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US Biofuels Update: Soybean Futures Give Up Gains Due to Favorable Crop Weather

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Biofuels feedstock futures closed lower on Thursday, with traders moving on from the neutral to bullish US Department of Agriculture data on Wednesday to bearish crop weather.

The Chicago Board of Trade November soybean futures contract closed 0.08% lower at $11.82 1/4 per bushel, while the CBOT September soybean oil futures contract settled 0.53% lower at 68.79 cents per pound.

The Nymex September ethanol futures contract settled 1.66% higher on Wednesday at $1.98 per gallon.

Rhett Montgomery, a DTN analyst, said the soybean market was very quiet on Thursday, holding modest gains for most of the session before settling near even on the day.

"A wet outlook for August across the heart of the soybean belt is keeping a lid on soybean futures despite continued dryness in the northern Plains," Montgomery said.

Although USDA's increase to the soybean crop size forecast in Wednesday's World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates likely took some air out of the soybean market's sails, there remain bullish points to be made once seasonal price pressure eases ahead of harvest, the analyst said.

Export demand is currently the bullish beacon for the soybean market, with another strong week of sales in the week ending Aug. 6, Montgomery noted.

On Thursday, private exporters reported sales of 125,000 metric tons of US soybeans for delivery to China during the 2026/2027 marketing year.

For the week ending Aug. 6, 2026, USDA reported an increase of 2.8 million bushels or 75,100 metric tons of soybean export sales in 2025-26 and an increase of 64.7 mb or 1,759,900 mt for 2026-27.

Last week's export shipments of 9.9 mb were below the 15.9 mb needed each week to achieve USDA's export estimate of 1.520 billion bushels in 2025-26.

Soybean export commitments now total 1.535 bb in 2025-26 and are down 18% from a year ago. That is ahead of USDA's estimated pace, even as its estimate of US ending soybean stocks is 11% larger than the previous five-year average.

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