First Major 2025 Reports Bolster Corn, Soybeans

Jan 14, 2025

By Betty Resnick

With a total of six reports published – Cotton Ginnings, Crop Production, Grain Stocks, Rice Stocks, Winter Wheat/Canola Seedings, all of which fed into a new World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report – Jan. 10 was a big day for USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS);

The January reports lived up to their reputation of being a market mover, revealing that USDA had previously overestimated production of corn and soybeans. The reports also brought bad news for cotton prices, with both increased production and decreased consumption, and introduced the first look at planted acres for winter wheat. This Market Intel will explore the top three newsmakers from today’s reports.

1. Major Drops in Yield Projections for Corn and Soybeans Feed Bullish Markets

The most attention-grabbing news of the day was steep reduction in yield projections for marketing year 2024/25 corn and soybeans, falling by 2.1% and 1.9%, respectively, from December projections. These declines in yields led to declines in production, which when accompanied by only minor adjustments to consumption, are indicative of tightening supplies. Both corn’s and soybean’s drops in yields, and production, were below industry expectations, leading to increased prices in the futures markets for both crops.

When compared to the last time corn yields were updated in November, the sharpest declines at the state level were in Kansas (-6.5%), Indiana (-5.3%) and Minnesota (-4.9%). Despite a now year-over-year reduction in corn production of 474 million bushels (-3%), and projections for lower year-over-year ending stocks (223 million bushels, -12.6%), grain stocks as of Dec. 1, 2024, are down only 1% compared to 2023.

Soybeans followed a similar trajectory to corn. As compared to November reports, the decline in soybean yields was largest in Kansas (-7.9%), Tennessee (-6.7%) and Indiana (-4.8%). Domestically, reductions in soybean production combined with a marginal increase in domestic use led to a 19.1% decrease in projected ending stocks. While domestically ending stocks are tightening significantly as compared to December projections, global projected ending stocks had a smaller change of only 2.7%. Zooming out to a year-over-year look, soybean supply is still looser than the previous year with ending stocks increasing by 38 million bushels (11.1%) domestically and 719 million bushels (17.3%) globally. Grain stocks as of Dec. 1, 2024, were up 3% compared to 2023, led by an on-farm stocks increase of 6%.

2. Bad Day for Cotton

This report did not contain good news for cotton producers. A slight increase in estimated production projections due to increased yields combined with a decline in exports of 30 million 480-pound bales (2.7%) caused ending stocks to increase by 9%. Notably, the decline in U.S. exports of 30 million bales perfectly matched an increase of Brazilian cotton exports, highlighting that the 2024 crop year will be the second where Brazil has displaced the U.S. as the world’s top cotton exporter.

Basically, production bounced back this year, in large part due to better growing conditions in Texas, but demand has fallen. This led to a nearly 15% decrease in price since last year, and a further projected 1.5% decrease in price since the December report.

3. Winter Wheat Planting - Decreasing in Breadbasket, Increasing in Fringe States

Farmers are projected to have planted 34.1 million acres of winter wheat for the 2025/26 crop year, an increase of 725,000 acres nationally (+2.2%) over 2024. However, the increase in acres was not spread evenly across the country. In fact, Kansas and Oklahoma, the states ranking first and third in total planted acres, declined by 200,000 and 100,000 acres, respectively. South Dakota (70,000 acres, -8.1%) and Tennessee (30,000, -7.9%) had the largest declines in acres on a percentage basis.

Most of the increase in acres came from states in the Great Lakes region, West Coast, and Southeast. By acreage, Montana and Texas had the largest increase at 300,000 acres each. On a percentage basis, South Carolina (45,000 acres, 56.3%), Michigan (150,000 acres, 37.5%) and Alabama (40,000, 36.4%) had the largest increases. But they weren’t alone, a whopping eight states increased their planted acres of winter wheat by 15% or greater.

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”