Markets Connect Dots Toward US China Trade Deal

Aug 25, 2025
By Denise Faguy
Assistant Editor, North American Content, Farms.com

Could tying AI chip exports with agricultural purchases be a win for U.S. soybean farmers?

On the weekly Ag Commodity Corner+ Podcast hosted by Farms.com Risk Management Chief Commodity Strategist Moe Agostino and Commodity Strategist Abhinesh Gopal, the focus for the week of August 18 to 22, 2025 was connecting market signals with on-the-ground realities. The discussion centered on trade negotiations and regional drought pressures.

Agostino highlighted signs pointing to a possible U.S.–China trade agreement. He noted that comments from President Trump urging China to expand soybean imports, combined with headlines on large aircraft sales and paused tariffs until mid-November, may signal a major trade deal that could be announced at the November APEC summit.

Gopal noted that linking AI chip exports with agricultural purchases could be a win for U.S. soybean farmers.

Crop tour updates were also in focus. Pro Farmer’s Crop Tour U.S. yield estimate of 182.7 bushels per acre for corn was sharply lower than USDA’s August projection. Soybean yields were pegged at 53, slightly under USDA’s 53.6.

Markets reflected these fundamentals. Corn and soybean futures showed strength, with September corn up 5 cents and soybeans up 16 cents. Energy markets and canola were supported by U.S. EPA biofuel exemption decisions, while Chicago wheat hit new lows.

Record cattle prices and stock market highs added further signals of broader economic momentum.

As harvest approaches, the podcast reminded farmers to stay patient, track yields, and, as always, prepare marketing plans carefully.

Ontario Great Ontario Yield Tour
Agostino compared the Pro Farmer Crop Tour results with the Great Ontario Yield Tour observations, noting disease pressures in the western Corn Belt and drought stress in eastern regions. In Ontario, the Great Ontario Yield Tour showed a clear contrast. Southwestern fields were performing better, but eastern Ontario and Quebec reported severe drought, with some farmers recording fields that received no rain in three months as of August 21.

Soybean crops were holding slightly better than corn, though overall yields look weaker than in previous record years. Agostino emphasized that despite advanced genetics, “rain makes grain,” and variability within fields remains a challenge.

Ontario’s final provincial yield estimates will be released in Woodstock on August 28 during the Great Ontario Yield Tour final event.

Watch the podcast below.

For daily information and updates on agriculture commodity marketing and price risk management for North American farmers, producers, and agribusiness visit things; Farms.com Risk Management Website to subscribe to the program.

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Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”