Agri commodity outlook 2026: The grain gambit strains, but policy will sustain

Two kings stand on opposite sides of the global chessboard, fighting for influence. They eye each other pointedly, and the pawns feel the tension. Instead of moving one step at a time in a prescribed, discrete manner, these kings behave more like knights, free-spirited, jumping over geographies and conventions, and attacking many squares across the board. Their movements are anything but predictable. Sometimes they seem to be part of a well-crafted master plan. At other times, they seem to lack coordination. Indeed, it is hard to move a piece with one hand while the other is rewriting the rules of the game.

The world is now a battlefield between two spheres of influence: the US and China. This power struggle includes wars like those in Ukraine and the Middle East and economic statecraft like tariffs, subsidies, and key export restrictions. Though this may seem obvious to anyone who reads a newspaper today, RaboResearch has been writing about a fragmented world for almost a decade (special credit to our global strategist Michael Every). Whereas agricultural outlooks written four years ago focused on supply and demand as their starting point, in the current climate, we must begin with geopolitics.