Agricultural Commodities: Grains, Softs and Livestock

Three Families of Agricultural Markets

Agricultural commodities are raw materials that come from farming and ranching. They are split into three broad families: grains and oilseeds, soft commodities, and livestock. Each family has its own growing logic, trading calendar, and set of market drivers. You can browse live prices for all of them on the commodities page.

These markets matter far beyond trading floors. When corn prices spike in Chicago, tortilla prices eventually rise in Mexico City. When a drought hits Brazil's coffee belt, the cost of a cup of coffee climbs months later in cafés everywhere. Agricultural prices are a direct thread connecting weather and soil to the grocery bill.

Grains and Oilseeds: Corn, Wheat and Soybeans

Grains and oilseeds are the backbone of global food and animal feed. The three most actively traded are corn, wheat, and soybeans. Corn is the world's largest crop by volume and is used for animal feed, ethanol fuel, and food processing. Soybeans are crushed into soybean oil (used in cooking and biodiesel) and soybean meal (a protein-rich animal feed). Wheat feeds humans directly, showing up in bread, pasta, and noodles.

How Grains Are Quoted

Grain prices are almost always quoted in cents per bushel. A bushel is a standardized volume measure — for corn it equals 56 pounds, for soybeans 60 pounds, and for wheat 60 pounds as well. Standard futures contracts (typically traded on the Chicago Board of Trade) cover 5,000 bushels each, so a one-cent move equals a $50 change in contract value. The commodity units guide explains these conventions in full detail.

Because prices run in the hundreds of cents, traders often convert: suppose corn is quoted at 480 cents per bushel — that is simply $4.80 per bushel. Prices on our site display in the most common market convention, and the how market quotes work guide explains how to read them.

Who Grows What and Why Location Matters

A handful of countries dominate each crop, which means export policy from just one or two nations can move global prices sharply. The United States and Brazil together account for the vast majority of the world's soybean exports. The U.S., Canada, Russia, Ukraine, and Australia are the main wheat exporters — Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 disrupted Black Sea grain flows and sent wheat prices surging worldwide. For corn, the U.S. and Brazil are the dominant exporters.

This geographic concentration creates a supply shock risk: a drought in Brazil or a harsh winter on the U.S. Great Plains can ripple through prices globally within hours of a weather forecast update.

The Crop Calendar: Planting, Growing and Harvest

Unlike metals or oil, grain prices follow a yearly biological rhythm called the crop calendar. Traders and economists track three distinct phases: planting, the growing season, and harvest.

• Planting season — For U.S. corn and soybeans, planting runs roughly April through June. Slow planting progress due to wet or cold weather tends to push prices higher, since it signals a potential reduction in the final crop size.
• Growing season — Summer months are the critical stress period. Heat waves and drought during the corn pollination window (typically July) can devastate yields. Traders watch weekly crop condition reports from the USDA, rating crops as excellent, good, fair, poor, or very poor.
• Harvest — U.S. corn and soybean harvest runs September through November. As new supply enters the market, prices often — though not always — soften. This pattern is sometimes called the harvest-pressure effect.

Southern Hemisphere crops (Brazil and Argentina) have an opposite calendar, with their harvest arriving around March and April. This means global supply of soybeans, in particular, is staggered across two main growing seasons per year.

WASDE: The Market Event Every Grain Trader Watches

The most important scheduled data release in agricultural markets is the WASDE report — the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, published monthly by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). It covers global supply, demand, and ending stocks (the leftover supply at the end of a crop year) for all major grains and oilseeds.

The WASDE functions much like an earnings report does for stocks: markets have a consensus expectation going in, and prices move sharply if the actual numbers differ from that expectation. A surprise cut to the U.S. corn yield estimate, for example, can send corn futures up several percent within minutes of the release. You can find upcoming WASDE release dates on the economic calendar.

Ending stocks are often the single number traders focus on most. Low ending stocks relative to total consumption signal a tight market with little cushion for any new supply problem.

Export inspection and export sales data, also released weekly by the USDA, give markets an ongoing read on how quickly the current crop is being sold abroad. Strong export demand from a large buyer like China can tighten the supply picture even between WASDE reports. See what moves commodity prices for a broader look at these demand-side forces.

Soft Commodities: Coffee, Sugar, Cocoa and Cotton

Soft commodities are tropical or semi-tropical agricultural products that cannot be stored as long as grains and are more sensitive to specific regional weather. The four most actively traded softs are coffee, sugar, cocoa, and cotton.

Coffee and sugar are quoted in cents per pound on U.S. futures exchanges. Cocoa is an exception — it trades in U.S. dollars per metric ton in New York and in pounds sterling per metric ton in London. Cotton, like coffee and sugar, is quoted in cents per pound, with a standard contract covering 50,000 pounds.

Geographic concentration is extreme in softs. Ivory Coast and Ghana together produce roughly two-thirds of the world's cocoa — a disease outbreak or political disruption in either country can send cocoa prices sharply higher. Brazil's dominance in both coffee and sugar means that Brazilian weather forecasts are closely watched events in those markets.

Livestock: Cattle and Hogs

Livestock markets cover live animals and their processed products. The two main contracts are live cattle and lean hogs, both traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and quoted in cents per pound.

Live cattle contracts cover 40,000 pounds of cattle. Lean hog contracts cover 40,000 pounds of carcass weight. Unlike grain contracts where the underlying product can sit in a silo, livestock prices are driven heavily by the supply of animals ready for slaughter at any given time — a figure that takes months or years to change because cattle herds, in particular, take a long time to build up or draw down.

Livestock prices also respond to feed costs: when corn prices rise sharply, ranchers and hog farmers face higher costs to fatten their animals, which can squeeze margins and sometimes leads to earlier-than-planned liquidation of herds. This is one of the direct linkages between the grain markets and the livestock markets — a good example of the correlation that runs through agricultural commodity groups.

Disease outbreaks are a major wildcard. African Swine Fever, for example, devastated Chinese hog herds starting in 2018, altering global pork trade patterns significantly for years afterward.

How Agricultural Markets Connect to the Bigger Picture

Agricultural prices feed directly into Consumer Price Index readings worldwide because food is a large share of household budgets, especially in emerging economies. When food inflation rises, central banks pay attention — and economic indicators pages will often show food inflation as a separate sub-component of headline CPI.

The U.S. dollar matters too. Most agricultural commodities are priced in dollars globally, so a stronger dollar tends to make them more expensive for buyers using other currencies, which can soften demand and weigh on prices. The relationship between currency markets and commodity prices is explored in what moves commodity prices.

Finally, agricultural markets sit within the broader commodities universe that includes energy and metals. A sharp rise in energy prices raises the cost of fertilizer (which is made from natural gas), farm equipment fuel, and transportation — all of which feed into the cost of producing food. These cross-commodity linkages mean that agricultural markets rarely move in complete isolation.