A Look at the 2025 North Dakota Storage Situation

Low commodity prices and reduced export opportunities have contributed to a potential shortage of grain storage in North Dakota in 2025. This blog post evaluates how the estimated size of the 2025 North Dakota crop compares to available grain storage capacity.

Methodology

We consider production and storage of five commodities: corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, and barley. We combine forecasted state-level yields from USDA’s September 12, 2025, crop report (available here) with county-level planted acreage data obtained from FSA (not publicly available). To obtain county-level harvest sizes, we take the most recent available year of data for county-level yields from the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (available here) and multiply these values by the ratio of the 2025 North Dakota state average yield to the 2024 state average yield. County-level storage capacities are obtained by multiplying the overall state total of on- and off-farm permanent storage reported by USDA, 1.39 billion bushels in 2023 (the most recent year of data), by the fraction of North Dakota’s total off-farm elevator capacity within each county. Data on 2024 and 2025 state-level grain stocks come from the USDA stocks report (available here), and we assume the stocks are distributed across counties proportionally to each county’s crop production. These data sources and accompanying assumptions provide us with county-level estimates of 2024 and 2025 storage, as well as county-level production and stocks estimates for each crop. Based on data on past exports, we assume that 48.5% of all soybeans produced in each county are exported to China in 2024. In 2025, this value is set to zero, based on the current non-existence of Chinese demand for soybeans from the United States. To account for potential changes in county-level storage capacity attributable to the June 2025 derecho event, we use damage estimates published by NDSU Extension.

Results

We find that the total forecasted 2025 North Dakota production across the five crops totals 1.08 billion bushels, total stocks are 440 million bushels, and total storage capacity totals 1.38 billion bushels. Thus, total production plus current stocks represent 109% of the total storage capacity. The analogous value for 2024 is 102%. However, crucially, in 2024, 116 million bushels of soybeans were exported to China, reducing demand for storage. Removing these exported bushels from the equation, the value of 2024 production plus stocks less exports represents only 94% of total storage capacity. Figure 1 compares production, stocks, soybean exports to China, and storage capacity in North Dakota for 2024 and 2025. Although it’s impossible to predict exactly how a tight storage environment will translate of on-farm decision-making, it is fair to say that the storage outlook in 2025 is certainly tighter than the situation in 2024.

Figure 1: Comparison of 2024 and 2025 grain production, stocks, exports, and storage capacity

At the county level, we find that counties near the Red River generally have a lower production-to-storage ratio than more Western counties. Figure 2 provides measures of the storage situation, providing estimates of the difference between potential storage demand and storage supply as well as the ratio between potential demand and supply for storage.

The left panel provides the gap between storage capacity and the sum of production plus stocks in millions of bushels, with red coloring indicating that potential storage demand (production plus stocks) is larger than storage capacity. The right panel provides the ratio of potential demand to storage capacity.

Figure 2: Comparison of 2025 production plus stocks to storage capacity.

Finally, we present a breakdown of the various potential causes of the potential storage shortage problem: increased production, decreased exports, and derecho-damaged storage. Figure 3 above presents these values as the difference, in bushels, between 2024 and 2025 values for production, soybean exports to China, and storage capacity. We find that changes in production and soybean exports are the primary drivers. Increases in storage capacity, especially in the western portion of the state, as well as bolstering export markets, could help alleviate pressure on North Dakota’s market for grain storage.

Figure 3: Determinants of the 2025 storage situation.

Note: Each panel reflects the change from 2024 to 2025 of one driver of the current situation.

Author and Contact Information:

Matthew Gammans – matthew.gammans@ndsu.edu

Jiyeon Kim – jiyeon.kim@ndsu.edu

Sandro Steinbach – sandro.steinbach@ndsu.edu