For the week, May corn gained 5¾, December corn was steady, May soybeans lost 6¼, November soybeans fell 10¼, May soybean meal down $5.60 per short ton and May soybean oil was up 42 points. May hard red winter wheat gained 2¼, May soft red winter wheat was up 1¼ and May hard red spring wheat tacked on 3 1/4.
Corn had a quiet week ending slightly higher and finally breaking the streak of lower weekly closes.
Jerry Gulke, president of the Gulke Group, says this was a classic reset or readjustment of the managed money in a market gearing up for a major USDA report and the end of a quarter.
“It’s going to be pretty important to their P&L to see just how smart they were in the month of March because this was pretty volatile. They’re going to want to look good so they can send out a quarterly report to their clients. I think this was kind of an evening up type of thing,” he says.
Gulke thinks the readjustment is warranted with the weight this year’s USDA Prospective Plantings report, to be released March 31, will have on the market.
“I think it’s going to be a blockbuster — and that’s coming from decades of experience,” he says.
Gulke has talked to commercial clients in Europe that have a vested interest in what the U.S. plants and has watched as the estimates have been released from various firms agreeing with the trend of more corn and less soybeans in 2025.
S&P Global and Allendale’s trade guesses were very close to USDA’s projected 94 million acres of corn and 84 million acre of soybeans from the Ag Outlook Forum in February.
However, Gulke thinks those are conservative estimates and there’s going to be a big surprise in the report.
“If the surprise comes, it’s going to be that we probably will plant a lot or intend to plant a lot more corn and a lot less beans than what anybody wishes to admit or predict for fear of being wrong,” he says.
Gulke has been gathering intel from his own clients through survey work and the lending community and is hearing the same trends.
“I’ve talked to some bankers and some loan officers in major agriculture areas who say this insurance is so good on corn you can buy up insurance to break even at worst,” he adds.
Meanwhile, soybean prices would have to climb to $12 or $13 to pencil out, so farmers are electing to plant less if they can swing it in their rotation.
Plus, corn yielded better in 2024.
“I can get better yields than my APH, but I’m not so sure about soybeans. With my crop insurance, I can buy 95% coverage on corn, pay a little money for it, and break even or even make money,” Gulke says.
If the report is a blockbuster and corn acreage comes in well above 94 million acres, what will that mean for the market?
Gulke says if it’s 95 million and there is no adjustment in demand that would push ending stocks above 2 billion bushels again, which is negative for corn prices.
“Whether you’re a government conspiracy theorist or not that will lower corn prices and curb inflation, which makes everybody happy,” he says.
For more information, contact Gulke at info@gulkegroup.com.
