Projections in the latest Illinois Crop Budgets suggest negative returns on cash rented farmland for the 2026 crop year (see farmdoc daily article from January 13, 2026).  This article compares…

Overall, farmland tenure in Illinois varies systematically from north to south, with northern Illinois characterized by a higher reliance on cash rent, central Illinois by greater use of crop share leases, and southern Illinois by a higher proportion of owned land.  Average higher-return operations consistently control land in ways that reduce fixed ownership exposure and increase risk sharing through crop share arrangements.

The term “off base” is defined as “not being in agreement with what is true” (Merriam-Webster.com). For farm policy, the term may conjure the base acre design for farm program…

Revision to Illinois crop budgets show improved return prospects due to slight increases in projected prices and significant federal support from the Farmer Bridge Assistance and ARC/PLC programs. Due to the bridge program payments, return projections for 2025 are now slightly above break-even levels in northern and central Illinois but remain negative in southern Illinois. Updated 2026 crop budgets suggest another year of negative average returns to corn-soybean rotations.

The ratio of US cropland price to cropland cash rent has nearly doubled since 1998, from 20 to 36. Empirical analysis so far has not identified any statistically significant explanatory factor, so this article’s purpose is to call attention to this dramatic change. Given land’s large share of US farm assets (roughly 80%), it is important that identification of the factors underlying the increasing agricultural land-rent ratio receive attention.

This article presents a model to forecast net return at harvest for the nine field crops that USDA ERS computes an economic cost of production. The model includes last year’s percent net return at harvest, last year’s average return to storing US corn and soybeans, and the ratio of beginning world stocks to last year’s use of the nine crops. These variables forecast a percent net return at 2025 harvest of -20%. Forecasted total net loss for the nine crops combined is $36.4 billion.

China has bought about 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans, fulfilling a U.S.-stated pledge to purchase that volume by the end of February, three traders told Reuters on Tuesday,…

U.S. fuel ethanol production expanded by 9%, reaching a record high 1.196 million barrels per day the week ending Jan. 9. The week ending Jan. 9 marks the fourth time…

Brazil surpassed the U.S. as the world’s top beef producer last year, according to market estimates, after the South American country beat output forecasts by hundreds of thousands of tons,…

Corn futures plunged to the lowest levels since August after USDA stunned the market by boosting its 2025 U.S. crop estimate above 17 billion bushels for the first time, signaling…