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Apr 03, 2025
By Jacquie Holland, ASA Economist
Despite forecasting lower acreages to be planted for soybeans in 2025, USDA’s Prospective Plantings report published Monday, March 31, offered little support for new crop November 2025 soybean futures prices.
U.S. farmers told USDA they expect to plant 83.5 million acres of soybeans in 2025, down 3.6 million acres or 4.1% from last year’s sowings. If realized, it will be the smallest U.S. soybean acreage planted since 2020 after farmers across the country indicated a shift away from soybean acres in favor of other crops this spring.
In the top 20 soybean-producing states, only two states (Ohio and North Carolina) indicated a slight increase in soybean acreage this year. In the other 18 states, 2025 soybean acreage estimates were down by an average of 5.1% from last year. The top five soybean-producing states in 2024 (Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota, and Nebraska) accounted for nearly 1.6 million fewer soybean acres this year. North Dakota and South Dakota pared back a massive 750,000 soybean acres from a year ago.
Corn and soybean returns for 2025 are both projected to be around a $100/acre-loss according to USDA-ERS cost-of-production forecasts, though the exact loss varies by location and farm. But broadly speaking, lower insurance prices for soybeans relative to corn during the February reference price discovery period led farmers across the country to hedge their bets on corn acres this spring. Corn acres rose 4.7 million acres from last year to 95.3 million acres, with much of the increase fueled from lower soybean acres.
Traders were expecting a slightly higher 2025 soybean number leading up to the report. A Reuters poll of analysts found an anticipated trade range of 82.5-85.5 million acres with an average guess of 83.8 million acres ahead of Monday’s report. The market likely expected fewer acres than the analysts surveyed prior to the report’s release, resulting in soybean price losses on Monday.
Rough balance sheet projections for the 2025/26 marketing year with current policies in place point to a reduction in ending stocks, which would be supportive to prices. However, traders are already factoring in the potential for a global trade war that could reduce domestic and export consumption, potentially raising U.S. supplies and weighing heavily on prices.
November 2025 soybean futures prices fell $0.10/bushel on Monday to close at $10.19/bushel, indicating the market would have preferred a smaller acreage estimate to boost prices in the face of considerable economic and political uncertainty.
Remember: These estimates are what farmers intend to plant, not necessarily what they will plant. Few acres have been planted so far, and weather is always a wild card. USDA’s June 30 Acreage Report will provide more certainty on the acreage discussion and could offer more insights about any potential impacts constrained cash flows this spring will have on total acreage this year. With the introduction of reciprocal tariffs just days after the Prospective Plantings report, farmers could make adjustments based on market fluctuations.
Perhaps the more significant driver in USDA’s post-report soybean slump was data from another USDA report, the Quarterly Grain Stocks report, which garnered less attention than its Prospective Plantings counterpart.
March 1, 2025, soybean inventories totaled 1.91 billion bushels, just slightly above the average pre-report trade guess of 1.901 billion bushels. The March 1 inventory was up 3.5% from the same time last year, reflecting the larger soybean crop harvested in 2024.
But the bears were fed by a revision to an earlier inventory reading. USDA added over half a million bushels of supply to December 1, 2024, ending stocks. USDA commonly makes revisions to the prior quarter’s stock reading in the Quarterly Grain Stocks report series, so it was not an unusual occurrence.
But this change suggested consumption rates during the first quarter of the 2024/25 marketing year were 552,000 bushels lower than previously believed. The lower December 1 reading paired with the smaller trade expectation for March 1 inventories resulted in 8.5 million fewer soybean bushels consumed in the second quarter of the 2024/25 marketing year than what the trade was expecting ahead of Monday’s reports.
Policy issues led to reduced soyoil consumption of biofuels in Q2, slashing crush margins and slowing crush rates. December 2024 and January 2025 were the largest and third-largest months, respectively, for crush volumes on record. But February 2025 crush volumes dipped 2.3% below year ago values amid tightening crush margins. Weekly soybean export volumes slipped 18% below the prior five-year average for Q2, according to FAS data.
Through the second quarter of 2024/25, 64.8% of expected soybean usage had been accounted for, slightly above the ten-year average of 63.9% for the first half of the 2024/25 marketing year. The December 1, 2024 revision may have been small and the March 1, 2025 inventory reading may have matched trade expectations, but the market fully, though not loudly, recognized the larger challenges ahead for soybean prices.
