Plenty to watch as we head into harvest season

By Doug Tenney, Leist Mercantile

I love watching hummingbirds drink from the feeder just outside my kitchen window. The show is always entertaining. One August morning, two battled for their turn. My feeder has five ports, and the pair quickly learned that it worked best not to drink side by side. Any other configuration quickly proved ideal. Several times, I watched two drinking, then one darted out of sight. It would return just seconds later, only to rinse and repeat. At times, one dropped into the butterfly bush, hovering like a helicopter, or teasing its partner before rising again for another sip. The entire scene was a mesmerizing moment in time, much like the harvest activity in the coming months, which will operate like a well-tuned orchestra, with each person knowing their role in bringing corn and soybeans out of the field as efficiently as possible.

The Pro Farmer Crop Tour, at this writing, was completed more than a week ago. Its implications will be far-reaching in the Sept. 11 WASDE Report just released.  The crop tour detailed disappointing soybean pod counts in several key production states, including Illinois, Iowa, and Indiana. Summer storms for Iowa and Illinois were detrimental to corn yields. That combination was clearly a factor in inspiring traders to be long corn and soybeans headed into that Sept. 11 USDA report. The Pro Farmer Crop Tour put the U.S. corn yield at a shockingly low 173.2 bushels per acre. In addition, it estimated the U.S. soybean yield at 53.3 bushels per acre. The U.S. 2025 corn yield was 186.5 bushels per acre, with the soybean yield at 53.0 bushels per acre.

Bullish thoughts can be quickly provoked upon realizing that U.S. corn demand may outstrip U.S. corn production. Extreme caution is warranted.

Let’s step back in time for just a moment, one month into the Aug. 12 WASDE Report. The major bullet point from that report was the reduction in the 2026 U.S. corn yield to 180.7; the July yield was 183. The U.S. soybean yield was 52.7; the previous month was 53.0. U.S. corn harvested acres increased by 1.4 million acres, while U.S. soybean acres increased by 1.2 million acres. December 2026 CBOT corn that day closed at $4.8075, up 20.25 cents. November 2026 CBOT soybeans closed that same day at $11.8325, up 14.5 cents. It was a rare day in the grain markets with corn gaining more than soybeans.

We are just weeks away from the Sept. 30 USDA Grain Stocks Report. With that report, we will get a much better understanding of ending stocks for the just-ended 2025-2026 marketing year. Since January, there have been constant tugging concerns with two demand lines in the supply and demand table. One, the 2025 corn yield was pegged too high at 186.5.  Second, the feed usage of 6.350 billion bushels was also too high. The Aug. 11 WASDE Report estimated corn ending stocks for the 2025-2026 marketing year at 1.945 billion bushels. I would suggest that, in upcoming WASDE Reports, both corn demand lines would decrease, while the final ending stocks will be just 50 million bushels plus or minus from the 2.0 billion bushels of corn ending stocks. That number is a huge psychological barometer to monitor when determining strength or weakness.

Several Ohio weather anomalies serve as a summary for the year to date. The Ohio spring planting season for producers north of I-70 was troublesome at best. May rains delayed corn planting well into the first two weeks of June, with corn pollination still taking place during the first half of August. Across Ohio, there were at least three periods of above-normal temperatures in the 90s from Aug. 1-20, which were extremely brutal.  Then the monsoons occurred mid-August when much of Ohio received 6-9 inches of rain or more. You never hear a farmer turning away August rains, since August is typically the driest month of the year. However, those rains flooded numerous corn and soybean fields located near creek or river bottomlands across the state. Rain came for multiple days, morning, noon, or night. They were just not pop-up afternoon thunderstorms. Columbus set a record for the most consecutive days of rain at 11. In the “you will never believe it category, multiple ODOT snowplows were pushing floodwaters off 1-71 just south of the Columbus floodwall in the wee morning hours on Aug. 20.

Expect the Ohio fall harvest season to be abnormally long this year due to the length of its huge planting window earlier this spring.

Thought for the day. “Notice that autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.” — Friedrich Nietzsche.