“I want John Deere and Case and all of – they’re great companies, Caterpillar… I want these companies to give it to you in the form of lower tractor and equipment costs,” Trump told hundreds of farmers and ranchers gathered under drizzle at an event on the South Lawn of the White House.

Deere & Co shares dropped two per cent after the statement. Case IH manufacturer CNH Industrial fell one per cent while Caterpillar Inc was down nearly 1.2 per cent in late-session trading.

The three companies could not immediately be reached for comment.

Trump seeks support from struggling farmers

Trump called for lower prices in an aside during a speech that otherwise focused on shoring up support among the Republican president’s loyal constituency of rural voters, who have backed Trump in all three of the last presidential races.

For the fourth straight year, U.S. crop producers are facing tight margins, high production costs and low commodity prices – and are struggling financially – despite near-record government payments.

The Trump administration is distributing $12 billion (C$16.7 billion) in aid to U.S. farmers — a move that farm trade groups and agricultural economists have said is helpful in the short-term but will not fully compensate farmers for financial losses that have topped $30 billion in recent years.

On Friday, Trump said he would seek even more such aid for farmers from Congress. More than 50 farm-interest groups, such as the American Farm Bureau Federation, are urging Congress to approve additional aid in a military funding package.

Trump pledges new loan guarantees

The event happened as the administration finalized new biofuel blending mandates for U.S. oil refiners, requiring them to mix more of the fuels made from corn and other agricultural products into the nation’s gasoline and diesel than initially proposed, in an apparent win for farmers.

Trump also said the U.S. Small Business Administration would open up new loan guarantees for farmers and food suppliers.

Farmers are entering the critical spring planting season under a cloud of uncertainty as the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran disrupts global trade, causing fertilizer and diesel costs to spike.

The long-term U.S. trade relationship with China also remains unclear amid the ongoing trade war launched by Trump’s administration with the country, the world’s top soy importer.

Rural voters constitute a fifth of the U.S. electorate, and they favored Trump by a two-to-one margin over Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

— Additional reporting by Bhargav Acharya

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The Environmental Protection Agency set total 2026 biofuel obligations at 26.81 billion RINs and the 2027 obligation at 27.02 billion RINs.

WHY IT MATTERS: While U.S. biofuel mandates set higher demand for oilseeds, the rules could disincentivize American buyers from choosing Canadian canola in the future.

The total mandates include 70 per cent of the blending obligations that were waived under the Small Refinery Exemptions program during the 2023-2025 compliance years, the EPA said.

The EPA in June 2025 had proposed total biofuel blending volumes at 24.02 billion RINs in 2026 and 24.46 billion RINs in 2027.

EPA added on Friday that, starting in 2028, foreign fuels and feedstocks will receive only half of the RINs of American-made products.

The rule ends a period of uncertainty for both the agriculture and refining industry, whose fortunes can be significantly impacted by the country’s biofuels policies.

Farmers and biofuel producers typically want high quotas to spur demand for their products, while refiners view the blending obligations as a costly burden.

On Friday, Canola Council of Canada president Chris Davison said he was pleased with what he’s seen of the EPA’s decision, particularly the increased blending mandate.

“We’re very pleased to see those updates, and Canadian canola can make a meaningful contribution there,” Davison said.

“Canola is a modest but important feedstock in U.S. biomass-based diesel production,” said Davis.

The new RVOs should create an “appreciable opportunity” for Canada’s canola crushers who have greatly increased production capacity in recent years.

Davison said he was not sure what ‘foreign feedstocks’ would mean as at one point the agency was considering a proposal to create a ring fence covering all of North America.

— Reporting by Richard Valdmanis and Daphne Psaledakis

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Soybean seedings, meanwhile, are expected to jump as some growers shift acres away from corn and wheat, which require more costly fertilizer, they said.

Farmers are entering the critical spring planting season under a cloud of uncertainty as the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran disrupts global trade, causing fertilizer and diesel costs to spike. The long-term U.S. trade relationship with China also remains unclear amid the ongoing trade war launched by President Donald Trump’s administration with the top soy importer.

U.S. net farm income

Meanwhile, U.S. net farm income is forecast to turn lower this year despite near-record government payments, marking the fourth straight year of crop producers facing tight margins, high production costs and low commodity prices.

The Trump administration is in the process of distributing $12 billion (C$16.6 billion) in aid to U.S. farmers. As the repercussions of the war rattle the broader economy, farm groups have urged Congress to approve additional aid.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is due to release its annual prospective plantings report on Tuesday, its first survey-based crop acreage estimate of the year. Analysts cautioned that the estimates, gleaned from farmer surveys conducted in the first half of March, could not fully account for disruptions and price impacts caused by the war, which began when the United States and Israel launched airstrikes across Iran on February 28.

“This particular planting intentions report, right out of the gates, is going to be viewed somewhat skeptically by the trade just because of the timing of the survey with the start of the war and how things have changed in terms of costs,” said Terry Linn, analyst with Linn & Associates in Chicago.

Analysts polled by Reuters, on average, projected corn plantings to drop to 94.371 million acres, down from 98.788 million acres in 2025, which was the most since 1936. Soybean seedings were seen at 85.549 million acres, up from 81.215 million a year ago.

Wheat plantings expected to fall

Plantings of spring wheat, grown in the northern Plains, are forecast to drop to 9.843 million acres, down from 9.990 million last year and the lowest since 1970. Prices for the high-protein grain have slumped since a record Canadian harvest last year.

Farmers in the U.S. Midwest farm belt normally rotate their fields with corn one year and soybeans the next, but profit projections and input costs can prompt farmers to deviate from their crop rotations in some fields.

“The fertilizer cost and fertilizer availability are the main drivers right now,” said Rich Nelson, chief strategist with Allendale. “But I would point out that we have questions about whether the USDA’s report will show the true story.”

Prices for urea fertilizer are up about 40 per cent since the start of the war while costs for anhydrous ammonia are up nearly 20 per cent, according to a report this week from economists at the University of Illinois.

“Given that nitrogen fertilizers are not used intensively on soybeans, higher nitrogen prices could also lead to a shift towards more soybean acres and fewer corn acres,” they said.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins this month estimated that about 75 per cent of farmers already had their fertilizer needs booked.

Hunt for alternatives

The hunt is on for alternatives that would insulate farmers from price volatility tied to natural gas in fertilizer markets, and be less carbon-intensive.

While natural gas powers the process of synthesizing most widely used ammonia fertilizers, there are efforts to power more ammonia production with renewable energy.

In Minnesota for example, a coalition of agriculture and conservation organizations launched the Minnesota Made Ammonia project on March 5 to build local ammonia production facilities in Minnesota that use renewable energy, according to a statement from the group.

Outside of the heart of the Midwest corn and soybean belt, farmers have more planting options, including hard red spring wheat, durum wheat, canola and cotton, analysts said.

Demand for biofuels swells

In North Dakota, the top spring wheat state and a key supplier of soybeans that are shipped to China via Pacific Northwest ports, rising fertilizer costs and trade uncertainty are likely to prompt some farmers to choose corn or canola over soybeans and wheat, analysts said.

The price of urea fertilizer has jumped at least $200 per ton since the start of the war, according to Jim Peterson, executive director of the North Dakota Wheat Commission.

“On a 50 bushel (per acre) wheat yield, you need another 40 or 50 cents a bushel to just cover that cost,” Peterson said.

Canola, grown in the northern Plains and in Canada, is also a viable option despite high fertilizer costs due to strong demand for vegetable oil for biofuel production. Demand for biofuels has swelled amid rising prices for petroleum-based fuels.

In the Delta, low cotton prices and costly inputs are likely to lead to the lowest cotton plantings in a decade as farmers may choose more profitable soybeans instead.

“If we go through the rest of March and into April with soybeans looking this much stronger than cotton, then, yes, we’ll see more acres move from cotton to soybeans,” said Barry Bean, president of Bean & Bean Cotton Company.

1 acre = 0.405 hectares

— Additional reporting by Ed White in Winnipeg, Renee Hickman in Chicago and Anmol Choubey in Bangalore

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Some 20 miles away, at a research center in Junction City, scientists are developing hybrid wheat seeds that promise higher, more consistent crop yields as drought becomes more common across the Plains.

Taken together, the experiments could change the future of the struggling U.S. wheat industry, which is being threatened by shifting consumer trends and the rise of lower-cost global rivals eroding America’s export dominance. The U.S. economic prospects for wheat, a crop that’s been cultivated for 10,000 years, hang in the balance.

Wheat not ‘technified’

When it comes to technology, for decades wheat has been the horse-and-buggy to its sports car brethren, corn and soybeans. And American farmers have been growing less of the crop, sometimes planting it only in rotation with other crops to preserve soil health.

But hybrid wheat is finally becoming more widely available, and genetically modified varieties may launch in the U.S. within a few years. The push represents a bet that the science will arrive in time to make it profitable enough to matter for growers.

“Wheat hasn’t been, for lack of a better word, a technified crop,” said Jon Rich, Syngenta’s hybrid wheat operations head, who has spent years developing the product.

Wheat buyers have been more resistant to GMO wheat due in part to consumer skepticism, while most GMO corn and soybeans are used as feed for animals.

Shrinking demand

Once the world’s top wheat exporter, the U.S. has not held that title since 2017, according to federal data. Farmers are grappling with a three-decade downtrend in per-capita flour consumption, a trend reinforced by the Trump administration’s new federal dietary guidelines and the rise of gluten-free diets.

Things are trending differently in Canada, where mills produced 2.68 million tonnes of wheat flour in 2025, a 7.7 per cent increase over 2024 levels.

Wheat industry millers and scientists who gathered for an annual meeting last month in Olathe, Kansas, said the new guidelines stigmatize grain-based foods, further diminishing the market.

“The fact that we are having to say ‘bread is real food’ – it’s unfortunate,” said Jane DeMarchi, president of the North American Millers’ Association.

The United States became a corn-growing behemoth in part due to an early 20th-century breakthrough that has eluded wheat: hybrid seeds, which yield more grain even under stressful conditions such as drought. Average U.S. corn yields rose from around 25 bushels an acre in the 1930s to 186.5 bushels in 2025.

Corteva says it ‘cracked the code’ on hybrid wheat

Creating a hybrid wheat seed isn’t as simple. The seeds and plants are much smaller than corn and have more complex genetics, making hybridization efforts costly for companies to develop and sell.

But recent scientific advances in DNA sequencing have lowered costs for breeders, triggering a boom in research and commercialization efforts. Seed and chemical companies Syngenta and Corteva are pushing forward in the U.S., projecting billion-dollar payouts – eventually.

Chuck Magro, Corteva’s chief executive, says the company has “cracked the code,” and that its hybrid hard red winter wheat used to make bread can increase crop yields by 20 per cent. Corteva plans to release the seed commercially in the U.S. in 2027.

Syngenta, the Swiss agrichemicals and seeds group of China’s state-owned Sinochem, has been selling hybrid spring wheat seed to farmers in the northern Plains states since 2023, reaching 12,000 to 15,000 acres in 2025. Still, that’s a fraction of the 45 million U.S. wheat acres seeded annually.

Syngenta and Corteva also are working on other hybrids, including for soft wheat used in pastries and Asian-style noodles, in coming years. But it’s a gamble if farmers will be willing to pay for seeds that can cost twice as much as conventional offerings.

GMO crops

The vast majority of U.S. corn and soybeans are grown from genetically modified seeds that offer built-in herbicide tolerance and resistance to yield-robbing pests. That is one hope for wheat too, scientists said, and GMO technology could eventually offer traits that boost nutrition or grain quality, too.

“Anything that gives our producers an advantage can improve profitability – that would be welcome,” said Allan Fritz, a longtime wheat breeder with Kansas State University.

The plants in the Manhattan, Kansas, lab have been genetically modified with a drought-resistant trait known as HB4, developed by Argentina’s Bioceres Crop Solutions, and bred to tolerate a particular herbicide not currently used on wheat. While that grain was approved for U.S. production by the USDA in 2024, none has been planted on U.S. fields.

Genetic lines of wheat vary by region, so public university researchers are testing whether the HB4 traits will function in wheat grown in the U.S. Plains. Field trials are still at least two years away, according to Brad Erker of the Colorado Wheat Research Foundation, a farmer-governed trade group that has partnered with Bioceres to commercialize HB4 in the U.S.

Selling GMO wheat seed is even further off, by 2030 or 2032 at the earliest, Erker said, and will only occur if major buyers of U.S. wheat, such as Japan and Mexico, agree to allow purchases.

“That’s part of the goal with this, to make it more attractive to grow wheat,” said Erker. “We don’t have GMO technology for our farmers in wheat, and corn and soy and sunflowers and sugarbeets and cotton all do.”

—With files from Glacier FarmMedia

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Since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, farmers across the Midwest have capitalized on climbing prices by selling corn, soy and wheat from storage bins to ethanol producers and major traders including Archer-Daniels-Midland and Bunge.

Growers also raced to sign contracts to pre-sell crops they have not yet planted and expect to harvest this year.

The rally was a welcome surprise for farmers and allowed many to lock in modest profits to cover soaring fertilizer, chemical and seed bills, though they said the gains were not enough to end a downturn in the agricultural economy.

Dave Kestel, a farmer in Manhattan, Illinois, said he sold about 40 per cent of the corn and soybeans he harvested last year and roughly 10 per cent of what he expects to harvest in 2026. He had been paying daily charges to store last year’s crops and was eager to unload them when prices jumped.

“I was doing the farmer happy dance,” Kestel said.

Soybean futures touched a May 2024 high above US$12 per bushel (C$16.47) on the Chicago Board of Trade on Thursday. Corn futures reached the highest point since May 2025 this week, while wheat set the highest level since June 2024.

Last year, prices sagged due to ample supplies and as soy exports suffered due to President Donald Trump’s trade war with China. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has started distributing billion of dollars in aid to farmers hurt by Trump’s trade policy.

Quick to sell

Analysts said the aid strengthens balance sheets in the short term but does little to improve underlying profitability.

Farmers were quick to sell crops as they sought to stem losses and questioned how long the rally would last. Corn and soybean prices at times have each been up about six per cent from their levels since before the war began.

“We are basically filling all of our grain elevators in North America and in South America as we speak,” Julio Garros, Bunge’s chief operating officer, said during an investor event on Tuesday.

A spike in oil prices because of the war lifted prices for crops used to make biofuels. Also boosting corn prices, the conflict disrupted crucial fertilizer shipments.

The gains were generally enough to allow farmers to make money, though break-even levels vary, said Angie Setzer, partner at advisory firm Consus Ag Consulting.

“When the market rallied big, it provided a lot of opportunities that they had been waiting for,” said Setzer, whose customers sold corn, soybeans and wheat.

Some farmers took chances on the size of their fall harvests. Keaton Lyons, who farms about 1,200 acres in Rensselaer, Indiana, agreed to sell about 100,000 bushels of corn he will soon plant.

“Pricewise, I feel really good,” Lyons said. “The thing that I’m nervous about is we don’t have a kernel in the ground and we’re 65 per cent sold.”

Farmers seize opportunity

Many farmers sold much of last year’s soybean crop in late 2025, but a large share of corn remained unpriced, so the recent surge could really help corn-heavy operations, said Wesley Davis, partner at Meridian Agribusiness Advisors.

As of December 1, growers were storing 14 per cent more corn on farms than a year earlier and two more soybeans, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show.

In Waseca, Minnesota, Richard Guse, who farms about 3,500 acres with his brother and son, said he made a small profit selling about a third of his 2025 corn crop to ethanol producer Guardian Energy for US$4.25 (C$5.83) per bushel this week.

“The prices have run up in a hurry,” Guse said. “It goes down a lot faster than it comes up.”

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Last year, lower U.S. soy sales to China allowed Brazil, the world’s largest soybean producer and exporter, to ship 85.4 million metric tons to China, an 18 per cent increase from 2024, according to Brazilian government data.

Though Hedgepoint has not released an exact forecast for Brazilian shipments to China, its bet is that Brazil’s soy sales to China may increase even after President Donald Trump said the world’s biggest importer would buy more beans from U.S. farmers this year.

China is expected to raise imports by 4 million metric tons to 112 million tons in 2026, according to Hedgepoint, creating demand that either Brazil or the U.S. could supply.

“Argentina will export less this year because its crop is smaller,” said Luiz Fernando Roque, a Hedgepoint Global analyst. “That already puts another 4 or 5 million tons in the hands of the Americans or Brazil.”

Regarding Argentina specifically, aside from a smaller projected soy crop, the country tends to focus on domestic processing to make soymeal and oil, Roque said.

In 2025, the U.S. share of China’s soybean imports fell to 15 per cent, from 21 per cent the year before, while Brazil’s rose to 73.6 per cent, up from 71 per cent in 2024, according to Hedgepoint data.

Argentina’s share jumped to seven per cent, from four per cent, according to Chinese government data.

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The decision could be unwelcome news for larger oil refiners that have argued that additional blending obligations would raise their costs. But it could help the biofuel industry by boosting demand for blending credits.

WHY IT MATTERS: U.S. biofuel policy can effect demand for Canadian canola.

Under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), oil refineries have to blend billions of gallons of ethanol and other biofuels into their fuel or buy credits, called RINs, from those that do. But small refineries can have those obligations waived if they demonstrate economic hardship.

The question of whether to reallocate those exempted blending obligations to larger refiners is a point of contention between the agriculture and fuel industries.

Biofuel groups have pushed the administration to fully reallocate the exempted gallons, saying it is crucial to support biofuel producers and the farmers growing their feedstocks. Refiners, meanwhile, have warned that reallocation unfairly forces larger plants to cover for smaller rivals, raising their compliance costs and potentially increasing pump prices.

The issue has taken on added significance after the Trump administration processed a large backlog of waiver requests totaling more than 2 billion gallons for the years 2023 through 2025, representing a sizable share of overall renewable fuel blending requirements.

Potential shift toward higher biofuel blending?

EPA officials in recent weeks have signaled they settled on reallocating at least 50 per cent of the waived volumes for those three years, and that the level could go higher, according to the sources, who asked not to be named discussing the matter.

That reflects a shift in preference toward increased biofuels blending, after the Environmental Protection Agency last year initially sought public feedback on a range of options from zero to 100 per cent.

The EPA did not comment on the Reuters reporting, but said that the agency was considering public comments and aimed to finalize the rule by the end of March.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment about the reallocation plan.

The EPA also sent its proposed 2026 and 2027 biofuel blending quotas to the White House on Wednesday, with a final rule expected before the end of March, an EPA administrator told attendees at an ethanol conference in Florida on Wednesday.

The sources cautioned that no final decision has been made and the approach could change before it is formally released.

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The loss of grass in Oklahoma and Kansas has sent ranchers scrambling for donations of hay to feed their herds as some face the prospect of running out of supplies.

WHY IT MATTERS: Persistent drought has driven U.S. cattle supplies to their lowest numbers since the 1950s and driven prices to record highs.

Since last week, the biggest wildfire, the Ranger Road Fire, burned an estimated 283,283 acres (114,640 hectares) in northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry said on Monday. It was about 65 per cent contained.

“Grass is gone,” said Collin Domer, 36, a volunteer firefighter for the Laverne Fire Department in Oklahoma who responded to the blaze.

“It’s sand. Take a sand pit and cover that over 285,000 acres.”

Cattle supplies lowest in 75 years

Other fires have burned thousands more acres in Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. Some cattle perished, state and industry officials said, without estimating the number.

“There’s been a lot of cattle loss,” said Bryce Boyer, spokesperson for the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry. “There’s been a lot of hay loss. The ones who do have cattle, a lot of them don’t have grass to feed them now.”

U.S. cattle supplies were already at their lowest level in 75 years after high prices and a persistent drought drove ranchers to send more animals to slaughter, instead of keeping them for breeding. Last year, Brazil surpassed the U.S. as the world’s top beef producer, according to industry estimates.

U.S. President Donald Trump has pledged to lower beef costs for consumers. However, retail prices for ground beef set a record high of $6.75 per pound (C$9.24) in January, up 22 per cent from a year earlier, due to low supplies and strong demand from consumers, according to U.S. government data.

Cattle flee fire

Farmers cut fences to allow cattle to escape the wildfire last week, though some animals died and others suffered burns after being caught, said Heather Lansdowne, spokesperson for the Kansas Department of Agriculture. Veterinarians were working with ranchers to determine the best care for hurt animals, she said.

“While they were able to save a lot of cattle, those producers now don’t have anything to feed those cattle,” Lansdowne said.

Once the flames are extinguished, it may take longer than normal for pastures to be ready for grazing again depending on damage from the intense heat, said Michael Kelsey, executive vice president of the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association.

“That’s a long-term issue for some of those ranches,” he said. “They’ve got to give it a little longer to recover.”

In the meantime, Domer was spearheading an effort to collect hay, feed and other supplies for ranchers. He said he received donations from as far away as Montana and Michigan.

The Kansas Livestock Association was also coordinating hay donations and said it received offers from Kansas, Wisconsin and Illinois for local ranchers.

“The grass resources have been burned up,” association spokesperson Scarlett Madinger said. “They’ve got to have something to feed their livestock immediately.”

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The two-day meeting this week in Arlington, Virginia, focused on a challenging farm economy that could see further headwinds after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday struck down Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs that he pursued under a law meant for use in national emergencies. The ruling handed a stinging defeat to the Republican president, with major implications for the global economy and potential ripple effects on the U.S. farm sector.

Trump has since vowed to levy a global 10 per cent tariff using other trade powers, but details are scant.

What USDA is doing

• The Farmer Bridge Assistance program is expected to distribute $11 billion in one-time payments to farmers. It’s a per-acre rate for those who planted one of the 19 commodity crops identified as being eligible for the program. Another $1 billion is slated for specialty crop producers.
• USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said Friday that the agency will open the application process ahead of schedule on Monday.
• In December, Rollins said farmers who qualify could expect “payments in their bank accounts” by February 28 – six days after applications open.
• “These resources will help carry producers into the next season, truly a bridge, as purchase commitments and new trade deals take effect and input costs continue to decline,” Rollins told a packed ballroom at the Agricultural Outlook Forum in Arlington, Virginia on Friday.
• Rollins did not immediately respond to questions about how USDA will process an expected flood of applications.
• Deep staffing cuts across the federal government last year, including at USDA’s Farm Service Agency offices in rural America, have slowed farmer access to many government services.
• The federal payments will not fully compensate farmers for financial losses that have topped $30 billion in recent years, economists and industry groups said.
• The aid will act as “a bridge until the improvements in the farm bill programs are realized on the farm,” John Newton, vice president of public policy and economic analysis at the American Farm Bureau Federation, told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.
• Earlier this month, USDA had forecast that U.S. net farm income would fall 0.7 per cent this year, despite near-record government payments expected to account for nearly 29 per cent of producers’ bottom line.
• USDA said it expects prices paid to farmers for corn, soybeans and wheat to rise slightly in the 2026/27 season, though prices remain well below recent highs.
• Average prices were projected at $4.20 a bushel for corn, $10.30 for soybeans and $5.00 for wheat — 10 cents higher than the current season and well below 2022/23 levels, USDA data showed.
• USDA Chief Economist Justin Benavidez said ad hoc farm aid, which has reached near-historic levels in recent years, has helped keep farmers in business during the downturn but likely supported input prices.

— Reporting by Karl Plume in Arlington, Virginia, and P.J. Huffstutter in Chicago

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Farmers expect corn, the most widely grown U.S. crop, to hew close to break-even levels this year, supported by strong usage. Some see soybeans as riskier, given rising competition from Brazil and a volatile U.S. trade relationship with top buyer China.

“Right now, you absolutely cannot make money on beans,” said Tim Gregerson, who farms in eastern Nebraska. “You can probably break even on corn, but you are going to have to have an extraordinary yield, or a price increase,” Gregerson said.

Most growers in America’s Midwest farm belt grow both crops, alternating what gets planted on each field from year to year to boost soil health. Many add wheat, sorghum, cotton or other crops to their rotations. But among farmers who have some flexible acres where they can plant anything, many see corn as their best bet.

USDA revisions add challenges

Planting decisions for 2026, hashed out in the winter months, mark the first step in determining the amount of grain produced in the world’s largest corn exporting nation and the second-biggest soybean supplier after Brazil.

Decisions are particularly challenging this year after the U.S. Agriculture Department made unprecedented revisions in January to its estimate of the last season’s harvested corn acreage, which, along with larger-than-expected estimates of the 2025 corn yield and stocks on hand as of December 1, pushed down prices.

Ahead of the USDA’s annual outlook forum this week, analysts surveyed by Reuters on average projected corn plantings for 2026 at 94.9 million acres, down about four per cent from last year’s 89-year high, but still the second-most corn acres in 13 years. The poll put soybean plantings at 84.9 million acres, in line with the 10-year average and up from the 81 million acres seeded in 2025, a six-year low.

U.S. farmers grew the biggest corn crop in history last year at more than 17 billion bushels, stuffing the nation’s grain bins and weighing on Chicago Board of Trade corn futures.

However, a record pace of export sales and robust demand from ethanol producers has kept a floor under prices as acreage ideas for 2026 take shape.

Even with rising costs for inputs such as seeds and fertilizer, CBOT December corn futures, representing the 2026 harvest, are hovering near $4.60 (C$6.28) a bushel, close to break-even levels for farmers.

“The market is signaling, ‘We don’t want you to cut too many corn acres.’ We don’t need as many as last year, but with today’s demand base, it’s not like we need a huge drop,” said Frayne Olson, an agricultural economist with North Dakota State University.

Pressures in farm country

Some U.S. farmers are struggling to stay solvent, even with increased government aid payments.

Soybeans cost less to grow, and demand from domestic crushers and the burgeoning biofuels industry should help offset diminished export sales due to trade tensions with China, by far the world’s largest buyer. China has purchased 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans since a late-October trade truce.

But prospects of future U.S. soy exports are uncertain ahead of a planned April meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping. Meanwhile, farmers in Brazil have begun to reap a record-large soy harvest that should dominate the global soy trade.

“The soybean market is more of a political football than the corn market right now,” said Dan O’Brien, an economist with Kansas State University.

Big corn yields

Corn typically yields more than triple the grain per acre compared to soybeans. While a large output pressures prices, individual farmers can earn more. Last year’s national corn yield was the highest on record at 186.5 bushels per acre, and state records were set in the No. 3 and 4 growing states of Minnesota and Nebraska as well as states farther on the fringe of the Corn Belt, like North Dakota.

As they finish their cropping plans for 2026, farmers say they are looking for ways to cut costs. In Nebraska, Gregerson has stopped buying new machinery and has found ways to cut fertilizer use. He is considering cutting back on herbicide applications, but doing so would mean staying close to the farm throughout the growing season to scout crops especially closely.

“When you do that, you have live and die in a sprayer. You don’t go on vacation in the spring or the summer. You have got to be so timely on killing your weeds.”

In North Dakota, farmer Phil Volk says growers in his area are delaying machinery repairs, skipping niceties like growth-promoting seed treatments on soybeans, and devoting most of their input costs to corn, his most profitable crop in 2025. Volk expects to expand his corn acreage this spring by 15 per cent compared to last year.

“They are going to cut as many expenses on soybeans (as possible) and pour all the juice to corn,” Volk said.

— one acre equals 0.405 hectares

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