Wheat producers: Finish 2025-crop sales... Wheat prices have fallen under pressure over the past week as peace prospects in the Middle East have weighed on prices, negating persistent weakness in crop conditions in the U.S. We do not carry over old-crop stocks into the new-crop marketing year. We advise selling the remaining 10% of old-crop stocks to get to 100% sold. Production concerns remain 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.
Check our advice monitor at ProFarmer.com for updates to our marketing plan.
USDA’s Farm Service Agency announced Tuesday that eligible landowners have from June 1 until Aug. 31 to review and consider base acre increases on farms enrolled in the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs. FSA said it began notifying eligible landowners, by direct mail, that Base Allocation Summaries outlining potential base acre updates will be available for review beginning June 1, 2026.
Base acres are the historical measurement of planted commodities used to calculate eligibility and payments for programs like ARC and PLC. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act enacted last year allowed for the allocation of up to 30 million new base acres nationwide.
To be eligible for new base acres, a current covered commodity must have been planted or prevented from being planted on the farm during the 2019 through 2023 crop years. The farm’s average planted and prevented planted acres during that period must exceed the total existing base acres for all covered commodities in effect on Sept. 30, 2024, excluding unassigned base acres. FSA farm total base acres cannot exceed the farm’s total cropland acres. If eligible requests exceed the nationwide cap of 30 million acres, USDA will apply an across-the-board, prorated reduction to all approved new base acres, FSA said in a news release.
FSA said there 22 covered commodities including wheat, oats, barley, corn, grain sorghum, long grain rice, medium/short grain rice, temperate japonica rice, seed cotton, dry peas, lentils, large and small chickpeas soybeans, peanuts, sunflower seed, canola, flaxseed, mustard seed, rapeseed, safflower, crambe, and sesame seed.
Oil slips below $90 a barrel: West Texas Intermediate crude fell 5.5% to close at $88.68 a barrel on Wednesday, while global benchmark Brent crude dropped 5.3% to $94.29 a barrel on growing market hopes a deal will soon be struck to allow traffic to resume through the Strait of Hormuz. The decline in crude was seen pressuring corn and wheat futures, though soybeans saw only a small loss and soybean oil proved remarkably resilient.
Food price alarms sounding: A Bloomberg report highlighted growing expectations that rising food prices will put a further pinch on consumer wallets as November midterm elections approach and further establish “affordability” as a key issue.
“It’s going to be a challenging year,” Ricky Volpe, an agribusiness professor at California Polytechnic State University who previously worked at USDA’s Economic Research Service, told Bloomberg. “Food is going to become less affordable, and consumers should be prepared for it.”
- News reports have said President Donald Trump was prepared earlier this month to issue an executive order reducing tariffs on imported beef as a response to rising prices, but was talked out of the move at the last minute after objections from USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins and others.
China allows urea exports: China issued export quotas for urea fertiliser, Reuters reported, citing sources with direct knowledge of the matter. The move could help ease a surge in global prices for the crucial crop nutrient that’s followed the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. China, one of the world’s largest fertilizer exporters, banned exports of many categories in March to protect domestic farmers from the surge in prices.
India rice exports slip: India’s rice exports in the first four months of 2026 declined slightly from a year earlier as the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran disrupted premium basmati variety shipments to Gulf markets, Reuters reported, citing two government officials. India, which accounts for more than 40% of world rice exports, usually ships more than the combined exports of the next three biggest suppliers - Thailand, Vietnam and Pakistan, the report noted.
China and Cuba hold ag talks: China and Cuba held talks on expanding agricultural cooperation in Beijing on Tuesday, the South China Morning Post reported Wednesday. The discussions are the latest in a series of moves by Beijing to shore up support for the Caribbean island as Washington intensifies a campaign of sanctions, criminal indictments and military posturing against Havana. The report said Chinese Vice-Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Zhang Zhili met Cuban Deputy Agriculture Minister Telce Gonzalez to review joint projects and explore new areas of collaboration in the sector.
The Cuban embassy in China said both sides discussed opportunities to deepen ties as part of the construction of a “community of shared future” between the two countries, and described agriculture as a priority area in the bilateral relationship, the report said.
Shepherds wanted: A job ad for shepherds to work in the remote grasslands south of Mongolia went viral in China this week, surprising Chinese farm owner Zuo Xiaoyoung and underlining the growing strains in the country’s job market, Reuters reported. More than 700 people applied for the two positions, including white-collar workers from megacities Shanghai and Chongqing, factory workers across the country and some university graduates. “It seems ordinary people are having a hard time finding work,” Zuo told Reuters.
- The report noted that while headline unemployment has held just above 5%, underemployment in China has been on the rise, while private-sector incomes have lagged behind economic growth for most of the recent decade.
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