As grain farmers prepare for spring planting, any optimism for the coming season is being tempered by the economic reality that they may face another money-losing year. This was looking to be the case even before the conflict began in Iran, which triggered a surge in fertilizer prices.

Input costs skyrocketed in 2022 after the start of the Russia-Ukraine war and remain elevated, while commodity prices sit under production costs. The American Farm Bureau says many row-crop farmers are looking at four or five straight years of operational losses, even after accounting for crop insurance payments and ad-hoc assistance. 

Philip Nelson, a fourth-generation farmer in LaSalle County, Illinois, who was recently elected as Illinois Farm Bureau president, says the profits farmers made when crop prices were high a few years ago have eroded and balance sheets are tight.

“If you adjust for inflation, we've got the same commodity prices we had in 1974, and at the same time, the input costs have quadrupled,” Nelson says.

Input costs aren’t the only issue clouding farmers’ outlooks for spring planting. Last year, the U.S. harvested a record corn crop of roughly 18 billion bushels, and that heavy supply continues to weigh on the market, says Sean Lusk, vice president, commercial hedging division for Walsh Trading. In addition, the outlook for soybeans remains mixed as farmers wait on the Trump administration to decide on a potential expansion of the biomass-based diesel program that could offset some of the lost export market share to China amid recent trade tensions. 

In a challenging year, risk management tools and fine-tuning marketing plans take on added importance.

The Purdue University-CME Group Ag Economy Barometer weakened in December, reflecting farmers’ declining long-term outlook about U.S. soybean export prospects as competition from Brazil increases. More recently, the focus has shifted to tensions between current conditions and future expectations, with farmers more optimistic about the former than the latter. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Economic Research Service forecasts net farm income to fall by 2.6% year-over-year in inflation-adjusted terms. The decline is mitigated in part by the Farmer Bridge Assistance Program and the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program, USDA’s aid packages for farmers to offset losses because of the trade environment. However, the American Farm Bureau says most producers likely will still lose money.

University of Illinois agricultural researchers forecast crop prices to be marginally higher in 2026. As of early March, CME Group September 2026 Corn and Soybean futures are trading around $4.55 and $11.32 per bushel, respectively.

Price gains compared to last year will likely be offset by small increases in overall costs with yields at trend levels. Break-even prices to cover all costs without government support are in the $4.70-$4.90 range for corn and $10.80-$11.25 range for soybeans, close to or above current market prices and pricing opportunities for the 2026 crop.

David Iserman, a fifth-generation farmer based in Streator, Illinois, is sanguine about the growing season, based on those figures. “We're definitely either breaking even, if we're lucky, or losing money,” he says.

Annual inputs, such as seed, fertilizer and chemicals, are higher than last year. Corn consumes more inputs than soybeans, and that may factor into what U.S. farmers plant this spring – though markets won’t know for sure until the 2026 Prospective Plantings report is released on March 31. However, many farmers typically still stick with a traditional 50/50 corn and soybean rotation for agronomic reasons, which is what Iserman and Nelson plan to do.  

Both producers have experienced lean times before and are looking at ways to cut costs. Iserman says fertilizer is his number one cost. He practices no-till farming on his soybeans and strip-till for corn. In strip-till farming, producers till a narrow strip of soil for fertilizer on the corn, which minimizes loss.

Iserman may tweak how much he uses and is studying the cost, using software to gauge his returns on his fertilizer use.

“We're looking at all of our fertilizer inputs from the standpoint of not yield, but profit. For every dollar I put in, I want to get $1 back. I don't care about winning a yield contest. I care about return,” he says.

Nelson also says he might cut back slightly on fertilizer use because he has built it up in the soil, giving him an option to cut costs.