
It’s still early in the 2025 battle for acres, but recent market patterns suggest corn is muscling ahead of soybeans and other crops.
The soybean-to-corn price ratio, a gauge of U.S. planting intentions, was trading slightly above 2, near two-year lows, in early 2025. The lower the ratio, the stronger corn prices are relative to soybeans, and a move below 2.4 historically signals an acreage shift from soybeans to corn, says Tanner Ehmke, grain economist at CoBank.
But a shift from soybeans could become more of a stampede. As grain markets languished much of the past year, corn was a relative outperformer, buoyed by robust export demand. Soybeans, by contrast, plunged 23% in 2024 and remain near four-year lows.
USDA predicted increased corn acres in 2025 but may need to revise higher. In its annual outlook released in November, the agency forecast 2025 U.S. corn plantings at 92 million acres, up 1.4% from 90.7 million in 2024.
In early 2024, when prices favored soybeans, plantings jumped 4.2% from 2023. A similar rise in corn this year could push seedings above 94.5 million acres, near the 10-year high of 94.6 million in 2023. Ehmke believes corn could surpass 94 million acres “if current trends persist.”
It will be a couple months before planters roll across the Midwest, and other factors such as weather could influence the acreage mix. But if corn acres do rise sharply, supplies would likely increase in turn, setting the market up for a potential price-depressive glut, similar to what’s happening with soybeans.
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