Apr 07 | Closing Market Report

Todd Gleason: 00:00

From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois, this is the closing market reported as the April 2025. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Kurt Kimmel. He's at AgMarket.net out of Windsor, Illinois. We'll hear from Ed Hussett, agricultural economist at the University of Minnesota, and we'll discuss the weather too.

Todd Gleason: 00:25

We'll do that with Mark Russo of Everstream Analytics, and along the way, we'll hear a portion of an interview that I did with Giovanni Preza Fontes about the cool and wet soils and planting conditions in the Midwest, Illinois in particular, and what that might mean for the coming crop all on this Monday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. It's public radio for the farming world online on demand at WILLAG.ORG. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. May corn for the day at $4.64 and a half. It finished four and a quarter higher.

Todd Gleason: 01:09

July at $4.70 and 3 quarters, up 3 and a half cents. And December at $4.46, 3 quarters of a cent lower for the new crop, May soybeans at $9.83, up 6¢ on the day. The July contract finished, four higher at $9.97, and November at $9.81, 3 and a quarter cents lower. Bean meal futures up 5 and $5.30 at $288.40, and the bean oil at $45.15, 69¢ lower. Soft red winter wheat in the July, the harvest month up seven and three quarters of a cent at $5.50 and a half.

Todd Gleason: 01:46

The hard red at $5.72 and 3 quarters, two and three quarters of a cent higher. Live cattle futures at a hundred and $94.17 and a half cents. A settlement price down $4.02 and a half. Feeders were off three sixty at $271 and 27 and a half cents, and lean hogs for a hundred pounds at $90 and a nickel down a dollar and 50¢. Crude oil at $61.32 a barrel down 67¢.

Todd Gleason: 02:14

Dow Jones Industrial Average now down just a hundred and one points at 38,429. It was much further down in the overnight trade. And here to talk about that and all things that have been happening in the agricultural sector is Kirk Kimmel. He's with the ag market dot net team out of Normal, Illinois. Hi, Kurt.

Todd Gleason: 02:37

Thanks for being with us.

Curt Kimmel: 02:38

Well, good afternoon, Todd. It's a exciting high volatility atmosphere we're seeing here and probably gonna stick around for some time to come.

Todd Gleason: 02:46

It feels like that will be the case. Let's do start with the outside markets. The Dow, regaining much of its overnight losses or nearly all of its overnight losses. The Nasdaq now up darn near 200 points at this point. What do you see in the marketplace, and why is this taking taking shape today?

Curt Kimmel: 03:08

Well, we we've taken a lot out out of the marketplace for sure. Just a lot of news, fake news earlier this morning here we had a sharp rally to the upside on news that the tariffs were going to be delayed for ninety days or a ninety day pause, then went more than that come out and everything was quite a bit higher than I'd say within twenty, thirty minutes, White House denied it saying that was fake news and boom, back down to negative territory, we went. Then going into just right before the midday Eastern Time there, there's ideas that if China does not take off their 34% tariffs they put on there last week by April 8 tomorrow that the administration will impose a 50% additional tariff on Wednesday, April 9. So we've just got things flying back and forth. This is mainly with China.

Curt Kimmel: 04:12

It seems though that we are making progress or the administration's making progress with some other countries and kind of negotiate or work through this process. It's just not tariff, but there are so called backdoor or non tariff barriers, value added tax, the VAT, you know, so there's a lot of moving parts taking place on how this is going to all unfold. Bottom line is we get some stubborn bullheaded people doing some big old punches on each other in through here. Where it ends, I guess we're gonna find out through here, but the end result is we buy a lot more from China than they do from us, Todd.

Todd Gleason: 04:54

Well, we'll find out how that goes as time passes, and let's do deal with the agricultural markets. Corn managed to gain in the old crop today. Is that because the bin doors are closed and farmers are getting ready to go to the field? I saw also the basis has been picking up.

Curt Kimmel: 05:12

Yeah. It's a combination thing. Bin doors are closed, but when that bin door closed, you heard a big bang alco inside. A lot of these bins are empty. A lot of the grains have moved and rightfully so.

Curt Kimmel: 05:25

What is left, I think guys are gonna hold on till they get the crop in the field for the most part. Corn wise, the delta, we'll see our first progress report this afternoon as a nation we're expected to be about 2% planted, boy they've been getting bombarded, some flooded out areas, then two, those guys that were switching from cotton to corn, they're gonna give about another week, week and a half, if they can't get back in to finish up corn, we'll see switching there. Not a huge amount of acres but just enough to give the market a little support. Also with the flooding, man, heart goes out to everybody in Arkansas, Southern Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, massive flooding and that helps support the soft red winter wheat. One idea is wheat's seen some awful wet feed in through here, so a little bit of weather, a little producer keeping their hands in their pocket just uncertainty around gave the corn and wheat market both a little bit of support here today, Todd.

Todd Gleason: 06:28

I was looking at the charts and even with the soybeans as heavy as the losses were last week, it appears to me that they stayed within a broader trading range and that must be good news.

Curt Kimmel: 06:41

Yeah, you can, make that chart kind of look wherever you want it to look like in through here. There's moving averages, there's trend lines, there's retracements, there's double bottoms, triple bottoms, all kinds of stuff, to look at through here. Corn kind of, old corn particularly kind of broke out, the short term downtrend line there and has been holding those recent lows. Brian, our technical analyst, feels it's very important to hold these recent lows, but if we can stay above the downtrend line here, technically we've got a little support. Then also too when you look at the corn chart, we're seeing lows materialize kind of the end of the month, first of the month, so hopefully that, trend will will continue here.

Curt Kimmel: 07:23

The momentum indicators are pointed upward. You know, the beans broke, the support line just fell out of bed, ugly, ugly, and, reached some areas here that warranted some, value and now we're in a position to maybe hopefully see these bees come back and test the old support line. So the charts are interesting, not only on the daily, but, you know, pull up some weekly and monthly charts here. There's just about a little bit of everything for everybody there, Todd.

Todd Gleason: 07:53

The livestock have suffered the last several days too. Cattle off another $4 today. Feeders off $3.60. Hogs were off a dollar 50. What are you watching in those markets?

Curt Kimmel: 08:04

If we get in dispute with China in through here, there's we we move some beef to China, and so the export picture's a little skinny here even though we are dealing with some tighter tighter numbers. That coupled with consumer confidence, man, if this stock market doesn't find some support in through here, the meat sector going out to eat could be put on the back burner, and that's not good for meat demand.

Todd Gleason: 08:33

Hey. Thanks much. I appreciate it. Very good. Kurt Kimmel is with AgMarket.net.

Todd Gleason: 08:43

April brings with it planting weather, sometimes cold, sometimes wet. When the combination is in place, that becomes a problem, says Giovanni Preza Fontes. He's an extension agronomist at the University of Illinois. I spoke with him late last week.

Giovani Preza Fontes: 09:00

Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, like, when we start getting into April, I think we're starting thinking about planning time and, you know, there's an easy to be out in the field and start work and planning. And I think sometimes we may be overly fixated on, you know, having the crop planted by a specific calendar date. So the idea here is that, you know, early planting is still good.

Giovani Preza Fontes: 09:30

Right? It's we know the potential benefits of early planting, but there are other things that we need to keep in mind. And I think soil conditions at planting and after planting, it's very important to keep in mind. And like you said, like, close soils by itself, it doesn't necessarily pose a threat to corn and soybean seeds, but the problem it gets when when the soil is cold and wet. Then we start having increased risk of seedling or seed damages by, you know, pathogen in in infection or insects feeding on the on the seeds.

Giovani Preza Fontes: 10:11

And we talked about the individual chilling injury, which is when the soybeans emerge and they you know, when they absorb water to emerge, if that water is cold, then that's when we see some of those chilling injury.

Todd Gleason: 10:29

We'll hear more from Gio tomorrow. Giovanni Prezefontes is an extension agronomist at the University of Illinois. He and Emerson Nafsager penned an article for the Crop Central website. You can see it right now on ours at willag.org. The theme music for the closing market report is written, performed, produced in courtesy of Logan County, Illinois Farmer Tim Gleason.

Todd Gleason: 10:54

Do visit our website. The address is W I L L A G Dot 0 R G. Let's turn our attention now to the broader agricultural sector with Ed Asad, agricultural economist at the University of Minnesota with extension there. Hi, Ed. Thank you very much.

Todd Gleason: 11:15

Just one topic on the mind of most people for the day, the impact of tariffs on agriculture and the wider economies across the planet in general. What do you think about the tariffs that the president has put into place?

Ed Usset: 11:31

My first thought is you say most people are thinking about the tariffs. And if you find the ones who aren't thinking about it, I'd love to meet them if there's something else on their mind. I'll tell you how I I finally came to terms with this. I was struggling with it. You know, everyone wants, you know, advice.

Ed Usset: 11:51

You know? The what should I be doing? What should I be doing? And I I've been just mute. I don't know what to say.

Ed Usset: 11:58

And it dawned on me that the difference here between, you know, people will look at this volatile market. By the way, I've got a small position in the stock, a $5 stock. It has moved 40¢ today, up and down. You know? I mean, it's it's like a almost a 10% range on one stock in one day.

Ed Usset: 12:24

It's sort of breathtaking. What struck me last week is, something we need to remind ourselves of, or I need to, the difference between risk and uncertainty. Risk can be measured. Got a lot of producers out there right now, Todd. They've got unpriced corn in the bin from last year, unpriced soybeans.

Ed Usset: 12:48

Doesn't feel real good right now. And yet I would say that strategy, which is very common for producers every year, is is risky. And yet we understand the risk. We understand that two out of three years, seven out of ten years, it's gonna work for us, sometimes very well. And we accept the fact that sometimes it doesn't.

Ed Usset: 13:11

Like last year, unfortunately, it looks like this year isn't looking too good either. But risk can be measured. We can put a probability on it. And a lot of the work I do with my characters and that is is really about measuring risk and leaning into things that work more often than not. This tariff thing is all about uncertainty.

Ed Usset: 13:35

And you can't measure uncertainty. You just you can't put a probability on it. If I tell people or if I had told people, I wish I had a month ago, get aggressive with sales, you know, stock and and commodities, get aggressive. I'd be right now. But, of course, if we do a u-turn on this current policy, markets can go back up and we're gonna feel bad.

Ed Usset: 14:02

If I tell people to do nothing and, these tariffs persist, it's like, well, you know, there you go. You should have sold. I don't know how how do you give advice in an uncertain environment? How do you how do you sort out the risk? You can't.

Ed Usset: 14:21

It's immeasurable. Like, you can't be measured, and the uncertainty is like a black cloud over this market.

Todd Gleason: 14:28

It will be difficult. I'm wondering if the known risk, relatively speaking, is what you have to stick with at this point, and then decide how much of the uncertainty you're willing to bear.

Ed Usset: 14:44

That's I guess that's what I'm doing. It's not working very well, Todd, but that's what I'm doing.

Todd Gleason: 14:51

Me either.

Ed Usset: 14:52

It's not it's not working very well. I'll go with the known risks. I'm thinking about crop insurance and and how how we're gonna handle that news if, in fact, we're making big payments next fall, how that how that shakes out in this whole thing, because that might be our big source of income come this fall. If we can't turn this thing around, we're gonna get payments based on revenue shortfalls.

Todd Gleason: 15:21

Okay. So we have eight more days until the April 15 to consider a known risk, which is PLC and ARC. Let's start with soybeans because I think that one is easier that the agricultural economist, the PharmDoc team here says sort of regardless with or without tariffs in place, our county is the likely choice. However, corn is on the bubble. They were leaning towards ARC County, but could be convinced of PLC.

Todd Gleason: 15:59

Does the uncertainty provide you a different view?

Ed Usset: 16:02

The uncertainty is what makes it impossible to answer. You know, it's the uncertainty that makes it impossible to answer. You go with what you think, is going to happen, and some people will be right, and some people will be wrong.

Todd Gleason: 16:18

Well, I just can't nail you down on anything today. No. No. No.

Ed Usset: 16:24

And I'm a I'm a real downer to talk to to boot. So, it's a it's been a tough one.

Todd Gleason: 16:30

Tell me about the April WASDE and more importantly, the May World Ag Supply and Demand Estimates and USDA's first set of numbers. They'll include some things that we as long as there is a normal growing season for the planting rate, that we probably know will be in place. For instance, if it's normal, we'll know what the projected yield values is. We'll know the acreage numbers that they are are expected to put in. So what do you see in those two?

Ed Usset: 17:03

Well, the most interesting thing in the acreage numbers, and and I assume that what came out of the March, planning intentions report will find its way into that May outlook for the new crop. We've now increased acres enough in corn that we're gonna slip that that much loved ending stocks figure back above 2,000,000,000 bushels at the end of the next, crop year, which is concerning. I mean, I thought the the February outlook, they increased acres some, two and a half million acres, and yet we still didn't have, ending stocks above that. But it turned a little more bearish on corn and, with that outlook. So I'll I'll have a close eye on that.

Ed Usset: 17:53

We're, of course it it's funny. You'd think we'd be talking even more about weather, and yet weather is is not a big topic right now. And yet, it's gotta be. At some point, we're gonna we're gonna talk about where it's dry, where it's warm, and so on. And I don't know if that works.

Ed Usset: 18:14

Won't work its way into the May report. The May report will be based on, USDA's thoughts on a trend line yield.

Todd Gleason: 18:23

Anything else before I let you go?

Ed Usset: 18:25

Oh, I've got, any recommendations on heartburn medicine?

Todd Gleason: 18:35

I went to get Claritin D, which is a different thing for my allergies today, but let's go Let let let's go with that. Okay. Hey. Thank you. I appreciate it, and we'll talk with you again next month.

Ed Usset: 18:51

Okay, Todd. Take care.

Todd Gleason: 18:52

Ed Asit is an agricultural economist. He's with University of Minnesota Extension. Mark Russo is now here. He's with Everestreem Analytics. Thanks, Mark, for being with us.

Todd Gleason: 19:18

It's been rocky. Oh, that's the tariffs. It was rocky, this last week with the weather too, though.

Ed Usset: 19:26

For sure.

Todd Gleason: 19:27

However, it looks like things are gonna smooth out, just a bit. Can you tell me about the weather forecast across the planting regions of the Midwest?

Mark Russo: 19:35

Sure, Todd. Certainly, a calmer pattern here coming up across the Central US after it was a very impressive and record setting rainfall totals and obviously severe and even some cases catastrophic flooding here in portions of the Midwest and Delta States. The pattern for the next few weeks is now shifting into a drier than normal pattern, so that dry stretch is badly needed here for the wettest areas, which again is gonna take some time for those areas to dry out. But this drier than normal pattern, will certainly be more locked in here for these next few weeks. And along with that too, temperatures, which over the next few days will be colder than normal, we'll be switching back to a warmer pattern by the upcoming weekend.

Mark Russo: 20:26

So, again, this cold shot right now looks pretty brief in duration.

Todd Gleason: 20:30

In the weak growing regions of The US, do we have concerns still?

Mark Russo: 20:35

We do. There was some precipitation last week in parts of the hard red belt, but by our calculations, only about 15% of the belt picked up meaningful amounts above, an inch with only a 30 with only a third of the belt picking up amounts above like a quarter of an inch. So more precip is needed. The planes is locked in a dry pattern now for the next couple of weeks and also will be turning quite hot, especially from late this week on into next week. So that will lead to increase in crop stress, declining crop conditions here going forward.

Todd Gleason: 21:11

In South America, I believe, and you can correct me, that the safrinha or second crop corn is going into mid April in fairly good condition. Are there concerns in other parts of that continent?

Mark Russo: 21:24

Right now, no. All in all, it's favorable weather here in April across South America. No sign of any extreme conditions here for the Safrinha Belt over the next few weeks. No sign of any wet patterns that would disrupt summer crop harvesting. And all in all, at this kind of final month of the rainy season, it looks like a normal or seasonal type of pattern.

Todd Gleason: 21:48

Europe in stormy conditions or not?

Mark Russo: 21:51

Right now, we are seeing stormy conditions in portions of the Black Sea region, which is helping to improve topsoil moisture there, but not solving the long term dryness issues. However, drier weather looks to return next week across that area. Then at the same time, actually Northern Europe, which has been dry the past thirty days, will start to receive rain activity there. So all in all, quite a bit of a dynamic pattern in Europe in terms of the precip patterns.

Todd Gleason: 22:21

Thank you much. We'll talk with you again next week.

Mark Russo: 22:23

You're welcome, Todd.

Todd Gleason: 22:24

Mark Russo is with Everstream Analytics joined us on this Monday edition of the closing market report that came to you from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online on demand anytime you'd like to listen to us at willag.0rg. There you can just click and play our ag programming or you can search it out in your favorite podcast applications or just hit the podcast tab and subscribe under the podcast of your choice, the opening market report, the closing market report, or the Illinois nutrient loss reduction podcast, all on the website at willag.0rg. You have a great afternoon. I'm Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.