An early look at 2025 U.S. corn fundamentals

from guest contributor Mark Welch | Grain Marketing Economist | Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service & Texas A&M University | April 24, 2025

With planting season progressing across the country, the 2025 corn growing and marketing season is getting underway. As we are wrapping up the old crop marketing year, the biggest surprise over the winter was a reduction in corn yield. In January, USDA lowered the 2024 average corn yield from 183.1 bushels per acre to 179.3. This lowered the estimated supply side of the corn balance sheet by 276 million bushels.

On the demand side of the balance sheet, USDA raised estimated exports through the marketing year from 2.2 million bushels at the beginning of the 2024/25 marketing year (May World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates) to 2.550 billion bushels in the April 2025 WASDE, an increase in use of 350 million bushels.

The May 2024 WASDE had projected a 2.1 billion bushel carryover and an estimated 51.8 days of use on hand at the end of marketing year. As we begin 2025, that old-crop carryover has been reduced to 1.465 billion bushels and days of use on hand to a relatively tight 35.2-day supply (see Figure 1).

The fundamental dynamics shaping the 2025 corn crop begin with an increase in planted acres. In the 2025 Prospective Plantings report, U.S. farmers indicated they intended to plant 95.3 million acres, up from 90.6 million in 2024. In its new crop year projections at the Agricultural Outlook Forum in February, USDA used an average corn yield of 181 bushels per acre. Even with a lower beginning stock number coming out of the old crop marketing year, these numbers result in an estimated supply over 17 billion bushels, a new all-time high.

While official use estimates will come out in the May 2025 WASDE, the Outlook Forum held total use in the new crop year about the same as 2024, 15.185 billion bushels in 2025/26 compared with 15.190 billion bushels in 2024/25. Major components of the use categories that will shape corn consumption this marketing year include the number of grain-consuming animal units. Cattle-on-feed numbers are on the decline while poultry and pork look to expand. Corn for fuel faces the challenge of projections for lower gasoline consumption in the 2025/26 corn marketing year than 2024/25.

That leaves exports. Not only does the U.S. face increasing exportable supplies of corn from other producers around the world (foreign corn production in 2024/25 was a record high 32.970 billion bushels), it is unclear how policy disruptions around tariffs and trade will impact U.S. exports.

With an increase in supply and use numbers steady, an early estimate of days of use on hand at the end of the marketing year increases from a 35.2-day supply for the 2024 crop to 48.9-days on hand at the end of 2025/26. Initially, that is a recipe for lower prices. But the season is young. USDA will release official estimates of these supply and demand factors in the May WASDE. And as we saw last year, many factors can shift the fundamentals, and the market, as this corn growing season unfolds.