion by 2022, well above the at least $28 to $30 billion implied by the 2026 framework. That recovery was supported in part by strong Chinese feed demand tied to the rebuilding of China’s hog sector after the 2018–2019 African Swine Fever epidemic, a tailwind that is not present in the current cycle. Phase One also fell short of its headline two-year targets in aggregate, although agricultural realization was meaningfully higher than for manufactured goods and energy: China reached approximately 83 percent of its covered agricultural commitment over 2020–2021 on a U.S. export accounting basis, against roughly 58 percent for all covered goods and services (Bown, 2022). Realized 2026 outcomes will likewise depend on implementation, the pace of state-buyer execution, and the broader macroeconomic and commodity-market environment over the commitment window.
‘Systemic agrifood shock’: The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization on Wednesday warned that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is the beginning of a “systemic agrifood shock” capable of triggering a severe global food-price crisis within 6 to 12 months. Avoiding such an outcome will require alternative trade routes, governments resisting the urge to impose export restrictions, the protection of humanitarian flows and buffers to absorb high transportation costs, the FAO said.
The time has come to “start seriously thinking about how to increase the absorption capacity of countries, how to increase their resilience to this choke, so that we start to minimize the potential impacts,” FAO Chief Economist Maximo Torero said in a podcast published on Wednesday.The FAO Food Price index, which tracks monthly changes in an international price basket of globally traded food commodities, rose for a third straight month in April as a result of high energy costs and disruptions caused by the Iran war.
The FAO made a series of policy recommendations, including short-term calls to:
- Rapidly secure alternative land and sea corridors to bypass Hormuz - this won’t resolve the magnitude of the supply shock of inputs but will help to marginally reduce it.
- Avoid export restrictions, especially on energy, fertilizers and inputs.
- Exempt food aid from trade curbs.
- Promote intercropping (cereals + legumes) to cut nitrogenous fertilizer use and provide major nutritional, environmental, economic, and agronomic benefits.
- Activate social protection programs, drawing on lessons from Latin America.
- Avoid blanket subsidies, which create significant fiscal pressures and tend to be regressive; instead, prioritize targeted support for the most vulnerable through digital registries that can efficiently direct assistance to vulnerable rural households and smallholders, particularly in Africa.
Among its medium-term recommendations, the FAO urged avoiding boosts to biofuel demand during shortages to limit food-fuel competition. Long-term recommendations included a call to “build regional reserves and warehousing capacity to strengthen future shock absorption.”
Indonesia export controls: Speaking of export controls, Indonesia said it will centralize commodities exports through a state-run agency, a move that will send ripples through global commodities markets given its role as the world’s largest exporter of palm oil, thermal coal and nickel, the Financial Times reported.
- “The sales of all our natural resources, starting with palm oil, coal and ferroalloys, must be through a state-owned enterprise appointed by the Indonesian government as the sole exporter,” President Prabowo Subianto said in parliament.
The FT noted that the benchmark palm oil price traded on the Malaysian exchange rose nearly 2 percent after the announcement over worries that the export controls could affect supplies. Nickel prices also rose on supply concerns.
Russia-China meat trade: Moscow and Beijing will ensure safety and analyze risks when increasing Russian meat exports to China, Reuters reported, citing a joint declaration on Wednesday that comes after a recent outbreak of cattle disease in Siberian regions.
Data from Russia’s agriculture safety watchdog showed the country’s exports of meat to China, including frozen beef, increased by 19% to 254,000 metric tons last year, the report said. However, beef exports slowed in March, Chinese customs data showed.
- Meanwhile, Brazil has asked China to clear exports from 33 more meatpacking plants in a bid to increase trade with its top customer, a Brazilian agricultural official told Reuters
Don’t miss these must-reads: