The economists continue to paint a rather bleak picture for farm prices in 2025. Dr. Nick Piggott is a professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at NC State University, and he expects prices to be about the same or perhaps even lower than in 2024.
“The situation is we just have a very large amount of ending stocks in both corn and soybeans, particularly soybeans, worldwide, and that just really limits the upside. For now, the only potential we may have for further increasing prices or any surprises with respect to planting or weather as we go into 2025 aside from that, we’ve got a lot of ending stock, so that’s just going to basically result in a lot of downward pressure on prices moving into 2025.”
However, Piggott does see livestock continuing to be a bright spot.
“So when you look at cash receipts in 2024, they’re down for crops, but they’re actually up for livestock, and in particular cattle. So the profitability of the cattle industry is coming back, and that’s in turn, partly because feed grain prices are cheaper, so they’re benefiting from that.”
Planted acres should not change much this year, but Piggott does see the possibility for some movement.
“I don’t expect there to be a lot of changes as compared to last year. Right now, there’s a signal to potentially plant more corn than soybeans, that’s going to play out in the next few weeks. But if soybean prices continue to fall and there’ll be a stronger signal to plant corn.”