“It didn’t do much at all for the market reaction. Some slight adjustments, but overall a nothing burger,” said John Weyer, vice-president of Walsh Commercial Hedging Services in Chicago, Ill.

“To steal a quote from my office manager, they released the report and didn’t tell anyone,” Weyer quipped.

Few changes in U.S. crops

Among the trio of main commodities, there were no changes to U.S. production of soybeans, corn and wheat for the 2025-26 marketing year.

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As for 2025-26 U.S. exports and ending stocks, the only differences compared to the USDA’s March report were that soybean exports were trimmed to 1.54 billion bushels from 1.58 billion, and the wheat carryover was bumped up to 938 million bushels from 931 million.

Global adjustments

However, Walsh said the change in global ending stocks for wheat did see a five to six cent drop in the North American futures. The carryout rose to 283.12 million tonnes in the April report from 276.96 million last month.

As well, world wheat production for 2025-26 was upped to 844.15 million tonnes, based on increased output for Argentina, the European Union and Russia.

For corn, the USDA kept Argentina and Brazil at 52 million and 132 million tonnes, respectively. Also with soybeans, with Argentina at 48 million tonnes and Brazil held at 180 million.

Crude oil

With such a mundane report, Walsh said crude oil will continue to guide the commodity futures over the next 30 days.

“That’s the driver of the bus right now,” Walsh said.

While recent talk of a ceasefire between U.S. and Israel with Iran generated sharp declines in crude oil and the agricultural commodities, fears of the war escalating pushed prices higher on April 9.

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As participation in on-farm research grows across the Prairies, researchers are working to strengthen how strip-trial results are analyzed so farmers can make more confident decisions.

A recent panel at Ag Days in Brandon offered a snapshot of where on-farm research stands today.

Farmers involved in Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers’ On-Farm Network shared their experiences and why they continue to participate.

WHY IT MATTERS: Improving how those trials are designed and analyzed can make the results more reliable and help growers make better management decisions.

Simon Hodson, who runs Rosebank Farms in Lenore, Man., said the value isn’t necessarily a breakthrough yield response — it’s confidence.

“It’s not an emotional choice, it’s a data-backed decision,” he said.

A null result can still be useful

Andrew Doerksen of Beaver Creek Farms at McGregor, Man., and Jayden Buchanan, who farms near Crystal City, Man., echoed that sentiment.

Several panelists pointed to “no statistical difference” results as some of the most useful outcomes. While that finding can feel anticlimactic, it often confirms that an added input or higher rate isn’t delivering enough return to justify the cost.

Soybean planting rates were one example.

Trials showed similar final plant stands across a range of starting populations, giving growers confidence to reduce seeding rates and save on seed costs.

Inoculant trials also showed little consistent yield benefit in many cases. With tight margins and rising input prices, those null results translated directly into savings.

READ MORE: On-farm research translates crop breakthroughs into ‘farmer speak’

Chris Forsythe, on-farm network agronomist with Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers, said most trials do not produce dramatic yield differences.

“Maybe 10 to 20 per cent of the time there is a difference, but 80 per cent of the time there isn’t,” he noted. Used carefully, that information helps growers avoid unnecessary inputs, extra passes or equipment purchases.

In one Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers trial on Doerksen’s farm, residual nitrogen spikes proved less consequential than expected, suggesting soybeans may tolerate more fluctuation than previously assumed.

Other trials have revealed subtler insights. In a wheat PGR trial on Hodson’s farm, yield did not change, but plant height did.

“If we weren’t working with the agronomists, we wouldn’t have been able to gain that information, and we might not have realized the value in that product,” said Hodson.

Strengthening trial design

Across the panel, the common thread was not chasing yield gains but narrowing uncertainty. Replication across multiple farms and public reporting strengthened certainty that findings were not local anomalies.

However, realism comes with a tradeoff.

WATCH: AgGronomyTV: Evaluating on-farm research

Field-scale trials capture the variability farmers live with, yet that same variability can make results harder to interpret. Long strip trials, differences in soil zones and yield monitor lag — the delay between crop entering the header and yield being recorded — can all mask real treatment responses.

A project funded by the Western Grains Research Foundation, SaskOilseeds, Saskatchewan Pulse Growers and SaskWheat and led by University of Saskatchewan professor Steve Shirtliffe, is focused on improving how on-farm trials are designed and analyzed.

Research officer Racquelle Peters, who manages the project, said on-farm research fills a gap that small-plot trials cannot. While small-plot research provides generalized recommendations under controlled conditions, field-scale strip trials reflect commercial realities.

“It feels more real to them, and there’s a good reason for that,” said Peters.

READ MORE: A whole new approach to on-farm research

“When you have that small plot research, which is also very valuable, they’re able to provide generalized recommendations, whereas, with the on-farm trials, you get specific recommendations, and that is very meaningful to farmers.”

Most on-farm trials follow a structured strip-trial layout designed to compare treatments fairly across a field. Improving how that framework performs under real field conditions is a central goal of Shirtliffe’s research team.

“What we’re doing is that we’re looking at ways to optimize that, using data that already exists,” said Peters.

Part of that effort involves re-evaluating older trial data with updated analytical tools, testing whether different approaches can strengthen the conclusions drawn from farmer-run trials.

Working at field scale means working with the variability farmers manage every season. That realism can make subtle treatment effects harder to detect.

The project is exploring approaches intended to improve sensitivity without sacrificing the practical advantages of on-farm trials.

Improving field-scale sensitivity

One method, the modulated on-farm response surface experiment, replaces single-rate strips with smooth ramps of application rates within a single pass. That allows researchers to analyze responses as a curve rather than a simple comparison of averages, improving sensitivity when identifying optimal input rates.

“I think of like turning one strip into a dozen mini-plots without any borders,” said Peters.

For fixed-rate decisions, such as fungicide application, the project is also testing precision strip trials that alternate treated and untreated segments within a single pass.

READ MORE: Sask. producer learns from his own on-farm trials

Varying the length of those segments helps account for yield monitor lag and allows spatial analysis to separate real treatment effects from background noise.

“It’s kind of like an on-off treatment system,” Peters said.

Keeping trials farmer-friendly

Peters said improving trial design isn’t about making on-farm research more complicated for growers. Most modern equipment already supports variable-rate prescriptions and precision application, so many of the improvements focus on making better use of the data already being collected.

That matters because on-farm research only works if it fits into normal operations. At the Ag Days panel, growers repeatedly stressed that trials must be practical and easy to integrate into busy seasons.

“The goal is to get precise, trustworthy recommendations that reflect their local conditions,” said Peters.

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The USDA also issued its quarterly grain stocks report with stocks for soybeans bigger than anticipated, while those for corn were smaller and wheat virtually matched the average trade guess.

USDA forecasts seeded acres for 2026/27

The USDA predicted corn planting intentions at 95.34 million acres, which is down from 98.79 million acres U.S. farmers seeded last year, but less than the market projection of 94.37 million.

The shift away from corn to soybeans was not as large as the trade believed there was going to be.

“That was the big conversation, how many corn acres there was going to be, especially with the beans this year,” said Ryan Etnner, broker with Allendale Inc. in McHenry, Illinois.

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The report placed soybean acres at 84.70 million, up from 81.22 million last year, but short of the market projection of 85.55 million.

Ettner said the total wheat acres caught his eye, with how close the USDA was to the trade guess. The department placed its forecast at 43.78 million acres and trade called for 44.79 million. Last year, farmers planted 45.33 million acres of wheat.

Fertilizer issues could be down the road

The broker added that rising fertilizer prices did not have as great an effect on the switch from corn to soybeans. He said most U.S. farmers apply their fertilizer in the fall and what will go on the fields this spring was largely bought before the Middle East war.

“The bigger concern is fall of this year, if things don’t calm down over there by that point,” Ettner said. “Most people are assuming this is a larger 2027 issue if the war is still going on by the fall.”

USDA Planting Intentions (Millions of acres)

1 acre = 0.405 hectares

Grain stocks

As for grain stocks as of March 1, Ettner said there was some pre-report speculation that total corn could be as high as 9.30 billion bushels.

“The quarterly stocks all came in line. The one concern was ‘what if corn had come in bigger?’ and it didn’t,” Ettner said.

He added that corn stocks were going to be very large simply because of the size of the 2025/26 harvest.

USDA Grain Stocks as of March 1 (Billions of bushels)

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As for the Canadian soybean crush, StatCan has not published any new data since it released its report for the July crush in August 2025. The agency said any numbers have been “suppressed to meet the confidentiality requirements of the Statistics Act.”

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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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Daryl Domitruk, now a research project manager for MPSG, said pulse and soybean prospects in Manitoba have become “very interesting” due to the war in the Middle East as well as speculation over upcoming weather conditions. He added that it is difficult to determine with certainty how many acres will be planted for certain crops.

“What we’ve been seeing is that soybeans are likely to increase in Manitoba. Dry beans are likely to be down and peas are tougher (to determine). We’re expecting similar acreage (from last year) but that could change with the weather,” Domitruk said.

His assessment largely reflected that of Statistics Canada’s latest principal field crop report released earlier this month. Soybean acres in Manitoba were projected at 1.869 million acres this year, up 12.9 per cent from 2025-26. Edible bean acres were projected at 120,000, down 45.6 per cent, while dry pea acres are expected to decline by 40.5 per cent at 116,700.

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Domitruk attributed the drops in dry bean and pea acres to the markets being well-supplied, which resulted in prices going down and seeded area falling.

With shipments of fertilizer and urea being held up due to the war in Iran, farmers may be inclined to grow soybeans and other crops with low fertilizer needs. Domitruk said there is already additional interest from growers.

“That is the only thing that may accelerate bean or soybean acres than what’s already being projected,” he added. “But we need to pay close attention to crop rotations in Manitoba.”

He added that the amount of snow received in central and southern Manitoba this winter could provide the moisture necessary for good growing conditions. However, pulse planting is still restricted to specific windows of time.

“That window only works if seeding for wheat and canola go according to plan,” Domitruk said.

“It’s really difficult when you have so many different factors in play this year between markets, world events, weather and prices for inputs. Weather-wise, we can only assume things will be OK. Of course, it’s not in our hands and we can just see what we get,” he added.

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Brazil, the world’s largest soybean producer and exporter, is facing rising production costs due to the conflict, including higher fertilizer and fuel prices.

“I confess that in 30 years I’ve never seen so many loose ends to tie up,” Agroconsult Chief Executive Andre Pessoa said during the firm’s forecast release event.

Brazil has expanded its soybean area year after year, with planting typically starting in mid-September.

If the war drags on amid difficult credit conditions, producers may reduce input investments and cut planting area, Pessoa said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Agroconsult estimated a record soybean crop for the 2025/26 season at 184.7 million metric tons.

— Reporting by Roberto Samora

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The USDA releases its prospective plantings report on March 31, providing the first survey-based estimates on the upcoming U.S. growing season.

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.

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The finding addresses a question that has surfaced in U.S. research and among Prairie growers managing high-pH soils: does choosing a low IDC score come at the cost of yield where chlorosis is not present?

“We didn’t know the answer to this question until just now,” U of M researcher Kristen MacMillan said during a presentation at Ag Days in Brandon.

WHY IT MATTERS: Understanding how variety selection affects yield helps farmers make more confident decisions in challenging soil conditions.

“It’s a highly visual condition,” said MacMillan, who is also Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers’ agronomist in residence.

“We’re choosing varieties based on their visual response, but what is the actual yield correlation to that?”

IDC is a common issue in calcareous, high-pH soils, where iron becomes chemically unavailable to the plant.

The condition causes yellowing between the veins of young soybean leaves, typically appearing in patches and lasting from mid-June into July. While symptoms may only persist for a few weeks, early-season stress can reduce yield potential.

How much yield does IDC cost?

To understand how IDC severity translates into yield loss, MacMillan collaborated with Manitoba Agriculture to analyze six years of data from single-row plots rated annually for IDC response near Winnipeg. Those plots were taken through to harvest to compare visual scores with final yield.

The analysis confirmed that yield declines as IDC scores increase in affected areas.

MacMillan reported a yield loss of roughly 1.5 to 2.8 bushels per acre for every one-point increase in IDC score. In practical terms, a two-point difference between varieties could mean a three- to six-bushel swing in IDC-prone zones.

Is there a yield trade-off?

The more pressing question, however, was whether selecting for low IDC scores sacrifices yield elsewhere in the field.

Many growers report IDC often affects only portions of a field, yet variety decisions are made for the entire field. Research in North Dakota and South Dakota has identified yield trade-offs in some soybean populations, where selecting for IDC tolerance reduced yield under non-IDC conditions.

To test whether that trade-off exists under Manitoba conditions, MacMillan established paired trials in IDC and non-IDC areas of the same field using identical varieties. She also identified a common set of varieties grown over three years to ensure consistency in comparisons.

“What we’re finding is that yield is also negatively correlated with IDC score or not related at all. So this is good news,” she said.

In other words, varieties with strong IDC tolerance performed well in affected areas without yielding less in unaffected parts of the field.

MacMillan also examined whether precision-planting different cultivars in IDC and non-IDC zones would provide an advantage.

Because no yield penalty was detected, splitting varieties within a field offered little benefit in most scenarios. Only in fields almost entirely affected by IDC did a particularly strong cultivar show a measurable advantage.

“If IDC is a constraint in your fields, continue choosing varieties with low IDC score and high yield,” she said.

For growers managing high-carbonate Prairie soils, the data reinforce current practice: selecting IDC-tolerant varieties remains the most reliable defence without sacrificing yield potential where chlorosis never appears.

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“The markets (in 2022) were telling farmers to plant every acre that they could,” Lilja said. “The Russian-Ukraine war has been in a heavy agricultural producing area.”

“That spring, we were just coming off of a South American drought. Supplies of soybeans, corn and wheat were historically on the low side,” he added, noting there were a number of limit up days in the commodities, especially for wheat.

Today, Lilja said the situation is different, despite the hikes in soybeans, corn and wheat. There hasn’t been any limit up days.

“You can argue the view from South America right now, they have come off record yields,” he said.

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For 2025/26 soybeans, Brazil is on its way to another record harvest that’s to be about 180 million tonnes, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Plus, Brazil is to have strong corn yields that are to produce a crop of around 132 million tonnes. Also, Argentina had a record wheat harvest of about 27.8 million tonnes.

As well, Iran isn’t as a major wheat producer that Russia and Ukraine are. Lilja said the latter two countries combined will provide about 108 million tonnes of wheat, while Iran’s production is maybe one-tenth of that.

Added to that, the U.S. situation is much different between 2022 and 2026. Lilja said U.S. wheat ending stocks four years ago were in a range of 570 million to 670 million bushels. The USDA has forecasted the 2025/26 carryover at 931 million bushels.

“We just haven’t seen the huge price spike that we saw back in February and March of 2022,” he said, but stressed the commodities are still following the increases in crude oil.

“The night crude oil spiked up (March 15-16) was the recent highs for U.S. soybeans, corn and wheat,” he continued.

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