USDA boosts corn supply estimate, prices plunge, growers alarmed 

The Agriculture Department on Monday boosted its estimate of 2025-26 corn production to more than 17 billion bushels, as prices plunged and the National Association of Corn Growers said the projection is “raising alarms among the nation’s corn growers.”

If the projections prove accurate, this year’s crop will be the largest on record by far, NCGA said. 

The increase came from both bumping up the corn yield by 0.5 bushel and increasing harvested acres, DTN/Progressive Farmer said in an analysis. 

The corn yield is now forecast at 186.5 bushels per acre (bpa), way above analysts’ pre-report estimates, DTN said. USDA also bumped up harvested acres by 1.3 million acres to 91.3 million acres.

“We need long-term market solutions, and we need them quickly, or this is going to deepen the economic crisis in the countryside,” said Ohio farmer and NCGA President Jed Bower. “The urgency for Congress and the president to open new markets abroad and expand consumer access to ethanol just increased exponentially.”

Bower noted that an immediate boost to demand would be the passage of legislation authorizing year-round consumer access to fuels with 15% ethanol blends. He said  this solution comes at no cost to consumers, requires no additional infrastructure developments and could use 2.4 billion additional bushels of corn annually at full implementation, according to NCGA estimates.    

NCGA continues to push the administration to quickly broker additional high-volume deals with other countries and finalize details on deals already announced, Bower said.  

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told the American Farm Bureau Federation convention that the Trump administration had used all its regulatory authority to increase the use of E15 with more corn-based ethanol, and that Congress needs to pass to allow the sale of E15 year round.