This Year’s Corn Crop Is Off To A Good Start, But Weather Will Dictate Price Direction

Jon Scheve discusses what is causing corn’s price decline over the last month and what to expect in the next few months.

By Jon Scheve

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June 09, 2025 07:56 AM

Market Commentary for 6/6/25

Over the last month, July corn has fallen from $4.70 to $4.40.Some of this drop may be attributed to funds going from a long of 350,000 contracts in February to being short 150,000 contracts this week as seen in this chart:

In 2023 and 2024, funds were also short around 100,000 contracts by early June.In 2024, funds continued to push the market down by going to a short 350,000 contract position in July.Conversely, in 2023 they went to a long 50,000 contract position by mid-summer and helped push prices higher.

Ultimately, weather will impact the direction funds take over the next 2 months.Historically, when the crop is 70% planted by May 15^th, which it was, there is a 75% chance the crop will make a trendline or above average national yield.

What about Late Planting in the Eastern Corn Belt?
There are concerns with the planting progress in Ohio, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.At least 10%-15% of Ohio’s crop won’t get planted, which could be the equivalent of 350,000 to 500,000 prevent plant corn acres.Kentucky and Pennsylvania have made better progress but are still behind.Combined, these two states produce a little more than half the corn Ohio produces, so it seems likely that only around 200,000 corn acres could go prevent plant in these 2 states too.

There are some isolated areas in southern Indiana and Illinois that may also have some prevent plant acres, but it should be limited.On the flip side, producers in North and South Dakota managed to plant much quicker than normal this year, so there will likely be limited prevent plant there.This may mean any prevent plant acres in the eastern corn belt could be offset by fewer prevent plant acres than normal in the northwestern corn belt.

Wet weather in the eastern corn belt may keep planted corn acres from surpassing 97 million, but I doubt it will go lower than the 95.3 million acres estimated in the March planting intentions report.

Drought Monitor
As this map shows, almost 80% of the US corn crop is not experiencing overly dry conditions:

Every year usually around 25% of the US crop is facing questionable conditions at any given time.Going forward, the biggest factor impacting prices long term will be if the areas experiencing dry conditions expand, and if so, by how much.

Bottomline:
Basically, most of the 2025 crop is planted and is off to a good start.The funds have seen that and have been selling, which has been pushing prices down over the past month.Weather risk will increase over the next 10 weeks.As always, if anyone could predict the weather, they could predict the direction of grain prices.