The corn and soybean meal ration benchmark

Corn and soybean meal are the yardsticks feed buyers price everything else against: corn for a pound of energy, soybean meal for a pound of protein. A co-product is worth what the corn and soybean meal it replaces would cost, and on the Sep 28, 2026 USDA board that came to $0.112 per pound of TDN from corn and $0.382 per pound of crude protein from soybean meal.

Why these two

Mississippi State University Extension values feeds by economic replacement, comparing the dollar value of their TDN and crude protein against base feeds, and names the base feeds: corn is often used as the base energy feedstuff and soybean meal as the base protein feedstuff. NDSU Extension prices distillers grains for dairy rations the same way, using the prices of soybean meal and corn as standards for both nutrients.

Both are the plain commodity version of what a co-product sells: corn is mostly starch and soybean meal mostly protein. The board uses Kansas State University's composition values for corn (87.9 percent dry matter, 9.5 percent crude protein and 88 percent TDN on a dry-matter basis) and 53.5 percent protein and 82 percent TDN at 89 percent dry matter for soybean meal. Corn is USDA's plant input cost from its weekly Grain Co-Products report, which quotes corn per bushel; the board converts it at 56 pounds a bushel, and the corn price per ton calculator does the same conversion on any quote.

The two benchmarks since 2022

Both fell hard from 2022 and turned up in 2026. By calendar year on the board:

• Corn averaged $247 a ton in the second half of 2022, $209 in 2023, $149 in 2024, $152 in 2025 and $157 in 2026 through September. Its cost per pound of TDN fell from $0.160 to $0.096 between 2022 and 2024.
• Soybean meal averaged $463, $445, $352, $283 and $326 over the same years, and its cost per pound of protein fell from $0.486 to $0.298 by 2025.
• They did not move together. Soybean meal cost 1.87 times corn per ton in 2022, 2.37 times in 2024, 1.87 times again in 2025 and 2.08 times in 2026.

One nutrient at a time: who beats the benchmark

In the 209 weekly reports from Jul 25, 2022 through Sep 28, 2026, only seven feeds ever bought a pound of TDN for less than corn: hominy feed (202 of the 206 weeks it was quoted), wheat middlings (163), soybean hulls (150), DDGS (68), rice bran (28), wheat millrun (9) and whole cottonseed (once). Twelve feeds bought a pound of crude protein for less than soybean meal at least once, led by feather meal (every report), meat and bone meal (200), sunflower meal (171 of 195), DDGS (166) and cottonseed meal (106).

That screen is strict. On Sep 28, 2026, with 18 feeds priced, none came in under corn on energy (hominy, the usual winner, had not been quoted since Sep 14), and four came in under soybean meal on protein: sunflower meal at 72 percent of its cost per pound, feather meal at 74, linseed meal at 89 and DDGS at 96.

Both nutrients together: the replacement value

Most co-products bring some of each, so the fuller test prices the corn and soybean meal that would supply the same protein and the same energy together. On the Sep 28, 2026 board ten feeds cost less than their corn and soybean meal equivalent:

• Sunflower meal at 68 percent of it, DDGS 73, linseed meal 80, wheat millrun 81, rice bran 82, wheat middlings 83, corn gluten feed 89, safflower meal 91 and soybean hulls 91. Cottonseed meal was level at 100.
• Canola meal came in at 109 percent, whole cottonseed 179, alfalfa meal 245 and cottonseed hulls 524. Those last three are bought for fat or fiber, which this method does not price; Mississippi State notes it does not account for roughage.
• Blood meal, corn gluten meal, feather meal and meat and bone meal carry more protein per unit of energy than soybean meal itself, so the equivalent would need a negative amount of corn. They are read on protein alone.

Worked example: DDGS on the Sep 28, 2026 board

Corn was $174 a ton, soybean meal $364 and DDGS $195.

1. NDSU's formula. A hundredweight of distillers grains is worth corn's price per hundredweight times 0.531 plus soybean meal's times 0.514. Corn at $174 a ton is $8.70 per hundredweight and soybean meal $18.20, so DDGS is worth $8.70 × 0.531 + $18.20 × 0.514 = $13.97 per hundredweight, or $279.49 a ton. At $195 it cost about 70 percent of that.
2. The board's own version. A ton of DDGS at 90 percent dry matter carries 1,800 pounds of dry matter, about 531 pounds of crude protein and 1,584 pounds of TDN. The same protein and energy take about 1,049 pounds of corn dry matter and 806 pounds of soybean meal dry matter, which is 1,193 pounds of corn and 906 pounds of soybean meal as fed.
3. Price them. 1,193 pounds of corn at $174 a ton is $103.79; 906 pounds of soybean meal at $364 is $164.89. Together $268.68, so DDGS at $195 cost 73 percent of the corn and soybean meal it replaces, even though on energy alone it cost 109 percent of corn.

The two methods land within a few points of each other. NDSU's factors come from dairy energy values and the board's from TDN, which is why they are not identical. Neither counts freight, amino acids, fiber or how much of a feed a ration can hold.

The cheapest-protein board and cheapest-energy board run the one-nutrient screen on every feed each week, and the guide to comparing feed ingredients walks through the method. To run it on your own quote and lab analysis, use the feed cost-per-nutrient calculator. The Ration reports the benchmarks as USDA publishes them; it does not forecast them or tell a reader what to feed.