December corn has held a $4.40 to $4.60 CBOT range for most of 2025, and November soybeans have moved between $10.00 and $10.50. When do prices actually turn? Farm Progress tackles that question head-on in its latest grain market forecast, and the short answer is: not yet, but the window opens this summer.

Both contracts have spent the opening months of the year in a holding pattern. Neither has posted a sustained breakout, despite a string of bullish headlines — stronger ethanol margins, tighter projected ending stocks, and intermittent Black Sea shipping disruptions.

The forecast identifies three triggers worth tracking now. South American harvest progress, particularly Brazilian safrinha corn yields, sets the floor for U.S. export competitiveness. U.S. export sales pace, especially the weekly soybean book to China, sets the upside. And the August WASDE acreage revision, paired with the Pro Farmer crop tour, sets the yield call.

Why the sideways grind?

Two structural pressures have kept a lid on the market. Brazilian production is on track for a record safrinha crop, adding to a global corn balance that already carried roughly 312 million metric tons of ending stocks going into the 2025 marketing year. And Chinese buying of U.S. soybeans has stayed sharply below the 2018-2020 average, even after Beijing cleared a handful of cargoes in March and April.

The forecast argues those pressures don't ease until late summer. That's when U.S. weather risk premium typically peaks, when the Pro Farmer tour samples ear counts across the Corn Belt, and when the August WASDE gives USDA its first real read on the 2025 crop.

What does the timing change for growers?

Marketing plans built around a spring rally need a rewrite. The forecast calls for a $4.80 to $5.20 trading range in December corn through harvest, with a shot at $5.40 only if August delivers a meaningful yield cut. The 2-to-3-bushel-per-acre drop that history books in years with a hot July across the western Corn Belt would tighten U.S. ending stocks enough to support a move toward $5 corn — the threshold most commercial elevators are watching.

For soybeans, the path is narrower. The forecast calls for a $10.80 to $11.40 range through harvest, with a move to $12 contingent on Chinese buying roughly doubling from current levels. That requires trade diplomacy that, as of late spring, has not materialized.

What could break the window?

A second wave of U.S.-China tariff escalation, a favorable August weather pattern, or a record-large Brazilian crop would each push the rally into 2026. The forecast treats the tariff risk as the binary variable — a 25% levy on U.S. soybeans from Beijing would close the rally window until at least the next marketing year.

What does this mean at the elevator?

Basis levels have stayed flat through the first half of 2025, a sign the trade isn't pricing in a summer rally. That gives merchandisers room to be aggressive on carry charges. It also gives growers a reason to hold rather than sell at harvest lows — the opposite of the pattern in 2023 and 2024.

The forward question

Will August deliver the heat? The Climate Prediction Center's June outlook points to above-normal temperatures across Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana through August. If that verifies, yield cuts and price recovery land on the same calendar page. If it doesn't, the sideways grind extends into 2026.