Surprise! January WASDE Report Moves Corn and Soybeans Lower – Cotton Flat

By Adam Rabinowitz

The USDA World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report was released with some unexpected projections.  A record corn crop is even larger than expected, now projected at 17 billion bushels, up 269 million bushels from the prior month.  This is a result of a record yield of 186.5 bushels per acre on a record 91.3 million harvested acres.  While total use was also increased to 16.4 billion bushels, the stocks-to-use ratio is projected to be 13.6%, up from 12.5% a month earlier, and up from 10.3% compared to 2024/25.  

It’s been well documented in previous Southern Ag Today articles that the stocks-to-use ratio is a good predictor of corn marketing year average prices.  Thus, the increase in the ratio is expected to result in a decrease in price.  In fact, the corn futures market responded with an immediate sharp decline on Monday.  The pre-report price of the March corn futures was $4.474/bu, which by close ended the day down 26 cents at $4.214/bu.  As a result, most of the gains that had accrued in this contract since the low price of $4.122 was projected on August 12, 2025, have since been returned.  The USDA did raise the marketing year price projections for 2025/26 to $4.10, although this is still down 14 cents from the 2024/25 price of $4.24.