How to read a USDA feedstuffs report

A USDA feedstuffs report is read one line at a time. Each line names a trade region and a sale type, then gives a price range per ton with its average, the change from the week before, the year-ago average and a freight code that says FOB or delivered and by what mode. Most lines are asking prices, not trades: in the three feedstuffs reports dated Oct 16, 2026, 87 of the 99 price lines were sellers' asks.

USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service publishes these reports weekly, and The Ration builds its board from them. Which report carries which feed, and how they differ from the monthly Cattle on Feed head count, is in USDA cattle feed report: Cattle on Feed vs feed prices. This guide reads the lines.

One line, column by column

The processor report groups its lines under a heading that names the product and its spec, such as Corn Distillers Dried Grain 10% (the moisture) or Soybean Meal 46.5-48% (the protein). Under the distillers heading, the Iowa line for the trading week of Oct 12 to 16, 2026 read: Iowa, Ask, 175.00-215.00, UNCH-DN 5.00, 190.50, 129.67, FOB-T.

In plain English: sellers in Iowa were asking $175 to $215 a ton for dried distillers grains, FOB the plant by truck. The low end was unchanged from the week before and the high end $5 lower. The quotes averaged $190.50, against $129.67 a year earlier, so the Iowa average was up 47 percent on the year.

Sale type: asks, bids and trades

The sale type column says whose price it is. Ask is what sellers were offering, Bid what buyers were offering and Trade a reported sale, and some lines combine them. In the reports dated Oct 16, 2026:

• The processor report had 53 Ask lines and 7 Bid/Ask/Trade lines, and all seven were Central US corn gluten feed and corn gluten meal.
• The mill-feeds report had 16 lines, all Ask.
• The animal by-product report had 18 Ask lines and 5 Trade lines.

So most of the board is offer prices, which is also why a range can run wide: the Iowa distillers asks spanned $40 a ton in one week.

The basis column: prices set off futures

Soybean meal and canola meal often trade as a basis, dollars over or under a futures month, and the report prints the basis and the price it works out to. The Illinois soybean meal line read 5.00Z to 40.00Z, with a price of 364.80-399.80, FOB by truck. Z is December in the month codes listed in the report's notes, so sellers were asking $5 to $40 a ton over December soybean meal futures. Both ends point to the same futures price: $364.80 minus $5 and $399.80 minus $40 both come to $359.80. Canola meal in Minnesota and the Dakotas was quoted at $105 to $50 under the same December contract, which made it $254.80 to $309.80 a ton. The glossary covers both senses of basis.

The freight code

The last column is basis in the freight sense: FOB (which the report's notes expand as freight on board) or DLVD for delivered, then T for truck, R for rail, B for barge, or a combination such as T/R. One feed can appear twice in a region at two prices: Pacific Northwest distillers grains were $274 to $327 delivered by truck and $274 to $297 delivered by rail that week. FOB plant vs delivered shows how far apart the two bases have run since 2022.

The dates

Each report's title carries its publication date and its footer the trading week it covers. The processor, mill-feeds and animal by-product reports for Oct 12 to 16, 2026 were dated Friday, Oct 16. The Grain Co-Products report for the same week, the source of the corn benchmark, was dated Oct 22. The Ration files each week's quotes under the Monday of the week, so all of them appear here as the week of Oct 12, 2026, and the corn figure can trail the rest of the board by a few days.

Worked example: from report lines to one national price

A national price on this site is the median of a feed's quotes for the week, within one grade and one freight basis. For dried distillers grains in the week of Oct 12, 2026, the 11 FOB plant regions averaged, lowest to highest: $175 (Wisconsin), $185.25 (Minnesota), $190.50 (Iowa), $192.25 (Indiana-Ohio and Michigan), $193.33 (South Dakota), $205 (Nebraska), $208.50 (Illinois), $212.50 (Missouri), $220 (Kansas) and $270 (California).

The middle one of the 11 is South Dakota's $193.33, which is the $193 the DDGS price page shows for that week. The Pacific Northwest's delivered quotes stay out of that median because their freight basis is different.

The board then puts each price on a dry-matter basis and divides it by the feed's protein and energy, which is how feeds from four different reports end up ranked together:

The methodology lists every source report and nutrient value. The Ration reports the prices as USDA publishes them, as ranges where USDA gives a range, and does not forecast them.