Annual Cost of Storing US Corn and Soybeans Since 1973

Oct 03, 2025

By Carl Zulauf and Nick Paulson et.al

This article begins a set of three articles on storing corn and soybeans, a topic of current interest given the size of 2025 US crops (see, for example, Wicks). This article specifically examines long term trends in the cost of storing corn and soybeans. Total storage cost changed little from 1974 through 2005, then moved somewhat higher between 2005 and 2020. Declining interest rates and thus interest opportunity cost of storage mostly offset increasing physical storage costs. Since 2020, interest opportunity cost and physical storage cost have both increased, resulting in higher total storage cost. These storylines underscore the important role of interest rates, thus interest opportunity cost, in offsetting or reinforcing on-going increases in physical storage cost. The reinforcing role has been noticeable since 2020.

Procedures

Starting this study with the 1974 marketing year postdates the increase in price variability that occurred in the early 1970s (Kenyon, Jones, and McGuirk). The study ends with the last complete marketing year, 2024. Cash price is the average monthly price paid to US farmers by first handlers as reported by USDA (US Department of Agriculture), National Agricultural Statistics Service. Storage starts in October, the month with the lowest average cash price. Storage cost includes (a) physical storage cost at commercial facilities to keep the crop in useable condition and (b) interest opportunity cost of storing instead of selling at harvest. Annual physical storage cost is from USDA, Commodity Credit Corporation through the 2005 marketing year. Thereafter, it is for an Ohio country elevator, cross checked with another first delivery point in Ohio. Interest opportunity storage cost is calculated by multiplying (a) the October US cash price times (b) the average one year US Treasury bill rate quoted on an investment basis for October as reported by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Physical storage cost for corn and soybeans varies, usually notably, across different US local markets in a given year due, in part, to different local supply and demand for storage. Moreover, the structure of commercial storage cost for corn and soybeans often varies from year to year. Common structures are (a) a monthly or daily charge per bushel, (b) a monthly or daily charge per bushel plus an upfront charge, and (c) an initial charge for a period of time, for example through January 1, then a monthly or daily charge per bushel. To create a standard format across years, physical storage cost was converted into a cost for the year (i.e. 12 months of storage). Given the notable variations over space, time, and storage cost structure, this article emphasizes longer term trends and relationships.

Source : illinois.edu

Video: Can Gene Editing Give Seeds a Stronger Start?

Reagan Reed has a way of describing his research that might make a plant breeder pause.

“I’m the sort of person who likes to break things to understand them,” he says.

What he breaks are genes involved in seed germination. Reed, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Davis, is investigating whether changing those genes can help seeds establish healthy plants under a wider range of conditions.

Reed recently attended the National Association for Plant Breeding meeting in College Station, Texas, as an NAPB Borlaug Scholar. His work speaks to a question that matters well beyond a research lab: what does it take for a seed to get a crop off to a strong start?

A seed that germinates quickly, alongside the others planted with it, spends less time vulnerable to stresses before seedlings become established.

“If you’re able to bridge that gap between germination to stand establishment, then that’s going to give you the highest probability of having a solid yield that year,” Reed says. “There’s a bunch that can go wrong after that, but it maximises your yield from the start, at least.”

Reed works in Dr. Imtiyaz Khanday’s lab at UC Davis, where his research focuses on seed quality in tomatoes and potatoes. He brings an unusual academic background to the work: at Skidmore College, he studied both biology and Latin.

Reed believes that combination prepared him for research. Translating an ancient text means studying each word, weighing its possible meanings and using context to reach the best interpretation. There is rarely a way to know with complete certainty what an author intended. Science, he says, requires a similar willingness to work through uncertainty.

“Attention to detail and comfortability working with uncertainty,” is how he sums up what Latin taught him.

In the lab, uncertainty can produce a surprise. Reed describes changing one gene and seeing little effect. Changing a second gene also appears to do little. Put both changes in the same genetic background, though, and the result can be substantial.

“I break this gene, nothing really happens. I break this other gene, nothing really happens. I combine them into the same genetic background, and now there’s a massive effect,” he says.

Those interactions matter as researchers gain the ability to edit multiple genes at once. They also complicate any simple account of how a trait works: improving a seed may depend on understanding what several genes do together.

For Reed, the question is whether that knowledge could help seeds germinate reliably when conditions are difficult. Some of the genes he studies prevent germination under certain conditions. That response may serve a plant well in one setting while limiting its usefulness in agriculture. He wants to learn what happens when those genes are changed, and whether the result improves establishment.

Yet a discovery that works in a lab still has a long way to travel before it reaches a field. Reed argues that agricultural biotechnology faces an economic challenge as well as a scientific one. New tools can create value for farmers, he says, but developing them requires a way to support the work in an industry where margins can be thin.

His fellowship with Flagship Pioneering gave him a view across AI, agriculture-related work and human health research. It also reinforced the importance of bringing people with different expertise into the same conversation—a benefit of gatherings such as the NAPB meeting.

“You need to have a team of people with different backgrounds who are willing to work together and approach the same problem in different perspectives and different ways,” he says.

That thinking connects the different parts of Reed’s path. Latin taught him to examine details without expecting a perfect answer. Gene editing lets him test what individual genes do—and what happens when their effects combine. Working with people beyond his own field helps him ask what those findings could become.

He came to agriculture because of its reach: the possibility that work by a small group of researchers could eventually make a difference on a much larger scale. His immediate focus is smaller and more precise. He wants to understand what helps a seed get through its first days and become a healthy plant.