Commodity Markets

The last couple of months were interesting. As we know, the U. S. government was shut down for much of the Northern Hemisphere’ s fall quarter( September-October-November), the spring quarter for the Southern Hemisphere( including agricultural giant Brazil and its sidekick Argentina). This allowed a lot to happen in the darkness created by the lights being turned out, including the world’ s largest soybean buyer— China— getting more active in the U. S. soybean market.

Government Shutdown, Market Shakeup

Activity began the moment doors were locked on U. S. government agencies, whose job it is to report such things, starting on October 1. A look at daily closes for the January soybean futures contract shows a low of $ 10.2025( per bushel) posted on Tuesday, September 30. Again, that date is important because it was just after midnight on Wednesday, October 1 that the U. S. government ceased to function.( Though many would argue it ceased to function a long time ago.)

This situation remained in place until Thursday, November 13. That day, the January soybean futures contract closed at $ 11.47, a gain of $ 1.2650( 12 %) over the span of roughly a month and a half. That’ s an impressive move. But what caused it?

Tracking the Numbers

Once the wheels of bureaucracy started turning again, albeit as slowly as what we normally see at the DMV, one of the sets of reports I actually pay attention to— weekly export sales and shipments( WESS)— was being released.( My disdain for nearly all government reports, regardless of market sector, is well known.) A quick reminder that WESS is released on Thursdays, usually, and is for sales and shipments made the week ending the previous Thursday.

The first release after the lights were turned back on occurred on November 13 for business the week ending September 25, or just as things were about to come to a screeching halt. At that time, the U. S. had shipped a total of 81 million bushels( mb) during the 2025 to 2026 marketing year( running from September through the following August, another concept I don’ t agree with), and had unshipped sales of 356 mb, putting total sales for the first month of the marketing year at 437 mb.

Some food for thought with those numbers: The shipment pace through the first month of the marketing year projected total export demand of 1.35 billion bushels( bb), down 27 % from the reported shipments the previous year of 1.841 bb. The first month ' s total sales number was down 37 % from the previous year’ s 694 mb for the same week. As for the world’ s largest buyer of soybeans— China, again— there were no sales on the books for either the 2025 to 2026 or 2026 to 2027 marketing years.

Digging through the archives, back to the same week a year ago, I found China had 259 mb on the books for the 2024 to 2025 marketing year. Gee, I wonder what changed as the U. S. got deeper into the marketing year, say beyond the first week of November...

Back to 2025: Given what was seen staring on October 1, I watched with interest when the next set of WESS numbers were released on November 20 for the week ending Thursday, October 2. Part of me expected to see China had booked some U. S. soybeans under the cover of darkness, but it wasn’ t to be. The latest update again showed nothing. No sales. No shipments. This meant we would have to wait another week. Or maybe longer.

December 2025 | www. FarmersHotLine. com | 23