Welcome to the table for Friday, February 20th, 2026 installment of Market Plus. Joining us now, Shawn Hackett. Shawn, it's a constant joke, but I mean it when I say I just want some good Midwest weather for you when you come to visit. If you would have come Monday, Tuesday, people were wearing shorts, you would have felt at home.
Well, I am glad to participate in what it means to be from Iowa, I really am. I feel whole now that I've had sleet, snow and had to take a foot of snow off my car. I really, really feel awesome about that.
I sure hope I get to see pictures of that here before the -- we'll put that in the Market Insider newsletter if they exist. But I want to start with the weather because Shawn, again, great questions. I said it during the TV show. Everybody was awesome. Let's go weather. First off, the top is a cycle drought still in play for the '26 growing season. Asks Dan in Oregon.
The only way you can have a cycle, which is a very serious drought, is you cannot have an El Nino arrive by July. As we said in the main show, 60% chance that there's an El Nino by July. And as every month goes by, that's going to increase in probability. As it stands today, that's a pretty good probability that we're going to have El Nino type weather, which means cool, timely rains, which means Glassboro wouldn't be possible in this coming growing cycle.
Are there parts of the country that could be set up for a dry cycle?
Western corn belt, northern corn belt is where you would have the potential for drought, where the fires are. That area, Texas, for like where they grow cotton. That would be the area that if I was looking at a more severe drought, it's not the core I states, of course, but that's where I would be focusing on drought to be the case.
But as we found out from USDA, that corn belt kind of moving north, and if there is drought in the Dakotas and Minnesota, that does become a big.
Relative to last year's big yields that they had in those areas. For sure, that could be something that takes the top off the crop yields for being, you know, as high as they could be. It doesn't mean we're going to have poor crop yields, though. I think on a national average, it could still come out to be pretty darn good.
Let's keep going on weather. We had a question about July and August weather, but I think you want to look a little further.
So okay, so even though this is a bearish thing for prices for the U.S., weather for El Nino, it's very positive for South American weather. Central northern Brazil can have really, really hot, dry weather for both the first half of the growing season for soybeans and the back half of the growing season for second crop corn. That's going to be a big story. In addition, India can have very, very hot, dry weather for their wheat crop, which would be another element to add if we have issues this spring, like we think, and geopolitics continues to be far afield. So there's reasons to be more optimistic about weather influence on price, just not during our growing season.
Okay. And that's tied to then Glenn in Ohio's question, which is also very similar to what you talked about in the show. And if there is this good weather coming, act now, prices are going in a different direction. Glenn in Ohio wants to know, with an anticipated reduction of corn acres, expansion of bean acreage, should a producer be more aggressive in hedging more of their production earlier in the year, the crop will be protected and heavily subsidized crop insurance products this year. So start with the first part.
I always believe if you expect a good crop year for weather, which we do, you're likely going to have lower prices in August and September than you do in the spring. I mean, that's just a fact of seasonality. And so if we're getting some momentum, we put some premium on wheat, we're putting some premium on soybeans. I think we can put some more premium on corn into the spring. You just need to take advantage. I can't predict trade deals. I can't predict geopolitics. They can come and they can go. I'm pretty good with the weather and ultimately the weather is going to be the driver of weather prices late in the summer or lower than the spring. I think they will be. And you need to be opportunistic, stay in the game, sell those prices on the higher side so that you can get to where the weather could be more constructive to price during the growing season in South America and in India.
Are you completely in the camp of new crop? We need to be making sales. Are we halfway home by the time the planters roll on selling?
I would say, you know, right now I don't. The three year and five year moving average on corn has tended to be a very good marker to sell, make cash sales new crop that comes in at, I believe it comes in at 572. I'm sorry. 470 to 490 is the three year and a five year moving average. I would look at those targets. We're not that far off from it.
I would look at those targets at any time. We can push into those targets from now into the spring. I would definitely, certainly anything you cannot store, and certainly those bushels, you know, you need to sell to keep the farm going, you want to make sure those are buttoned up before the spring is done.
