Q2 Delivered the Shocks. Q3 Decides Who Pays for Them.

The Q2/Q3 2026 Global Commodity Report is now available. Here's a preview of what's inside, and why the next 30 to 60 days matter more than the last 90.

If Q1 2026 established a new baseline of compound stress in agri-food markets, Q2 confirmed it isn't going anywhere. A fertilizer crisis that hardened into a structural cost floor, an El Niño arriving faster than most forecasts anticipated, and a fifth consecutive war-affected planting season in the Black Sea all collided in a single quarter. The full report covers what happened, commodity by commodity, and what the data signals for Q3. Below are the highlights.

What happened in commodity markets in Q2 2026?

Three forces drove nearly every major price move this quarter, and none of them was demand.

Geopolitics hit the input side. Urea prices at NOLA climbed above $850/MT in April, up roughly 120% versus December 2025, after the Strait of Hormuz disruption sidelined a majority of Middle East output and left dozens of vessels stranded in the Gulf. The World Bank now projects urea prices up 60% for the full year 2026.

Trade policy reshaped flows. Retaliatory tariffs have cost U.S. agricultural exporters an estimated $14.9 billion over 12 months, with soybeans absorbing about half of that. Meanwhile, the July USMCA review hangs over North American fresh produce, with Mexican avocados the most exposed.

Weather stopped being background noise. La Niña officially ended, and El Niño probability reached 99% for June through August, with a potential Super El Niño trajectory emerging. The risk map is shifting: the Americas moderate while South and Southeast Asia enter their highest-risk window.

The report tracks Q2 price performance across cocoa, arabica and robusta coffee, wheat, corn, soybeans, urea, olive oil, sugarcane, oil palm, rice, bananas, avocados, and more, with the primary driver behind each move.

Which crops are flashing warning signals right now?

Platform data from early June shows confirmed stress, not just forecast risk, across several origins:

• U.S. corn sits at Watch across the major Corn Belt states, with drought and wet stress compounding during early development and extreme heat forecast to cluster right through the July pollination and grain fill window, while December futures hold near 2-year highs.

• Côte d'Ivoire coffee carries the highest-severity signal in the report: every producing region rated Terrible or Poor, with drought recorded on every single day of the Reproductive Development phase.

• Côte d'Ivoire cocoa logged its worst on record pod-set drought across 8 seasons, while a 100K MT unsold stockpile masks the forward shortfall.

• Brazil sugar cane posted Fruit/Crop Fill drought that surpasses the prior São Paulo record by 119 to 130%, heading straight into the main crush season.

• Turkey cherries are tracking cold intensity at 178% of a benchmark freeze event that caused 40% losses.

• Colombia bananas and Egypt mangoes both show the majority of national output under confirmed Warning-level stress.

• Ukraine and Russia wheat carry confirmed winterkill from the January Black Sea freeze, affecting roughly 42% of Ukrainian output.

These sit alongside detailed reads on U.S. corn, Mexico avocados, Turkey apricots, Malaysia oil palm, Vietnam coffee, and India rice, among others.

Where are prices telling a different story than the fundamentals?

This is the most useful pattern in the report for anyone buying forward. Two commodities, cocoa and olive oil, are sitting at or near price lows while forward production signals deteriorate underneath them.

Cocoa illustrates it cleanly: nearby prices are projected to keep falling as inventory clears, while forward prices point nearly 58% higher over 12 months. Vietnam's record Q1 coffee exports tell a similar story, reflecting the outgoing 2025 harvest rather than the stressed incoming crop. In both cases, the window between what spot prices say and what field conditions say is where procurement decisions get made or missed.

What should agri-food leaders watch in Q3 2026?

Four dates and signals anchor the quarter:

1. July's USMCA tariff review, which could reprice North American avocados overnight

2. The July U.S. corn pollination window, where any heat stress confirmation moves futures with no correction until the August 12 WASDE

3. India's southwest monsoon, officially forecast below normal just as El Niño peaks during grain fill, with direct implications for rice and export policy

4. September's Côte d'Ivoire main crop opening and Spain's olive harvest outlook, when forward climate signals get confirmed or refuted

The report closes with a stakeholder impact matrix and action cards for sourcing, hedging, quality, and timing decisions across growers, buyers, traders, manufacturers, and policy teams.

Why read the full report?

Because the pattern across Q2 was consistent: by the time stress showed up in prices, the signal had been visible in field-level climate data for weeks or months. The full 32-page report includes the complete risk register, price forecast tables out to 12 months, regional deep dives across the Americas, Europe and the Black Sea, Africa and the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, plus the full appendix of platform climate charts behind every call.