Corn (US #2 yellow) price

Corn (US #2 yellow) is one of the two commodities every feedstuff is priced against. On a dry-matter basis it runs about 9.5% crude protein and 88% TDN, roughly 0.92 Mcal of net energy for lactation per pound of dry matter, at about 87.9% dry matter as fed. Those figures come from Kansas State University Extension, Nutritional Composition of Feedstuffs for Beef Cattle (MF3648). The leaderboard uses them to convert each USDA report week's board price into a cost per pound of protein and per pound of energy, so it can be ranked against corn and soybean meal. Prices are quoted per ton, and the cheapest board price is not the cheapest fed price once freight and moisture are counted (see the FOB-vs-delivered guide). Corn is the crop this whole board is measured against, and what is quoted here needs no processing detour to reach a feed bunk: it is the grain itself, US number two yellow, off the farm. Price is set in the futures market more than in any feed report, moving on Corn Belt acreage and weather, the ethanol industry's grind, export sales to Mexico and Asia, and the competing pull of soybean acreage each spring. Feed use, mostly cattle, hog and poultry rations, is the single largest claim on the crop, but it competes against ethanol and exports for the same bushels, which is why corn swings more than any feedstuff priced off it.

The yardstick for every energy feed on this board. USDA's Economic Research Service describes corn as the main energy ingredient in livestock feed and the most widely produced US feed grain, accounting for nearly all feed grain production and use. That is why hominy, wheat middlings, soybean hulls and rice bran all get read against it: a co-product feed is cheap or dear relative to what the same energy would cost as corn. The corn and soybean meal benchmark explains how corn and soybean meal together anchor the rest of the board.

Part of what leaves the feed bunk comes back. ERS's feed grains overview lists livestock feed and fuel ethanol as the main domestic uses, alongside wet millers who turn corn into sweeteners, starch, oil and alcohol. It also notes the United States exports a share of every crop, so foreign buyers bid for the same bushels. Those processors do not take the whole kernel out of the feed market: ERS notes corn is processed into products that include co-product feeds, such as the DDGS, corn gluten feed and corn gluten meal on this board, that return to rations. A bigger ethanol grind draws on corn and adds to co-product supply at the same time.

Discovered in futures, settled by basis. ERS builds its season-average price forecasts from futures prices and local basis. Iowa State University's Ag Decision Maker defines basis as the difference between the futures price and a local cash price and traces it to transportation costs, storage costs, local supply and demand. A cash benchmark like the one on this page is futures adjusted by that local gap, so two regions can drift apart while futures sit still.

Harvest is when basis is widest. ERS starts the corn marketing year on September 1. Iowa State notes heavy farmer selling at harvest tends to lower the cash price with little effect on futures, leaving basis traditionally wide in the fall, and that cash prices tend to gain on futures from harvest through the marketing year as storage costs build.

Stocks-to-use sums up the balance. Acreage, yield and the pull of feed, ethanol and export demand all end in one ratio: ending stocks as a share of total use. Kansas State University's agricultural economists chart the US corn price directly against that ratio, drawn from USDA's supply and demand estimates.