Sunflower Meal, Feather Meal and DDGS All Price Under Soybean Meal

Sunflower meal, feather meal and DDGS all price below soybean meal on a cost-per-pound-of-crude-protein, dry-matter basis this week, with no new USDA AMS feedstuffs observations published since the previous issue. Sunflower meal leads the board at $0.275 per pound of crude protein, 69% of soybean meal's cost. Feather meal follows at 77% of soybean meal's cost per pound and DDGS at 91%.

• Feather meal holds at $0.309 per pound of crude protein, 77% of soybean meal on a dry-matter basis. The CP coefficient is a book value from published feed tables.
• DDGS at about $193/ton prices protein at $0.364 per pound of crude protein, 91% of soybean meal. On energy, DDGS costs 117% of corn per pound of TDN, above the corn benchmark on that axis.
• Corn holds as the cheapest energy source at $0.105 per pound of TDN, the energy benchmark at about $162/ton plant input cost. Rice bran follows at 106% of corn and wheat middlings at 109%.
• Soybean meal at about $382/ton FOB. USDA ERS's Oct. 15 Oil Crops Outlook, per Maria Bukowski and Bryn Swearingen, raised the 2026/27 U.S. soybean production forecast 27 million bushels to 4.56 billion bushels on higher yield. The farmer price forecast holds at $12.00 per bushel.
• Feed grains supply was raised 10.1 million metric tons to 476.4 million MT for 2026/27, the second-largest on record, per USDA ERS's Oct. 15 Feed Outlook (Jennifer K. Bond, Steven Ramsey and Joshua Huang). Corn supply drove the bulk of the increase.

Several individual price series have not updated in over two weeks, including specific alfalfa pellet series for Kansas and the Pacific Northwest and almond hull series by California origin. Check the stale-data flags on affected data pages before using those figures.