Apr 13 | Closing Market Report

cmr260413

- Curt Kimmel, AgMarket.net
- Risk Premium & N Supply Chain Issues
- Mark Russo, EverStream.ai

Todd Gleason: From the land-grant university in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the closing market report. It is the 13th day of April 2026. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Curt Kimmel. He's at AgMarket.Net in Normal, Illinois. We'll hear today from Frayne Olson, agricultural economist at North Dakota State University. And then we'll turn our attention to the weather forecast. We'll do that with Mark Russo at Everstream Analytics. All on this Monday edition of the closing market report that comes to you from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online on-demand at willag.org. That's W-I-L-L-A-G dot O-R-G. Our theme music is written, performed, produced, and courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer Tim Gleason. Todd Gleason's services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.

May corn for the day settled at $4.40 1/4. It was 3/4 of a cent lower. July at $4.51, down a 1/4. December corn, $4.71, 1 1/4 lower. May soybeans, 13 1/2 lower. A settlement price there at $11.62 1/4. July, $11.77 1/2, down 13 3/4. November beans, $11.49 3/4, down 8 cents for the day. Bean meal futures up 10 cents for the day, and bean oil futures 59 cents lower. Wheat futures, soft red in the July, that's the harvest month, 11 1/2 higher at $6.16 1/2. And the hard red July, up 6 1/2 cents at $6.34 1/4. Live cattle futures, 67 1/2 cents lower. Feeder cattle up 47 1/2 cents. Lean hogs settled down $6. Crude oil for the day, $1.97 higher, below a hundred bucks again though, they went to $105.63 for the day, around $98.51 at this time. And that's in the WTI. The crude Brent at $99.10, up $3.90.

02:12 Ag Markets with Curt Kimmel

Todd Gleason: We're joined now by Curt Kimmel of AgMarket.Net to help make sense of these numbers. Hi, Curt. Thanks for being with us.

Curt Kimmel: Glad to be here. Another week, hopefully we avoid some of these storms coming at us.

Todd Gleason: We'll see how that goes. There are places, of course, that need rainfall, so it is a double-edged sword. Speaking of that, over the weekend, the United States and Iran did not come to an agreement. The President has now put into place a blockade. Iran also has a blockade. I don't think much will be getting through, it feels like. What impact did that have on the marketplace?

Curt Kimmel: That is another news item we need confirmation on, and something we cannot control and are subject to. There were also reports that China was not too happy with that, and their vessels carrying energy out of there will go through. In the same breath, the Chinese navy is supposedly not too far away. That is unconfirmed headline news, but the market is subject to that type of news. Initially, we saw beans weak and corn and wheat higher on some spread activity unwinding the spread. We saw that the bean market did record a daily price reversal to the downside, so we need some positive news to get the bean market turned back higher.

This morning's export shipments: corn shipments at 1.7, that was at the upper end. Beans, 814,000 tons, that was in the middle. Wheat shipments, 320,000 tons, that was at the lower end. The crush report expected to show another good round of crush, but the thing with the crush report is it's expected to show some building of soybean oil stocks. We'll see how the market handles that and what the crush number is. Going into 11:00 this morning, the funds were sellers of about 3,400 contracts of beans, they were buyers of 5,800 contracts of wheat, 3,200 contracts of corn, bought 4,300 contracts of soybean meal, and were about even on the bean oil.

Todd Gleason: A couple of things. Are there estimates out for this afternoon's crop progress report? And also, have you been talking to producers? I know I've seen them in the field over the last week, of course.

Curt Kimmel: One of these rare times I don't have estimates for the report this afternoon, but yes, visiting with producers, there's been some pretty good headway taking place. It's still early. I expect this afternoon's report to show at average, maybe a tick above average. The equipment today, we're able to cover a lot of ground. It seems here in Central Illinois, if you go Northeast, guys have been putting some beans in. You go straight East of us, there's quite a few beans in. It seems like a good chunk of guys I visited with had about half or two-thirds of their beans in. As far as planting corn, just a tad bit there.

Corn and more rapid progress, you go Decatur and South. The slower area that needs to warm up a little bit more and dry out is Northwestern Illinois into Iowa. They're still a few days out yet on that. But if this weather cooperates and stays warm, I don't think it will be too long. There's pretty good headway. I think a lot of these guys have been going, last week, the Delta to the far South has been playing catch up. We'll see what this afternoon's report shows, and I wouldn't be surprised that we're a little further along than what the trade thinks.

Todd Gleason: Thank you much. We appreciate it. We look forward to talking with you again really soon.

Curt Kimmel: Very good. Take care, Todd.

06:54 Risk Premium & N Supply Chain Issues

Todd Gleason: You too. That's Curt Kimmel. He is with AgMarket.Net online. We're now joined by Frayne Olson, agricultural economist at North Dakota State University in Fargo. He is here once a month. Hi, Frayne. Thanks for being with us today.

Frayne Olson: Always my pleasure. It's always fun to visit and get caught up on what's going on in the wild world of agriculture.

Todd Gleason: I did take a look at the drought monitor from last week, April 9th. Congratulations, by the way, North Dakota is sitting there very pretty. Not too dry, not too wet. It's one of the few that looks that way across the Midwest. I want to ask you first about the common theme across most of our analysts for probably all of this year, at least since January. The report simply says, we believe you should get started. The further we got in, especially to March, you had better get started with your old and new crop sales. Or actually, finish up your old and start those new crop corn and soybean sales, 20 to 40 percent. Are you in that same kind of camp?

Frayne Olson: I am. Actually, what I said in some of my last farmer meetings before the spring season started, I made some comments about that. When you look at the charts, general price movements, it's pretty obvious to see where we started getting a risk premium built into corn, beans, and wheat due to the conflict in Iran. We saw from an outside market standpoint, the stock market starting to drop. There was an increase in some of the index funds, commodities. They switched from investment in stocks and bonds into a commodity portfolio, and a lot of those are pre-indexed portfolios which include a portion of the grain complex. They were primarily going after the precious metals, gold, and crude oil, the energy market. But they end up getting some of the grains as well because it's a pre-packaged index.

We did see an increase in price but also an increase in volatility. With some calming down over the last week, we did see some of that pullback, some of that risk premium come out of the grain markets. I do think it will probably get put back in again. So this, in my opinion, is an opportunity to get some pricing done. It doesn't have to be a lot. I'm not suggesting it be big, big values, but at least get the process started. Getting some old crop cleaned up, looking at some of the new crop pricing. I'm fully in that camp. What percentage you should do is a little bit more ticklish, depending upon your individual farm, your ability to store grain, your cash flow needs, etc. I am fully behind a minimum of 20 percent. 40 percent, in my opinion, might be a little bit strong just from my personal bias, but I could certainly be talked into that.

Todd Gleason: I'd like to ask you about acreage as well. Numbers coming out from the United States Department of Agriculture on the last day of the month for March. That survey taken relatively early in March, and the war in Iran's impact really hadn't been diagnosed as a urea and/or nitrogen source problem. The Secretary of Agriculture says that not this year, 80 percent of the nitrogen has been put in place. Farmers here in Illinois and Indiana, that seems like the right number. That 20 percent might be interesting as it relates to the acreage if they can manage to switch to soybeans because of the price ratios. I'm wondering what happens in your part of the world, though. Have you been having those kinds of discussions?

Frayne Olson: Yes, I have. I've actually done a few sessions for some co-op managers' conferences and talking to some of the folks that are in retail fertilizer, grain merchandising, petroleum as well. Had a lot of conversations with those guys around this region. As far as pre-purchased or how much of the fertilizer has been priced, particularly nitrogen products, before the war began, yeah, that 75-80 percent seemed to be a pretty common number. There were a few individual farmers that hadn't booked much, there were some that wished obviously now they had booked a lot more than they did.

There wasn't a lot of presales. There wasn't a lot in the 2025 purchasing cycle, mainly because incomes are down, they didn't need the tax write-offs. But after the first of the year, there was starting to get a lot more activity. From the nitrogen products, again, I think that number seems to be pretty common or pretty reasonable. We do have a lot more flexibility on crops up here. It's not unusual for a typical North Dakota farmer to have four, five, or even six crops in a normal year. So we have some flexibility to flip around. I get a lot of questions about that. When I looked at the prospective plantings report that came out, most of the numbers I saw I felt pretty comfortable with. They were pretty similar to what I had been informally surveying farmers all winter long.

The one exception was corn. Pretty much every meeting I went to, I said, what do you think is going to happen to corn acreage locally? And almost everybody said, yeah, it's going to be up. And then we get to the survey numbers and it was down just a little bit from last year. Not extensively, it wasn't a huge shift or reduction, but it was down. That surprised me a little bit. One of the challenges we have, especially for a farmer that has tight supplies or very, very high fertilizer bills from the nitrogen perspective, corn is obviously a big nitrogen user, but so is wheat—both spring wheat and durum—and canola is also a pretty heavy fertilizer user.

When we look at our dominant crops that we grow up here, acreage-wise, number one is soybeans, number two is spring wheat, number three is corn, and number four is canola. So those are our big crops. If there are, we have some other legumes besides the soybean that we produce. Soybeans obviously are still our number one acreage crop in the state. I do think there will be some more interest in soybeans. Now, my caution to farmers looking at that is we still have this big uncertainty about exports and what's going to happen with our trade relations with China. So there is some risk exposure in the marketplace now that you're looking to try and absorb.

But we do have some other legumes. We're also, this region is very heavy into dry edible beans: pinto beans, navy beans, black beans. We also have some other pulses, including field peas and lentils. So we do have some other choices. But again, each one of those crops is relatively small in acreage relative to let's say a soybean or a corn. I know there are farmers looking at that, I know there are some farmers that can consider a much heavier pulse rotation. So it doesn't have to be soybeans in this region, but it will likely be soybeans just because they're relatively simple and easy to not only produce but also to market.

The net of all of that is I see the numbers coming out of the report, the prospective plantings report, I think the numbers are pretty close to what we'll see this spring unless we have some really funny spring weather. Except for that corn number. I do think the North Dakota corn number might actually come up just a little bit because a lot of the fertilizer had already been purchased. Hadn't been applied, there are some retailers a little bit concerned about some refill tons, but I think they'll be able to work around those short-term issues. So it's really a pricing thing and how much rationing do we need to have to make.

Todd Gleason: On that note, because North Dakota uses, I think, primarily urea as its nitrogen source across the board, and I don't know whether that's spring applied or fall applied, and whether that depends on crops, and there is expected to be a lag into the 2027 growing season, or the fall this year, will be a high-priced nitrogen and urea maybe longer than that. Does that change your crop mix going into next year?

Frayne Olson: Going into next year, I think it will. Next year, I think, is going to be a very different environment. Again, I think from what I'm hearing, most of the—we are very urea-focused. There is still some anhydrous that goes on, especially in the western portion of the state, but a lot of the farmers have switched to urea only. We don't do a lot of UAN. There's some corn guys that do some top dressing, but it's relatively small amounts. So heavily dependent upon urea. And I agree, I don't think fertilizer prices are going to come down very quickly. We tend to see big run-ups with a very, very long tail as prices start to come down. So the longer this conflict in Iran continues, the more challenges I think we're going to have from a pricing standpoint. I think the US is in pretty good shape from a supply chain, being able to get the available supplies, the question is going to be what's the price level.

I am a bit concerned, becoming more and more concerned about fall fertilizer prices. Again, given thin profitability, I think farmers are going to get very conservative on the amount of fall fertilizer they put on. That might have an impact, I guess as we move into the 2027 cropping year, on what those acreage balances will look like.

Todd Gleason: Thank you much, and I look forward to talking with you again in another month.

Frayne Olson: All right, always a pleasure. Enjoy the conversation.

17:29 Ag Weather with Mark Russo

Todd Gleason: That's Frayne Olson. He is an agricultural economist at North Dakota State University. Let's take a look at the global growing regions across the planet. Mark Russo is here. He is with Everstream Analytics. Hello, Mark. Thanks for being with us.

Mark Russo: Hello there, Todd.

Todd Gleason: Let's start here in the United States. We've been talking a great deal about rainfall that is needed in the hard red winter wheat growing regions of Kansas, Colorado, parts of Texas, Oklahoma. Did they get anything out of this last set of rain?

Mark Russo: Got a little bit of rain here with this opportunity over the past four to five days. In general, the eastern belt and parts of the southern belt got good rainfall at levels which stabilize the crop, but the vast majority of the western hard red winter wheat acreage missed out on meaningful rainfall. In the central areas here, it was all over the board. A few areas in around Wichita, Kansas picked up rains, but more on the lighter side of things. So all in all, the majority of the belt did not improve over the past week. Some stabilization, but it could have been much better.

Todd Gleason: And do we have anything in the offing in the next week, 14 days?

Mark Russo: The short answer is no. The next two weeks will feature across that western acreage just a continuation of drier weather. At the same time, there will be additional rains in the eastern areas that have fared better of late, but for that key western area that still needs rain, we don't see anything meaningful over the next two weeks.

Todd Gleason: Does that take the crop, do you suppose, from needs to dire?

Mark Russo: Starting to head that direction here. Would not exactly say that here by the end of the two-week period, but if this carries forward just another week or two into early May, then that will certainly be the case.

Todd Gleason: That's the timeframe I'm looking for. About the rest of the Midwest, the corn belt in particular, how are things progressing? I was looking at the drought monitor from last week, still before the weekend, on the 9th. There was an awful lot of the corn belt that was really dry.

Mark Russo: That's been improving here, and will continue to improve as the pattern does feature rain activity. Overall, the outlook is variable here from a precipitation standpoint. Taking a step back, what we've seen here lately is that the southern Midwest has been dry over the past week. That has extended into the Delta and southeast. That's where planting progress has been pretty rapid here of late. Coming up, at least the southern Midwest, most of it's on the drier side of things. A little bit of rain around, but a little bit of a drier bias.

The central acreage, especially northern Illinois and then eastern Iowa, that area looks to be the wettest here going forward. So things will be a little bit slow there. We're not expecting that to be any kind of exceptionally wet pattern or things that would bog down and be a concern. Then there will also be some additional rains in portions of Wisconsin and Michigan, where it's very early, but some interruption is possible there in field work operations and planting. Then you go to the northwest Midwest, it's drier biased, also a little bit warmer biased, and really good planting is expected there the next few weeks. So all in all, it's all over the board here in terms of weather conditions and planting progress going forward.

Todd Gleason: On that planting progress note, USDA will update those figures this afternoon at 3:00 Central time. Many of these stations, including our home station, will talk about those numbers tomorrow morning. 8:55 a.m. is our opening market report on WILL. Many other stations as well will have an update on that set of numbers. Probably, we'll talk a little bit about South America during those reports as well. What are you seeing there today?

Mark Russo: Well, Todd, Argentina's pattern looks a little bit wetter over the next two weeks, with a couple of bigger storm systems moving through. And with above-normal rainfall now expected across the vast majority of acreage, that will begin to slow down harvesting of corn and soybeans. Soybeans are just starting to get harvested, so they're going to start on the slower side. Corn has been advancing at a very good pace in recent weeks, but now that's starting to slow as we go through the remainder of April.

As for Brazil, the only item of note is in the southern Safrinha acreage, in around Parana, Brazil. That area is back into a drier pattern over the next couple of weeks. Their soil moisture is adequate right now, will start declining for the next couple of weeks. Ideally, they'd like to see another rain event right at month's end or in early May to boost soil moisture before the dry season comes to an end. So that's going to be the main thing to watch here over the next few weeks.

Todd Gleason: Thank you much, Mark.

Mark Russo: You're welcome, Todd.

Todd Gleason: That's Mark Russo. He is with Everstream Analytics, joining us on this Monday edition of the closing market report. That came to you from Illinois Public Media. Find us online at willag.org. I'm Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.