USDA forecasts the 2026 U.S. corn crop at 16.0 billion bushels, down 5.9%

The USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service forecast 2026 U.S. corn production at 16.0 billion bushels in its August 12 Crop Production report, down 5.9% from 2025, with an average yield of 180.7 bushels an acre, 5.8 bushels below last year [1]. Soybean production was forecast at 4.52 billion bushels, up 6.0%, on a yield of 52.7 bushels, 0.3 lower; all wheat for grain was put at 1.53 billion bushels, down 23% from 2025, on a yield of 47.8 bushels [1].

The report landed a week after Nutrien's second-quarter release, whose outlook said firming crop prices and growers' focus on protecting yield potential should support crop input demand in the third quarter, and that a faster than average pace of crop development could bring an earlier start to the fall fertilizer application season [2]. A smaller corn crop at firmer prices is consistent with that reading; a smaller crop whose price does not respond is not, because a grower with less grain to sell cuts the discretionary inputs first.

Why a U.S. reader of Canadian stocks should care is the supply chain behind the acre: net imports supplied 92% of the potash American farms used in 2025 and Canada supplied 79% of those imports, so the fall application season in Iowa is, in large part, a sales season for Saskatchewan mines [3]. The September report, with harvest further along, will say whether August's yield cut holds.