6/17/26 Afternoon CommStock Report – Cash Corn in Brazil Is Under $3.50/bushel – No Problem!

I drove on I-88 across Central Illinois and Eastern Iowa last weekend. If the crops there are any indication of how things look overall, the markets will struggle to find any significant strength this summer. The fields were postcard perfect. Granted there is a lot of season yet to go. Furthermore, the bigger weather threats lie ahead. But compared to this time last year, I would argue that it looked just as good, if not better. I didn’t see a single bad field. Crops were extremely uniform and healthy looking. Everything was well watered and appeared to be flourishing. We have reports of too much rain causing concern of nitrogen loss. I had the same concern last year as it rained 18″ on the farm between June 1st and July 31st. The corn still made a new record. Well-tiled farms and splitting nitrogen applications can help mitigate those issues to some degree.   Focus will quickly shift to the June acreage update where we expect to see at least some reduction in corn acres. That said, it is not always what happens in the report, but how the market responds to it. The prevailing sentiment seems to be that we…