Chicago Futures Focus: Wheat, Corn and Soybeans

Wheat starts the first session of December on a softer footing, with overnight trade leaving SRW down nearly five cents and HRW lower by just over four cents as the complex gives back part of last week’s modest recovery. Nearby December 2025 CBOT wheat comes into Monday trade around 5.35 $/bu, roughly four cents above Friday’s 5.31 $/bu close, after a week in which front-month SRW added four cents and MPLS December gained more than fourteen cents, but the broader wheat board remains lower year to date, with nearby contracts down around three percent in SRW, over seven percent in HRW and close to three percent in HRS. Export demand is tepid: the long-delayed US Export Sales report for the week to 16 October showed just 341,306 tonnes of wheat sold, a three-week low, and the follow-up release for the week to 23 October is expected to show only 350,000–650,000 tonnes of additional sales. At the same time, global supply signals remain heavy, with Argus pegging Russia’s 2025/26 wheat crop at 86.5 MMT, only slightly lower than before, and ABARES lifting its estimate for Australia’s 2025/26 wheat crop to 35.6 MMT, about four percent above last season and pointing to what could be the country’s third-largest wheat harvest on record.

Corn is also under mild pressure in early Monday dealings, trading roughly two cents lower after closing Friday at 4.35½ $/bu, which leaves the December 2025 contract starting the week near 4.33 $/bu and still down about 5.6 percent since the beginning of the year. Friday’s short post-holiday session had delivered gains of two to almost four cents across the front months and pushed the US national average cash corn price to about 4.11 $/bu, while nearby futures locked in a ten-cent weekly advance. Under the surface, positioning is shifting: open interest in corn fell by more than 8,500 contracts, and 64 deliveries were issued against December on Friday night, suggesting a continued roll away from the front month. On the demand side, the long-overdue Export Sales report for the week ending 16 October finally confirmed a hefty 2.82 MMT of 2025/26 corn sales plus another 571,502 tonnes on the books for 2026/27, making 3.394 MMT in combined sales, the largest weekly tally in exactly a year and leaving total export commitments 42.9 percent above last season at 33.56 MMT. In Brazil, first-crop corn is now 99 percent planted according to AgRural, slightly ahead of last year’s pace, and CEPEA notes that stronger domestic demand has lifted Brazilian corn prices again in late November as buyers return to the spot market to rebuild inventories, even as ample stocks and the incoming US crop loom as potential caps on further gains in coming months.

Soybeans enter Monday with early losses of around three to six cents, but still sit on a stronger price base than grains after a positive end to last week. January 2026 futures closed Friday at 11.37¾ $/bu and are now trading near 11.34 $/bu, after gaining more than twelve cents over the shortened week and leaving nearby contracts roughly 13.5 percent higher year to date, well ahead of wheat and corn. The national average US cash soybean price has firmed to around 10.65½ $/bu, while soymeal futures slipped modestly on Friday and soyoil rallied, with December soyoil up 150 points on the week and nearby contracts almost 30 percent higher since January, reinforcing the oilseed complex’s leadership role. Export demand is slowly rebuilding: the delayed USDA data for the week ending 16 October showed 1.1 MMT of soybean sales, the first week this marketing year to exceed 1 MMT and more than 40 percent above the previous week, though still about 57 percent below the same week a year earlier and with China yet to appear as a buyer in that report. For the week ending 23 October, analysts expect a further 0.6–1.6 MMT of new soybean bookings, while Brazil’s forward supply story is shaped by an AgRural estimate that 89 percent of the country’s soybean area had been planted by Thursday and by CEPEA reports of slower sowing, irregular rainfall and firmer domestic prices that are encouraging farmers to hold back new sales.

Global Drivers and Today’s Key Market Themes

Across the broader derivatives landscape, price signals today reflect both fundamental pressure and weather-linked support. In US overnight trade, wheat is down between about four and five cents across SRW and HRW while HRS is flat, corn is roughly two and a half cents lower and soybeans are off just over four cents, with soymeal marginally weaker and soyoil down by about 0.28 cents. In parallel, Chinese January 2026 agricultural futures show soybeans and soyoil higher and corn slightly lower, while Malaysian palm oil has slipped about 20 ringgit to roughly 4,094 ringgit per tonne after recent volatility, underscoring the tight but still price-sensitive nature of the veg-oil complex. The year-to-date performance table continues to highlight this divergence: nearby SRW wheat is down about three percent, corn roughly 5.6 percent lower, but soybeans up 13.5 percent, soymeal nearly three percent higher and soyoil up an impressive 29.5 percent, keeping speculative attention focused on oilseeds despite stubbornly large global grain supplies.

Weather patterns remain a core driver of risk premia. In North America, a series of winter systems is delivering heavy snow, strong winds and sharp temperature drops across the Northern Plains and Midwest, with forecasts warning that blizzard conditions and a burst of arctic air will effectively end any remaining fieldwork and push US winter wheat firmly into dormancy. Through late November and early December, further storms are expected to keep temperatures below to well below seasonal norms across large swathes of the Corn Belt and Plains while slowly lifting Mississippi River levels as snowmelt and upstream precipitation feed into the basin, modestly improving barge logistics out of the Delta but not fully eliminating low-water constraints. In Europe and the Black Sea, widespread recent precipitation has left much of the continent in decent shape heading into winter, yet earlier sowing delays in Italy, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria and continuing soil-moisture deficits in southwestern Russia keep regional wheat condition ratings under close watch, especially since above-normal temperatures have delayed hardening and dormancy in some southern and eastern zones.

South American weather and crop progress add another layer of complexity for today’s trade. Brazil has seen very isolated showers across central and northern regions over the weekend, with forecasts that failed to deliver the hoped-for rainfall, leaving soil moisture still inadequate in parts of the main soybean belt just as some fields approach flowering. A front moving through the southern states on Monday is expected to stall over central Brazil and enhance precipitation there later in the week, but for now the lack of consistent rain in Mato Grosso and Goiás is beginning to worry producers and traders, particularly as CEPEA highlights that soybean sowing is running slower than last year and that irregular rainfall over the past three months has increased uncertainty over 2025/26 yield potential. In Argentina, scattered showers over the weekend were locally heavy, but models call for a full week of dryness once Monday’s system clears, a pattern of heavy rain “sandwiched” between long dry stretches that is creating highly variable growing conditions for developing corn and soybeans and could stress crops if moisture is not replenished before the critical reproductive phases.

The Black Sea axis remains central to global balance calculations. Ukraine’s 2025 grain harvest is now projected to reach around 60 MMT, with up to 20 MMT of oilseeds, and officials expect roughly two-thirds of this output to be exported, reinforcing the country’s role as a key supplier of wheat, corn and oilseeds despite ongoing logistical challenges. As of 28 November, Ukrainian farmers had already harvested 52.6 MMT of grains and 17.1 MMT of oilseeds and completed about 98 percent of planned winter-crop sowing, with winter wheat area up to 4.7 million hectares, slightly ahead of last year. At the same time, Ukraine’s grain and legume exports since the start of the marketing year on 1 July are down 32 percent year on year at 12.14 MMT, including a 50 percent drop in corn shipments and notable declines in wheat and barley, reflecting both infrastructure bottlenecks and shifting trade routes. This combination of robust production and constrained outbound flows leaves markets finely balanced between comfortable global availability on paper and episodic tightness in specific origins and destinations.

Oilseed and veg-oil dynamics are heavily influenced by policy and forward buying decisions in Asia. India has made rare long-term purchases of South American soyoil, securing more than 150,000 tonnes per month for April through July 2026 at a discount of around 20–30 $/t to palm oil over that period, an unusual move driven by expectations that Indonesia’s planned expansion of its biodiesel mandate from B40 to B50 in late 2026 will soak up exportable palm supplies and raise global palm prices. Indian buyers are using these forward soyoil purchases as a hedge against future palm shortages and are simultaneously bracing for potentially tighter sunflower oil supplies due to weaker Black Sea and European crops, while current spreads show Black Sea sunflower oil priced 230–250 $/t above South American soyoil. Yet in the near term, palm oil still trades about 90–100 $/t cheaper than soybean oil, prompting some Indian importers to cancel near-dated soyoil cargoes and pivot to palm, which tempers immediate soyoil import demand even as the winter season normally favours soy over palm.

Palm oil itself is being reshaped by Indonesian and Malaysian developments. Indonesia has cut its crude palm oil reference price to 926.14 $/t for December from 963.75 $/t in November, lowering the export tax to 74 $/t and maintaining an additional CPO levy at ten percent of the reference price, a move that could stimulate exports and influence global pricing benchmarks. New data show Indonesian January–October palm oil exports up 7.83 percent year on year to 19.49 MMT, excluding palm kernel oil, oleochemicals and biodiesel, and industry group GAPKI reports no major impact on production so far from destructive floods in Sumatra, suggesting that supply remains ample. In contrast, Malaysia’s November palm oil exports are seen at about 1.26 MMT, down from roughly 1.50 MMT in October, reinforcing the idea that changing trade flows, not absolute production shortages, are currently driving price spreads within the veg-oil complex.

Other supply-side signals outside the Americas also influence sentiment in today’s session. Australia is expected to raise its estimates for wheat, barley and canola production, with analyst surveys now pointing to around 36.1 MMT of wheat, 15.75 MMT of barley and 6.9 MMT of canola, implying what could be the country’s third-largest wheat crop, its biggest ever barley harvest and its second-largest canola crop. Analysts attribute the upgrades to timely pre-harvest rains in the south and better-than-expected yields in the west, even though recent rain around Esperance in Western Australia may downgrade 2–3 MMT of wheat to feed quality. Kazakhstan, meanwhile, has harvested a record 27.1 MMT of grain in 2025, including 20.3 MMT of wheat, and exported 3.1 MMT of grain between 1 September and 27 November, underlining the continued strength of Central Asian exports to regional buyers in Central Asia, Iran, Azerbaijan and Afghanistan. These numbers add to a worldwide picture of comfortable grain availability that continues to cap rallies unless weather or logistics shock the system.

Livestock and protein markets are also feeding back into grain and oilseed outlooks. In Spain, authorities are grappling with African swine fever cases in wild boar near Barcelona, with up to fourteen suspected infections and about a third of the country’s pork export certificates temporarily blocked, threatening a pork export industry worth 8.8 billion euros per year. Several key importers, including Taiwan, China, the UK and Mexico, have already imposed bans or suspensions on Spanish pork, which could alter feed demand patterns in Europe and redirect meat trade flows. At the same time, Australia is rapidly expanding its grain-fed beef sector: feedlots like Gundamain are fattening thousands of Black Angus cattle on barley, silage, cottonseed and molasses to meet rising Asian demand for grain-fed beef, and industry plans to double lot-feeding capacity could see half of Australian slaughter cattle grain-finished by 2027. That structural shift helps Australia capture market share from US exporters amid tighter US beef supplies and underscores how grain availability and pricing feed directly into long-term changes in global animal protein supply chains.

As today’s trading session unfolds, markets must reconcile soy-led strength with heavy grain supply, weather risks and shifting trade patterns. The combination of gradual drying in Argentina and southern Brazil, an increasingly likely La Niña pattern, winter storms in the US and warm, dry pockets in the Black Sea keeps a weather premium embedded in wheat and corn, even as record or near-record harvests in Australia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine weigh on the forward curve. On the demand side, the resumption and “catch-up” of US Export Sales reports, India’s unusual long-dated soyoil coverage and evolving palm oil tax and export regimes in Indonesia and Malaysia will guide short-term flows in oilseeds and veg-oils, while disease-related disruptions in Spanish pork and structural growth in Australian grain-fed beef keep feed demand under scrutiny. Whether the modest firmness seen into the end of November can extend into a sustained price recovery will depend on how quickly these weather, policy and logistics stories evolve and whether any of them is strong enough to overwhelm the still-bulky global grain and oilseed balance.