Esse texto é de autoria de Angie Setzer, consultora de Grãos da Marex US.

O Footnotes é postado todo sábado no portal Brz Report (plataforma da Agrinvest onde você encontra basis, trades, fluxo das commodities, preços do mercado físico, cobertura da China e muito mais).

We are three weeks into 2026 and have experienced a handful of events that, in years past, would have dominated the news cycle for weeks, if not months. Now, we’re lucky if the major headlines remain relevant for more than a few hours.

This is both good and bad for grains as we work into the New Year. While we have not forgotten the bearish update from the USDA just under two weeks ago, the market has turned its attention to a handful of other factors that seem to be willing to lend support.

This week I wanted to look at a handful of things that have my attention as we head into the final week of January 2026.

The USDA Is Probably Overstating the Crop, but It Really Doesn’t Matter

It has been almost two weeks since the USDA surprise heard across the commodity space, and I am still working to digest the numbers. I have spent close to two hours talking with Lance Honig from NASS about the figures released on the 12th, trying to better understand how a miss in acres and production of that magnitude could occur.

While Lance did not have all the answers, he remains confident in both the process and the data, and I believe him when he says the figures released last week were what their analysis shows. That said, I still cannot ignore the market signals that say their estimate may be a touch too large.

While some parts of the country saw a basis that was historically wide at harvest due to logistical and capacity constraints, most of which impacted the bean market, many other regions showed no indication that the incoming corn crop was truly 2 billion bushels larger than a year ago. In addition to the basis strength we have seen across the Corn Belt, conversations I have had with folks in the elevator system responsible for originating bushels reinforce my opinion that the crop is smaller than projected.

At this point, I believe total supply could be overstated by as much as 500 million bushels, with the by-state misses coming mostly in Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, Illinois and in the east like New York and Pennsylvania.

As for what caused the miss, I feel it’s a whole combination of factors. First, the June data was problematic. Given the turmoil and turnover at the USDA at the time, there were already concerns about data quality, with the miss from June to final doing everything to reinforce those fears. A swing of this size from June to final plantings has never happened before, making many feel it is more difficult to adequately manage risk.

Moving beyond that, I believe we are underestimating what farm aid packages could be doing when it comes to incentivizing the certification of silage and high moisture acres. Expanded crop insurance options and farmer aid programs that only apply to certified acres have likely encouraged newly certified acres, ones more importantly, that will not end up in the commercial grain pipeline.

When asked about this Lance did say silage played a role, though in the opposite way I expected. According to Honig and Seth Meyer, former Chief Economist of the USDA, the increase in harvested acres in the January report was driven by their belief that planted acreage could not have as much silage as the figures would suggest. Perhaps more concerning than the acreage adjustment itself was the decision to rely on extrapolated data from a survey with a 40% response rate.

While in the statistical analysis world a 40% response rate is deemed great, we used to see an over 70% response rate within the last 10 years. One must wonder if the same processes used to extrapolate and build an outlook with over 50,000 farmer surveys returned could look the same when that number is nearly cut in half.

Unfortunately, all of that and 50 cents still won’t buy you a Coke, so we’re forced to deal with a rangebound market for now, waiting for cash to show us what is real when it comes to supply.

Looking ahead, it is fair to ask whether the industry would benefit from rethinking the role surveys play in early production estimates. Perhaps leaving the USDA to provide a new crop outlook driven by economics and weather the first half of the season while waiting for FSA and harvest data to get a better understanding of actual production would provide better insight. While I’m not necessarily in this camp, we must come up with a way to increase farmer interaction with the USDA in a way that is mutually beneficial or misses like we saw this past year are only going to get worse.

In the end, cash will tell us the true story of what is out there for corn. We will be watching the basis and spreads closely as well, watching to see what it takes to get the farmer reengaged. However, it seems important to point out that even if we are short on their production guess the USDA won’t likely do a thing about it unless the overstatement becomes obvious, i.e.: we’re dealing with a new crop production problem.

In the meantime, much of what had been sold by the farmer pre-report is working its way through the pipeline, with limited selling interest out there at these levels once those bushels are moved. Originators will likely need to get their cash values up in line with levels seen just ahead of the report to get ownership, something many have been hesitant to do so far.

Farmer Selling/Farmer Holding

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