In August of 2025, after receiving information on expected corn yields from the objective yield survey conducted annually by USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), USDA officially forecast in its monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report that U.S. corn farmers were poised to smash the previous record for the amount of corn produced in a single crop year. In that report, the U.S. projected corn production was 16.74 billion bushels, exceeding the recent record output set in 2023 of 15.23 billion bushels by more than one billion bushels. In its most recent WASDE report released in November, that figure climbed slightly, to 16.75 billion bushels.
In addition, the U.S. soybean crop is expected to be quite robust as well, less than five percent below the 4.46 billion bushel record production level recorded in 2021. Even the U.S. wheat crop was fairly robust at 1.985 billion bushels, only 14 percent below the record set in the 2016/17 crop year, with 6.5 million fewer harvested acres of wheat.
When one tallies up all the feed grains, spring-planted wheat, and soybeans projected to be harvested this fall, and add in ending stocks from the end of the 2024/25 crop year, there will be more than 25.5 billion bushels of grains and oilseeds sloshing around the U.S. grain and oilseed marketing system this year. This figure does not include U.S.-produced minor oilseeds or pulse crops, which are not included in the monthly WASDE estimates, nor U.S.-produced rice and cotton, which have largely separate handling and marketing systems in this country. Thus, this year’s bountiful harvest will put a considerable strain on the U.S. grain marketing sector, both in terms of prices that farmers can expect to receive for their crops and the demand for crop storage, which may exceed constructed storage capacity in some states.
Most U.S. crop prices continue to be relatively low for the second straight year, with the current estimates for 2025/26 season average corn and soybean prices forecast lower by 12 percent and 15 percent respectively compared to the 2023/24 season averages, according to USDA data. In addition, the prices of many key agricultural inputs for crop production, including nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides, continue to be relatively high, as have interest rates. A recent survey conducted by the American Banking Association (ABA) and Farmer Mac found that U.S. agricultural lenders expect just over half (52 percent) of their farm borrowers will show a profit for this year. The survey indicates that the financial outlook for the 2026/27 crop year looks even worse.
According to an analysis conducted by an economist working for the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) and released in August 2025, there was more than 25 billion bushels of grain storage capacity, both on-farm and off-farm, available to U.S. farmers as of the end of 2024, which in aggregate should be adequate to store all the crop expected to be in the system this fall. However, that storage capacity is not equally distributed across the country. Nearly 60 percent of the storage is found in just six Midwest states– Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Indiana–which could leave farmers in other parts of the country without access to proper storage.
In those instances where farmers with bumper crops don’t have their own storage facilities on farm, or adequate access to storage at local elevators, they may have to resort to alternative methods of storing their grain before they choose to market it. The worst case scenario would be piling a portion of their crop on the bare ground, which leaves it highly vulnerable to moisture and insect damage, especially if adverse weather strikes. One step up from piling grain on bare ground would be to construct concrete pads near the farmstead and pile the grain on that surface, ideally covering the pile with tarpaulins to reduce weather damage.
In recent years, U.S. farmers have had access to large hermetically sealable triple-layered plastic bags to store grains that were developed at Purdue University to help small-holder farmers in Africa reduce post-harvest losses of their cowpea crops in 1987. Funding for this research had been provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). This crop had been particularly prone to insect damage, costing these farmers precious revenue from a relatively high value crop. Farmers in developing countries now use these bags to store a variety of crops, not just cowpeas. These so-called PICS bags (for Purdue Improved Crop Storage) have been available for sale in the United States for the last several years, and can be purchased online at this location.
If farmers anticipate that shortages of storage capacity could be a long-term issue in their region, they might want to consider building additional on-farm storage for their own use. Such a step would likely not address the farmer’s immediate need for grain storage, as construction would almost certainly not be completed until sometime next year. USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) can provide low-interest loans to farmers wishing to build such facilities under the Farm Storage Facility Loan Program (FSLP). According to an article published by the FBN Network in August 2025, a typical storage bin of 30,000 bushels can cost around $70,000, which translates into about $2.33 per bushel. However, with hefty tariffs still being applied to key materials used to build storage bins, such as steel and aluminum imports, that cost may be going up over time.
