White maize in Afgooye fell from $50 to $26 a Loor as the Gu harvest landed.
In the same fifteen days, red sorghum in Baidoa rose 40%.

How to read the tables

Where the recorder gave a low–high range, First and Latest use the midpoint and Range uses the outer bounds. ▲ marks a price that rose; ▼ a price that fell. Read the colour from your side of the trade: a rising price favours the farmer or trader with produce to sell, a falling price favours the buyer stocking up.

At Afgooye, the fall is confined to the harvest

In the same Afgooye market, over the same fortnight, maize halved while mung bean doubled, cowpea held at double for nine days and sesame rose a third — and wheat, which arrives by ship, did not move at all. A market-wide shock moves everything together. This moved one group of crops one way and the rest the other, with the imported cereal flat. The signal is supply arriving in the harvested crops, not a change in the market as a whole.

The two zones moved in opposite directions

Afgooye (riverine, irrigated): maize −48%, sorghum −4%. Baidoa (rain-fed agropastoral): maize −20%, sorghum +40%. Sorghum is rising in Bay while it falls on the river. Two agricultural economies, fifteen days, one country — and they are not experiencing the same August. A farm at Janaale drinks from the Shabelle, which carries rain that fell upstream; a farm in Bay drinks straight from the sky. In a year when the sky disappointed, the canals did not.

Security context, Baidoa

Armed clashes broke out inside Baidoa on 17 August, inside the second week of this reporting window. Baidoa’s cereal readings span that period: a rising sorghum price through a disrupted market reflects thin supply and constrained trade together, not the season alone. A price pushed up by disruption is context, not a planning signal — it can reverse as quickly as calm returns.

How to read it

The split follows the zones. Where the Gu delivered — the riverine belt — maize now sits a fifth under last August. Where it did not — Bay — maize and sorghum sit nearly half above. The same year, read from two zones, gives two opposite answers; a single national price would hide both. The same 2025 bulletin published farm-gate maize at 756,000 SOS per Loor: Afgooye’s market price of $24 a Loor on 22 August sits at or below that level once converted — a market price at or under the previous year’s farm-gate price, in the middle of the harvest window.

Where we are in the season

FEWS NET’s June outlook recorded the April–June Gu as “below average and atypically short, with a delayed onset and early decline,” and projected July harvests below average in riverine areas and substantially below average in the agropastoral zones. Looking forward: FAO Somalia warned on 2 June of a greater than 90 percent likelihood of El Niño conditions in the October–December Deyr, with elevated risk of flooding along the Juba and Shabelle basins.

Cereal growers, riverine: the main Gu harvest is landing and prices normally fall through it. If you can store safely, holding is usually worth more than selling into the arrival week. If a loan forces a sale, sell the smallest share that covers the payment.

Cereal growers, Bay: sorghum reached $25.20 a Loor — but part of that rise came with the disruption inside Baidoa, not the season alone. A price pushed up by disruption can reverse as quickly as calm returns.

Pulse growers: mung bean doubled and cowpea spent nine days at double at Afgooye while cereals fell — mixed plots earned their keep this fortnight.

Based on price observation only. Not agronomic advice; no chemical, pesticide or veterinary guidance is given here.