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Nov 07 | Closing Market Report · Closing Market Report

• 0:00
  Todd Gleason: From the land grant university in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market reported as the November 2025. I'm extension's Tug Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Mike Zuzlow. He's at globalcomresearch.com.
• 0:14
  Eric Snodgrass will have a weather forecast for us, including an outlook for the month of December, and maybe we'll have a transition really to fall. And along the way, we'll talk with David Center. He's the president of the American agriculture movement and a co founder of Farm Aid. They have had some things to say about SNAP, the nutrition assistance programs, and the Trump administration will do all of that on this Friday edition of the closing market report from Illinois public media. Mike Zuzlow, globalcomresearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas now joins us.
• 0:51
  Hi, Mike. Thanks, for being with us. It's been a busy week. A lot has gone on since Monday. Can you recap it for me, please?
• 0:58
  Mike Zuzolo: Yeah. I I would say starting with the beans ahead of the USDA WASDE numbers on Monday, the the soybeans overall got what they needed and therefore held on to the $11 level and lead month futures, but I'm not sure they got what they wanted, Todd. And what I mean by that specifically is we've been waiting for more details between The US China trade agreement. We did see China come in and reinstated The US soybean export licenses for primary exporters, and that had been down and not had been approved since March. And so it was a building block week.
• 1:32
  It felt like to me that we got what we needed and that China is moving, but the trade walked away Friday without really knowing anything in terms of volume and still, I think, a little bit skeptical about the trade agreement given that we had heard that China maybe picked up 20 cargoes of beans out of Brazil for the month of December. So I mean, I would say that given that, could have made new weekly highs, been able to make some new multi month highs if we would have gotten what we wanted. And I think it puts more onus and more pressure on the WASDE report to perform for us, maybe on the supply side more so than the demand side we'll see.
• 2:12
  Todd Gleason: We'll see that on Friday of next week, released at 11:00 on the fourteenth. I do believe there were some cargo loads of wheat, maybe some other things, Milo as well?
• 2:24
  Mike Zuzolo: One cargo, sorghum, two cargoes of wheat. I'm glad you brought up the wheat because that that we've talked a lot about and will continue to talk a lot about. While the Pacific Northwest price of beans remains elevated at around $12, So it suggests we did do some business. The market got a lot more excited about the wheat, it seemed to me, until Thursday, Friday, when we only found out two cargoes got done. So trade was thinking several 100,000 tons, and we didn't get that.
• 2:51
  But what I took away from that into your first question about not getting what we wanted in the soybeans, Todd, is that we had a really nice bounce in wheat. It was actually a leader with meal on the upside and then turned to the leader of the downside on Thursday in this disappointment. But it kinda showed you what kind of strength the whole grain complex could have when the wheat got underneath us. And so we're still lacking the wheat and lacking the crude oil as far as joining up together to underpin the commodity demand mindset. Crude oil and going into 2026, just for an FYI, doing my updated analysis and doing a webinar this weekend for clients and subscribers, it's gonna be marked with the oversupply tag once again.
• 3:34
  And until we can get rid of that and shed that oversupply tag, it's probably gonna be hard for the grains and the other commodities to really sink their teeth into a demand led rally.
• 3:44
  Todd Gleason: Because you mentioned meal, you talked about that last week. Did you dig into why meal has been moving so well?
• 3:53
  Mike Zuzolo: No. The only thing that I have found is that Argentina has been moving around macroeconomically with their currency. I would say that probably had something to do with it. And I think it was just good old fashioned spread trade unwinding that the bulls and the biofuel bulls in bean oil were exiting and buying back their meal. Meal like wheat has made a multi year low here in 2025.
• 4:17
  So don't wanna say it's due for a rally, but how many more shorts are going to come into this market without really feeding the bear?
• 4:25
  Todd Gleason: We have often over the last ten or twelve years talked about outside money and how large it is and how the the role that commodities have chain has changed in the marketplace with their investment, being a a marginal side of what they're actually investing in. Has that made a difference in your outlook for commodities going forward if they are a safe haven or not?
• 4:54
  Mike Zuzolo: Yeah. It has. And and I would say along with the crude oil, we also had a central bank worldwide push into gold. And, yes, retail investors got into it as well, but it was really, in my opinion, central banks that pushed this market to the new record highs in 2025. And that was mostly on a safe haven mindset of worrying about the dollar and what is being dubbed de dollarization.
• 5:21
  I don't think that's gonna be as big an issue in 2026. In fact, it looks like to me, if the crude oil stays weak and we weaken on some inflationary pressures because of the slowdown in The US and China, it seems to me that the dollar would be back in fashion again. And so I'm not looking for the same tailwind in the dollar that we had back in 2025 at this point, unfortunately.
• 5:45
  Todd Gleason: If they were using commodities, gold in this case, as an inflationary hedge, and they see the dollar getting stronger, I think, is what you just told me.
• 5:54
  David Senter: Right.
• 5:55
  Todd Gleason: Will they come out of that, and does that put pressure on the marketplace?
• 5:58
  Mike Zuzolo: Yeah. They probably won't initially, Todd, because we we do have, I think, an equilibrium in this market where the central banks feel comfortable because I don't think anyone really feels strongly that The US and China have resolved any major issues at this point. For the most part, I think central banks feel pretty comfortable being in the amount of gold they are right now, unlikely to liquidate, especially given I think there's heightened military conflict potentially in 2026 versus 2025.
• 6:26
  Todd Gleason: On corn, anything?
• 6:27
  Mike Zuzolo: Yeah. Big thing on corn was record high on weekly ethanol data. Shot us kinda shot us down, though, because EPA put in waivers and approved the waivers for blending for small refineries, and, that happened on Friday. So you could see kind of a direct relationship between corn wanting to follow beans early in the day. That news came out.
• 6:48
  Corn reattached its caboose to the wheat market, and so we're back to kind of where we began. And I think here again, beans sure would like to have a friend right now in one of those two complexes.
• 6:58
  Todd Gleason: Some of those SREs at 100%, some at 50%. Read the article online from the PharmDoc team. It'll help you resolve some of those issues and come up with what that means. Not you, Mike. Yeah.
• 7:09
  No. I'll read
• 7:10
  Mike Zuzolo: it to
• 7:11
  Todd Gleason: you as well.
• 7:11
  Mike Zuzolo: I'll definitely read it.
• 7:12
  Todd Gleason: That's that's Mike Zuzlow. He is with globalcommresearch.com out of Acheson, Kansas. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, every dollar in SNAP spending generates about a dollar 50 in total economic activity. Now in small towns and farming counties, SNAP benefits circulate through the system keeping grocery lights on, shelves stocked, and family farms afloat. Farm Aid, co founded by Willie Nelson and which held its first farm crisis concert in the 1985 right here on the University of Illinois campus, says the Trump administration frees on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP funding until the government reopens is without precedent, and it agrees that SNAP is not only a nutrition program, but says it's the heartbeat of local economies.
• 8:05
  I called and talked with David Center about this.
• 8:09
  David Senter: Yes. I'm David Center, and I'm president of the American Agriculture Movement.
• 8:14
  Todd Gleason: And your relationship to Farm Aid?
• 8:16
  David Senter: I am, one of the founders of Farm Aid, and I am Farm Aid's historian.
• 8:22
  Todd Gleason: What's the most interesting historical fact about Farm Aid that you can come up with?
• 8:28
  David Senter: The most interesting fact, farm organizations, they have their own turf that they protect. It doesn't matter if it's a commodity group or or farm bureau, farmers union, whatever the organization is. And they want farmers to be a member of their organization. But then Farm Aid came along, and it allowed many different organizations and people to come together. If you agree on certain points, everybody can stand in unity and speak together.
• 9:15
  And it's it's been interesting. I always said in speeches that Farm Aid rolls out a neutral stage so that all of our different organizations can come together and find common ground in support of family farm policies for farmers and ranchers. So, anyway, that's, that's what I think, that that stands out to me that, Farm Aid allowed us to do that.
• 9:49
  Todd Gleason: You sat on the Farm Aid board, and have been there since the very beginning. The organization is involved in agriculture, and sent a a press release out about SNAP or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs this week as it's related to what the Trump administration, current USDA, is doing by not funding SNAP in full. Why did why did you all decide that was important?
• 10:22
  David Senter: Well, it's important because, when you look at rural America, we have, a lot of, of senior citizens. We have a lot of people that need those SNAP benefits because there's not a food bank in these little small rural towns. And so, they need that, that assistance. And, you know, Congress approved the program, provided funding for the program. And so it shouldn't be up to the dollars are there, and it they it just, snap is very important.
• 11:16
  It's a very important market for, for farmers too because, I know most all of the, farmers markets that I go to accept, SNAP benefits. And it it's important, where they can get fresh fruits and vegetables and local produce and and, kinda support local farmers, as well as getting good, healthy food. And so SNAP it, is is important. And if if congress wants to look at changes or this, that, and other, I you know, they should be the ones to do that. And, I'm we always had a farm food coalition.
• 12:12
  It's the only reason we have passed the last number of farm bills because you have the nutrition programs. You have the farm programs. We all come together with urban members and rural members and and pass a farm bill. Now they have broke that farm food coalition by including all the farm changes in the reconciliation bill this year and by all of the cuts put forward to pay for the bill or to pay towards the bill, I guess you'd say, because it's still a big deficit. But SNAP SNAP is important lifeline for a lot of people.
• 13:07
  And I I know there's some fraud and abuse, each state, stays on top of that as best they can. And then USDA, follows up, trying to make sure that, it's a it's administered in a fair and honest way, and the people that earn it and deserve it are the ones getting it and not those that try to abuse the system.
• 13:34
  Todd Gleason: AAM and Farm Aid suggest in this press release that SNAP is not charity. It is, in their writing of it, infrastructure. You used the Department of Agriculture number that said for every dollar in SNAP spending, a dollar and 50¢ in total economic activity was created and then circulated through these small small towns and farms in rural areas. And you were also concerned about the lack, of availability of grocery stores in in those areas too.
• 14:09
  David Senter: That is correct. I mean, I can travel across rural America. And, when I was traveling in the, late seventies, in the early days of AIM, I did a lot of speaking around the country. And you'd go to these towns, these rural towns, and there'd be businesses around Courthouse Square, the the towns that have two or three churches. There'd be a local school.
• 14:34
  And now you go through town after town in rural America. There might be a Dollar General there, and there might be a place to buy gas where you can get a sandwich out of refrigerator there if you want it, but no restaurant. They have county schools now. All but one church will be closed, and everybody has to go to the same one just because not wasn't enough people left after the eighties to, to keep, all the churches open. I mean, it's just it's it's terrible, what, has been allowed to happen to these small rural towns.
• 15:15
  And this new farm crisis we're dealing with is gonna hurt, the larger, county seats and and more what few of the independent farm businesses are still out there are really gonna, suffer, and we're gonna lose a lot of what infrastructure's left, and a lot of it's already gone. But it is a concern.
• 15:43
  Todd Gleason: David Center, thank you very much. I appreciate it.
• 15:45
  David Senter: You bet. Very glad to talk to you.
• 15:48
  Todd Gleason: David Center is the president of the American Agriculture Movement and a cofounder of Farm Aid. Let's turn our attention now to the global growing regions. We're joined by Eric Snodgrass. He's at Nutrien Ag Solutions and Agrabal. Hello, Eric.
• 16:15
  I hear you've been traveling again. Another late night coming back to Champaign County.
• 16:20
  Eric Snodgrass: Yeah. But, you know, Todd so, yeah, we got delayed getting to Chicago. I I didn't land till after almost 2AM, but I got to drive home and watch the storms last night. I mean, for me personally, nothing keeps me awake more on the road than watching a storm off in the distance, and it was kinda nice. And we did get a little bit of the wet stuff around here, a little bit more rain up farther to north.
• 16:39
  Man, Todd, we need every ounce of that. We've gotta get the soil moisture up a bit, especially for our fall application work, and we gotta change these soil temperatures. So last night was kind of the first of a series of fronts coming through, and I think it's gonna give us a better outlook overall with what we need to get done this fall.
• 16:55
  Todd Gleason: Yeah. Soil temperatures have been like, what? This is, that 50 degree mark's important as it's related to fall anhydrous application.
• 17:03
  Eric Snodgrass: Yeah. It is. And so the good news is what's upcoming, because it's been quite mild, to be honest with you. Right? What's upcoming is enough cold air starting this weekend and early next week that's really gonna drop those down.
• 17:15
  And we will get a little bit of moisture out of this next system that's coming through. It's a little clipper system. And I'll be honest with you, Todd. I would not be surprised if somebody listening to us right now is gonna see their first snowflakes of the season. I'm not expecting big accumulating snows, not even close.
• 17:29
  So be very cautious of what you read on the Internet right now about the snow that's coming through. But, you know, we're gonna turn enough cold air on those great lakes that we could we could even, Todd, possibly see some little bits of lake effect snowbursts that get down here as the colder air really settles in. But there's moisture with it, and the temperature's gonna drop off, which is gonna get us in a much better position after this to keep doing that fall fieldwork.
• 17:55
  Todd Gleason: Let's talk about that fall fieldwork next year. By the way, 50 degrees and below is the time you can go for anhydrous applications. That little bit of rainfall is gonna be really important. The one we had last night, that woke me up, which is surprising. I never wake up during storms, but that one did wake me up.
• 18:11
  It also means the knife track will close-up. And so, if you've been waiting to go, congratulations. Thank you. If you have gone, you know, shame on you, but that's just me telling you that. So, you know, nitrogen cost a lot of money.
• 18:24
  Making the transition next week, but we're gonna warm back up. What's temperatures be like?
• 18:30
  Eric Snodgrass: Yeah. I mean, warming back up in mid November is like getting high temperatures in the fifties, maybe touching 60. With overnight lows, that'll likely go down there, excuse me, the low thirties at times. But that's that's about average, you know, for this time of year. And so I'm not expecting I'm not expecting things to get too crazy, but it will go back over mild once we get past the cold air that's coming through, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.
• 18:54
  Now what I wanna get you prepared for is there are several things that are lining up right now that would suggest to me to tell you that December's gonna have a lot more access to cold air in the Eastern two thirds of The US, which, of course, puts us squarely in that particular spot. We've got La Nina, which is gonna peak early. We have got this other La Nina like thing that's called the Indian Ocean dipole. It's happening over in the Indian Ocean. And they're working together.
• 19:21
  And you look at all the historical analogs, and December's are not mild when that happens. So unlike a year ago where our December was mild, I think this one is gonna be a bit colder, which takes 2024 kinda off the analog list, if you will, thinking about it. So I would just tell you, around Thanksgiving and beyond, you might get an early taste of winter around here, so be prepared for, for what that might look like.
• 19:44
  Todd Gleason: You kinda told us or hinted at that, in the last time we talked. We are concerned about the dry weather. We've had a little bit of rain, not not much. Does December change that? I mean, drought, river levels, all those kinds of things?
• 19:58
  Eric Snodgrass: Yeah. It's been hard to get that river to come up, but the good news is with this upcoming pattern that's coming through, I think we're gonna see better chances of this well, the November and then most of December being active above normal precip. But to be honest, Todd, the only way to keep that is if we have a real active early freeze thaw cycle kind of thing. So if some of that does come in as snow, we get to melt it and pull it into the top few inches of the soil. So I like it overall.
• 20:25
  It's a drought reducing type winter, early winter setup or late fall setup. But it means it's not comfortable. You know what I mean? Know, sometimes folks are like, man, can we just keep it in the fifties too much of December? This isn't that year.
• 20:38
  I think we're gonna have more access to colder air, going forward.
• 20:42
  Todd Gleason: Anything you've been thinking about or seeing data related to long range forecast recently?
• 20:47
  Eric Snodgrass: Yeah. Do not expect the front half of this winter to look like the back half. I can't give you details because I don't have them yet, but all I know is that there is mounting evidence that this La Nina is likely gonna peak and crash fast. Unlike some that just linger into February and March, I think we'll be talking about a whole new regime in the jet stream by the time we get it to Christmas. And what I'm hoping is we get kind of this two pronged attack coming out of the Pacific Ocean, which means the whole United States has an active winter.
• 21:17
  And that would be good for our drought picture, which as you I'm sure you've seen, we're still at about 70% of the land area of the Lower 48 in some stage of drought. We being in a very, very dry spot here in Illinois, especially Northern Half of Illinois with such low subsurface soil moisture levels. But that quick peak of La Nina is not just important to us. It's gonna be important to other places around the world.
• 21:36
  Todd Gleason: So it crossed my mind as I was listening to you there. I wonder if that is a big enough system that it can shift weather across the planet. Yeah.
• 21:45
  Eric Snodgrass: It can. And so there's some folks right now that are watching La carefully, like Australia. Right? They love to have La Nina. They tend to have wet springs and summers.
• 21:53
  That means their their summer crops tend to do okay, and they don't have drought going into their next fall. Well, if this thing peaks and shifts kind of early, we start to get a little concerned about that. Then we go to South America. Models keep saying, oh, Southern Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, drier. Central Brazil, center west, east, very wet.
• 22:14
  And if that's the case, it always comes back to the old adage, will Brazil be able to outdo with more acres? Will it outacre South America's potential yield problem? And that's probably going to be the case, but I have a feeling that we're gonna be watching the North versus the South in South America very carefully throughout this winter. And the markets might bite into a story with that, especially if just other things start, you know, allowing it to move in a different direction.
• 22:41
  Todd Gleason: Hey. Thank you much. I appreciate it. Yeah.
• 22:42
  Eric Snodgrass: You
• 22:43
  Todd Gleason: bet. Eric Snodgrass is with Nutrien Ag Solutions and Agrabolt joined us on this Friday edition of the closing market report that came to you from Illinois Public Medium. If you can stay with us the whole of the hour here on our home station, you'll hear commodity week next. If not, it's up online right now at willag.org, willag.0rg, and many of these stations will carry it over the weekend. I'm Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.
• 23:49
  Doctor. JACKSON: