Apr 16 | Closing Market Report

Todd Gleason: 00:00

From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market report. It is the April 2025. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Greg Johnson.

Todd Gleason: 00:14

He's with TGN. That's Total Grain Marketing, the elevator here in Champaign County. And we'll discuss the weather forecast with True Learner at World Weather Incorporated in Kansas City. Along the way, I'll have some advice from the weed scientist and agronomist at the University of Illinois, the crop scientist on campus, about cool wet soils and conditions for planting as well as plant populations for both corn and soybeans and how pre emergence residual herbicides work particularly in no till and what's needed there to make them effective all on this Wednesday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world.

announcer: 01:01

Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.

Todd Gleason: 01:07

In Chicago today, corn futures finished two to three higher, and the soybeans were up between 3 and 4¢. Greg Johnson from TTN. That's totalgrainmarketing.com right here in Champaign County. The elevator owned by FS now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. What a gorgeous day it is, Greg.

Todd Gleason: 01:29

That reminds me too that Farmers, this is probably the first day in our area, local area, that they're really moving, and they just move slow, and there'll be a lot of them on the road. So be careful out there. You can come up on the back end of them really, really fast. Mostly, they can see you, but not always. So be careful and be patient.

Todd Gleason: 01:51

Thanks much for being with us, Greg. I take it you're out and about this morning, and saw a lot of activity.

Greg Johnson: 01:58

Yeah. And as you said, it's really the first day. There was a few out yesterday, but, in our area, I think today is the official start of planting season. As you go south, throughout the state, they've had more rain as you go farther south. So I don't think we're doing as much to the south of here, but, certainly from here on north, I think, farmers are able to get into the field.

Greg Johnson: 02:19

The weather doesn't sound it sounds typical spring stop and start. We get a couple of good days and then, two or three days of rain, and then it gets warm, and then it gets cool, and then it gets wet, and then it gets dry. So I think, with the forecast the way it is, I think farmers are gonna try to take advantage from here on out of any opportunity they have to get in the field for a day or two at a time. And and it usually works out that we get it all planted, and, you know, maybe we'll have it spread out this year. Some years, we get it all planted in the same ten day to two week period.

Greg Johnson: 02:47

Other times, it gets stretched out for a five or six week period, and that seems to be my prediction anyway, is that it this is gonna be one of those stretched out, periods where it all, you know, it'll all get planted, but it may not all get planted at the same time.

Todd Gleason: 02:59

They'll be in the tractor cab, so they'll be happy regardless. So if it's four or five weeks from now, they'll be happy and stressed both, I suppose. Do the markets tell you that they'll be stressed about them still at that point?

Greg Johnson: 03:15

The the markets have actually done very well. Even with all the tariff turmoil, on the stock market, commodities actually had a very good week last week, up 30¢ in corn and 66¢ in beans. And And this week, we're kind of chopping back and forth. Yesterday we were down, $04 $0.06 in corn and $06 to $8 in beans, and today we're gaining that back. So, I think the markets, are hanging in there very well, the commodity markets, all things considered, with all the tariff talk.

Greg Johnson: 03:45

I think, you know, China continues to be the one country that, we may continue to have trade tensions slash trade wars with, but the other countries, sounds like they're willing to come to the table and negotiate. And as a result, the tariffs have been delayed for ninety days, and so, so far so good, I guess, as far as the trade talks are concerned.

Todd Gleason: 04:06

So the trade just turned its attention back to the s and d tables?

Greg Johnson: 04:11

Exactly. We we continue to see export numbers, above ahead of pace. And, every day or two, we see another announcement, either corn or soybeans to some different countries. Today, the rumor is that Pakistan, who believe it or not, I didn't realize this, is our sixteenth largest buyer of soybeans has talked about buying soybeans as a way to reduce that trade deficit. There's you know, a lot of countries are running up big trade deficits, which is a no no on president Trump's, list.

Greg Johnson: 04:41

So Pakistan is offering supposedly to buy soybeans to reduce that trade deficit. So, we we may see some positives out of all this, you know, trade tension.

Todd Gleason: 04:52

In about a month, USDA on the twelfth, it's a Monday, will release its first look at the new crop. Will things change, you think, then?

Greg Johnson: 05:01

You know, we we I don't know that it'll change. I think everybody realizes with 5,000,000 acres more of corn, the ending stocks number will not be 1,400,000,000. It'll probably be 2,000,000,000. But that assumes, number one, that we get all 5,000,000 acres planted, and number two, that we have something close to a trend line yield. Neither one of those do we know the answer to today.

Greg Johnson: 05:24

So, you know, the numbers will come out and on the surface they probably will look a little negative, but the bottom line is I think the weather in June, July and August will tell the tale. We will have enough acres and if we have a decent crop yield, prices will go lower, but I don't know that they'll go lower right away because there's so many different things that could happen as far as the weather is concerned that you would have to, you know, be very confident in your weather forecaster to to sell assuming that we're gonna have a normal crop everywhere in the Midwest.

Todd Gleason: 05:59

We're the optimist. Farmers have not sold, too much of the new crop, and they actually still have, some old crop, some a lot of old crop, I believe, around. Although they did a pretty good job of marketing in January and February. What should they be looking forward to as the places they might want to consider, a marketing push?

Greg Johnson: 06:22

It depends on how long you're willing to hold on to that old crop corn. I don't know that it's very likely that we see much more of a rally in April or May. If it rains they're going to say rain makes grain and that doesn't help the price. If it doesn't rain we get stuff planted in a more timely fashion and we all know that the small crops don't need a lot of rain. So it's hard to come up with a weather scenario that is friendly prices in April or May.

Greg Johnson: 06:48

But if you look at subsoil moisture levels, we are behind even though we've got, you know, a fair amount of rain here in April. The topsoil is very recharged, but the subsoil moistures, we're still running behind. So we're gonna need to get some timely rains in June, July, and August. And if you're willing to hold on that long, I think you can see higher prices this summer, but probably not here in the next six weeks.

Todd Gleason: 07:14

And finally, I'm looking forward to our conversation tomorrow for Commodity Week. You, Eric Snodgrass will join us. Kurt Kimmel and Dave Chatterton. Should be a fun afternoon. We'll take care of that at Southpaw Social in Mohammad.

Todd Gleason: 07:29

I'm looking forward to that.

Greg Johnson: 07:31

Yes. And, I'm looking forward to hearing, what Eric thinks the weather's gonna be like because I know nobody can predict the weather, that far out, but, nevertheless, the trade, does trade off of those long term weather forecasts. So it'll be interesting to see what, what people are thinking about the summer weather.

Todd Gleason: 07:47

Hey. Thanks a bunch, and we'll talk to you tomorrow afternoon.

Greg Johnson: 07:50

Thanks, Todd.

Todd Gleason: 07:51

That's Greg Johnson. He is with TGM. That's totalgrainmarketing.com. This week, the crop scientists from the University of Illinois have been awfully active on the Crop Central blog. I've pulled a couple of conversations I've had both with the weed scientist Aaron Hager and the agronomist Giovanni Prezefontes from campus.

Todd Gleason: 08:17

Let's start with Giovanni and talk about seeding rates and soil conditions. He says it's just not good to plant into wet soils, and that's kind of the first bit of advice he has for farmers in this month of April. It's also worse to plant into cold wet soils. There's still plenty of time, he says, for field conditions to improve.

Giovani Preza Fontes: 08:38

We don't want to plan if the soil is too wet just because of, you know, that's not a good start for the crops. It's probably gonna have a negative impact on emergence and establishment and and, you know, you're not setting yourself to to having a good stand.

Todd Gleason: 08:55

The first rule of thumb then is to wait for soil conditions to be good before planting. When that happens, farmers should work to get their seeding rates dialed in to deliver a plant density that maximizes profitability.

Giovani Preza Fontes: 09:09

So when we look at corn overall, what we found is that, and again, this is looking at the economic optimum plant density, right? So overall, what we found in our research is that we kind of maximizing the highest dollar return to seed when we have population densities of about 34 to 36 plants per acre. For soybeans, we see the maximum return to seed is around, you know, 115,000 plants to a 20,000 plants per acre.

Todd Gleason: 09:43

Again, Gio says to aim for a population density of emerged plants of 34 to 36,000 plants per acre for corn and between a 15 and a 20,000 plants per acre for soybeans. This is based on what he calls a conservative number related to the economic analysis. It uses $4 for corn and $10 a bushel for soybeans and a seed cost of about 50¢ per thousand seeds. Now let's turn our attention to weed control. Aaron Hager, Extension weed scientist from the Ovaez here.

Todd Gleason: 10:19

He's written an article for the Crop Central website blog as well. It is titled Principles of Soil Applied Herbicides. It's a reminder to producers of all kinds, particularly to no tillers, I think, Erin, about pre plant herbicides, how they work and what needs to happen in order for them to work well. Why did you write it?

Aaron Hager: 10:42

This is really a topic, Todd, that we we remind people of about every three or four years because of the increased importance, the increased utility, the increased utilization even of soil residual herbicides. We you know, many folks would remember the time, you know, when the glyphosate resistant or Roundup Ready soybean varieties were really were glyphosate was all that many people wanted to use, and a lot of folks moved away from things like residual herbicides and but of course nature has responded to that. And the evolution of resistance has really brought back the the the relevance, the importance of trying to keep weeds from ever emerging from the soil. But these things aren't really magic. You know, there there's not a magic potion, if you would, that makes these things perform as we hope they do.

Aaron Hager: 11:33

They really the the guiding principle is that in order for these soil residual, soil applied herbicides to be effective, they have to be in a state where they're available for uptake by the germinating seedlings. And so if they're sitting on top of residue, for example, in in a no till scenario, if they're sitting on top of dry soil in a conventional till scenario, they simply will not be as available as if they had been either worked in by a good amount of precipitation or by a shallow mechanical incorporation.

Todd Gleason: 12:06

If you're a no tiller, and I think you focus a bit on this, and trying to control weeds in your fields, there are a couple of problems. The trash that is there, and trying to get this herbicide, residual herbicide, into a space where it can be taken up by the seedlings. What do things work?

Aaron Hager: 12:29

If you're if mechanical incorporation is simply not an option in in your scenario, then you really are dependent upon getting either precipitate or if you have the capability overhead irrigation. There's really no one specific amount of precipitation nor is there one specific interval between when you make that application and when you need to receive that precipitation or that irrigation. It really depends on myriad factors. There's there's factors associated with chemistry of the herbicide itself. As you indicated, there's the question of surface trash residue.

Aaron Hager: 13:06

The more residue, the greater the opportunity for more tie up of that residual herbicide. There are factors about what is the existing soil moisture status. You know, all of these things come into play. If if there is a rule of thumb, so to speak, we generally say if you can receive anywhere from a half inch to an inch of precipitation within about seven to ten days after the application, that's probably one of your best case scenarios. And so if your amount of precipitation is less than that or the interval is greater than that, then the likelihood that those soil residual herbicides may not perform as well as if those other two scenarios have been satisfied starts to increase.

Todd Gleason: 13:48

Are there weed sizes that cause a problem if you can't get in early enough to do the residual? And you I mean, early enough meaning that the weeds have come up and are already growing.

Aaron Hager: 14:00

Well, if if you have emerged vegetation, you know, it it depends upon what your program is. If it's a if it's a residual herbicide that has very little foliar activity, for example, many of the group 15 products have virtually no post activity on emerged weeds, then we would highly encourage people to include something in that application specifically to control any emerged vegetation. It's always a risk when we try to plant first and then with the intention of coming back to control any existing vegetation because even though that may be our intention, we we are reminded almost every growing season that mother nature is really the one that controls what we can what we can and can't do.

Todd Gleason: 14:38

And finally, since we're now post plant, weed size matters.

Aaron Hager: 14:42

In the postemergence ring, that's probably one of the most critical factors is trying to control any emerged vegetation before it simply gets too large. We can always control smaller weeds much more effectively, much more consistently than if we try to target larger weeds. You know, go back to what we discussed a few minutes ago when the glyphosate resistant technology was still largely effective on most of our weed species. It was not uncommon to see fields that were with emerged weeds that were way too tall when glyphosate was still effective a lot. People chose that strategy.

Aaron Hager: 15:18

But what we have to remember is that, you know, weeds don't ever do anything to increase your crop yield. The only thing they're doing is reducing that genetic yield potential. And the longer that we allow them to compete with the crop, the more likely they're gonna be successful, and we're not gonna harvest the number of bushels at the end of the year that we might have if we would have been more timely with those post applications.

Todd Gleason: 15:42

Thank you, Aaron. Aaron Hager is an extension weed scientist based on campus at the University of Illinois. He's penned an article for the Crop Central website. It's inside of farmdoc.illinois.edu. You may also see it on our website at willag.0rg.

Todd Gleason: 16:01

That's willag.org. Look for principles of soil applied herbicides. The theme music for the closing report is written, performed, produced in courtesy of Logan County, Illinois Farmer Tim Gleason. Don't forget, you can always find our programming to listen to on demand at willag.org or look it up in your favorite podcast applications. Let's turn our attention now to the weather forecast.

Todd Gleason: 16:27

Drew Lerner is here. He's with World Weather Incorporated in Kansas City. I hear that you had the weather we're having today, yesterday. It's just gorgeous, magnificent, wonderful outside. Let's hurry up and get done so I can get there.

Todd Gleason: 16:43

Thank you for being thank you for being with us today. Planting weather across the Corn Belt. Tell me about it.

Drew Lerner: 16:52

Yeah. Boy, a lot of variety across the region. We have, still the floodwaters receding from the Ohio, river system. We are looking at the crest on the, the flooding on the Mississippi, South Of Memphis now working its way southward. It'll probably take another week to get to the Gulf Coast.

Drew Lerner: 17:12

And but even with the crest passing, we still are going to have flood conditions lingering for a while longer. So most of, of Northeastern Arkansas, a big part of Tennessee, certainly the West and big part of Kentucky, as well as some neighboring areas North of the Ohio River are still dealing with standing water in some of the low lying area. And those that don't have the standing water are just deep in the mud. And so there's really not much opportunity here for getting into the fields anytime real soon. The sad part of this outlook that I'm about to tell you is that we're going to see rain return to parts of these areas right before the ground gets dry enough to do any field work.

Drew Lerner: 18:01

So we're going to extend the delays well into the end of this month and probably into early May. And that's going to raise some concerns, I'm sure. The rain that's going to come up over this next seven days is probably gonna be most significant this this weekend into early next week. And we'll see one to three inches of rain coming out of Missouri, the heart of Missouri, into Northwestern Ohio to the south of that in the Ohio River Valley and southward through the Tennessee River Valley, as well as the Delta, we will see another probably three quarters of an inch to an inch and a half of rain. Now that's that's not excessive rain, but, you know, when we're in this extremely wet scenario that we're in right now, any rain is just bad news.

Drew Lerner: 18:55

And so we will not be able to drain these places that have the standing water out much more than what we're gonna see by the time we get to Saturday. And we will reverse the trend to some degree. We're not gonna see a new crest of serious flooding, but we are not gonna allow the ground to dry appropriately. So getting into some of these fields is is definitely gonna be put off for a couple of weeks, I'm guessing. There is additional rain beyond this event that I'm talking about too.

Drew Lerner: 19:26

And that's the sad part is that we will have another wave or two of moisture moving through the Ohio River Basin and the Delta probably as we go forward through the second half of next week into the following weekend. Now that event at the moment doesn't look terribly great. But as I just mentioned, any rain right now with temperatures holding close to normal is just probably not, it's not good enough. We gotta be dry and hot and I don't think we're going to be down that road for a little while. Now outside of that issue, and of course, that's a, that's a biggie.

Drew Lerner: 20:02

We still have moisture deficits in parts of the Western Corn Belt, but we will be seeing timely precipitation occurring in most areas. And so the stage should be set for really good planting conditions once we get outside of this period of more active weather that we're in right now. And so probably at some point in the latter days April and more likely the May, we're gonna have some really good planting conditions in the Western Corn Belt and parts of the plains too. Of course, we are still watching the the wheat areas in the plains, and, some of those areas from West Texas into Western Kansas and Eastern Colorado are gonna continue fighting some dryness.

Todd Gleason: 20:44

In South America, we've been watching dry areas in the Eastern part of the Center West, and further to the East. Have they expanded as we get to the end of their monsoon season, which should be now?

Drew Lerner: 21:01

Yeah. Normally, this is the end. The forecast models are being very generous with rain, and we will see scattered periods of precipitation occurring for another ten days at least in probably two weeks. So we're gonna get to the April with the moisture profile in Western Safrinha corn areas staying saturated or nearly saturated, which is exactly what they need for the late season planted crop because that will give that crop a chance to get a little closer to reproduction and filling without drying out too much. Even if we assume that the monsoon ends around the May 1, the Eastern areas you talk of are a little bit drier bias, but unfortunately for those who are rooting for a problem in Brazil, the wetter bias is going to shift into some of those drier areas.

Drew Lerner: 21:53

And we will see the ground becoming saturated in that part of the production area as well. It may not be quite as wet as it is in the West, but it will come real close. The bottom line is that we will make it to the end of this month without any issue whatsoever. And we'll have enough moisture in the soil to carry crop development for a good two to three weeks after the April, assuming that the weather is dry and seasonably warm. And so we could still run into a problem if the temperatures suddenly get very hot.

Drew Lerner: 22:27

But I don't see that happening right now. Certainly not with all the moisture that's in the ground. There'll be so much feedback moisture will hold the temperatures back. So for right now, it looks like the safrinha crop is gonna do a little bit better than what everybody was worried about.

Todd Gleason: 22:41

Hey. We'll talk with you again next week.

Drew Lerner: 22:42

Alright. Have a good week.

Todd Gleason: 22:44

You too. Drew Lerner is with World Weather Incorporated in Kansas City. Joined us on this Tuesday edition of the closing market report that came to you from Illinois Public Media. Find us online. Listen to us on demand anytime you'd like at willag.0rg, or search the closing market report out by name in your favorite podcast applications.

Todd Gleason: 23:05

I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleeson. Doctor.