Reviewed September 2026 against USDA AMS daily grain reports and USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist WASDE projections.

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CBOT Soybean Futures Today: Corn, Soybean Prices Explained

“CBOT soybean futures traded at $12.99 per bushel on September 11, 2026, while the Dec 2026 corn contract settled at 514.00 cents per bushel on September 10, 2026, per USDA AMS.”

CBOT soybean futures are the Chicago Board of Trade contracts that set the reference price for U.S. soybeans, quoted in cents per bushel for delivery in a specific month. As of September 11, 2026, CBOT soybean futures traded at $12.99 per bushel, according to AGSIST’s live futures tracker. One session earlier, on September 10, 2026, the Dec 2026 CBOT corn contract settled at 514.00 cents per bushel (that’s $5.14/bu), per USDA AMS report 2850. Below, we break down what moves these two contracts, how the mechanics of a futures contract actually work, and what to check before you rely on any single day’s print.

Table of Contents

• CBOT Soybean: Current Price and How It’s Quoted
• CBOT Corn Futures: Dec 2026 Contract and How It Works
• The December 28, 2024 Corn Futures Close — What’s Confirmed and What Isn’t
• Corn and Soybean Futures Compared
• USDA’s Soybean Price Projection vs. the Futures Market
• Trading Volume and Liquidity
• Breakeven Calculator for CBOT Contracts
• How to Monitor These Prices Going Forward
• Try it: Run your own numbers

CBOT Soybean: Current Price and How It’s Quoted

“CBOT soybean,” “cbot soybeans,” “soybeans cbot,” and “cbot beans” all refer to the same instrument: the soybean futures contract traded on the Chicago Board of Trade (part of CME Group). Each contract represents 5,000 bushels, and prices are quoted in cents per bushel — so a quote of “1299” means $12.99/bu. On September 11, 2026, that contract was trading at $12.99 per bushel, per AGSIST’s soybean futures page.

For comparison, an earlier snapshot from May 23, 2025 (Katadata, citing CBOT two-month futures) put soybeans at $13.00 per bushel — within a few cents of the September 2026 level, despite more than a year passing between the two readings. That’s the nature of a futures curve: different contract months and different points in the marketing year can land close together or diverge sharply depending on the balance sheet at the time.

Soybean futures prices are driven by a small number of recurring inputs: planted acreage (published by USDA NASS each June), yield estimates (updated monthly in WASDE and finalized in USDA’s January crop production report), export sales to China and other buyers (weekly USDA export sales data), and the South American harvest (Brazil and Argentina, which compete directly with U.S. supply from roughly March through June). None of these move in isolation — a soybean quote is a running vote on all of them at once.

CBOT Corn Futures: Dec 2026 Contract and How It Works

“How do corn futures work” is really two questions: what the contract structure is, and what makes the price move. Structurally, one CBOT corn contract also covers 5,000 bushels, quoted in cents per bushel, with delivery months set at fixed points in the year (March, May, July, September, December being the standard cycle). The December contract is the one most closely tied to the U.S. harvest, since it matures right after the bulk of the crop is combined and delivered.

On September 10, 2026, the Dec 2026 corn contract settled at 514.00 cents per bushel — $5.14/bu — according to USDA AMS report 2850, which USDA publishes daily. That report is the same one grain elevators and cash-market buyers reference for basis calculations, so it’s a more granular source than a general market news summary.

Mechanically, a corn futures contract works like this: a buyer and seller agree today on a price for corn to be delivered in a specified future month. Neither side typically intends to make or take physical delivery — most positions are closed out (offset) before the contract expires — but the contract still anchors the cash price a farmer is offered at the local elevator, via a basis adjustment (local cash price = futures price +/- basis). That link is why “how do corn futures work” matters to someone who has never placed a trade: if you sell corn to an elevator, the number on your settlement sheet started as a CBOT futures print.

Where the Dec 2026 Corn Number Comes From

• Report: USDA AMS 2850, published daily at ams.usda.gov/mnreports/ams_2850.pdf.
• What it contains: daily cash grain bids alongside the corresponding CBOT futures settlement used to calculate basis.
• How often it refreshes: every trading day. The 514.00-cent figure is a single-day settlement, not an average — check the current PDF for today’s number rather than reusing this one.

The December 28, 2024 Corn Futures Close — What’s Confirmed and What Isn’t

Several searches point at one specific number: the CBOT corn futures close on December 28, 2024. We want to be direct about this rather than guess: that exact closing price was not returned in the sources available for this research pass, and we are not going to fabricate a figure to fill the gap.

Here’s how to get the real, verifiable number yourself, in under a minute:

1. Go to USDA AMS’s daily grain report archive at ams.usda.gov/mnreports.
2. USDA AMS retains historical daily reports — search for the report dated December 30, 2024 (the next USDA publishing day after December 28, since AMS does not typically publish on weekends, and December 28, 2024 was a Saturday), which will reference the December 27 (Friday) settlement, the last trading session before that weekend.
3. Alternatively, CME Group’s own historical settlement data (available through its exchange data products) carries the exact December 27, 2024 close by contract month.

We flag the Saturday date deliberately: “December 28, 2024” being a non-trading day is itself the most useful fact we can hand a reader chasing that exact string — it tells you which adjacent trading day’s data actually answers the question, whether you’re checking corn futures close, corn futures price, or the CBOT corn print for that week.

Corn and Soybean Futures Compared

“Corn and soybean futures” move together more often than not, since they compete for the same acreage in the U.S. Corn Belt — a farmer deciding between the two crops each spring is comparing relative price expectations, and that decision itself feeds back into how much of each crop gets planted. Here is how the two contracts stack up on the fundamentals covered in this article:

The USDA soybean price projection for the 2025 season was $10.00 per bushel, per USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist. Set against the September 11, 2026 spot futures print of $12.99/bu, that’s a gap of roughly $3/bu between an official season-average projection and the live futures market a season later — a reminder that a WASDE projection is an average expectation for an entire marketing year, not a forecast of where the futures contract will trade on any given day.

USDA’s Soybean Price Projection vs. the Futures Market

USDA’s WASDE report (World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates) is where the $10.00/bu soybean projection for the 2025 season comes from. WASDE is published monthly by USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist and is the standard reference for season-average price forecasts across corn, soybeans, and wheat. You can find the current edition at usda.gov/oce/commodity/wasde.

Two things are worth separating here, because “soybean futures news today” searches often conflate them:

• WASDE’s season-average price is a single number meant to describe the whole marketing year (September through August for soybeans) — it’s a planning benchmark, not a live quote.
• The CBOT futures price — like the $12.99/bu September 2026 print — moves every trading session and reflects same-day supply, demand, and macro news.

Both numbers matter for different jobs: WASDE for budgeting and policy analysis, CBOT futures for marketing decisions on when to sell. Neither should be read as a rolling forecast of the other.

Trading Volume and Liquidity

CBOT corn futures averaged approximately 350,000 contracts traded per day in 2025, according to StoneX’s trading desk research. At 5,000 bushels per contract, that’s roughly 1.75 billion bushels of nominal corn changing hands daily in the futures market — several times the size of the entire annual U.S. corn crop, which is normal for a futures market where most volume is speculative or hedging turnover rather than physical grain movement.

That volume matters practically: a market trading 350,000 contracts a day has tight bid-ask spreads and can absorb large hedging orders from grain elevators and processors without moving the price much on any single trade. It’s part of why CBOT corn and soybean futures are treated as the reference price for cash grain contracts across the U.S. Midwest, rather than a regional cash market setting its own independent price.

Where Farm-Level Data Fits Into Marketing Decisions

None of the CBOT numbers above tell an individual grower what their own crop is worth — that still depends on local basis, actual yield, and harvest timing. This is where technology-driven agriculture companies fit into the picture: satellite monitoring can give growers an earlier read on their own expected yield, which is one of the few variables in the breakeven math below that a farmer can actually estimate ahead of the elevator scale ticket.

Farmonaut’s satellite-based farm management tools track crop health through the season using multispectral imagery, giving growers an independent yield signal to weigh against USDA’s county and national averages. That’s available through Farmonaut’s web app, Android and iOS apps, and its API for larger operations that want to pull the data into their own systems.

For operations that want to combine futures pricing with field-level data programmatically, Farmonaut’s satellite and weather API exposes crop health and weather signals that can sit alongside a CBOT price feed in a marketing dashboard, and the API developer documentation covers the integration details.

Breakeven Calculator for CBOT Contracts

Use the calculator below to convert a CBOT futures price and your local basis into an estimated per-acre revenue and breakeven yield, using the corn and soybean figures cited above as starting defaults you can overwrite with your own numbers.

Assumptions: this calculator uses a flat basis you enter manually and a single production-cost figure per acre; it does not account for crop insurance, hedging costs, storage, or drying charges, and it treats yield as a fixed input rather than a distribution. Enter your own local basis from your elevator and your own actual per-acre costs for a realistic result — the defaults are the CBOT corn figure cited above and a representative Corn Belt cost estimate, not a prediction for your farm.

How to Monitor These Prices Going Forward

Because every CBOT price in this article carries a specific date, none of them will still be accurate by the time you’re reading this unless it’s the same trading day. Here’s the durable method for getting a current number instead of an old one:

For CBOT Corn

• USDA AMS publishes daily cash grain and futures data at ams.usda.gov/mnreports/ams_2850.pdf — report 2850 specifically. It updates every trading day, so check the date stamp on the PDF before quoting a figure from it.
• The full USDA AMS market news index is at ams.usda.gov/mnreports, which also carries wheat, soybean, and regional cash bid reports.

For CBOT Soybean

• AGSIST’s live soybean futures page at agsist.com/soybean-futures-prices tracks the current contract price in real time during trading hours.
• USDA AMS also publishes soybean cash and futures-referenced bids alongside its corn reports on the same market news index.

For Season-Average Projections

• USDA’s WASDE report, issued monthly by the Office of the Chief Economist at usda.gov/oce/commodity/wasde, is the source to check for an updated season-average price projection rather than reusing the $10.00/bu figure cited above for the 2025 season.

This three-source method — AMS daily report for the futures settlement, AGSIST or a comparable live tracker for intraday movement, and WASDE for the season-average projection — stays useful regardless of which direction the market moves next, which is the point: the numbers in this article will age, but the checklist for replacing them won’t.

Why These Numbers Diverge From What You Might Have Seen Elsewhere

If you’ve seen a different corn or soybean price quoted elsewhere for around the same period, the most common reasons are: a different contract month (Dec 2026 vs. Mar 2027 corn will trade at different levels), a different day (futures settle daily, and even a single session can move several cents), or a cash price with basis already applied rather than the flat futures number. When comparing sources, always match contract month and date before treating two prices as contradictory.

None of the figures in this article should be read as investment advice or a signal to buy or sell futures contracts — they are reference points for understanding how CBOT pricing works and where to verify it yourself.

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FAQ Section

1. What is the CBOT soybean futures price?
   • CBOT soybean futures traded at $12.99 per bushel on September 11, 2026, per AGSIST.
   • Check agsist.com/soybean-futures-prices for the current live price, since this figure changes every trading session.
2. What is the CBOT corn futures price?
   • The Dec 2026 CBOT corn contract settled at 514.00 cents per bushel ($5.14/bu) on September 10, 2026, according to USDA AMS report 2850.
   • Get today’s figure from USDA AMS’s daily report.
3. How do corn futures work?
   • One CBOT corn contract covers 5,000 bushels, priced in cents per bushel, for delivery in a fixed month (March, May, July, September, or December).
   • Most positions are closed before delivery; the contract’s real function is setting a reference price that local elevators adjust with basis to set the cash price paid to farmers.
4. What was the corn futures close on December 28, 2024?
   • December 28, 2024 was a Saturday, so CBOT did not trade that day — there is no closing price to report for that specific date.
   • The relevant trading-day close is from Friday, December 27, 2024; find it in USDA AMS’s archived daily reports at ams.usda.gov/mnreports or via CME Group’s historical settlement data.
5. How do corn and soybean futures compare right now?
   • Dec 2026 corn settled at 514.00 ¢/bu (Sept 10, 2026); soybeans traded at $12.99/bu (Sept 11, 2026) — see the comparison table above for contract size, delivery months, and volume.
6. How does the CBOT futures price compare to USDA’s season-average projection?
   • USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist projected a $10.00/bu season-average soybean price for the 2025 season, versus a $12.99/bu spot futures print in September 2026 — a reminder that a WASDE season-average and a live futures quote answer different questions.
7. How can I estimate my own breakeven price?
   • Use the breakeven calculator on this page: enter the current CBOT futures price, your local basis, your expected yield, and your per-acre production cost to get an estimated revenue and breakeven price.
8. How can satellite data help with marketing decisions?
   • Farmonaut’s satellite crop monitoring gives growers an independent, field-level yield estimate through the season, which can be plugged into the breakeven calculator above ahead of the final elevator scale ticket.