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Amid trade turmoil, Iowa farmers turn to grain storage as markets stall
Uncertain trade relationship pushes more producers to hold onto their crops, hoping for better prices.
Nov. 16, 2025 5:30 am
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On John Airey’s farming operation, stretches of good weather this fall made harvest go smoothly.
Airey, who grows corn and soybeans in rural Alburnett, typically puts some of his crops into storage after the harvest to sell at a later date, but this year, Airey said he put more in storage than he has in previous years.
He pre-sold some grain, but stored “a fair amount” of soybeans due to the ongoing uncertainty with the global trade market.
With the “uncertainty with the Chinese and with the trade deals, there just wasn't a lot of action on the market,” Airey said. “The market had been in a pretty tough spot for 12 to 18 months … selling didn't seem like the most advantageous choice.”
But Airey said at some point, Iowa farmers will have to sell their crop, regardless of the market, to make money to operate the farm.
“You got to pay the bills,” he said.
Airey is one of many farmers who have opted to store more grain this year with the hope that the global agricultural market will rebound and their crops can be sold at a higher price than what’s available today.
As America’s trade conflict with China persists, farmers across the country are feeling strain from continued uncertainty in the agricultural market.
And with most harvests in the Midwest wrapped up, producers in the Corn Belt have faced a difficult decision: to sell or store?
Aaron Lehman, president of the Iowa Farmer’s Union said tension has been felt acutely among Iowa farmers, especially as more soybean farmers in the state have opted to store their grain, instead of selling up-front, in hopes the market will rebound in the coming weeks.
China — historically, the biggest customer for U.S.-grown soybeans — has drastically reduced the amount it’s buying. A USDA report released last week showed China had bought only 332,000 metric tons, which is a fraction of the 12 million metric tons U.S. government leaders said the country had agreed to purchase by January.
That decline in sales has “depressed the markets,” Lehman said.
He said with more farmers opting to store their grain — either commercially, on their own farms, or both — some storage has started to reach capacity.
“Some of our farmers were told from their local elevator, where they have been delivering soybeans for decades, they were told, ‘Don't bring your soybeans here,’” Lehman said. “They’ve got nowhere to go.”
Lehman said more soybean farmers have been opting for storage on their own farms, either in grain bags or in grain piles.
“A lot of farmers have their own soybean storage on their own farm, and what we're hearing is a lot of those farmers where they might normally take them to market, but they're trying to store them and wait for a better price, because the price has just been so depressed,” Lehman said. “We've got a lot of soybeans, but we've got a lot of farmers who are storing because they think, ‘Hey, the trade situation couldn't get any worse, could it?’”
This comes during a year when experts predicted high soybean yields.
However, Grant Kimberley, senior director of market development with the Iowa Soybean Association, said determining how big this year’s soybean harvest was has been difficult due to the federal government shutdown.
The shutdown, which ended Wednesday night, lasted a record 43 days, restricting the U.S. Department of Agriculture from updating its October crop production report.
“We do think, though, that overall yields look pretty good this past year,” he said. “USDA was reporting yields for the U.S. soybean production. For Iowa, it would be quite high as well, but we had several good years of good yields in Iowa for soybeans.”
In September, prior to the shutdown, USDA forecasts predicted the soybean harvest would yield 53.5 bushels per acre, up 2.8 bushels from 2024. If realized, the forecasted yields in Iowa and eight other Midwest states would be record highs.
However, the USDA projection noted, acres of soybeans being harvested this year was forecast to be 80.3 million acres, which is 7 percent less than was harvested last year.
Kimberley said a final crop report for the growing season will be released in January.
An unpredictable market
Although the agricultural industry has been facing more trade uncertainty, fueled by the Trump administration’s tariffs on China during the president’s second term, experts say the agricultural markets have been a challenge for producers beyond this growing season.
Kimberley said this recent wave of economic struggles for producers — in and outside Iowa — goes back to 2023.
“In 2023, that's when the market really started to go much lower for corn and soybean prices, and yet our input costs and expenses have continued to increase and stay very high,” he said.
Kimberley said that much of this also has been tied to high inflation rates.
“That's the overarching problem that's been plaguing farmers and agriculture here for the last several years, and this year just is a bit more pronounced because of additional market and trade and biofuel policy uncertainties … so that’s kind of why they have to deal with this,” he said.
Kimberley said in strained economic times — like when farmers’ expenses exceed their revenue and when “cash is tight” — making new investments, on things like new machinery or grain storage, can be difficult.
“Farmers had to really pull in the reins, so to speak, and they can't really make some of those investments even if they want to,” he said. “And that’s a challenge.”
Chad Hart, an Iowa State University economics professor and crop market specialist, said low commodity prices — typically the result of oversupply or weak market demand — has been a persistent issue this year as well.
With that, “farmers are hoping to hang on to the crops for a little while longer in hopes that prices will improve and typically, they do over time,” Hart said. “As we move further away from harvest, we do tend to see prices improve, and so that's why they're looking to use that storage.”
Hart said there are multiple reasons why the market continues to be uncertain for producers and buyers, but the ongoing trade conflict is one of the biggest factors at play.
“We're in a trade dispute, where there is a lack of sales in the international marketplace that we usually see at this time of year, so that has the impact of lowering prices today,” he said.
A slight rebound
After President Donald Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in October, the U.S. announced that the Chinese government had committed to opening “China’s market to U.S. soybeans and other agricultural exports,” agreeing to buy soybeans this year and in future years.
Phil Knuth, grain originator at the River Valley Cooperative in Martelle, said that although some details of the October deal between the U.S. and China still have not been released, the news provided some relief for Iowa farmers.
Knuth said when the deal was announced, the agricultural market rebounded slightly, and some Iowa soybean farmers took their grain out of storage at the co-op and sold it off.
By postponing selling their soybeans for a few weeks, Knuth said some farmers were able to sell for $1 more per bushel than they would have been able to weeks earlier.
The producers who chose to do that, Knuth said, they “actually came out ahead this year.”
“The (farmers) that would have sold right out of the field as they delivered — as we were in the height of soybean harvest — got paid essentially $1 less than those now that put it in commercial storage,” Knuth said. “They paid the minimum, and then after the announcement of this expected trade deal with China, were able to capitalize on that and sell the bushels and extract about $1 of margin that wasn't available when the soybean crop was actually coming out of the field here in Eastern Iowa. It's been kind of interesting to watch.”
Knuth said it is difficult to quantify how many farmers decided to go that route but said a fair amount of Eastern Iowa producers opted to put their soybeans in commercial storage and sold them a month later at a higher price per bushel.
Matt Koch, chief marketing marking officer at Sukup Manufacturing, a family-owned manufacturer of grain storage, drying and handling equipment based in Sheffield, said China’s purchase of soybeans is a “big, big deal” for the U.S.
He said the slight rebound in the markets has helped, but “we don't necessarily know what's going to happen tomorrow.”
With the uncertainty — and several years of declining soybean prices — Koch said farmers have had fewer places to take their grain after harvest.
“This year, we've seen a very late year push in late season storage,” he said.
With an increase in storing grain this year, Koch said commercial grain storage availability has varied throughout the state.
“There's pockets where there's plenty (of storage) and there's pockets where it's real short,” he said.
He said U.S. farmers have bore the brunt of market instability.
“No one's been hurt more than farmers and agricultural manufacturers,” Koch said.
Olivia Cohen covers energy and environment for The Gazette and is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. She is also a contributing writer for the Ag and Water Desk, an independent journalism collaborative focusing on the Mississippi River Basin.
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Comments: olivia.cohen@thegazette.com
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