10/20/25 Afternoon CommStock Report – Soybeans are in the Bin…the Doors are Shut…What Next?

2025 Soybeans are in the bin…now what? Farmers are holding, waiting for events to unfold. The price of soybeans has taken margins underwater but you don’t take a loss until you sell. The primary information needed, being waited for, is “will there be a trade deal with China?” and “how much will the Trump trade-aid ACH turn out to be?”. A Trump/Xi summit and announcement of Trump trade-aid ACH details when the government reopens someday, should provide some clarity on both. Farmers are roughly $1.50 bushel in the red on their soybeans. That creates a great reluctance to sell. The last information that we had from USDA, forecast soybean production at 4.301 bln bushels. That would mean that the Trump trade aid ACH would have to be $6.45 bln to get soybean farmers to breakeven. Something less than that would be disappointing. You can’t live off of breakeven. ARC/PLC subsidy payments do not come until October 2026. This is a moving number because if farmers get $1.50 bushel in aid and the market falls further, the loss increases and they do not breakeven again. Nothing else makes a profit either so whether you grew wheat, peanuts, rice, cotton, corn or…