It’s that time of year to take a look at what was good or bad and what fell between the two.
Best of
- Yield. Unexpectedly good. However, I realize this wasn't the case for everyone.
- Basis. Better than predicted. Early harvest saw end users raise basis to get farmers to harvest wet corn. Recently, basis took a jump to encourage delivery of grain despite cold and snowy weather.
- Grain market. Rebounded. Though not as substantial as 2024, and seemingly a lot more sideways, any price increase is always welcome.
- Smooth harvest. The speed and ease (for us) of both planting and harvest. For that matter we didn't have to battle weather much at all this year to get field activities done. Probably the worst weather we've had to deal with is early and lasting snowfall, which made hauling grain more difficult. But even that melted away in the last week to 10 days
Worst of
- Fertilizer prices. High and unrelenting. Sure, some prices are down, but nitrogen and sulfur prices continue to increase, with both more than 25% higher than this time last year. This will keep margins tight for 2026.
Seed and chemistry prices seem to be pretty stable heading into 2026, but time will tell. This week I finally turned in the first draft of seed order.
I have hardly any fertilizer or chemicals booked.
In between
I'm not going to get into politics and policies. But subsidies, farm programs, and tariffs make this list. Are they good or bad? That's hotly debated and hard to tell.
I know subsidies may help keep some farms afloat after the 2025 books close. I also know very little, if any, of these payments stay in the farmer’s pocket. It's all just used to pay bills. which in the end allows fertilizer, seed, crop protection and machinery prices to stay high.
I see no sense in how some of these programs work. The Supplemental Disaster Relief Program reaches back to 2023 and 2024 to compensate for shallow losses. It calculates what losses were, then pays something around 35%. I believe ARC payments from 2024 triggered this fall as well.
Bridge payments should be coming soon, too. It's a lot to keep track of and even harder to understand.
Let's not forget a new farm bill should be coming soon. (I'm not sure why it's called a farm bill when such a small amount is about farming.)
Anyway, I feel this category had to make the list due to its impact on agriculture. I'll let the coffee shop debates rage as to which category they fall in!
Wishing everyone a great new year!