Glacier FarmMedia — Soybean and corn futures at the Chicago Board of Trade posted some large price swings during the week ended March 25, as market participants reacted to the shifting news out of the Middle East and adjusted positions ahead of upcoming acreage data from the United States Department of Agriculture.
The USDA releases its prospective plantings report on March 31, providing the first survey-based estimates on the upcoming U.S. growing season.
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The trade sentiment ahead of the report is for a three-to-five-million-acre reduction in corn area from the 98.8 million acres grown in 2025 and a similarly sized increase in soybeans from the 81.2 million acres grown last year. Rising fertilizer costs due to the war could see even more area shift to soybeans.
Soybean/corn ratio
The soybean/corn ratio is calculated by dividing the soybean futures price by the corn futures price, with a number above 2.5 historically seen as favouring planting soybeans and a ratio below that tipping the scales to corn.
With May soybeans settling at US$11.7175 and corn at US$4.6725 on March 25, the ratio works out to 2.51 — slightly favouring soybeans.
However, the localized cash bid ratios across the countryside are more varied. Looking at a sampling of elevators in Illinois and Iowa the local soybean/corn ratios range from 2.35 to 2.65, meaning seeding corn looks more favourable in some areas and soybeans in others.
The high fertilizer costs and other metrics are also not caught in the ratio, which should keep speculation on the annual fight for acres at the forefront of the trade in the coming weeks.
Charts
May corn has traded in a range of US$4.40 to US$4.76 per bushel since the Middle East war started on Feb. 28. Fund traders added to the bullish bets, to sit on their largest net long in corn since February 2025 at about 230,000 contracts. The trend is still higher in corn, as that market looks to keep too many acres from flipping to soybeans.
May soybeans settled at US$11.7075 per bushel on Feb. 27, the day before the U.S. and Israel first attacked Iran and hit a session high of US$12.3875 per bushel two weeks later. However, the contract was right back where it started by March 25.
