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Sep 18 | Closing Market Report · Closing Market Report

• cmr260918 The September 18, 2026, Closing Market Report, hosted by Todd Gleason, details commodity market movements and agricultural weather forecasts. Mike Zuzolo of GlobalCommResearch.com analyzes the tightening of cash soybean supplies and the negative impact of diesel rail surcharges on local grain bids. He outlines concerns that the Federal Reserve's recent interest rate hike will weaken both domestic and export demand, advising producers to consider hedging strategies amid high market volatility. Meteorologist Eric Snodgrass of Nutrien Ag Solutions forecasts an extended period of heavy rainfall across the northern Corn Belt, potentially stalling early harvest operations. Snodgrass contrasts this with record-setting heat in the southern United States and delayed crop planting progress in South America. 01:05 Ag Markets with Mike Zuzolo, GlobalCommResearch.com 11:30 Ag Weather with Eric Snodgrass, NutrienAgSolutions.com --- Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant University in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report. It is the 18th day of September 2026. I’m Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason. Coming up, we’ll talk about the commodity markets with Mike Zuzolo. He’s a globalcommresearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas. If you can stay with us for the whole of the hour on our home station, you’ll hear all of our Commodity Week program including Mike, along with Naomi Blohm of Total Farm Marketing and Greg Johnson of Total Grain Marketing. If not, you can check it out right now in its entirety at willag.org, and many of these radio stations will carry it over the weekend. Also today, during the first half hour of our program, we’ll talk with Eric Snodgrass as we usually do on a Friday during the Closing Market Report. A quick look at the numbers as they settled up in Chicago at the CME Group: December corn down 3 at 527.5 today; the March at 541.5, down 3; and the May at 548.25, 2.5 cents lower. November beans 1303.5, down 16.25; January down 17 at 1320. 01:05 Ag Markets with Mike Zuzolo, GlobalCommResearch.com Todd Gleason: Mike Zuzolo, globalcommresearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas, now joins us. Hello, Mike, thanks for being with us on a Friday, and thank you for joining us yesterday for recording our Commodity Week program. Mike Zuzolo: Another nice Commodity Week, I think very timely, Todd, and another 94-degree day here in Atchison. We have had it with this weather at this point. Todd Gleason: Well, it’s much cooler here, much nicer here, relatively speaking, than the hot weather. Hopefully, you will get some next week that cools you down. Let’s start with something we didn’t discuss really yesterday, but you wanted to in our Commodity Week program as we began, and folks will hear this in just a few moments on our home station—actually on all of these radio stations, and they can hear the whole of Commodity Week at willag.org on demand anytime they’d like. You wanted to talk about the Federal Reserve, which I want to talk about today, and then you said, “Oh, and thank goodness for the price of bean meal.” I will note that bean meal collapsed a little bit today. However, on the weekly charts, it’s still having a good up week. Mike Zuzolo: Yeah, and I think this is where I have been very disappointed that the wheat and the bean oil have not been able to follow the crude oil higher, Todd, and that’s the bigger picture of why I’m very thankful for the bean meal as we close out the week. And we do have a significant amount of long liquidation on Friday with the October meal seeing about a 4.5, 4.3% decline, but like you said, still up on the week. It calls into question why we rallied so much, and I think the meal market in particular, given the weaker crush numbers that we saw about a week ago, really opens up the idea that there are areas in this country, I think the cash bean market is extremely tight. Thursday’s sharp run-up was, I think, mostly due to a 50-cent jump in Lincoln, Nebraska at a processor, and that was coupled with, I think, a 75 or 90-cent jump in Council Bluffs. So you can get an idea, I think, of where the tightness in the beans is, and it just reinforces, along with what we talked in the Commodity Week program about the diesel prices and the cash basis and the surcharges, that I believe that our biggest profit potential is going to be once again in the basis this year because of the way this market is set up. Todd Gleason: Okay, I’m going to separate that out for just a moment, but I do want to talk about those jumps in prices, shortage of supply. Is that because we are at the end of the marketing year, and they have not begun really to harvest soybeans in their area, and they just simply need them to keep running, or is it that they’re actually expecting that they will remain short of supply? Mike Zuzolo: Yeah, I think the first would be the most likely because not a lot of beans have been cut there in that area at this point, but they have had a really tough weather pattern this whole year. So if they’re coming into the 2026 harvest tight on farmer-owned beans, they’ll probably remain very tight on farmer-owned beans. And so this is where it goes back to, what if USDA is wrong by trending higher on soybean yield nationally? We could cut two bushels in the national yield, and that cuts our carryover in half. Again, that really resonates with the idea of how you sell it, what your cash basis is. In other words, do you do futures and options because (A) you have a weak basis, and you’re worried about your yields being down, and you don’t have any beans from the old crop, which many of us don’t at this stage. Todd Gleason: Okay, so there was some work, and I want to continue to talk about basis. People can check this out. The farmdoc team posted just yesterday to the farmdocDAILY website about basis, when it occurs. We always think about it occurring at 50%. That’s actually when it does across the whole of the US. It manages to kind of bottom for around five weeks during the October timeframe, that’s roughly speaking. And they were doing corn as opposed to soybeans, but it’s going to be kind of similar, I would think. So producers are going to have some opportunities here, you believe, because basis is likely to be weaker than it has been in the past. Is that what you’re concerned about, and if so, how do they take advantage of it? Mike Zuzolo: Yeah, diesel surcharges are hitting us in the interior mostly because of the railroad surcharges that are being hit. So that’s point number one. Point number two is up ahead of US President Trump and Chinese President Xi’s meeting, will we keep the same demand number for soybeans? And if we do, that should keep the export market very underpinned. And Greg talked about that on Commodity Week yesterday, did a really fine job as usual. Point number three would be, what if you want to sell some soybeans because your yields are very, very good, but your basis is very, very weak, and yet we have this rainy pattern that may be coming in again this weekend for Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio. It seemed to shift south on Friday on the GFS weather model. And if that’s the case, does that open up the door to improving basis? So if the funds sell because of a negative piece of news, does that mean you need to sell, and if so, do you do it in paper or do you do it in cash? And I think that’s why that basis is so, so important. What I’ve seen in my own research is we have not felt the basis drop below last year in the central part of the country yet. That’s what I’d be looking for if this diesel surcharge really took hold. So that’s one of the key things that I’ll be watching. Todd Gleason: Yeah, so we’ll be having to watch that, and without the diesel surcharge, probably would have a pretty decent basis, I would think. Mike Zuzolo: Yes, absolutely, with that tighter, tighter carryover because of the biofuel policy and China coming in, absolutely, yeah. Todd Gleason: All of those things. Now turn your attention to the Federal Reserve earlier this week. The Federal Reserve under its new chairman Warsh decided to raise rates by a quarter of a point. How does that impact agriculture? Mike Zuzolo: It’s tough, and as I say in Commodity Week, I’m really worried about peak demand now, Todd, because President Trump’s policy in this whole second term has been to weaken the dollar through tariffs and through keeping the monetary policy weak and very open and low interest rates to keep the money flowing. He was very hard on Chairman Powell. The new Chairman Warsh is moving into that same direction, and they clearly see inflation as a problem. The diesel was probably the biggest reason why the Fed moved. And so it’s kind of a negative feedback loop for the farmer because we just talked about how the diesel is hurting our cash bids. Obviously, it’s crushing us combining corn if we didn’t get it locked in. And so this demand side of the equation, though, with the Fed raising, if they raise again next month, that’s going to be very tough on the demand side, both investment demand and physical demand, because guess what we saw Friday was a new two-month high in the dollar. And that’s what happens when the Fed raises rates, it tends to attract the dollar bull. Todd Gleason: And so you’re worried about exports in that case. Mike Zuzolo: Worried about exports, worried about investment demand, worried about the micro and macro demand side. Investment on the macro, physical demand on the micro. Todd Gleason: What are you telling producers in that case? Mike Zuzolo: I’m writing my weekend copy right now lining out how we’re going to hedge corn and beans if we lose trendlines, and that’s something else we talked about on the technical side, Naomi did a great job as usual on the technical side with the charts. Yeah, and so I agree with her, the pullback in this market is there, it’s possible. The funds are long. The key is to just shut your eyes, hedge, I think on paper because of the uncertainty in the cash market. I personally think the bean yields are going down based upon what producers are telling me who have harvested. So I want to catch that quote “falling knife” if I see a falling knife on the board, and do that with known cost. Todd Gleason: What will be the signal for you? I mean, what do you watch for? Mike Zuzolo: Yeah, the big thing we talked about again was the wheat-crude oil price relationship turning sharply negative instead of sharply positive. We don’t want that to break down. Wheat continues to show us it’s the leader, especially in the corn market. Even that yield cut in the corn couldn’t do anything last Friday without the wheat’s help. Todd Gleason: Okay, so on that note, it doesn’t appear that Russia, Ukraine are any closer together at this point, and the president is now saying he’s close to a decision about annihilation of the Iranian leadership. I’m wondering, you’ve got to put all of those in perspective, I suppose, at some point because that all tells me that we’re not going to open up oil flow anytime soon. Mike Zuzolo: Yeah, on the Commodity Week program we talked about the Trump-Xi meeting, and I was optimistic. And I have changed my mind a little bit because of the purchases they’ve come across with and I think the weakness in their domestic economy getting actually a little bit worse than better since the last six months. But the question really remains, between what President Trump said about Iran, what we’re looking about potentially with fuel exports being limited or cut or something like that being announced, does President Xi come here and is he a quote “rational actor”? In other words, does he in the United States, China in the United States say, we got to keep the world economy going, we got to play good together, or is he an irrational actor? And I think to your question, if we would make a strong move one way or the other, that opens up the door that he may come here but nothing really good happens, and we’ve built some premium into this market. So again, another reason why, as I say, I’m saying catching a falling knife because the volatility is almost unexplainable at this point because of what we’re dealing with in our world. Todd Gleason: Hey, thank you much, Mike, we appreciate it. Mike Zuzolo: You too. Thanks, Todd. Todd Gleason: That’s Mike Zuzolo with globalcommresearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas, joined us on this Friday edition of the Closing Market Report. Our theme music is written, performed, produced, and courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer Tim Gleason. By the way, Mike will return in just a few minutes. You’ll be able to hear all of Commodity Week, including Mike, along with Naomi Blohm and Greg Johnson. If you’re listening on our home station, otherwise it’s up online now at willag.org and many of these stations will carry it over the weekend. 11:30 Ag Weather with Eric Snodgrass, NutrienAgSolutions.com Todd Gleason: Let’s turn our attention now to the growing regions across the planet and the weather that’s impacting them. Eric Snodgrass from Nutrien Ag Solutions and agrible is here. Hi, Eric, thanks much for joining us. I appreciate you taking some time with me on a Friday. Eric Snodgrass: Yeah, it’s, I don’t know if you can hear it over my phone, but it’s, there’s some storming going on in the background. I can hear some thunder outside the house and it’s getting ready to give us a little bit of rain. Todd Gleason: I wasn’t sure whether your wife was moving furniture or whether that was thunder as we started. We don’t live very far apart, so it was thunder. Yeah, I can hear the same thing, which begs the question, what will this weekend look like? Eric Snodgrass: Yeah, so we’ve got some very heavy rain coming in across the northern part of the state, and this follows what has been extremely wet weather coming out of parts of Iowa, southern Minnesota, Wisconsin. In fact, some places in the last week have picked up several inches of rain. And Todd, you know, I’ve never farmed an acre, so I can barely grow grass in my backyard. But I do have a question for you, when you get this much rain like we’ve seen lately in the central and western Corn Belt, and what I’m predicting this weekend for the northern part of Illinois and southern Wisconsin, when you get this much rain in mid-September, what are we doing to the crop? Like what are the potential negative or positive outcomes from this? Todd Gleason: Well, it depends on how much it is and whether it weakens the stalk more than anything else for corn. Soybeans, probably at this stage of the game, still not too much of a worry, I wouldn’t think. But we’ll see. Oh, that thunder is just rolling, nice. Eric Snodgrass: Yeah, yeah. Right as soon as we started talking, it started raining. Well, I mean, some of the rainfall totals are 4 to 8 inches, and there has been some wind with some of this. And so I didn’t know if you get that much and it softens things up, if you start to really worry about lodging issues at this point in the year. Todd Gleason: You can. What’s funny is that sometimes, and it’ll just be ugly, because the top breaks out of it, as long as it stands at the bottom it’s probably fine, it’s just kind of ugly going through it, but we’ll see. Eric Snodgrass: Yeah. Well, the other part of this pattern though is where that rain is, it’s the dividing line. You go south of it, I mean, we’ve had an incredibly hot week here in central Illinois. You get south of that, and the temperatures are routinely in the 100s. The start of September is setting records across huge swaths of the United States. So I’m talking about the Southern Plains to the Mid-South to the Ohio Valley, and it’s setting records with the hottest start to September on record. And meanwhile to the north and to the west, it’s been quite cool. In fact, I was in Lake Charles, Louisiana on Wednesday. I left in the morning, it was 98 degrees in the morning. When I landed in Minneapolis, it was 63. So I flew over the boundary over which all of the heavy rain has been falling. And by the way, that heavy rain connects all the way back to Arizona. It’s kind of this one big arching line throughout the United States right now. And I’m not sure if you saw this, but parts of Arizona saw some historic rains earlier this week. Todd Gleason: I did, and I just unbelievable what the length of this particular system and how long it really is. Eric Snodgrass: Yeah, yeah. And as we’re talking, Todd, I can no longer see the neighbor’s house because it is raining so heavily. There’s just this wall of water between us. And that’s what the atmosphere has been doing this late summer time period, very preferentially drenching certain places while keeping other places away from rain. Like when I was flying and stopped in Dallas, Dallas is now on day 63 of no rain. 63 days, not a drop of rain, and a bunch of those days had temperatures over 100 degrees. Todd Gleason: Wow. So let’s talk about rainfall in the Midwest over the next week or so, and then what happens at the end of September? Eric Snodgrass: Yeah, so a couple things to think through here, the remainder of the next seven days, the southeast ridge, which is record-setting in its size, the rains are going to hit the same spots. So the northern half of Illinois, we could have, you know, I’m talking like near DeKalb for example, there’s a chance that some places up there might pick up 2, 3, 4 inches of rain depending on how long you spin underneath some of these thunderstorms. The farther we go into the pattern, I think we do not settle into cold air right away. We’ve got some cooler conditions that are going to try to get here next week, which is going to feel amazing, but we’re not going headlong into fall just yet. I think we’re going to open back up toward the end of the month to more mild conditions. At this point, the farther I look into September, I do not see such wet conditions as we’re seeing across certain parts of the Corn Belt we see right now, though. Todd Gleason: Look into October, I’m wondering what you think that looks like, and if the Super El Nino has an impact? Eric Snodgrass: Yeah, it does. So if you look historically at what happens in October with big El Ninos, they tend to sharply go cooler. Now that can be a good thing if you’re doing fall fieldwork and you’ve got to get those soil temps down there below 50. The sooner we can get harvest done, dry things out, and then get that fieldwork done and get the fall application done, that’s good, right? So we want the soils to cool off. I wonder if that’s going to happen. And the reason I say that is because so far this year, persistence in the forecast has been winning out over any sort of a model picking up on a change. And so with the Super El Nino, I’d be like, oh, it’s going to get cooler. Yet there were predictions for the middle of September to be cooler, and it is definitely not. So we’re going to have to worry about how long we keep around the warmer conditions and what it might do in terms of getting us into the fields to get the crop harvested and harvested quickly because, as you know, I’m concerned as we get into October of increased rainfall chances which tends to tighten up our fall harvest windows. Todd Gleason: Turn your attention to planting conditions in South America. Eric Snodgrass: Well, here’s one that really I just don’t get, Todd. It has been wet for months across southern Brazil, like Parana for example. Yet where are we getting the early planting numbers from? Parana, they’re planting. I’m like, where are they finding the time and the windows to do that given how wet it’s been, especially because the forecast for the next 10 days is very wet down there as well. I will say this, the northern areas like Mato Grosso, the monsoon has not started. It’s not even showing real signs of starting just yet, and as a result, I think they’re going to be sitting for a little while longer making big pushes in October rather than in early September. So I think we’re still looking at potential for delays in planting, but I’ve said that in the past and they don’t care and they go plant as fast as they want. So I’ll be honest with you, Todd, it’s like farmers here. It is, you know, I’m like, well, this weather pattern should mean that they’re going to wait and guess what they do, they go faster than normal. So planning to be watching in South America. I think the biggest thing is we’re getting more confirmation that increased acreage could be flat to 1%, which I think is going to be a more impactful statistic going forward. Todd Gleason: Hey, thanks much. We’ll talk with you again next week. Eric Snodgrass: Alright, thanks, Todd. Todd Gleason: That’s Eric Snodgrass. He is with Nutrien Ag Solutions and agrible and helped us to wrap up this Friday edition of the Closing Market Report that came to you from Illinois Public Media. If you can stay with us, you’ll hear all of our Commodity Week program including Mike, along with Naomi Blohm and Greg Johnson. If you’re listening on our home station, otherwise it is up online now at willag.org and many of these stations will carry it over the weekend.