The U.S. soybean yield for the 2024 growing season has been forecast at 53.2 bushels per acre, up 1.2 bushels per acre from last month’s trend-based yield of 52.0 bushels per acre, according to the USDA’s yield forecast released Aug. 14.

With a higher yield anticipated, the markets have been responding accordingly, ag economists report.

Combined with a 1.0-million acre increase in the harvested area estimate, which now stands at 86.3 million acres, the soybean production forecast for marketing year 2024-2025 is increased by 154 million bushels to 4.6 billion bushels, the USDA report stated.

With a higher soybean supply, the U.S. soybean exports forecast is raised this month by 25 million bushels to 1.85 billion bushels and crush is unchanged at 2.4 billion bushels.

“We’ve been on a long downward slide and now we’re feeling around to see if we’ve hit bottom yet or not,” Iowa State University Extension Ag Economist Chad Hart said on Sept. 11. “When you look at November beans pricing at $10, you know it’s not near where it was near a year ago, but in the grand scheme of things, we’ve seen it worse. It’s one of these deals where we’ve seen a 20 percent drop in prices over the past year, so that’s a hard thing to swallow right now for a lot of producers. At the same time, too, there’s a lot of really good reasons we’ve seen such a price drop.”

There’s the potential of the crop being the biggest one ever seen this harvest, Hart pointed out, which is being seen not just in the U.S. but worldwide.

“Everyone has beans to sell and that helps drive prices down. It’s been a rough year and if you’re looking for positive influences out there for the market, we continue to see biofuel development through renewable diesel and soybean crush levels are really strong because of that,” said Hart. “If the USDA is correct on its prospect of export numbers, we’re looking to bounce back over the next 12 to 18 months. So demand is pretty good.”

As always, weather has played a role in the markets, but Hart noted that he’s heard issues with the Mississippi River being too low.

“It’s a double-edged sword. We don’t want moisture during harvest, but we need it to help keep that river flowing down to the Gulf,” he said. “It’s amazing how quickly we went from too dry early and started the year worried about being too dry, then went to too wet then back to dry conditions. Overall, it’s been a really great year to produce great soybeans and a really rough year to market them.”

Grant Kimberley, senior director of market development for the Iowa Soybean Association, said Sept. 12 that it would take a major production or demand catalyst beyond what would be expected at the moment to break out of the current market price ranges.

“The markets are going to start focusing on what yields already are forecast at and see if we achieve those pretty lofty expectations,” Kimberley said. “It’s turned out to be pretty dry at the end of the growing season, so that might have trimmed things a bit. We’ll also look at how export sales are trending, but China and other places are running behind the five-year average for export pre-sales leading into the year, so we’ll hope that picks up more than what it already has.”

With China the biggest whole bean buyer in the market now and for the foreseeable future, it was good news when growers heard that the forecast had been bumped a couple million metric tons higher from that country.

“It’s also hot and dry in South America. With La Nina occurring right now, that could delay their planting window or cause a shorter-term challenge by pushing them back later for harvest. That helps us expand our export marketing windows a little later into the winter,” Kimberley said.

He said that export sales need to bump up higher and meal exports need to start increasing, since there will be more crush capacity coming online.

“That’s important as the biofuel demand is important, too, of course, but I’ve heard in California there will be a cap for soybean oil,” he said. “Those are more longer-term challenges as our short-term issues to watch are more our weather, South America’s weather and export sales.”