2026 Pre-Harvest Results: How CropSide Performed Against the Average Market Price

One of the best ways to evaluate a grain marketing strategy is to compare it against a simple benchmark.

Instead of asking whether we sold the exact high—which is nearly impossible to do consistently—we can ask a more practical question:

How did CropSide's recommended sales compare with the average daily market price?

For the 2026 pre-harvest marketing period, CropSide's recommended sales finished above the average daily futures chart price in both corn and soybeans:

🌽 Corn: +$0.10/bushel

🌱 Soybeans: +$0.31/bushel

Rather than cherry-picking a particular high or low on the chart, we're comparing our recommendations against the average daily closing price during the same period we were actively making pre-harvest sales.

🔴 Red circles represent CropSide's 2026 pre-harvest recommended sales.

Markets provide hundreds of opportunities to make—or postpone—a grain sale.

Some days prices are near the highs. Other days they're near the lows. Averaging the daily futures closes across the marketing period gives us a straightforward benchmark for what the market offered over that same window of time.

Our goal at CropSide isn't to claim we'll sell every high.

Our goal is to use a disciplined process to make sales when we believe the risk versus reward favors the farmer.

For the 2026 pre-harvest period, that process resulted in an average recommended price that was:

🌽 10 cents above the corn benchmark

🌱 31 cents above the soybean benchmark

The difference may sound small until it's applied across actual production.

At 200 bushels per acre, a 10-cent advantage in corn equals:

$20 per acre

At 60 bushels per acre, a 31-cent advantage in soybeans equals:

$18.60 per acre

Across 1,000 acres, that's approximately $20,000 for corn or $18,600 for soybeans compared with the respective average daily futures-price benchmark.

That's why grain marketing doesn't necessarily require catching the exact top to make a meaningful difference.

One year doesn't tell the whole story.

CropSide has been tracking our grain marketing recommendations against the market for 16 years.

Over that history, our recommended sales have averaged:

🌽 Corn: +$0.24/bushel above the average market price

🌱 Soybeans: +$0.44/bushel above the average market price

Some years the advantage has been larger and some years smaller. That's exactly why we believe performance is better evaluated over many marketing years rather than by focusing on any single sale or market high.

The goal has remained the same throughout those 16 years:

Use a disciplined process to improve the average price of our recommended grain sales over time.

CropSide's approach isn't built around predicting the next weather headline, USDA report, or geopolitical event.

We analyze:

Sometimes that means selling while everyone is bullish. Other times it means remaining patient when the market is under pressure.

The objective is the same:

Make disciplined grain sales when the market gives us the opportunity—and work to outperform the average market price over time.

For the 2026 pre-harvest marketing period, that meant finishing $0.10 above the average daily corn price and $0.31 above the average daily soybean price.

We didn't need to sell the exact high.

We needed to make good decisions consistently.

For the 2026 results shown above, the benchmark represents the average daily closing futures price during CropSide's pre-harvest marketing window. CropSide's performance represents the weighted average price of our recommended pre-harvest sales compared with that benchmark.

Results are based on futures prices and do not include individual farm basis levels, fees, or other adjustments. Actual cash prices received by individual farms will vary.

Past performance does not guarantee future results.

News tells you what happened. Price tells you what matters.

Helping Farmers Sell Grain More Profitably

— CropSide Analytics