The Grain Brief® – Monthly Recap May 2026
“The Price of Grain Fell. The Cost of Everything Else Didn’t.”
Corn: -6.5%
SRW Wheat: -6.5%
HRW Wheat: -7.8%
Spring Wheat: -7.2%
Soybeans: -0.9%
The market saw:
plentiful supplies
favorable weather
strong planting progress
And quickly concluded:
“There is plenty of grain.”
But that wasn’t the whole story.
Urea prices surged as much as 55%.
The Baltic Dry Index gained roughly 20%.
The Strait of Hormuz remained a major flashpoint, keeping global energy markets on edge.
Soyoil rose nearly 5% during the month, continuing to outperform the broader grain complex.
While grain prices fell throughout May — and again on its final trading day — the real costs of producing, financing and moving grain kept climbing.
Cheap grain does not mean a cheap food system.
Because abundance and security are not the same thing.
The world still has grain.
The real question is how much it will cost to produce it, finance it, insure it, and move it to where it is needed.
May priced abundance.
June may start pricing its true cost.
The Grain Brief® is a publication by Sandro Filippo Puglisi