By Kirk Maltais
Soybeans showed a glimmer of hope for farmers in 2025, but 2026 is not looking so rosy.
U.S. soybean farmers, already squeezed by thin margins and high costs, are now facing another year of stiff foreign competition, particularly from Brazil. Those hoping for recent momentum in soybean futures to continue, and potentially lead to profitable acreage, are probably out of luck.
"For a grains producer, there's no place to run and no place to hide," said Don Roose, head of West Des Moines, Iowa-based brokerage U.S. Commodities.
Soybean futures on the Chicago Board of Trade found some strength in the latter-half of 2025, hitting 16-month highs near $12 in November after promises from China to purchase roughly 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybean exports. The uptick gave farmers hope for an improved economic outlook, especially as gains in soybean futures outpaced corn or wheat futures.
But those gains have since receded. The most-active soybeans contract settled at $10.43 a bushel on Wednesday, down 10% from November's high.
Farmers last year were able to produce an average of 53 soybean bushels an acre, an all-time high, the Agriculture Department's latest World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report said. But they sold roughly 16% less soybeans on the export market than the prior year, leading to an increased amount of soybeans harvested this fall but left unsold in storage bins.
China resumed buying U.S. soybeans in November, this after a spat about tariffs led the world's biggest agricultural buyer to divert most of their business to other nations like Brazil and Argentina. The USDA has reported multiple large high-volume sales of soybeans to China since then, but many fear that this is only a stopgap until Brazilian crops begin to hit the export market next month.
"We know that February on, our export pace for soybeans dwindles to zero," Roose said.
In the Southern Hemisphere, Brazilian farmers are just beginning to harvest their soybean crop, which the USDA estimates will be a record-high 178 million metric tons. "They are only about 1% harvested and early yields are promising," said Michael Cordonnier, head of Soybean & Corn Advisor Inc.
The mammoth Brazilian crop has the U.S. agricultural market worried about overflowing global supplies and bargain prices for beans. "It is hard to see how farmers are going to make any money at these prices, and I do not see any reason for the prices to increase given the crop conditions in South America," Cordonnier said.
Even so, U.S. farmers may still plant more soybeans than last year, while reducing how much corn they field. Cultivating soybean acres is a cheaper proposition than corn, which requires more fertilizer to produce. The supply and demand situation for corn is also tough, with farmers last year producing more than 17 billion bushels of corn for the first time ever and crop prices finishing 2025 off 4%.
Entering this year both corn and soybeans remain "significantly below break-even prices" for farmers, said Scott Metzger, president of the American Soybean Association and a sixth-generation farmer in Williamsport, Ohio. "It doesn't look good for next year," he said.
Many farmers will be looking to $12 billion in aid payments being distributed by the USDA to keep them financially afloat, but that aid is seen by many as only a temporary solution and think that it'll take a weather event in Brazil or the U.S. Corn Belt leading to lost crops to bring prices up to profitable levels.
"I don't think anyone realistically expects that costs are going to come down in any sort of major degree," said Tom Halverson, chief executive officer of agricultural lender CoBank.
Write to Kirk Maltais at kirk.maltais@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
01-14-26 1614ET
