Latest / Closing Market Report / Jun 30 | Closing Market Report
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- cmr260630 The June 30, 2026, broadcast of the Closing Market Report, hosted by Todd Gleason, provides a comprehensive look at agricultural markets, conservation practices, and weather forecasts. The program begins with Naomi Blohm of Total Farm Marketing analyzing the morning's USDA grain stocks and acreage reports, noting that while corn and soybean acreages aligned closely with expectations, a significant drop in winter wheat harvested acres due to drought offered some market support. The focus then shifts to a University of Illinois Extension conservation cropping initiative featuring a panel discussion with farmers Brent Fowler, Adam Dahmer, and Greg Thoren. They share their personal experiences overcoming familial skepticism, equipment limitations, and the necessary mindset shifts required to successfully adopt no-till practices and multi-species cover crops. Finally, returning meteorologist Ed Kieser delivers the agricultural weather outlook, forecasting intense heat across the Corn Belt leading into the holiday weekend, with scattered, "ridge-riding" thunderstorms expected along the edge of a high-pressure system before slightly cooler temperatures arrive the following week. 01:05 Ag Markets with Naomi Blohm, Total Farm Marketing 07:49 Cover Crop Conversations: cultural and mindset shifts 18:53 Ag Weather with Ed Kieser, Illinois Public Media --- Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant university in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report. It is the 30th day of June 2026. I’m Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason. Coming up, we’ll talk about this morning’s USDA reports with Naomi Blohm. She is with TotalFarmMarketing.com. We’ll delve into what it takes to be innovative on the farm as it’s related to conservation, and then we’ll turn our attention to the weather forecast. Ed Kieser will be here. That’s a name some of you, many of you, will likely recognize. He’ll be in for Don Day this afternoon right here on this Tuesday edition of the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online on demand at willag.org. announce: Todd Gleason’s services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. 01:05 Ag Markets with Naomi Blohm, Total Farm Marketing Todd Gleason: Naomi Blohm from TotalFarmMarketing.com now joins us to take a look at how the market reactions were to the USDA grain stocks and acreage figures this morning. They were released at 11 o’clock. You and I are talking about an hour later because I’m hosting a webinar throughout the day today for University of Illinois Extension on succession planning. The succession here is that the prices went up and they have knocked back just a bit. Can you start with the numbers broadly for me as it relates to acreage and how they compared to what the trade was expecting? Naomi Blohm: Absolutely. Corn acres today came in at 95.3 million acres. That was unchanged from March. Trade thought that maybe the acreage number, like the average guess was 94.9, so it is a little bit higher than the average estimate, but within the range of estimates, and I think the surprise is that there was no surprise. Usually, there’s some sort of unforeseen something on these reports. On the soybean side of it, soybean acres came in at 85.4 million acres, which was right on the average estimate, and that number slightly higher than the March number of 84.7. So, no big surprises there. Looking at wheat, wheat kind of is the one that is supportive overall. As far as the planted acres for wheat came in at, they came in for all wheat at 42.7, a little bit lower than the average estimate of 43.8, a little bit lower than the March 31st number. But the biggest thing about the wheat number today, in my opinion, was the focus on the winter wheat harvested acres. The winter wheat harvested acres came in at 31.5. That was below the March number of 32.4 and below the estimate, the average estimate coming in today of 32.4. So, that was supportive and that’s why wheat is up about 12 cents at this time. But when you look at the harvested acre number, just because of all of that drought that the plains had, harvested acres at 21.2. The USDA acknowledging the problem out there in the plains with the drought, and I think that’s going to give the wheat market some general support going forward, but we’re still in that situation where there’s, at the moment, plentiful global supplies. Todd Gleason: Given those numbers for wheat, did they simply get abandoned? They were not harvested and abandoned, they didn’t clearly transfer apparently to any other crop. Did they? Naomi Blohm: Right. No, I think what you initially said about abandoned acres, or just as guys were getting ready to do some harvest they just realized that it might not be worth it. So, abandoned acres I think is the theme here. I haven’t seen any specific wording from the USDA, but that’s kind of what the trade chatter has been and that coincides with what clients have told me. It also coincides with how fast the harvest has been going this year, because if you don’t have a crop to harvest, harvest has a tendency to go faster than the average pace. So wheat today, Kansas City wheat again up about 10 to 12 cents today on this news. Maybe trying to find a short-term low, but it might struggle to rally again just because the short-term perception is that global wheat supplies are sufficient. Todd Gleason: Anything from the grain stocks report that was of note? Naomi Blohm: Well, the theme is that we have more supply than last year. Corn quarterly stocks came in at 5.295. It was a little bit lower than the average estimate going into the report of 5.39, but when you look at where we were last year at this time, 4.64 for carryout on the quarterly stock side of it. That’s the resounding reason why July corn futures got down to $4 the last two days, because we’ve got old crop supplies available. On the soybean side of it, quarterly stocks today came in at 1.061, slightly higher than the average estimate of 1.05 and pretty close to where we were a year ago at this time at 1.00. So from that standpoint, comfortable supplies of soybeans, but it does set us up to make sure we have to watch August weather. I’m also still of the strong opinion that when we find our harvest low at some point in August or early September, it’s going to be a big low and we’re going to see a lot of end users come in and buy, and a lot of other countries come in and buy for their import needs. So we’re going to see strong exports later on this summer. But anyway, the report today, the USDA punted. No big shocker, which is the shocker because usually this report has some sort of dynamic volatility response to it, and we got nothing today. We’ll just have to go back to weather watching from here. Todd Gleason: So why is it that both corn and soybeans managed to rally at least for a while after the USDA release? Naomi Blohm: Yeah, I think two parts. One would just be initial computer headlines and computer trading as the report came across. The other part of it, corn especially. Corn had been so oversold going into the report, and the fact that we got nothing that was over the top negative, it made the marketplace have a little bit of a recovery bounce on short-term profit taking. People who were short, they’re buying back those positions. It’s also the end of the month position squaring. Tomorrow starts a new month and a new quarter. So we can maybe see a little bit of weather premium getting built back into this just because it has been so warm. If the rain showers do not materialize later this week, then we need to put weather premium back in. So maybe a little bit of a short-term bounce here, but history says that if corn does get a bounce here into 4th of July weekend, a lot of times it’s another opportunity to be making some sales for old crop and new crop. Todd Gleason: Thank you much, Naomi. That’s Naomi Blohm. She is with TotalFarmMarketing.com. 07:49 Cover Crop Conversations: cultural and mindset shifts Todd Gleason: Did you know cover crops are the only in-field practice with both nitrogen and phosphorus reduction efficiencies? Cover crops are used on about 1.25 million acres in Illinois. While that sounds like a lot, it’s just 6% of the 21 million cropland acres in the state. University of Illinois Extension, as it did with no-till starting in the 1970s, is working hard to change the culture around cover crops. There are, of course, many barriers to overcome. Something new Extension has been trying is called FLASH, or Farmer Led Advances for Soil Health. There are financial incentives within the program, but more importantly, it puts farmers in touch with each other to explore cover crops and to talk about what they’ve learned. These groups are localized, so it’s easy for them to grab a cup of coffee and get together. We’ll do something like that today. University of Illinois Extension’s Rachel Curry hosted a farmer panel on this subject. It included Adam Dahmer, Greg Thoren, and Brent Fowler. She asked the three of them to talk about their operations. Adam and Greg told stories of conservation-minded families and landowners. Brent, on the other hand, had a different experience, and part of that, he admits, lands on him. Brent Fowler: Listening to Greg and Adam, our story is a little different. The main challenge that I have faced with conservation has probably been my family. I mean, I love my dad, I love my whole family, but that has definitely been the biggest challenge. My dad is ex-military, so he’s very structured. He likes to do the same thing every single day, and he likes to do the same thing every year. You know, I kind of joke with people that I like trying new things. We’re definitely different in that way, and I have an uncanny ability to question everything my dad does or ever has done. So that can be a little bit challenging at times. But I like trying new things, and I like testing. I like comparing different practices. But that has definitely been hard. I know that well. One of the things that kind of got us started in no-till—and we are almost all no-till now—but we had a worker that went to a field by mistake. He was supposed to take our plow, our ripper, and he took our vertical tillage tool instead. Long story short, it went well, the field did really well, and it really got me questioning if it was really worth it to plow all of our cornstalk fields every year. So I remember I went to my dad and my grandpa at the time and said, “You know, I want to do some tests. I would like to try a test of the vertical till and not plow the whole field.” And they really hated that idea. I also kind of joke with people that, you know, the only thing I can compare it to would be for a non-farmer to paint your living room but leave a strip in the middle unpainted. That’s how my dad and grandpa felt about it. But, you know, they went along with it, and we started doing tests, and the results were showing that it really just wasn’t paying to do all that heavy tillage. So over time, we did that for several years, and then we started where we were only plowing half the field, and we did that for a few years. Then it got to where we were, you know, only plowing a strip in the center of the field, and the tests just kept showing that the minimal till or no-till was better. So that’s kind of how it started. But you know, another thing that I think about too is that ditches or gullies in fields really bother me. I know Dad doesn’t like it, but Dad can go take a field cultivator and fill in the ditches in a field, and it doesn’t really hurt him as much as it does me. I look at it as, that soil left our field, and it’s never coming back. So that’s what really led me to… when I found out that we can do some of these conservation practices and keep our soil in our field and be more profitable, that was really exciting when that happened. And now we are trying, you know, we definitely do a lot of cover crops now. Almost all of our cornstalks before soybeans have a cereal rye cover crop. So that’s kind of our story. Todd Gleason: Again, that’s Brent Fowler. He farms in the southern part of McDonough County. That’s about an hour east of the Iowa-Missouri border on the Illinois side. His initial barrier to adopting conservation methods on the farm was institutional. Why on earth would we change? That’s not the barrier, conservation or cover crops, that Adam Dahmer ran into. He farms in Williamson County. It’s in deep southern Illinois. Just trying to learn how to use and manage cover crops has been his biggest problem. Adam Dahmer: As far as challenges are concerned, I would say early on, back in the late 90s, it was information. We started with cereal rye in front of soybeans and into cornstalks, and the whole purpose of that was for organic matter. We successfully were doing that, but nonetheless we were still trying to figure out how to get it across all the acres. As we moved forward, the industry grew a little bit and we were able to source good seed and so forth to move forward, and that allowed us to expand our operation. The biggest struggles I see most people have is the mindset on how to achieve it. You’ve got to change your entire scope of how you approach your equipment purchases, as well as your management practices. I really don’t care what color piece of equipment you drive, if it doesn’t work in the application, it is of no use for this operation. And that’s the mindset that often holds most people back, is they are die-hard a certain brand even though that particular piece may not be best for the diversity they are wanting to implement with cover crops. So we’ve always kept a real open mind as far as what equipment and so forth we were using. As far as seeding goes, that’s probably one of the biggest hurdles that I hear is guys can’t get it in the field. We’ve done it. We started with airplanes. Drills, of course, by far the best. We built a highboy seeder in 2013, that worked good, but nonetheless the drill still outperforms it. Drones work very well. We’ve implemented those more and more as we move forward as they don’t get the cover crop seed tied up in the whorl of the corn plant like other seeding methods do pre-harvest. But as far as challenges, I would say that would be the only ones. I mean the biggest challenge most operators have is their mindset. Because if they do not keep an open mind and convince themselves they are going to make it work, they are destined to fail. So I can’t really speak as far as anything that’s really prohibited us from expanding other than our own mindset, and we’ve been pretty progressive on that. Todd Gleason: Mindset. I can do it, we can do it, we should change. Greg Thoren, the other farmer on the panel discussion, agreed with Brent and Adam. And then he went a step further, thinking more broadly about the reasons behind the change and the good he is doing. Greg Thoren: I agree with everything that Adam and Brent said. I’ve experienced those things. The barriers might be looking back now, it’s a completely different management system. It’s a unique holistic management system. And maybe this is for someone that’s more advanced, but as you start, we started with cereal rye again like Adam did. That’s a no-brainer, we did it for erosion purposes. And I truly believe that no matter what cover crop you use, even if it’s a single species, that it does so many more things than just one object that you want it to do. That’s the fun thing about this. We as farmers think if you do one thing, you get this one return. Well, with cover crops it just does a tremendous amount of things like any plant does. So I think that was the big takeaway for me. And of course nowadays we’re into multi-species cover crops. We try to plant at least four different families at a minimum for soil health purposes. And then of course we’re getting into the soil health arena more as a public even. And that’s a very, very good system because it basically all comes back to clean water, clean air. If we can get the soil health better, this system just makes sense. Mother nature just makes sense how she does things, and we’ve basically disturbed her a lot with our conventional farming practices that we have today. Todd Gleason: Again, that’s Greg Thoren. He’s from the driftless area of the state, in the far northwestern corner of Illinois, where the soils were not covered by glaciers in Jo Daviess County. He, Adam Dahmer, and Brent Fowler all use cover crops. Each is from a very different area of the state, yet they all have a common thread that runs through their farms: conservation and innovation. In future episodes, we’ll take up some of what that means on the ground and in the ledger. We’ll hear about profits versus yields and how to get it all done with planters, drones, and timing. 18:53 Ag Weather with Ed Kieser, Illinois Public Media Todd Gleason: Let’s turn our attention now to the global growing regions. Ed Kieser is here. That’s a name many of you will be familiar with. He has now returned to Illinois Public Media, at least on and off, and today is going to fill in for Don Day. Ed, day weather, who’s away. Thanks Ed for being with us. It’s been such a long time, glad to hear your voice. Ed Kieser: Well it’s great to be back. I’ll tell you, I feel like I’m at home. Came back to the station last week on Friday and it’s just been great to hear from so many people. We still have a lot of listeners from back when. I can tell you that. Todd Gleason: I know we do, and they’ll be surprised to hear you as well. Really glad the ag audience, I know, really appreciated your time here. Glad to have you back, so let’s get right into it. It is hot across the Corn Belt. It has also been wet in many places. Give me your assessment of the weather forecast coming up. Ed Kieser: Well as we go into this 250th birthday for America celebration this weekend, it’s certainly going to be a hot start in a lot of the country, from the Mississippi Valley all the way to the East Coast, including all of the Corn Belt. It looks like the peak of the heat is today through Thursday in the Corn Belt, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to turn significantly cooler Friday or Saturday. Temperatures will still get up into the 90s. It’s just the chance for scattered thunderstorms starts to spread across more of the Corn Belt as we get to the end of the week. It looks like over the next couple of days, the rain will be confined mostly to the upper portions of the Midwest and Corn Belt, that includes northern Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin. Those areas are getting some deluges and that’s because that’s where the edge of the hot dome is, and a lot of times you’ll get storms forming right along that edge. So for the next few days, that’s where the bulk of the rain will be, and in some cases too much rain, several inches. But the rest of the Corn Belt will be mostly dry through Thursday, and then it looks like scattered thunderstorms start to pick up in coverage a bit as we go Friday into the weekend. And that will be leading into, I’ll just say slightly cooler air for the start of next week. We may have a couple of days where high temperatures are only in the upper 80s as opposed to the 90s, and the heat index may get below 100 for a few days. But it does look like there’s a chance next week that heat will start to build again, especially in the western Corn Belt. It looks like there will be a little bit of an adjustment to the pattern where the heat will be shifting a little further west, and then the eastern Corn Belt will be less hot and will have a little bit better chance for scattered showers and thunderstorms. Todd Gleason: Those scattered showers and thunderstorms would be of the ridge rider type, and really I want to ask about further out as well. I know that’s more difficult, but those two things—the scattered showers are just coming around the top of the high, correct? Ed Kieser: Well right now they are, but there will be a little period where there’ll be a little more widespread as we get a little bit of a transition to where the high is located. But again, I think we will get back maybe into that ridge rider pattern. And that’s something we’ll have to watch once we get beyond the 4th and into the middle of July. It appears that maybe there will be a little bit of a better chance of those coming into more of the bulk of the Corn Belt. There’s still some question marks on the details of the exact location of where that will all set up, but it does look like the ridge of high pressure is shifting a little bit further to the west starting next week. Todd Gleason: Ed, it’s really great to have you back on hand at Illinois Public Media, and thank you for being with us here today. Ed Kieser: My pleasure. Todd Gleason: Ed Kieser is a meteorologist with Illinois Public Media. You’ve been listening to the Closing Market Report on this Tuesday afternoon. Be sure to visit our website at willag.org. Have a good afternoon. I’m University of Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason.