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The NDSU Extension weekly podcast In the Pod: Soybean Updates delivers timely insights and expert advice on soybean production.
You're listening to In The Pod, soybean updates, a weekly trek into the latest soybean information from NDSU Extension. Happy New Year. This is part two of the 2025 wrap up. Ana Carcedo, NDSU Extension agronomist, has more of the ups and downs of the 2025 soybean growing season and a look into 2026. Ana, in part one, you talked about the rough start of the season, crusting, and IDC. What else plagued farmers?
Ana Carcedo:So if we keep moving forward with our season, we are going to see that we were kind of behind in terms of growing degree days. We were always behind. So it was kind of a cool season at the beginning. That actually delayed it a little bit our flowering. So, usually, we will start having soybean flowers around early July, but that did not happen. And that might be actually a good thing. Something that happened between June and August, it was a lot of storms. So we have that tornado at the June that was just horrible. Even though the frequency of hail events in the state is a known phenomenon, With an average of, like, two twenty five hail reports each year, the 2025 severe weather season was particularly active, leading to federal disaster assistance being made available for North Dakota due to this widespread damage from storms, hail, winds, and tornadoes. So it was a particularly stressful season for a lot of farmers. Also, with the markets war and, like, the certainty of if you are going to be able to sell your soybeans and everything. It was especially stressful. Something we want to highlight from NDCU is mental health. If you're stressed, if you're feeling down, you're feeling that you're not coming around, there is a lot of resources that we want to make you available. Go ahead. Type in Google managing stress NGSU, agriculture, and you're going to have a lot of resources that that are meant for you. The rains keep going during the season, and that actually led to a lot of sclerotinia white mold pressure. In mid September, we have an early frost that nobody was expecting, and that actually hurt a little bit our yields as well. We kept having rains, and that actually led to delays in harvest, people harvesting soybeans up to November. If we talk about the national outlook, The U. S. Soybeans yields have been robust with USDA estimating productions near 4,300,000,000 bolshes for the 2025 crop season with yields similar to recent years. But in North Dakota, specifically, factors like this cold spring and all the things that we have been measuring actually tempered the yields compared to the national average. Our yields actually were kind of average with 36 bushels per acre, but that actually is built by a lot of variations. A lot of fields were really, really good with yields up to 60 bushels per acre. Some were really, really poor with yields up to fifteen, twenty bushels per acre.
Bruce Sundeen:What do you think is in store for farmers in 2026?
Ana Carcedo:So talking about weather actually remains a wildcard. Like, dry conditions or heat or late season storms can dramatically shift the expectations. It's actually too early to say something. And if we talk a little bit about markets, they have been so volatile. We saw that soybean futures sell off recently as Chinese purchases lagged expectation, which can weigh on prices in the near term. Trade agreements aiming to lock in purchases with U. S. Soybeans annually could support this demand, including these commitments with China extending into 2026 and beyond, but volumes might remain below the decade average. We are going to hear more about this with friend in the new episodes.
Bruce Sundeen:Are there other factors that affect market price? For instance, are there a lot of soybeans being stored?
Ana Carcedo:So we are up in terms of the the stocks that we have, and that is one of the things that they're used to predict. If we have a lot of stock, then the prices go down. The other thing that's really important when predicting if we are going to have a good price or not is South America. Crob in Brazil is looking pretty amazing. They're going to start harvesting in January, but it's not good for the soybean prices.
Bruce Sundeen:Thanks, Ana. Our guest has been Ana Carcedo, NDSU Extension agronomist. You're listening to In the Pod, soybean updates, a weekly trek into the latest soybean information from NDSU Extension supported by the North Dakota Soybean Council.