01/08/26 Afternoon CommStock Report – What will the January USDA Annual Crop Report Say???

Sometimes it can be a mistake to view things from your own backyard but based upon our 2025 Northwest Iowa farm production results, we would not expect USDA to reduce corn/soybean yields much in the January report. Given the drastic reduction in the number of USDA bean counters employed by the department, will this impact report accuracy? If not, most will argue USDA had too many employees. We have seen data on 2025 crop quality that we think is reliable confirming that the long growing season benefited test weights and grain quality. There was enough water to finish the crops. The longer the fill the more test weight that plants can pack into the kernels. Our 108-109-day hybrids produced a farm average of 270 bpa when the FSA measured the bins. That is the yield that gets turned into crop insurance. That was a record farm yield so will increase our average APH. It is in line with the topline USDA record yield. We were 70% corn so that carried our soybeans. That means that our corn yield was high enough to cover costs with a small margin. Whatever else that we get from the government in payments adds to…