Fundamentally Speaking

Similar to what we did with corn last week, this graphic plots the USDA week 29 (around the third week of July) national soybean condition report for the 2025, 2024 and 2000-2025 average rating for the U.S. and top 18 states on the left-hand axis.

For this we use our usual ratings system where we weigh the crop based on the percent in each category and assign that category a factor of 2 for very poor, 4 for poor, 6 for fair, 8 for good, and 10 for excellent and then sum the results.

Reported on the right-hand axis is the percent that the week 29 rating this year deviates from the 2000-2025 average.

The figure in the yellow boxes is rank of 2025 week 29 soybean rating from 2000 to 2025 with 1 the best and 26 the worst.

Starting with the U.S., this year's 2025 week 29 rating of 746 is just above the year ago 740 and the eighth best since 2000 with the last higher rating being in 2020 at 750.

The U.S. soybean rating this year is now 4.0% above the 2000-2025 average.

All but three of the states (Michigan, North Dakota, and Tennessee) have their week 29 rating above their 25-year average though for most just modestly so.

The states doing exceptionally this season so far include North Carolina whose 788 rating is its best over the past 25 years and 11.8% above its average, Iowa which is the second largest soybean producing state whose 794 rating is tops among all states, Louisiana and Missouri.

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