Row Crops Today — May 14, 2026
The 5-minute 5 AM brief for row crop producers and ag professionals
Headline Stack
🌽 House passes year-round E15 ethanol bill 218–203, splitting Republicans
📊 May WASDE pegs 2026/27 corn crop at 16.0B bushels, price at $4.40
🔬 FAPRI: year-round E15 could push average blend rate to 13% by 2035
💰 Senate Ag hearing scrutinizes $84B in fertilizer industry profits
🌾 Kansas drought pushes corn acres to milo, planting set for month's end
Top Story
🌽 The House passed year-round E15 on a 218–203 vote. — LINK
The House voted 218–203 on Wednesday to permanently authorize year-round sales of E15 ethanol fuel, with 122 Republicans, 95 Democrats and one independent in favor against 90 Republicans and 113 Democrats opposed. The vote split GOP leadership: Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise voted no, while Majority Whip Tom Emmer voted yes. The bill now moves to the Senate, where it faces an uncertain path. "Anybody who's from Ag state, this is a huge win for them," said Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), one of the bill's lead advocates. "We're helping keep domestic energy successful, and we're helping family farms." Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas) wrote in a Hill op-ed last week that E15 is a "Trojan horse to expand one of the most costly and destructive federal mandates in U.S. history: the Renewable Fuel Standard." Perry's motion to recommit the bill to committee failed 112–309. The stand-alone vote followed a decoupling from the Farm Bill earlier Wednesday after oil-state Republicans objected.
More This Week
📊 May WASDE: corn production set at 16.0B bushels for 2026/27. — LINK
USDA's first full 2026/27 balance sheet projects corn production at 16.0 billion bushels — down 6% year-over-year on fewer acres and a 183-bushel trend yield — with ending stocks falling 185 million bushels and the season-average price at $4.40, up 25 cents.
"USDA's first 2026/27 outlook shows tighter supplies across several markets, led by wheat, corn, cotton, rice, beef, and sugar," RFD-TV reported in its farm-level takeaway from the report.
Soybean production is forecast at 4.435 billion bushels — up 173 million — with crush rising to 2.750 billion bushels on biofuel demand, exports at 1.630 billion bushels, ending stocks at 310 million, and a season-average price of $11.40.
🔬 FAPRI: year-round E15 lifts corn, pulls acres from soybeans. — LINK
The University of Missouri's FAPRI study projects nationwide year-round E15 would expand corn demand gradually, reaching roughly a 13% average ethanol blend rate by 2035, with farmers planting more corn and fewer soybean acres and livestock feed costs rising.
"All you're doing is trading off some gallons of biodiesel becomes some gallons of ethanol, and so there's a trade-off between those two commodity prices to some extent as well," said FAPRI Director Seth Meyer.
Meyer told Brownfield there would be fewer agricultural tradeoffs from raising the ethanol blending cap within the Renewable Fuel Standard, a step that has not happened.
💰 Senate Ag hearing zeroes in on fertilizer profits. — LINK
South Dakota Corn Growers Association President Trent Kubik told the Senate Ag Committee on Tuesday that record fertilizer earnings are squeezing farm margins, with senators pressing Chairman John Boozman to advance the bipartisan Fertilizer Price Transparency Act mandating USDA price reporting.
"When my input price goes up, my profit margin shrinks. And I'll be frank, it's unclear to corn farmers in South Dakota how the opposite is possible for the fertilizer industry," Kubik said.
Andy Green, senior advisor with Center Market Strategies, told the committee that industry consolidation "affords fertilizer producers too much market control" and said it "may be appropriate to reconsider those recent mergers that have helped form this highly concentrated sector."
🌾 Kansas drought pushes corn acres to milo. — LINK
Central Kansas farmer Adam Baldwin says dryland corn not yet in the ground is shifting to grain sorghum, with planting of milo and soybeans planned for the end of the month following one of the driest springs on record and a single February precipitation event.
"Dryland corn at this point if it's not in, it's probably going to milo. We have acres that we had planned on being sorghum that we didn't have fertilizer bought for. With the high price of fertilizer, we're probably going to take corn acres and transition them to milo acres without fertilizer and transition them back to beans," Baldwin said.
Baldwin said sorghum and soybeans will be planted "into the dust," citing more forgiving stand establishment compared with corn, where uneven emergence at low seeding populations cannot be recovered.
Basis Watch
Nebraska Southeast soybean basis firmed 10 cents on Wednesday, May 13, leading old-crop bean moves, with Missouri West also improving 10 cents on the top end. Kansas South Central old-crop beans strengthened 5 cents, while a cluster of Iowa locations — North Central, Northwest, and Southwest — each firmed 3 cents on their top-end July bids. Kentucky Purchase new-crop beans softened 5 cents.
On the corn side, Kentucky Pennyrile new-crop December basis improved 17 cents, well clear of anything else in the corn data. North Dakota Northeast and Kansas South Central old-crop corn each firmed 5 cents, while Pennyrile's old-crop July weakened 5 cents on the low end and Kentucky Purchase new-crop softened 5 cents.
Source: USDA AMS
$84 billion — the estimated combined profits of the nine largest fertilizer companies in 2021–22, a period when some firms saw earnings rise 100–200%, according to Sen. Tina Smith at Tuesday's Senate Ag Committee hearing.
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