Fundamentally Speaking

Next week brings the key farmer intentions planting report where trade is expecting U.S. corn acreage will increase by anywhere from 3-4 million acres above last year's figure with soybean planted area falling by a similar amount.

Better prospective per acre returns for corn along with falling fertilizer prices over the past two years and ideas that corn may be less adversely impacted pricewise from the ongoing trade wars seen as reasons for this switch.

Producers do pay attention to relative prices, but yield expectations also come into play as in certain areas of the country corn yields outperform soybeans and, in some areas, vice versa.

This chart shows the 10-, 20- and 30-year corn/soybean yield ratios on the right-hand axis while reported on the left-hand axis is the soybean/corn price ratios for the top 15 states that grow both and the U.S.

Starting with yields, we are seeing in North Dakota that corn yields have improved relative to soybean yields as the 30-year corn/soybean yield ratio at 3.73 is lower than the 20-year at 3.85 and now the 10-year at 4.02 where ND corn yields since 2015 have averaged over four times as many bushels as those for soybeans with the ratio having trended higher over the past 30 years by 0.029 bushels per acre.

At the oppositive side of the ledger is Kansas where corn yield growth has not kept pace with that of soybeans yields as the 30-year corn/soybean yield ratio at 4.02 is higher than the 20-year at 3.68 and now the 10-year at 3.57 as the KS corn/soybean yield ratio has fallen by 0.046 bushels per acre per year over the past 30 seasons.

This suggests maybe ND farmers should be planting more corn than soybeans while those in Kansas should do the opposite.

As for changes in price ratios, only three states have seen soybean prices increase relative to those for corn but more often the soybean/corn price ratio has trended lower over the past 30 years, especially in the Upper Midwest with this trend most pronounced in SD, IA, MN and ND, though Tennessee by far has the lowest soybean/corn price ratios for all three time periods.

(c) Copyright 2025 DTN, LLC. All rights reserved.