August 20, 2026
At this hour:
🌽Corn market is up 4-5c,
🌱soybeans are up 4-5c,
🍞wheat is up 2-3,
🛢️crude oil is up $2.32-$2.33,
💲US Dollar is down 26 points
-Pro Farmer crop tour continues to find disappointing results.
-Pro Farmer results for Illinois found corn yield down 7.7% from last year and soybean pod counts came in at 3.3% less than last year.
-Money flow seems to be chasing commodities again as grain and energy prices are pushing higher.
-Crude oil up 2.5%.
-The U.S. Dollar is back trading below 99% adding a supporting factor to U.S. grain prices.
-Weekly export sales will be out this morning. Here are these estimates courtesy of Reuters: corn 500,000-1,800,000 metric tons, soybeans 400,000-1,950,000 metric tons, wheat 200,000-400,000 metric tons and soybean meal 150,000-500,000 metric tons.
🐂🐻 Look for a higher trade for Thursday.
Support/Resistance:
September corn – Support on September corn is at $4.55 1/2 which is the 10-day moving average. Resistance is at $4.92 which is the high from May 5th.
December corn – Support comes in at $4.79 3/4 which is the 10-day moving average. Resistance comes in at $5.06 1/2 which is the high from May 13th.
September soybeans – Support comes in at $11.83 which is the 10-day moving average. Resistance is at $12.43 which is the high from July 24th.
November soybeans – Support is at $11.99 1/4 which is the 10-day moving average. Resistance is at $12.56 1/2 which is the high from July 24th.
September Kansas City wheat – Support is at $7.35 1/4 which is the 10-day moving average. Resistance comes in at $7.77 1/2 which is the high from July 24th.
Where do we go from Here:
Another day and another state with disappointing yield results for the Pro Farmer Crop tour. As the tour got into Illinois, the trade was expecting yields to pick up a little. However, we keep seeing the same theme where corn yields are less than last year and less than many had thought. The Pro Farmer crop tour will wrap up here today in Minnesota with their final national yield released on Friday. The money flow keeps coming into U.S. grains in a very counter seasonal time frame. So far, I have not seen demand back off much if any. The Funds are building a pretty big net long position, but demand is still really strong so we will likely need higher prices. December corn futures are trading above $5 here this morning which we have not been above since early this spring. A close above $5.00 would be very friendly to the corn market.
Soybean pod counts continue to be disappointing on the Pro Farmer crop tour. The U.S. can still produce a great soybean crop this year, but questions are rising. What if our national yield would drop closer to 52 bushels per acre or less? With the super El Nino picking up steam and not looking to peak out until November or December, could the U.S. continue to see more adverse weather going into harvest? What about South America? They will get started planting in September and typically an El Nino pattern tends to be dry especially for central and northern Brazil. All these talking point are supporting grain prices along with what Pro Farmer is finding out in the fields this week. The weather looks good through the end of August and into early days of September so the U.S. crops should finish out great. The Pro Farmer crop tour will wrap up this week so heading into next week, we might be hard to find bullish data to trade on. So, that could cause the markets to stall out a bit and maybe see a small pullback. That still would not change the friendly outlook for U.S. grains in the big picture.
The wheat market continues to be all about the Black Sea region. The Ukraine farm minister said Ukraine will export 1.5 MMT of grain in August which is well below its 5 MMT estimate. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine doesn’t seem to be coming to an end anytime soon so what prices will remain well supported and could test contract highs here very soon.
