Two Minnesota farms had two different approaches to get through the 2025 season.
In central Minnesota, Raymond DeMars, who is working to eventually take over the family farm near Swanville, said they finished harvesting soybeans and corn in mid-October. While the corn crop was not as impressive as hoped, he was pleased with a soybean crop yielding around 54 bushels an acre, just a few years into adding the crop to the rotation.
“The hardest part was trying to get a good price for them,” DeMars said.
DeMars, an American Soybean Association Young Leader, opted to sell the beans right off the field rather than add any costs of storing them. He sold locally at $9.28 a bushel, an amount he said was enough to be a little better than break even.
“That was enough to just get it out of here,” DeMars said.
Uncertainty and tariffs made the decision easier.
“Sometimes you kind of just have to make that decision and hope it was the right decision,” DeMars said. “I mean, unfortunately, nobody has a magic ball you can rub and see the future.”
About 150 miles southeast near Faribault, Minnesota, Gail Donkers was planning to have the corn harvest complete on Friday, Oct. 31. With corn reaching up about 15 feet tall and soybean yield reports of around 85 bushels an acre, harvest was looking spectacular.
“It was incredible. It was just like optimal timing, and too bad it wasn't silage corn because that would have been really good silage corn to take out,” Donkers said.
Her part of the state lacked any hard frost, but soybeans were still quick to dry down earlier in October.
Donkers, chair of the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council, said her farm has enough crop storage to handle the abundance of grains. Given the current market conditions, the outlook of potential improvements coming from sales to China that opened up that week, Donkers said they opted to store the grains for now.
Donkers said they have some grains sold for this fall, but not as many as normal. She said the farm would be looking into that closely as changes were happening by the minute during trade talk deals during the last week of October.
“Lotta years we deliver ours right to Mankato and just move them right away, but this is not one of those years,” Donkers said. “You know we’re going to sit on them a little bit and see if we can do a little better on them.”
The decision, at least for the moment, looks like it could pay off well for those who opted to hold onto soybeans. On Monday, Nov. 3, Chicago Board of Trade futures prices were up nearly 20 cents, to $11.34 a bushel. The market had seen seven straight days of increases at that point. Minnesota Soybean Processors in Brewster posted a cash bid price for November soybeans at $10.69 per bushel on Monday, Nov. 3.
That’s a turnaround soybean producers have been hoping for, but not in a way that could have been easily predicted. Those who sold earlier in October are likely kicking themselves as the futures price has climbed more than a dollar a bushel since then.
Lacking a crystal ball, DeMars instead focuses on leaning on what he can control.
In seeing depressed prices earlier in the year, DeMars said his family made the decision to store even more silage than normal. They have more cattle to feed, and he has his suspicions that it’s going to be a colder winter on the way.
Having a diversified operation, which includes an Angus herd, means that, as crop prices were depressed, DeMars enjoyed a more profitable return from the cattle.
Another thing that helps the farm prosper is that they limit their inputs as much as they can, taking advantage of fertile soil and low weed pressure.
“We try to keep the input costs down, especially this year was a great thing because we came out just over even,” DeMars said. “So, I mean, we didn't, by any means, make anything to write home about, but we also didn't lose money.”