This past week, your loyal scribe traveled to Tobermory, Ontario, which is at the end of the Bruce Peninsula, a little bit of northern Ontario attached to the South. The heat units are getting pretty scarce as you get to Tobermory, so I always appreciate some of the farms that were actually trying to grow corn there. It is a reminder to me that when you add modern science and technology with human ingenuity, you get the tools to grow crops in some of the most far-off places.

It is an annual sojourn for me, and typically when I return to my farm in southwestern Ontario, my soybeans remind me that harvest will come very soon. Today, as I traveled the more than four hours on the highway, it was rare to see a soybean field that wasn't turning rapidly. At the same time, I didn't see one farm tractor in the field, which reminded me that soils have been wet over the last several weeks and many of us are waiting for dry periods to get field work done again. Widespread soybean harvest is about two weeks away for many people.

With that, I was asked tonight whether I thought Ontario soybean prices would remain in the $17.00 level. This is about $3.50/bu above where we were a year ago, cash price levels we could hardly even imagine earlier. We have the largest American crop in U.S. history about to come off the fields, and you would think that soybean prices would be slumping. However, soybeans were up $0.22 on the day with the USDA report set to come out tomorrow.

The USDA report will surely be my topic next week as the market regurgitates all the different variables that come from it. We know that the trading algorithms are dialed in to everything about USDA reports. Combine this with really strange geopolitics that continually drive headlines, and we are seeing the uncertainty that causes these prices to rise. The Iran-U.S. war and the resultant effect on oil prices continue to affect soybean prices.

Still, we must remember that we're talking about the biggest American soybean crop ever. On top of that, we have President Xi arriving on Sept. 24, and I'm thinking we've got to expect more agricultural commodity announcements on that day or the days after. At the present time, the South Americans are just starting to think about planting soybeans, and for the time being it's the best time for American soybeans to move into China.

A big problem is the Chinese still have a 10% tariff on American soybeans coming into China. This is a big limitation for private soybean buyers as well as state-owned enterprises. Of course, it was in response to earlier American tariffs on Chinese goods. On September 24th, will that all go away?

We shall see. In lieu of that, we must remember that soybeans can still be the great liars. Sometimes they look really good in the field but don't yield so much, and sometimes it's the antithesis of that. As I write this, the September USDA report will be coming out Sept. 11, and nothing is expected to change much with soybean fundamentals. However, you never know. There could be another outlier we never see coming.

There is another thing we should remember about this market. Markets don't always need a fundamental reason to do what they do in the short term. Sometimes the money flows into a commodity because traders believe something is going to happen, and sometimes it flows out because they believe something else. That is why trying to predict exactly where soybeans will be next week is a rather dangerous occupation.

For Ontario and Quebec farmers, however, $17 soybeans are real today. They are not a prediction, a USDA number or a computer model. They are a cash price that can be locked in, and that is what makes them worth paying attention to.

The temptation is always to look at a big crop coming and think prices must go lower. But markets are never quite that simple. Demand matters, China matters, currency matters, South American weather will matter, and geopolitics certainly matters. And somewhere in the middle of all that is the farmer trying to decide when to sell.

I'm no different; some of you have asked if I'm still holding out for $30 soybeans? Of course I am, but I've had several marketing orders hit. The soybean price challenge ahead is to decide how much risk you want to take and how much of that $17 price you want to put in the bank. Nobody knows where the market is going, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have a plan. Daily market intelligence remains key. Risk management never grows old.

Philip Shaw can be reached at philip@philipshaw.ca

Follow him on social platform X @Agridome

(c) Copyright 2026 DTN, LLC. All rights reserved.