Weekly Crop Commentary - 02/06/2026

Briana Holtzman
Grain Merchandiser, Kenton (Region 1)

What a week for the bean market! On Wednesday, President Trump met with Chinese President Xi and reported that the meeting was successful. China agreed to increase its current soybean purchases to 20 MMT, an increase of 8 MMT from the original 12MMT. It was also stated that China will commit to 25 MMT for the following season. This led to a bean rally that lasted through midday today. The EPA is also supposed to be releasing its final policy regulations for soybean biofuels later this month/early March. This will give us strong domestic soybean demand, on top of strong export demand, if China fulfills its commitments.

China released a statement yesterday that it will begin shifting away from self-sufficiency and increase trade and imports in the agricultural market. This policy shift is expected to lead to broader Chinese imports of agricultural products, especially from the United States.

There is less of a story with corn and wheat this week, with both being brought up slightly by beans midweek. I am not seeing any major weather concerns in South America, but that is always something to keep an eye on. The USDA will release its February WASDE report next week on Tuesday, where we might see some tightening on the current crop carryout.

Zach Dennis
Grain Merchandiser, Upper Sandusky (Region 2)

I wanted to start this week’s commentary with a thank you to everyone who attended the Region 2 Marketing Meeting on Feb 4th. It was a great meeting with a large crowd. I hope you were able to take something away from the meeting to help you with your marketing this upcoming season.

Old crop beans have rallied this week! A tweet from President Trump suggested that China may be open to buying 8 MMT of soybeans in addition to the initial 12 MMT. However, this is all speculation at the moment; we will wait and see if anything transpires from it. Soybean crush remains near record levels, driven by meal and oil. Brazil is starting to harvest its bean crop. The crop is said to be record-breaking, which will contribute to a significant jump in global supply and put pressure on US soybeans.

Corn has been trading flat here as of late. There is still an abundance of corn in the US. While exports have been strong, it's being faced with competitive pressure from both Brazil and Argentina. Weather patterns in Argentina have been dry and hot the last couple of weeks, we will see if this has an effect on the record breaking yields they are expecting.

Looking forward, I would utilize the target offers. They work great. Thanks, and I hope you have a great weekend.

Zane Robison
Grain Merchandiser, Urbana (Region 3)

What a ride for the markets this week.

March corn started the week around $4.25 futures and worked its way back to key resistance near $4.35, only to lose some steam today and seemingly finish around the $4.30 level. That said, if you’ve got old corn to move, it makes sense to get some targets in around $4.35 futures or roughly $4.40 cash. That area feels like where we may stall out for the time being, barring any additional Twitter headlines. There isn’t much else new on the corn front. Exports remain on track but have slowed recently, largely due to normal seasonality.

Where to start with beans… I guess with the tweet that started it all: “The consideration by China of the purchase of additional agricultural products, including lifting the soybean count.”

Beans reacted sharply, rallying nearly 50¢ at one point, and continued to move higher through Thursday and into this morning before cooling off into the close. One interesting development that flew under the radar: China released its annual “Number 1 Document,” which outlines rural and agricultural policy priorities for the year. Buried in the document was a shift away from a strict self-sufficiency mindset toward greater participation in global agricultural trade and imports. Does that guarantee increased purchases of U.S. soybeans? No. But it does leave the door open for additional business. At some point, China will still need to buy Brazilian beans simply because the U.S. balance sheet cannot support another round of large Chinese purchases on its own. Still, it’s quite the policy shift and suggests there may be some internal pressures building within China.

Have a great weekend.

Ralph Wince
Grain Merchandiser, Canfield (Region 5)

Good afternoon. Finally, we have something that rallied the bean market this week. I would imagine most writing for Heritage grain commentary will focus on what President Trump said on Wednesday to rally the soybean market this week. So, I won’t spend a lot of time on that. Instead, I want to add some comments for you to ponder as we move ahead in the coming weeks.

I know that it appears that China MAY take an additional 8 MMT of soybeans in the current marketing year. Let’s convert that to bushels; that works out to about 294 million bushels. USDA has our carryout at 350 million bushels. We would almost have no beans left in the pipeline, and the way we would ration back demand would be run the price higher. That sounds good, but I’m not in that camp.

So why do I bring this up? Well, maybe China will take that many more. Still, for sure, we would see other export businesses head to South America, where beans would be cheaper because of the China loss. So the basis would probably weaken, making South American beans even cheaper than U.S. beans. The U.S. Southeast feed market would be able to import beans more cheaply from South America, thereby reducing feed demand for U.S. beans. I do not know how high the market can go, but I do know that if China does not take that additional 294 million bushels, the bean market does not need to be this high.

I said all that to say I do believe the U.S. soybean producer has been given a gift with this week’s rally. We really need to be selling beans, both old crop and some of our new crop production. Give us a call to discuss more in detail.

Stay warm this weekend. They say these are going to be the coldest days so far this season, but it looks like we'll be above freezing by the middle of next week.

Morgan Hefner
Grain Merchandiser, Nashport (Region 5)

The grain markets were mostly rangebound through the first half of the week. We saw slight positive movement in beans on Tuesday after soybean oil posted pretty significant gains. Most of the attention early in the week was centered around biofuels, as information on the 45Z tax credit policy was released on Wednesday morning.

The bigger move of the week came on Wednesday, mid- to late morning, when President Trump released details of a call he had with Chinese President Xi. Overall, it’s reported that China is considering buying an additional 8MMT of U.S. soybeans. The bean market reacted quickly to the news; March beans gained nearly 50¢ at one point and settled the day up 26¢. There was also discussion of China purchasing 25MMT of U.S. beans for the next season. Soybeans have continued to climb higher throughout the remainder of the week, but are running out of steam here this afternoon.

Have a great weekend!