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Mar 11 | Closing Market Report · Closing Market Report

• 0:00
  Todd Gleason: From the Land to Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report. It is the March 2026. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Greg Johnson at TGM. That's totalgrainmarketing.com.
• 0:17
  We'll look in-depth at the volatility taking place in The Middle East and the fundamentals of the marketplace, meaning supply and demand. Then we'll turn our attention to the weather forecast. Many interesting things happening there. We'll talk about last night's storms with Drew Lerner at World Weather Incorporated in Kansas City, and he'll take up a very long recurring cycle from last winter, early last winter, about forty five days, and some issues it might create over time in The United States. We'll do all of that right here on this Wednesday edition of the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media.
• 0:56
  It is public radio for the farming world online on demand at willag.org. You can also search us out in your favorite podcast applications, places like Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Alexa, the Google in your house. Just ask or type in the closing market report, and it should play or pop up. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. May corn for the day settled at $4.60 and a quarter, 8¢ higher.
• 1:29
  July at $4.72, up 8 and 3 quarters. And December corn today, $4.89 on the settlement price, up 9 and a quarter cents. May beans, $12.14, 12 and a quarter higher. July 1227 at a quarter, up 12 and a quarter, and November beans, $11.63 and a quarter. The new crop, up nine and three quarters of a cent.
• 1:48
  Bean meal futures, 90¢ higher at $3.15 40. The bean oil, $67.16, up a dollar 54. Wheat futures soft red July at six zero five and three quarters up 2 and a half cents. The hard red 07/06/2027 and a quarter 4 and a quarter cents higher. Live cattle futures down $2.25, rather 22 and a half cents.
• 2:11
  Fewer cattle $6.37 and a half lower and lean hogs at $95.20 per 100 pounds 87 and a half cents lower on the day. Crude oil, $87.66 a barrel, up $4.21. The wholesale price of gasoline, 14 and 3 tenths of a cent higher at $2.75 and a tenth of a cent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average off 353 points at this hour at 47,392 for the day. You're listening to the closing market report.
• 2:43
  Greg Johnson from TGM, totalgrainmarketing.com now joins us to talk a very volatile market place with us. Hey, Greg. Thanks much. Last week at the AllDAG Outlook, and I'm pretty certain this was the case because it's what Bloomberg reported from the AllDAG Outlook that, you all fall for corn and soybeans said lots of volatility, but the fundamentals still suggest there's just a lot of supply. Can you put those two things into context for me?
• 3:14
  Greg Johnson: Yeah. The supply side of that equation is is exactly correct. We do have a big supply of beans. Brazil is probably getting close to half harvested, if not a little bit more by now. And so they've made it through, in very good shape.
• 3:28
  It's gonna be a record crop. Maybe not quite as big as what we thought a month ago, but, you know, the USDA still says 180,000,000 metric tons for Brazil. They lowered the Argentine crop by a half a million metric tons, but even if they lower the Brazil crop by a million, that's still gonna be a record crop out of South America. We're gonna plant more beans up here in The US, it's just a question of how many more acres these higher input costs due to the Middle East Conflict might increase corn acres, or I'm sorry, increase bean acres by another million, million and a half, maybe reduce corn acres by a million, million and a half. We'll have to see how that plays out.
• 4:07
  But, yeah, the fundamentals would say we're gonna have an abundant, abundant supply of soybeans. So the only question is, does China come in and take alleviate some of that, excess supply with some additional demand? Maybe we'll get an answer to that when, president Trump and president Xi meet, in early April. Maybe we won't. So that's the uncertainty, but, we definitely do have a bigger supply of soybeans.
• 4:33
  And so the uncertainty is on the demand side of the equation, and that's why I think we are seeing, some pretty wild swings, in both corn and beans this this past week or so.
• 4:44
  Todd Gleason: Yeah. So Friday, a pretty good up move, follow through in the overnight trade, which is fairly typical. I mean, just unbelievable follow through in the overnight trade, in into Sunday morning or into Sunday, Monday morning, and then step back, what did what did farmers do in the draw area about making old and new crop sales in the face of that and then with the up move today?
• 5:11
  Greg Johnson: Well, we've been encouraging farmers to put offers in to get their old crop corn sold at $4.50. You know, we had $4.50 last summer, and that's the last time that we've been able to pay $4.50 for for corn. It was as low as $3.75 this fall, this past fall before now we're rallying up into that $4.50 area. And so farmers that had offers in got that booked, and they were happy about that. Then the market sold off a little bit, down to about $4.35, but, now we're back up to that $4.50 level again.
• 5:44
  So, farmers are selling, old crop corn and beans. They don't have as many old crop beans to sell because I think they were probably 85% sold on old crop beans, going into this rally. So there's not as many beans for sale at this point, but corn, I think farmers were still holding on to every bit of a third of their old crop corn. And so now this rally has allowed them to lighten up and get some of those old crop corn bushels moved at, at some pretty good prices.
• 6:13
  Todd Gleason: Is Basis reacting at all in the face of the volatility?
• 6:16
  Greg Johnson: We've seen some of the processors, drop their bids by $2.03 cents, but not nearly as much as what you might think for this kind of rally. I I think farmers have been disciplined sellers. They're not overwhelming the market. They're letting a little bit loose, but not that much that we're seeing basis levels drop. Here in Champaign, we have not dropped our basis a bit.
• 6:39
  Basis is still the exact same in the world. Basis remains firm. So usually when the futures market rallies, the basis widens out a little bit, but that's not the case this time around, and and that's good for the producers.
• 6:51
  Todd Gleason: Alright. What do you see going forward, or can you give us an idea of what things might look like?
• 6:58
  Greg Johnson: I think it boils down to the Middle East situation. If we think that situation will calm down and and tankers can start going through the Strait Of Hormuz again, oil prices will drop, and we could see corn and bean prices drop. On the other hand, if that conflict lasts for weeks, months, who knows how long, I think that we'll still oil prices will remain relatively high, and that will allow corn and bean prices to remain relatively high. So it's that simple, but, it's it's also that difficult to figure out because I'm not sure if anybody knows when exactly the the tensions will ease over there.
• 7:35
  Todd Gleason: Yeah. It's about the logistics and the uncertainty both. So logistics, just straight of Hormuz, being able to move through that area, tankers, and all kinds of freight, and then the uncertainty about when the war might end.
• 7:51
  Greg Johnson: Exactly. And and and you have to remember, keep in mind, there is a limit as to how high prices can go. I mean, at a $120 a barrel oil, which is where we got got to over the weekend, people started figuring out, hey, you know, we don't have to go through the Strait Of Hormuz. Maybe we can go around. It's a lot longer and it costs more money, but for a certain price, you can figure out a way to get crude oil fertilizer inputs from point A to point B.
• 8:21
  It's gonna cost more, but there is a price level at which people will figure that out. So I don't wanna just say as long as the war goes on, prices are gonna go higher. There is a limit as to how high prices can go, but I'm not sure if we've been there yet or not, but just keep that in mind, guess, for, you know, there you know, we we wanna lock in profits and, you know, there's so much uncertainty that, you know, I I think farmers just have to be a little bit disciplined, and you're not gonna hit the high of the market. You just have to be happy with the with the price that you're getting, I think.
• 8:53
  Todd Gleason: How much change do you think in acreage there could be? I know you talked about a million, but I in in the I states, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota as well, Nebraska. So we get kind of the top five, although Indiana is not there all the time. But, how how much of an acreage shift, if any, do you see in those, or or do producers stick with their rotations in that area?
• 9:18
  Greg Johnson: If the inputs are available, I don't think you'll see much shift at all in the I States. I think where you'll see the shift is in the Dakotas, the Kansasses, the Kentuckys, the Ohios, places that can't grow 240 bushel corn. I think that's where you'll see, an acre shift back to soybeans. So I I've kinda been using, going from 99,000,000 acres this past year down to 95. Now I would say it's probably 94.
• 9:47
  Because for people that did not get their inputs locked in, they're gonna have to pay higher input costs. And they may decide, hey, I can't I can't afford to pay those higher input costs for corn, so I'm just gonna plant a few more beans. So that, probably adds another million acres, of beans and less a million less acres of corn. So it it may be as low as 94,000,000 acres when it's all said and done on corn.
• 10:12
  Todd Gleason: We'll have to check with USDA NAST to see if they can capture that from the surveys, that are being returned from farmers and when when those surveys actually get in, so that we can have a better idea of what that March 31 survey might look like for the prospective plantings report. Anything else before I let you go?
• 10:33
  Greg Johnson: No. I I think, it's basically all we're all eyes are on The Middle East and that, that on days when it looks like it's gonna continue, when the Iranians say they're gonna dig in and hang out for, or hold out for an extended period of time, the crude oil market goes higher and that allows corn and beans to go higher. On other days when President Trump says it's just about over with and we're coming to a close, then prices go lower, and I don't know that anybody knows for sure. So, lots of volatility in this market, for the time being.
• 11:01
  Todd Gleason: Thank you much. We appreciate it, Greg.
• 11:02
  Greg Johnson: Hey. Thank you, Todd.
• 11:04
  Todd Gleason: That's Greg Johnson. He is with TGM. That's totalgrainmarketing.com based in the elevator right here in Champaign County. Joined us on this Wednesday edition of the Closing Market Report that comes to you from Illinois Public Media. Our theme music is written, performed, produced, and courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer Tim Gleason.
• 11:24
  If you visit our website, you'll still find information about crop insurance decisions. Those need to be made very shortly. Also, you'll find content from the ag economist, the crop scientist, and the animal scientist right here on the U of I campus. It's all at willag.org. That's willag.org.
• 11:47
  Just one quick news item for the day. US farmers are bracing for a system shock due to disruptions in shipping through the Strait Of Hormuz. American Farm Bureau Federation president Zippy Duvall urged the Trump administration to intervene in a letter with several recommendations. The letter noted that 49% of global urea exports and about 30% of global ammonia exports come from the Persian Gulf. Recommendations include utilizing the US Navy for the safe transit of fertilizer shipments and providing financial assistance to vessels carrying fertilizer cargo.
• 12:27
  Let's turn our attention now to the weather forecast. Drew Lerner is here from World Weather Incorporated in Kansas City. Kind of a rough night in parts of the Midwest last night, Drew. Tell me about that storm track to begin with, and then we can put that in context of the volatility of just the spring season.
• 12:45
  Drew Lerner: Yeah. You know, we we really have kinda kicked into spring fairly quickly here, and I don't think the atmosphere is fully ready for that because we keep getting shots of cold air coming around. And this round of severe weather last night started actually down in Central Texas, worked its way up through Central Oklahoma and then into Eastern Kansas. And then from Eastern Kansas through Northwest Missouri up into parts of the Southern Great Lakes region is where a lot of the action was. There was also some high wind reports that occurred in Southern Illinois as well.
• 13:18
  But most of that larger area I described is where the, the wind and the hail was great. And then we had several tornadoes noted in Texas and some from Illinois up into parts of Indiana. So a wild night and I'm afraid it's just the beginning. We're going to continue to see some wild weather off and on as we go throughout the spring season just simply because we do have quite a bit of contrast in air mass characteristics coming up as we go forward through these next few weeks.
• 13:48
  Todd Gleason: If I'm not mistaken, that is a really large geographic area, and it must have just moved super fast. How unusual is it?
• 13:56
  Drew Lerner: Well, it's the it's probably a little unusual for early March. I mean, we we usually get something like this maybe in late April or early May once in a while. But, yeah, it was a it was a very broad area of pretty wild weather and a definite byproduct of so much warm moist air coming northward. You know, we've been so warm for this time of the year that the atmosphere really didn't have a chance to cool down before the cold air mass came around, and that really fired off these storms. And I think we'll see something like that occurring periodically as we go forward through the season.
• 14:31
  Although, I think this particular round of stormy weather is probably going to run its course as we finish out the day today and maybe a little bit tomorrow in the eastern part of the country. But, for the most part, we are probably at the end of this outbreak, but we will see something else occur just another week or so away in parts of the Eastern Midwest and then later in the month, again, maybe a bit more broad based.
• 14:55
  Todd Gleason: So that was part of the volatility I wanted to discuss, but really it was about the changing temperatures and the air masses over time because it appears a lot of the Midwest will be very cold at some time in the not so distant future.
• 15:11
  Drew Lerner: Yes. You know, we've got a little shot of cold air coming right away behind this this severe weather we've had, and folks out in the Western Midwest are already experiencing that today, a North wind and temperatures will be in the fifties and some forties out there, but this isn't the peak of the cold. There's actually a reinforcing shot of cold air that will come around as we get into early next week, maybe Sunday through about Tuesday. And before that system comes through, we will see a rather aggressive storm center evolve across the northern parts of the Midwest. And we'll probably have, unfortunately, some blizzard or near blizzard conditions occurring late in the weekend across the region from South Dakota to Michigan and some lighter snows to the to the north and south of that area.
• 15:55
  But we could get pretty wild there. There might be another band of severe thunderstorms in the Eastern Midwest and the Southeastern United States, but all of that comes ahead of very cold air. And this is going to be the anniversary. I think it's March 17 is the anniversary date of the big cold surge we had in late January, early February. And that was when we had the citrus freezes in Florida and a lot of sugarcane on the Gulf Of America coast being hurt as well.
• 16:24
  And then that was of course the beginning of that long series of high energy demand days for the Atlantic coastal states. Well, this is about forty five days and we're looking at this pattern repeating again in the April or the May. Now this cold air mass that's coming in for early next week, it's pretty potent and we will get freezes into the Northern Delta, the Tennessee River Basin, maybe the interior parts of the Southeastern States. Will nip a lot of wheat. It looks like the majority of the wheat isn't any more advanced than the joint stage in those areas.
• 17:00
  So I don't think we're going to see any permanent damage. My concern is that if we return this pattern one more time in late April, early May, after we've managed to get some corn in the ground and up across parts of the Midwest, it would might run the risk of hurting some of that early crop. We may also have wheat that's much more advanced at that point in time. And if we bring another freeze in, of course it won't be as far to the South in late April and May as it is next week, but there will be other crops that are, you know, well developed a little farther to the North. So I'm a little bit nervous about the return of this pattern at that point in time.
• 17:37
  So maybe the best advice I can hand out right now is, you know, maybe slow it down a little bit with the planting. When we start warming back up again here in another week, we wanna be careful not to get too far ahead of our frost freeze dates no matter how nice and warm that may seem because I do think we'll see more cold.
• 17:55
  Todd Gleason: Yeah. So persistence is one of those things that I I feel like happens more often in the spring months and continues into the spring, on occasion. I am wondering whether persistence in a forty five day cycle happens very often as opposed to persistence in a three, five or seven day cycle.
• 18:16
  Drew Lerner: Yeah, there's definitely a ten day cycle that is pretty regular and we can often see that in the weather pattern. This is a little bit different pattern here. It's kind of independent of that 10 recycling tendency that we've seen in the past. This forty five day pattern actually started way back in November. I don't really know what the driving force is behind it.
• 18:42
  I want to say it's connected to the lunar cycle or, but I don't know that I can really say that with any great deal, a degree of confidence, but it's there. In other years we've had repeating cycles like this. They're not always forty five days. Think I can remember one a couple of years ago, was about a sixty, sixty two day cycle, but it was significant enough that it repeated right through the summer. And it became a great forecasting tool.
• 19:10
  And this particular one we're looking at here has potential to do that kind of thing again. So we'll watch and see what happens late April, early May, if it shows up again and still is fairly potent, then we'll look after that into maybe sometime around the June 1 for another shot of cold.
• 19:26
  Todd Gleason: Harvest season in South America. How are things going there?
• 19:30
  Drew Lerner: The harvest took off really well in the previous two weeks. I think this last several days has turned a little bit wetter in some spots, but we've really saw a lot of field progress made aggressively in Brazil, the early soybean crop getting largely harvested. Sabrina crop planting has moved way ahead of the norm. It looks like that field work is going to continue aggressive in the Southern, maybe two thirds of the production region. But the North will be a little wetter.
• 20:04
  Mato Grosso into parts of Sao Paulo and Southern Minas Derais, those areas we'll see regular occurring rainfall over the next ten days will slow the field work down a little bit. But I think most of the important, safrinha crops in Mato Grosso are mostly planted at this point. There's some field work that's still left to be done a little bit, in a few spots there and also in Goias. But, I think they're going to get along okay. And having this rain right now is really important because the monsoon will end sometime in early April and having a saturated soil, it would be ideal for ensuring that they can reproduce under favorable conditions.
• 20:42
  Now to the south of this though, it is dry and that would include Southern part of Mato Grosso, soil, Parana, Paraguay, and parts of Sao Paulo. And those areas are probably not going to see high volumes of rain over these next couple of weeks. They could go into the post monsoonal period without as much moisture as they should have. That could raise some issues for safrinha corn later in April or May.
• 21:08
  Todd Gleason: And one final place I'd like to check-in on because of the volatility that's taking place in The Middle East. How are the wheat growing regions of the Black Sea doing coming out of the winter months?
• 21:20
  Drew Lerner: Yeah. That's a great question. Actually, the this year has turned out to be far better than I think anybody expected. If you recall back to the last autumn, we had quite a bit of drought, especially from, the in The Middle East from Turkey over to Iran. The dryness was very serious.
• 21:36
  There was a lot of talk about, them not getting the crop all planted or it would, come up very poorly. But over the course of the winter, we did see a considerable amount of precipitation occurring across that region. The moisture profile right now is just about ideal in Turkey. It's also very good in Iraq. Syria has got a little dryness still in the South, but in the North it's pretty good.
• 22:00
  Iran, I think the Northeast part of Iran has not done very well with moisture. They've had enough for a little bit of improvement, but the bulk of the Western Part of Iran has had some pretty good moisture for a good start to their wheat crop. And North Of The Black Sea in Ukraine and Russia's Southern Region, I think everything is in fairly good shape. It was also a little dry there last autumn, but we have much better moisture today. And I think the crops will wake up to a much better environment for some new tillering and some aggressive early spring, development.
• 22:35
  Todd Gleason: Thank you for helping to lay out the fundamentals on the ground there and what the supply of wheat might be in that area. I appreciate it, and thanks for joining us this week. We'll talk with you again next Wednesday.
• 22:45
  Drew Lerner: You bet. Take care.
• 22:46
  Todd Gleason: That's Drew Lerner. He is with World Weather Incorporated in Kansas City. Joined us on this Wednesday edition of the Closing Market Report that came to you from Illinois Public Media, Public Radio for the farming world online on demand at willag.org. That's willag.org. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.