Latest / Closing Market Report / Dec 05 | Closing Market Report
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- **Todd Gleason:** From the Land Grant University in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report. It is the fifth day of December, 2025. I'm Extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Mike Zuzolo. He's with GlobalCommResearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas. We'll hear from Michael Langemeier; he's a Purdue University economist. We'll discuss the CME Group Ag Economy Barometer. And then we'll turn our attention to the weather forecast—a different kind of barometer—we'll do that with Eric Snodgrass from Nutrien Ag Solutions and Agrible. On this Friday edition of the Closing Market Report that comes to you from Illinois Public Media. If you can stay with us for the whole hour on our home station, you'll hear all of our Commodity Week program, too. Otherwise, it's up online right now at WILLAG.org. With our panelists guests today, including Ellen Dearden from Ag Review and Matt Bennett of AgMarket.Net. Todd Gleason's services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. March corn for the day settled at $4.44 3/4, 2 1/2 lower. The May down 2 1/4 at $4.52 1/4. And December at $4.64 1/4, half of a cent lower. January beans at $11.05 1/4, down 14 1/4. The March at $11.16, down 12 3/4. And New Crop November: 10 3/4 of a cent. Settlement price there at $11.04. Bean meal at $307.40, that's down $3.80. The bean oil 10 cents lower at 51.69. Wheat futures soft red in the March at $5.35 3/4, 4 1/2 lower. And the hard red down 2 3/4, it settled at $5.31 1/4 in the March. Live cattle futures at $227.15, up $3.15. Feeders at $239.05, $2.47 1/2 higher. And lean hogs on the day at $82.27 1/2, they finished 42 1/2 cents higher per hundred pounds. You're listening to the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media. Mike Zuzolo is now with us. He is with GlobalCommResearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas. Hi Mike, thanks for being with us today. Hope you're staying warm there in Kansas. **Mike Zuzolo:** We are warming up after hitting single digits out here in Northeast Kansas. I hope you're doing the same, Todd. I think we sent it your way. **Todd Gleason:** You did. And we are warming up as well. That is good news. I would prefer to be a little warmer than in that single digit—certainly not below zero for sure, but sometimes that comes. Now, it is a little icy in Chicago at the CME Group, at least as it related to the soybean market. Can you tell me what's been taking place this week? **Mike Zuzolo:** Yeah, you know, given all the noise this week, Todd, I felt like this week was a really fairly clear-cut supply and demand week. Starting with soybeans. We came into this week wondering about the Chinese demand, but also having South American weather kind of in the back pocket that it was still threatening and making the crop production potential vulnerable, not just in Southern Brazil, but also Argentina. As we progressed through the week, we saw the demand side of the equation weaken more and more for the soybeans. Brazil putting out their November exports for soybeans over 4 million tons, up about 70% from last November. We booked probably, you know, roughly at this point around 3.3 million tons of Chinese and unknown soybeans in export sales by my calculations, going back to late October when the deal was struck. In the contrary and offsetting that was continuing strong demand in the corn market with daily sales to Columbia, Mexico, and then the 2 million metric ton sale for the weekly totals. And it just seemed to me that we were starting to try and navigate the demand side of the equation and then waiting on the weather. And by the end of the week, it looked like the weather was shaking out that Southern Brazil was going to get some relief; Argentina not as much. And I do think the trade kind of decided at that point, let's go ahead, buy the corn, sell the beans. And it showed up on the charts because we were threatening new weekly lows on the beans while the corn was trying to test its weekly high from Thursday. And clearly by the time we got to Friday's close, the beans and the weakness had won with them making a new monthly low. **Todd Gleason:** That is not good. At this point, we still have days left in the month, of course, lots of days in the month of December. Is there room to rally in that case? **Mike Zuzolo:** Yeah, I think it puts pressure—if the weather models are correct and Argentina stays dry, I associate that more with corn and soy meal. Southern Brazil, if it would get rains and improve, then I would associate that more with soybeans as far as market implications. But this type of weather pattern, if it pans out next week, probably puts more pressure on the soybeans. And I think one of the things that hasn't been talked about a lot was an updated attaché report for China late in the week. And they kept their '25-'26 Chinese bean imports at 106 million metric tons against USDA's 112 million metric tons. This has been an ongoing issue. And you know, CASDE and some of the other private firms and official Chinese firms are actually below 100 million metric tons. So what I'm getting at is I think when it comes to both the corn yield in Iowa and Illinois, and also this demand export demand issue for soybeans that really kind of reared its head at the end of this week—I think it adds more importance to the WASDE report on next week on the 9th. **Todd Gleason:** Well, tell me about Tuesday then. What are your expectations? **Mike Zuzolo:** I think the big thing that I look at is—again, the yield numbers. I continue to hear from producers and we're seeing it in the Central Illinois bids. I think Decatur scratching around at $4.50. Ottawa at the river was around $4.50 for cash corn. And here in Northeastern Kansas actually, we got up close to $4.50 and that was where we were last year at this time. So it just seems to me by being back to levels not seen since maybe June, July, or even going back a whole year—is the crop really out there or did we really just, you know, soak it up with extra demand? I think that's what I'd like to know more about that on the WASDE report from USDA on the corn. And as I said, with the beans, it's really about the Chinese demand if the weather is not going to play a positive factor. One last thing I'd say about this week's trade is we also saw the supply and demand come around in the wheat market, unfortunately more negative than positive. After seeing a five-week low in the dollar and some rhetoric by Russia and some rally potential, the oversupply bear just took hold again between Argentina, Australia, and then Stats Canada's number on Thursday. **Todd Gleason:** Do you think you will learn more on Tuesday or will you have to wait until the January report to get some updated numbers—the grain stocks figures, the crop production surveys, those kinds of things? **Mike Zuzolo:** This is completely my own thinking and I have nothing to support this, but my sense is is that there is so much concern going on on farm country right now and Washington knows about it. They want to get the data out as fast as possible, especially if that data would suggest we need to get more payments out to producers. And I think between that and the shutdown, I feel like that the USDA is under a lot of pressure right now to put out real-time data. So that that's a key element to this whole thing though. **Todd Gleason:** It will be interesting to watch and see how that turns out. What on the macroeconomic side have you been watching most closely? **Mike Zuzolo:** Yeah, I think the Fed rate cut has almost certainly in my mind been dialed in completely for the currency markets and for Wall Street. And early in the week that helped us a lot when it came to the commodities overall. I think copper made a new all-time high earlier this week. And so that's probably something that, will we let some of that air out of the bag or not if the Fed does or doesn't cut rates? And, you know, does that stimulate some short covering in the dollar? That's something in the macro markets that really needs to be watched. Obviously, the biggest thing for the crude oil market continues to be what's happening in the Baltic and the geopolitics. I don't think that story is got an end to its book yet either. **Todd Gleason:** Yeah, so I was going to ask about that. The Ukraine-Russia war continues. There is more fighting and it has been more intense. A couple of Russian vessels—tankers—with crude oil on them have been sunk. I suspect there's a whole lot yet to happen in the Black Sea before any peace can be acquired, I suppose. **Mike Zuzolo:** I really think so, Todd. Because if you look at a monthly chart and you even go back to November, I think we had like a four or five dollar a barrel trading range in November and I think we're about two and a half or three dollars here in early December. To me, it just doesn't seem like we've moved the needle at all in terms of pricing any kind of geopolitical risk in. Why? Well, because with the market still consumed with this idea of oversupply in 2026. **Todd Gleason:** All right. Hey, thank you much. I appreciate it. We'll talk with you again next week. **Mike Zuzolo:** Look forward to it. Thanks, Todd. **Todd Gleason:** Mike Zuzolo is with GlobalCommResearch.com. He is in Atchison, Kansas. *(Music transition)* Each month the agricultural economist at Purdue University released the Ag Barometer—actually the CME Group Ag Economy Barometer. This month it pegs itself at 139. That is the highest reading since June. We'll return to that in just a moment, but first we'll talk with Michael Langemeier, who helps to put that Ag Barometer together each month. He is at Purdue University. I asked him about the beginnings of this barometer and why it was put into place. **Michael Langemeier:** Yes, about the middle of 2015—it doesn't seem like it's that long ago, but it's over 10 years now—the CME Group talked to several universities about developing a producer sentiment index that was similar to the consumer sentiment index that the University of Michigan has been doing for decades. And so luckily we got... we put a proposal in and we got it. We got the go-ahead to work with CME Group on this. And so we started it in late 2015 as a monthly survey and we continue to do it as a monthly survey. Every month it's 400 U.S. producers and we try to mimic value-added in production agriculture. What I mean by that, because corn and soybeans is relatively important, we make sure that the majority of the people we survey are corn and soybean producers. And we break it down by percentages actually. And so beef, for example, is 20% of the survey. And so we try to keep those demographics very consistent from month to month. We also try to make sure it's all full-time operators. This is very important because it's not the same people every month. In fact, very rarely has someone been contacted twice in the last 10 years. I have ran across two or three people that have answered the survey twice, but it's not very common. So we try not to do that. And so if you're not doing a panel, you've got to keep the characteristics of the people you're calling—because it's a phone survey—consistent across time. And we've been able to do that fairly well. **Todd Gleason:** Are there a set of common questions that are asked month in and month out and have been since the beginning? **Michael Langemeier:** Since the beginning, just the five questions that go into the Ag Economy Barometer. And that's a combination of questions that are related to what's going on currently. So we ask people, for example, "Do you think your profitability is better today than it was 12 months ago?" Not worded quite like that, but it's a very current oriented question. That's probably correlated with crop prices, that answer to that particular question. But we have questions like that are very general in nature. One of the questions is worded, "Do you think production agriculture is going to have good time or bad time five years from now?" That's not based on crop prices. And so when you put together the index every month, part of it's following what's going on with crop prices and input costs, but not all of it. Because people are also answering questions long term. And their long-term expectations depends on several things. I'll give you a couple for examples. Every February we ask people about their growth expectations. Do you expect to reduce the size of your farm, farm to stay the same, or increase your size of farm? And we have several different buckets in terms of percentage growth. 50%... the last five years, it's not the same people of course, but 50% say they're going to grow, 50% are not going to grow. Do you think that 50% is more optimistic than the 50% that's not going to grow? Yes. So those that are going to grow are more optimistic. You also tend to be more optimistic if you're planning on bringing someone into the operation. So occasionally we'll ask some transition planning questions and they'll relate that to sentiment. So sentiment is impacted by current fundamentals. Think about computing net return... net returns for corn and soybeans, for example. It's impacted by that, but it's not entirely driven by that. And we didn't know when we started this how correlated they were going to be. Some people told us that it's just going to follow corn price. And there is an element of it that probably does follow corn price, but there's other things that are also important. And it's that long run... long run are you positive or negative? **Todd Gleason:** So it makes sense that people would say, "Hey, I can tell you what it's gonna say. Corn prices are higher, so it's gonna be good. Corn price is lower, gonna be bad." You've addressed some of that. Are there seasonal differences? For instance, when they are in the field, are they happier and does that show up? **Michael Langemeier:** There's not a lot of seasonality, but there is... it does... elections do matter. That's extremely important. So if you look at the index since late 2015, we got a major bump in the index after the 2016 election. We got another major bump in the index after the '24 election. And I think that's driven by a change in the policy environment, particularly that long term. So when we ask questions related to that, sure enough, when, for example, this last... and when Trump got elected in 2024, we asked questions: "Do you expect regulations to be better or worse? Do you expect taxes to be higher or lower?" They answered those questions in a very positive sense. That they were very confident that the policy environment improved for production agriculture. And so I think those things are more important than seasonality. We have found, however, that in years where the harvest is really good, there is a pop in sentiment. Farmers feel good when I have a lot of corn in the bin, when I have a lot of soybeans in the bin. So I do think that matters. It's hard to disentangle that, but just observing it in years where things look pretty good nationally—this is a national survey—that does tend to improve sentiment. **Todd Gleason:** Are you able to tease out the difference between regulatory feelings, sentiments, as opposed to trade and policy sentiments? And the difference between those two? **Michael Langemeier:** We've asked questions, a laundry list of different policies, and which of those you think is more important for your farm. And that varies depending on where we're at, in what month we did the survey. For a long time, if we asked a question like that, regulatory policy would be way up there towards the top. Now this last year, it's been trade. Trade policy has been very important. **Todd Gleason:** What's the most important thing you think those who are looking at the press releases should know about the barometer, understand about it, and take away from it? **Michael Langemeier:** Well, I think if you're in agribusiness or farm press, I think it's interesting in itself because it kind of tells a story on what's on the people... what's on farmers' minds. And so it's very valuable from that standpoint. But every outreach presentation I do, whether it's farmers or agribusiness people, I put a few charts in there. And I found that most farmers are also interested because they're not only interested in their... what they're thinking about the future of agriculture, they're interested in what other people think about the future of agriculture. So it's been a fairly warm reception from farmers. **Todd Gleason:** Michael Langemeier is a Purdue University agricultural economist. The Purdue University CME Group Ag Economy Barometer for the month of November peaked at 139 points. That's the highest reading since June. Much of the increase, Langemeier says, was driven by a sharp 15-point jump in future expectations, even as current conditions held steady. Financial outlooks improved alongside a 10 to 15 percent rally in fall delivery corn and soybean bids, helping offset weaker cattle prices in that livestock sector. Yet producers, he says, remain cautious. Capital investments sentiment slipped further and a few farmers view today as a good time to expand. Long-term farmland value expectations reached a record high while most corn producers anticipate stable cash rents heading into 2026. You can read more from the Ag Economy Barometer by searching for it: Ag Economy Barometer and Purdue. *(Music transition)* Let's take a look at the weather forecast now. Eric Snodgrass is here. He's with Nutrien Ag Solutions and Agrible. Hello, Eric. Happy Friday to you. **Eric Snodgrass:** Yeah, thanks for having me on again. **Todd Gleason:** Let's turn your attention to what's happening here in the United States first. We've got a lot of snow... a lot of snow on the ground. And in November and early December, that's just almost unheard of where we live. Tell me about it. **Eric Snodgrass:** Yeah, I'm pretty excited about it. Especially if we can get these temperatures to warm up a little bit. Now it makes a massive slushy mess, but if we can get these temps up early next week to crack above freezing, melt some of the soft, get it to soak into our soils—that's exactly what I want. Unfortunately, the way the atmosphere is set up right now is any sort of warm up we're going to get's going to be brief. We're going to have multiple rounds of what we call Alberta Clippers coming through the pattern because we're just anchored around a big deep trough over the Hudson Bay. So what are you going to get? You're going to get systems coming out of the north and west. Hopefully out ahead of one or two of them we can warm up a little bit, but then behind them more shots of really cold air. And we've seen some pretty cold air here this week across much of Illinois. **Todd Gleason:** We have indeed. I thought you were excited because you finally got to use both of your snow throwers. But that was just... **Eric Snodgrass:** I know, I used mine a lot! My driveway is a glacier right now because we were gone on Saturday when the first snow came in. We didn't get home until late Saturday night and we had to drive over it. And then I had to... I was gone all week traveling all over the country talking to growers all over the place. And it kind of did that, you know, we got a little bit more on top of it and my son didn't get... I'm on his case about it, he didn't get out there and clean off. So my driveway is now like a part of a glacial system and we're never going to get the snow off of it until it melts. So that's my other kind of hidden agenda behind telling you that we might warm up a little bit next week to melt some snow. **Todd Gleason:** You're just hopeful and it may or may not happen. Uh, the rest of the winter, you got any new long-range forecasts that we need to talk about? **Eric Snodgrass:** We do. So we're going to have plenty of access to cold air in December. There's no changing that. So it doesn't mean it's there all the time, but there's access to it. It's going to be easily brought out of the Canadian Prairie. It's going to be very mild though in the West. So just think about that: we're cold north, mild west. That's a flow out of the jet stream that's going to be coming from the northwest right in between the two. So why am I telling you this? I'm telling it to you because I need southwest flow. I need flow of storms coming into California and just ripping across the country to help eliminate some of the drought problems that we've got. We got a new drought monitor and it's looking like what, 68, 67% coverage still? And that's a lot of area that needs to be, well, taken care of with respect to drought. Now, after we get through though... listen, this is really important. I think after we get through the holidays, we're going to have a much, much different regime for the second half of winter because La Niña likely peaked over the last couple of weeks and it could fade very, very fast going into the second half of winter. **Todd Gleason:** And what does that mean? Do we get warmer, milder temperatures? **Eric Snodgrass:** Todd, I wish I knew. I can just tell you what it means is: different. It's a big change. It's funny, I looked at 12 different analog years where this happened and each one had a different solution for the second half of winter. They none of them really looked the same. I just will say this: they were not dry winters for us though. We continued to get good moisture into the Midwest, which is a positive overall when you think about that transition away from La Niña toward neutral conditions. **Todd Gleason:** Is there any more definitive correlation between a La Niña that is weakening and South American weather at all? **Eric Snodgrass:** Well, we kind of want the strong La Niña to stick around and that would be because we'd get a dryer signal out of Southern Brazil and Argentina. And we tend to be really wet across Brazil's main growing areas up north. So the problem there is strong La Niñas, they tend to hit Brazilian total production a little bit. Ones that fade and weak, they're just not that strong of a signal overall. Now there's dry pockets in Brazil, no doubt about it, and some dryness in the northern part of Argentina. But I still... I can't find enough evidence to tell you that it's going to be such a big hit on acr... or excuse me, on yield that it's going to outdo their additional acreage. So still in a wait-and-see position with what's going on with the weather in South America. Maybe there's a bit of a weather rally at some point in January, February. But that'll be when the beans come out and the corn goes in. We're just going to have to wait. There's just nothing for me to report today that's like, "Hey, look out, this is coming." I think it's more like, "All right, be patient, but be prepared for a story when one does emerge." **Todd Gleason:** Hey, thank you much. I appreciate it. **Eric Snodgrass:** Yeah, you bet. **Todd Gleason:** Eric Snodgrass is with Nutrien Ag Solutions and Agrible. Joined us on this Friday edition of the Closing Market Report that comes to you from Illinois Public Media. If you can stay with us, you'll hear all of our Commodity Week program. If not, it'll be up on this radio station over the weekend. And it's online right now at WILLAG.org. That's W-I-L-L-A-G dot O-R-G.