5 Takeaways from the 2025 Commodity Classic
March 18, 2025 For almost three decades now, most folks involved in the agricultural community have annually gathered together to attend the Commodity Classic event. This year’s show took place in early March at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, CO. Along with the rest of the industry, CropLife magazine had many of its representatives in attendance and here are the five key takeaways from the three-day show.
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Attendance Down, But Quality Up
Since the return of the Commodity Classic following a one-year break during the COVID pandemic, attendance for the show has been steadily climbing. At the 2024 Commodity Classic in Houston, TX, approximately 11,500 visitors came to the show.
This year, overall attendance at the event was down, but only slightly, coming in at 11,300. When asked, most show watchers thought the Commodity Classic altering its normal mid-week schedule to a Sunday-Monday-Tuesday timing could be the culprit.
Still, when CropLife representatives spoke with exhibitors, most were happy with the show traffic. “There may not be as many people here as normal, but the quality of the people we are seeing has been much better,” was a common reframe.
Introducing Brooke Rollins
A long-standing tradition at the Commodity Classic is for the acting Secretary of Agriculture to make a speech to attendees. And this year was no different. On March 2, Brooke Rollins, the new Secretary of Agriculture under President Donald Trump, spoke. In her speech, she promised that the administration would look at all aspects of agriculture on behalf of growers.
“Everything is on the table right now,” said Rollins. “I know that President Trump realizes the state of the farm economy in this country. We’re building the team of USDA to ensure that we have the structure and the plan in place to allow us to move very quickly.”
Rollins added that she believed that a new Farm Bill could finally be approved this year rather than seeing another extension of the current one. “I’m hopeful we can get a new one done by the end of the year,” she said.
Crop Protection Focusing on 2026
Normally at a Commodity Classic, exhibiting companies spend a lot of their time talking about the many new products that they have coming into the marketplace for the current growing season. And there were plenty of examples of this from the crop protection product companies. This included Kyber Pro and Sonic Boom herbicides from Corteva Agriscience, Liberty ULTRA herbicide from BASF, and INTRAVA DX herbicide from UPL.
However, many more companies at the 2025 Commodity Classic talked about new products coming for the 2026 growing season instead. This included Convintro from Bayer Crop Science and Rapidicil from Valent U.S.A. A few show attendees speculated that this “one-year forward” timing from companies reflected the changes the crop protection products industry has been dealing with since the Endangered Species Act became more prominent when looking for product approvals from EPA.
Ag Tech Introductions
Not surprisingly, one of the most active areas in terms of new products came from the ag tech equipment sector. And although smart ag systems for tractors and combines were the most prominent products featured at the 2025 Commodity Classic show, there were several examples for self-propelled sprayers. This included John Deere, which highlighted an updated version of its popular See & Spray Select that features new variable rate capabilities for later-season fungicide, desiccant, and pre-harvest passes; New Holland, which is planning to equip its Guardian sprayers with Raven Industries’ Sense and Act units for green-on-brown applications in a system it is calling IntelliSense; and Case IH, which is also utilizing the Sense and Act technology on its sprayers, calling the system SenseApply.
In all of these cases, the equipment manufacturers are planning to offer these new smart ag features to their customers with the start of the 2026 model years. Retrofit kits will also be made available for older models, said all three companies.
Looking Ahead to 30
Speaking of 2026, next year will mark an important milestone for the Commodity Classic – the show’s 30th anniversary. Next year’s event will take place February 25-27 in San Antonio, TX, at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. The Commodity Classic has held its show in San Antonio many times over the past 30 years – mostly recently for its 2020 show. The 2026 Commodity Classic should be a special, must-attend event indeed!
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