By DTN Staff

OMAHA (DTN) -- The average daily close of the December corn futures contract was $4.16 during October, while the November soybean contract was $10 per bushel.

The averages are an important piece of price discovery that underpins many crop insurance policies, which use the higher of either the harvest price or the spring projected price to calculate indemnity payments. The projected prices are an average of the new-crop futures contracts' closes during February. They came in at $4.66 per bushel for corn and $11.55 per bushel for soybeans.

DTN Lead Analyst Rhett Montgomery said 2024 represents a return to some semblance of normalcy regarding fall guarantees being lower than spring guarantees for both corn and soybeans.

"The deterioration of prices was also much less extreme in 2024 compared to last year where we saw over a dollar per bushel difference in guarantees for corn insurance versus 50 cents in 2024," Montgomery said. "As a result, revenue protection from 70% up to 85% is unlikely to trigger a payment this year without a reported yield loss."

Breakeven prices per the USDA crop budgets for 2024 are estimated to be $4.78 on corn and $11.70 on soybeans, Montgomery said.

"Last spring saw producers switch acres away from corn and into soybeans, as an insurance soybean-to-corn price ratio of 2.48 incentivized this shift. As of this fall, that ratio has shifted slightly back to favoring corn at 2.40, as a result of estimated record soybean production in the U.S. and Brazil for 2024-25 driving soybean prices down further relative to corn.

"This will set up a very intriguing battle for acres moving forward into the first quarter of 2025, and as always, the February 2025 crop insurance averages will play a vital role in producers' decisions of what to plant in 2025."

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