Apr 08 | Closing Market Report

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Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant University in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report. It is the eighth day of April 2026. I am Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we will talk about the commodity markets with Greg Johnson from TGM, that is Total Grain Marketing in Champaign, Illinois. Then we will turn our attention to the war in Iran, its impact on fuel, fertilizer, and how farmers are feeling about the coming growing season. I think you will be surprised by the sentiment a survey of them gave back to Purdue University. And then we will turn our attention, as we close out our time together, to the weather forecast. We will do that with Drew Lerner at World Weather Incorporated in Kansas City on this Wednesday edition of the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media. It is 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 finished at $4.47 and a quarter, a penny and three-quarters lower. July at $4.58 a bushel, down two, and December new crop, two cents lower at $4.76. May soybeans, $11.62, up three and three-quarters. July, $11.78, three and a half higher. And November soybeans, $11.52, a penny higher for the day. Bean meal up $2.30 at $314.10. The bean oil at $67.42, $2.30 lower. Wheat futures, soft red down seven and three-quarters at $5.80 and a quarter in the May. July down 17, $5.91 and a quarter. And the hard red July at $6.12, 11 cents lower on the afternoon. Live cattle futures up 12 and a half cents, feeders $1.37 and a half higher, and lean hogs down $2.40. Crude oil, 17 dollars lower.

01:55 Ag Markets with Greg Johnson

Todd Gleason: Greg Johnson from TGM, Total Grain Marketing in Champaign, Illinois, now joining us to take a look at the marketplace. Hi, Greg. Thanks for being with us. Quiet trade after the president along with the leaders in Iran have come to a truce of some sort, a ceasefire for a couple of weeks. The biggest trade issues related to that, both of course were primarily in the energies with crude oil down sharply. Wheat also sharply lower as well today. What can you tell me about the marketplace?

Greg Johnson: I think we have a risk-on day today, with traders getting back into the stock market, into the equities, getting out of the oil position obviously. The corn and bean markets have not really tracked with the crude oil market the last couple of weeks. It was tracking, there was a correlation there earlier, but the last couple of weeks there has not been. The good news is even with oil down 15 to 20 dollars a barrel today, that really has not translated into sharply lower corn and bean prices. Beans are actually fractionally higher, and corn is just a couple cents lower. We kind of divorced ourselves from the tie between crude oil prices and corn and bean prices for the time being.

Todd Gleason: What have producers been talking to you about, if they have at all, or maybe they are just in the shed making sure that their machines are ready to go, particularly the planter at this time of year?

Greg Johnson: The corn market has been down three weeks in a row, and it looks like we are on our way to our fourth week in a row lower. With the lower prices, farmers are not interested in selling at these prices, and I agree with that. The one thing I would say, though, is they probably need to get offers in. When they get busy in the field, they may not be able to pay attention quite as much as they have been when they are not in the field. We are only 25 to 30 cents off contract highs. December corn got all the way up to $4.98. The crop insurance price is $4.62, so we were quite a bit higher than that crop insurance average price. I know it is early and if we have weather problems, we could go higher. If we do not have weather problems, I think the USDA report tomorrow will remind us of the fact that with the kind of acres that we are talking about and a normal type yield, we are going into the season with a 2.1 billion bushel corn carryout. We could be somewhere pretty close to 2 billion unless you tell me we are going to have a drought somewhere this summer. I think that is a good reminder for farmers to get offers in. Five dollars is where the market seems to want to run out of steam, so without a drought, we probably will not need to see five dollar corn. We could get back up into the $4.80s and $4.90s, so I would encourage producers to take a look at that, see if they can make money at $4.80, $4.90, and get some offers in at those levels.

Todd Gleason: Your point is the fundamentals really have not changed, at least not yet, and the trade for the old crop is looking forward to tomorrow's WASDE report. Only I think 3 million bushels down on the ending stocks for corn, just down a million bushels from 350 to 349 for soybeans. Soybeans though have managed to stay higher over the last couple weeks. How do you see that market continuing?

Greg Johnson: Same thing there too. I think the fundamentals might be a little bit better in the short run. In the long run, the extra acres and the big crop out of South America, 180 million metric tons, will get a confirmation as to whether that is still in play or not tomorrow. If that is the case, even a few more million acres, even though it was not quite as high of an acreage number as what the trade was expecting, if you put a normal yield on that, we are still going to have plenty of beans. We will get the carryout up into the 400 million bushel range instead of the 300 million bushel range. It is a reminder for producers to get beans sold on rallies. We are about 30 cents off of the highs that we have seen here on this last run-up and well above the crop insurance average price, so those are probably good levels to put orders in. Without a big announcement from President Trump and President Xi when they meet on May 14th and 15th, a demand rally would obviously help us. But without that demand, the RVO thing seems to have played out its course. We are back to trading a comfortable supply. Beans up towards the upper end of that range, if we can get May beans back up to the $12 range, if we can get November beans back up to that $11.80, $11.90 range, those probably would not be bad ideas to get some more beans sold at this point.

Todd Gleason: Are we far enough out from the RVO announcement that you have had time to have conversations about what total crush capacity in the United States might be for soybean oil, how that relates to renewable diesel and biomass-based diesel as well, and how close we are to capacity?

Greg Johnson: We have talked about that in the past, and we are very close to capacity. For the 2026 calendar year, it is going to be hard to increase crush much more than what it is. There are a few more plants coming online within the next six to seven months, so maybe next year in 2027 we could see crush expand. Crush is near its capacity at this point, so we probably should not look for any more bullish news on the RVO side. We could see something on the export side if President Trump and President Xi work something out, but I am not overly optimistic that that is going to happen. The beans have had a nice run-up, and we sold off a little bit recently, but another 20 to 30 cents if we gain that back, all of a sudden we are knocking on recent highs, and that might not be a bad place for producers to get grain sold.

Todd Gleason: I know the Andersons are still there next to you. They have the fertilizer side. I am wondering if you have had conversations with them about what fall fertilizer might look like for anhydrous ammonia. Particularly the farm doc team suggesting that their models would predict at this point $860 a ton conservatively, and that that could go higher depending on what is happening in the Middle East. This is prior to the pause. They said this will happen regardless simply because of the damage that has been done to the LNG production facilities that make urea eventually and other types of nitrogen. Have you been talking with your fertilizer friends about this and what are their concerns?

Greg Johnson: The potential for continued high prices on the input side are very real. I would say though that the farmers at this point are not willing to lock in those high-priced inputs so far advanced into the future, with a lot of time to go. Maybe the prices do not come down, but as they usually say when corn prices are low this early in the year, "I can always lock in a loss. Why lock it in nine months to a year ahead of time? I'll just wait until we get closer to the timeframe when I have to do something, and then I'll capitulate and lock that in if I have to." The prices could stay sticky high, but on the producer side, we have not seen a willingness to lock in those high prices this early in the calendar.

Todd Gleason: Greg, thank you much, I appreciate it.

Greg Johnson: Thank you, Todd.

Todd Gleason: That is Greg Johnson. He is with TGM, Total Grain Marketing.

10:55 Higher Fuel and Fertilizer Prices & Farmer Sentiment

Todd Gleason: The higher price of fuel and fertilizers may persist into the fall. This will cause serious issues for row crop farmers, already expecting a fourth year of losses. That was prior to the start of the war with Iran. Gary Schnitkey from the University of Illinois has been using a model to project future anhydrous ammonia prices for a few years, and today he says it is providing no relief.

Gary Schnitkey: We think this is going to persist into the fall, but we can see particularly the nitrogen sides going up. What is going to be interesting is to see what happens to sulfuric acid. Potash may be a little bit sheltered from these increases. Urea is not. Urea is one which is imported from the Middle East and that has been our largest increase. Diesel fuel has been going up which is likely to have some impact particularly on fall. Bio-diesel has been going up. All the anhydrous ammonia prices have been going up, and you can see that those increases have been large. Diesel and bio-diesel as well. We will talk more and more about this particularly as we are looking at fall decision-making.

Todd Gleason: Schnitkey made his comments during a farm doc webinar yesterday. His anhydrous ammonia model is conservatively projecting an 860 dollar per ton price this coming fall. It could be much higher. USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service showed the price of anhydrous ammonia across the state of Illinois this past week averaged nearly 1100 dollars a ton. Despite all of this deflating news, the March Purdue University CME Group Ag Economy Barometer shows U.S. farmer sentiment improved. This happened in the month of March, even as global uncertainty and financial pressures intensified. Michael Langemeier in the Purdue AgCast podcast noted that tight margins, rising input costs, and growing financial risk continued to influence farm level decisions, keeping producers disciplined with capital and cautious about major investments. He did say that all this negativity was offset last month primarily by just one thing.

Michael Langemeier: The impact of higher energy prices and higher fertilizer prices had a negative impact on sentiment. There were other factors going on here, and one of them that we did not talk about in the report is the bridge payments were going out. If you average those for a corn-soybean farm, they were about 35 dollars per acre, so they were rather sizable, and that probably boosted sentiment. If you look at corn and soybean prices, particularly corn prices, corn prices were up at the time we surveyed in March compared to the time we surveyed in February. One of the interesting things about corn prices is it is not perfectly correlated with energy prices, but it is positively correlated with energy prices. Because the energy prices went up, corn prices went up a little bit, and I think that offset some of the negativity regarding the higher energy and fertilizer prices. A lot of producers probably already purchased their fertilizer, so this is not going to have quite as much impact for those people.

Todd Gleason: The Purdue ag economist did make note that for those farmers who have yet to make 2026 growing season purchases, the impact of the war with Iran will be significant on their profits and or losses. You are listening to the Closing Market Report on this Wednesday afternoon. Our theme music is written, performed, produced, and courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer Tim Gleason.

14:50 Ag Weather with Drew Lerner

Todd Gleason: Let's turn our attention now to the growing regions across the planet. Drew Lerner is here, he is with World Weather Incorporated in Kansas City. Hi, Drew. I bet you are having a very busy Wednesday.

Drew Lerner: Every day is a good day, right? As long as we get up and we are breathing.

Todd Gleason: It is. That is very true. I want to start with the snowpack, probably in Canada. There is a big difference between it and that which is in the United States. There was a news item that NPR has been reporting throughout the day related to the potential dryness in the Western United States through the summer months and the impact it may have on water supply there. Let's start with Canada. I think the snowpack is pretty heavy there.

Drew Lerner: Yes, certainly in the northeast part of the prairies. That would be northeastern crop areas in Saskatchewan and probably the majority of Manitoba. Those areas have quite a bit of snow on the ground, anywhere from one to two feet in fact in several areas, and we just got another eight inches of snow last night across some of that region. It is coolish, and it does not look like we are going to see a tremendous amount of warming. Those areas can plant in May, in fact they often do, so that is really not that big a deal at the moment, but we do want to watch that. In contrast to that, it is quite dry in the southwestern parts of the Canada prairies. Still a multi-year drought prevailing there. That is part of the whole issue you are asking about in the Western United States. We have had a crazy warm winter, and the snowpack is minimal. I am looking at the snow cover chart right now and the mountains are really thin on their snow. This is going to be an issue for water supply in 2027, but probably not so much in 2026, and I say that because the water supply in California in particular is really still quite abundant, and they will be able to take most of the year for us to deplete that water supply and make an issue out of it. It would be more of an issue next year, especially if the winter is not abundantly wet. Some of the interior mountain areas of the West definitely do not have much snow, and the runoff is going to be pretty pitiful, and some of those rivers and streams are going to run fairly low this year. This raises the potential for fires over the course of the summer. Having the lack of precipitation in general over the western part of North America certainly raises the potential for a stronger than usual high-pressure ridge during the usual summer season. If that indeed does occur, two things will take place: one, we will probably have a lot of dryness in the Plains to deal with, and number two, the eastern parts of the U.S. and the Midwest in particular would probably have a cooler northwesterly flow of air during the summer that would produce some showers and thunderstorms periodically but not necessarily producing huge volumes of rain. I do think that the monsoon will kick in in July and August and bring some moisture to the western United States, and some of that moisture feed will come into the Midwest. From an agricultural perspective, we do not want to get too carried away about the dry issue coming up for the western part of the United States. Most of the agricultural areas will be away from that. The exception will be the Delta and the Southeast, where there will be some ongoing struggles with dryness. We are very dry right now in the southeastern portion of the United States. For right now, the biggest issue agriculturally is really in the western High Plains and hard red winter wheat country where it is still quite dry there, and only a few scattered thunderstorms are expected in the coming week.

Todd Gleason: That would be Montana, Wyoming. The hard red winter wheat in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, found some recovery?

Drew Lerner: The recovery that is going to occur there is going to be partial and temporary. One of the biggest things that are needed in that particular region is a good general soaking and an extended period of cool weather to stimulate new tillers after getting some damage to the crop over the winter. This pattern is going to be enough to improve the crop a little bit, but I am not convinced it is early enough in the season, and I am not convinced that we are going to see the moisture long enough to really stimulate a successful new tillering event and bring those new tillers to a full head to gaining some yield from that. I am a little bit of a pessimist, so we will see what happens here. It is hard to kill the wheat crop, and certainly any rain that falls out there is going to be helpful.

Todd Gleason: I do want to cover South America, but a short word on the primary corn growing regions of the nation from the western part of the Corn Belt in Nebraska all the way through Ohio.

Drew Lerner: For right now, we are looking at quite a bit of rain. This is the time of the year a lot of guys need to be in the fields to get those optimum yields, and we are not going to be able to do that very well with the frequency of rain and thunderstorms that are going to take place as we go forward through this next 10 days. There will be a period of better weather at the end of April and early May, unfortunately it is going to be fairly chilly during that time period, so drying rates will be slow, and then when we start to heat up, there will be more rain coming. Argentina is finally getting a break from too much rain. It has been raining quite a bit here recently. Their sunseed quality has suffered, but most of the corn and soybeans have not been bothered, and certainly the drier weather coming up over the next 10 days will be well-timed and good for the crop. For Brazil, we have seen a fairly active weather pattern here recently, and it looks like the monsoon is going to linger at least another couple of weeks. If that is the case, this puts the safrinha corn crop in a better position to make it through most of the reproductive season without running too short on moisture, assuming that the monsoon will end later in April. It is not a bad scenario from a Brazilian farmer perspective, but it is not good news for our marketplace.

Todd Gleason: When that second crop corn went in the ground, what was your assessment on the conditions it went in under, and were those good, bad, just okay, normal, and are they improving now?

Drew Lerner: Most of the corn crop went in fairly well. There were some pockets of dryness, but there was also some timely rain. The rain amounts were less than usual in quite a few areas, but we did not go through any prolonged period without any moisture at all. That was the initial planting environment. Since then, we have had some very good alternating periods of rain and sunshine. The moisture profile is not ideal. We are still lacking moisture down deep in the ground in the southern safrinha corn areas, but those areas can often get rain in April and May from mid-latitude frontal systems coming out of Argentina. Having dryness in the south is not necessarily a terrible omen. If we had dryness in the north, that would be a different story because we cannot get rain up that way once the monsoon ends. Today, the moisture profile in Mato Grosso, Goiás, and northern Mato Grosso do Sul is favorably rated. It is not ideal, but I think if we can extend the monsoon into the latter part of April, that buys them some very important time and they may do fairly well.

Todd Gleason: Thank you so much for all the updates, we appreciate it.

Drew Lerner: You bet, have a great week.

Todd Gleason: You too. Drew Lerner is with World Weather Incorporated in Kansas City. Joined us on this Wednesday edition of the Closing Market Report, which you can find online at willag.org. Just click and play the Closing Market Report from the webpage, or look it up in your favorite podcasting applications. I am Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.