Apr 17 | 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 17th day of April 2026. I'm Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Mike Zuzolo. He's at globalcommresearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas. And Eric Snodgrass will join us to discuss the agricultural weather forecast. I'll remind you to visit our website at willag.org where you can get an early start today on next week's spring fund drive. Just hit the "Donate Here" button, and we'd be glad to have you put into the commentary section in support of agriculture so that the staff and management here at WILL know you're making a contribution on behalf of the ag programming at Illinois Public Media. On that note, my brother, Tim Gleason, has made a contribution. Our theme music for both the closing market report and Commodity Week, which comes up immediately following this program, are written, performed, produced, and courtesy of him.

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Todd Gleason: Before we get started, meteorologist Andrew Pritchard has an update on some possible severe weather for the evening in the local area.

Andrew Pritchard: After a warm and windy Friday afternoon, scattered to widespread thunderstorms are expected to develop to the west across Missouri and Iowa, along and ahead of an approaching cold front. These storms may organize into lines or clusters as they move east into and across central Illinois later this evening into the overnight, with a risk of scattered severe weather impacts. Damaging wind gusts over 70 miles per hour and isolated tornadoes are the primary hazards expected with tonight's storms as they move through the area between 8:00 PM and midnight. The cold front will clear the area tonight, bringing cooler temps and quieter weather for the weekend. For Illinois Public Media News, I'm meteorologist Andrew Pritchard.

Todd Gleason: And I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason. Chicago corn today settled at $4.48 and 3/4 a bushel, up a quarter of a cent. July futures at $4.57 and 1/2, down a quarter. And new crop December, $4.77 a bushel, up a quarter. May beans, three and a half higher at $11.67 and 1/4. July, $11.83, up two and a half cents. And November soybeans, a half cent higher at $11.56 and 1/2. Bean meal, 90 cents lower, $331.80. Bean oil at $68.16, $1.17 lower. July soft red winter wheat, down seven and a quarter cents, settled at $5.99 and 1/4. The hard red July at $6.50, down a nickel for the day. Live cattle futures were 27 and a half cents lower at $247.35. Feeder cattle, $365.67 and 1/2, down $2.85. And lean hogs at $101.05 per hundred pounds, down 62 and a half cents. Crude oil in the West Texas, that's the WTI, at $82.68, down $8.49. The crude oil Brent global trade down $8.64 at $90.75. And the wholesale price of gasoline, 16 and 6/10 of a cent lower at $2.92 and 1/2 for the day.

03:32 Ag Markets with Mike Zuzolo

Todd Gleason: Mike Zuzolo at globalcommresearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas, now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. Hi, Mike, thanks much. You and I are talking before 2:00 today, and the Cattle on Feed report would be due out. I'm wondering if you could put it into context, though we haven't seen the numbers, with maybe some things that have been happening this week, including the settlement of the strike at the JBS plant in Colorado, and them going back to work. They had gone back to work already, but at least they have a settlement there. Can you tell me about those things in combination?

Mike Zuzolo: As far as actual supply and demand fundamentals and daily kill, it really hasn't shifted too much. It does show that JBS probably did a good job of making up for the lost kill at other plants, Todd. I think we saw a kill of about 512,000 preliminarily on Thursday's kill. That's right in there with what the trade has been expecting. The Cattle on Feed report, though, takes on added importance in respect to the hard break in the energy markets. The fear of the trade was increasing this week that the summer driving season and summer grilling season, after the CPI numbers came out, really do show that this year's summer grilling season demand is going to be a very big uphill battle. We have 100% ground beef prices dancing close to $7 a pound versus around $5.10 or $5.15 two years ago, whereas bone-in chops and boneless chicken breasts are both at about the same price as two years ago in the $4 range. So when you add together the strength of the earlier week's move in energies and the CPI data, the market probably started to wonder whether they should be this long in the cattle going into the Cattle on Feed report. Since the placements number kept us on feed as of April 1 close to 100% of last year, those are two big pieces of the puzzle that will likely direct our trade post-report.

Todd Gleason: If you take a look at some other things that happened through the week, there is a ceasefire with Iran at the moment and in Lebanon between the Lebanese and Israel. I'm wondering what impact you think that might have. And are there other things you've been watching in Washington, D.C., or policy on the global stage?

Mike Zuzolo: Plenty on the latter. Just to finish up and put a dot on the cattle market heading into next week, if we have lower energy prices coming and the peak in diesel and unleaded prices is here because of the ceasefire, and you don't get a bearish Cattle on Feed report, the USMCA starts to get negotiated starting this weekend. News sources out of Latin America that I've been watching are suggesting that the screwworm issue is going to be talked about. The USMEF has been talking about getting the border opened back up coming from the CEO doing an interview in a Latin American periodical. I think that frankly sunk the cattle market as we closed out Thursday's trade and kept us very much on the defensive in feeders going into Friday's close and the Cattle on Feed report. So depending on what the report says, if the USMCA negotiations don't say anything about opening the border, there are a couple of good reasons for short covering. As to the other things, in a very brief amount of time, we just have to simply watch to see if last week's lows in the grains are going to be taken out next week. In other words, what we are putting in this week is a base-building week, in my opinion, and we should not be able to go back and take out last week's lows. Even if we've lost the energy bull, we've gotten the dollar bear back, the gold bull back, and a weather bull established in the wheat market. I'd like to see this carry on through next week by the close.

Todd Gleason: We'll follow up with some of those things in a moment. USMCA, for those who've been listening, is the United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement, which replaced NAFTA, and USMEF stands for United States Meat Export Federation, that's who the CEO was that you were talking about. Now, when you look into next week, it sounds like you have a much more positive view of this marketplace.

Mike Zuzolo: For me and the economic analysis, it just really seems that we have a spillover domino effect in the energy side of the equation, Todd, that is just now starting to get appreciated in the energy-intensive commodities. If energy prices are going down, then the Fed should not need to raise interest rates, and that should beat the dollar back down and stimulate commodity investment again. That's the biggest train car that we lost with the engine these last couple of weeks. There are a couple of things working in the background that really support the idea that this market does not need to go to new lows. Especially given if we have a hard freeze in the hard red wheat belt country this weekend, because we've got low acres and probably low yield. And if peace has broken out in the Middle East, it opens up the idea that the US and China will probably meet and have their summit, which again should be supportive to grain prices overall.

Todd Gleason: Anything else to add before I let you go for the day?

Mike Zuzolo: Just have a fantastic weekend and keep buckled up, Todd.

Todd Gleason: Alright, you too. That's Mike Zuzolo. He's at globalcommresearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas, joining us on this Friday 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 anytime you'd like to listen to us at willag.org.

10:15 Ag Weather with Eric Snodgrass

Todd Gleason: On this Friday, let's check in with Eric Snodgrass at Nutrien Ag Solutions and Agrible to see what the weather forecast is like for the growing regions across the planet. Eric, good to talk to you. This is the third week, so we finally get a chance to talk. There's been quite a bit of severe weather around. Can you recap some of that for me first, please?

Eric Snodgrass: Here's the setup. We've had this massive intrusion of the Bermuda High into the southeast. There is mega drought in the southeast, but it has focused all of the heavy rains from Texas to the Great Lakes. If you go look at the precipitation statistics, the Great Lakes are right now having their wettest spring on record. Meanwhile, in the southeast, Kansas, Oklahoma, parts of Texas, getting up into Nebraska and Colorado, they're also having a highly anomalous precipitation pattern, but they're dry. In the middle is all this really wet weather, and a ton of it has been severe weather. We set a new state record in Illinois for hail size. We've had a lot of severe weather, and we're in for more of it right now. It's got a lot of folks worried if this is the way that this upcoming season is going to go. Are we just in for repeated severe weather events, and what are they going to do to the growing season?

Todd Gleason: You've been traveling a lot through the winter months, you always do. Is there anything that people have been asking or talking about that you have made note of?

Eric Snodgrass: I'd like to just say something that I hope I'm clear on. I've been asked, and I was just asked again yesterday at an event, if the government is controlling all of this. If the government is sending all this severe weather and the nasty hailstorms. I'm going to say just a couple of things. One, that's giving a lot of credit to our government. We can't get certain things right, but boy, we can control the weather. The reality is we can't. You have no idea how bad I wish we could control the weather. We tried this during the Vietnam War. It was one of the largest government attempted manipulations of weather in history, called Operation Popeye, from 1968 to 1972. Instead of trying to shut down that northern border in Vietnam so the Vietcong could not continue to go back and forth between there and Communist China, we wanted to flood out the Vietcong supply trail instead of dropping napalm. Fifty thousand different attempts at manipulating the weather through cloud seeding were undertaken. They were found to have no effect. In fact, four out of the five years, it was drier than average rather than wetter. I'm bringing this up to make one thing very clear. If you'd like to manipulate weather, you have to do it on the size scale and order of magnitude of producing enough energy that you're going to be the equivalent of the sun. That's what's ultimately driving all of this.

So, what made all the severe weather up north? We've had wide open access to heat, open access to unstable air, and it's been focused because the Bermuda High has been so dominant. Why is it dominant? We've had an El Nino building, which means all the effort has been going into the Pacific, allowing the Bermuda High to expand into the southeast. We can point to scientifically reasonable reasons that make sense on what's going on. And it's not done, Todd. There's a nasty line of storms that's going to come toward us late tonight into early tomorrow morning. It's a big area of enhanced risk to our west over the Mississippi River, and it's coming again. So there's more in store. I just want to be very transparent and clear that I promise you, our government is not manipulating this.

Todd Gleason: Okay. That severe weather that you mentioned, who needs to be concerned and where?

Eric Snodgrass: All of us. Everybody that's listening to you right now. This is going to stretch from Wisconsin all the way down to Oklahoma, and it's going to move from the west to the east. I think it'll be coming over the river late this afternoon, up by the Quad Cities and Dubuque, and then down by St. Louis. I'm expecting it to be after 6:00 or 7:00 tonight. Then it's going to press east toward us, bringing in some very heavy rain. And then behind it, Todd, some really cold weather. If you've not looked at the temperatures on Sunday, we're getting pretty chilly again, and there's even frost risk in the mix for us going forward.

Todd Gleason: Tell me more about that.

Eric Snodgrass: This is what's troubling. We've had so much warm weather as of late. With this next big push, we're going to drop some really cold air that's going to come out of Canada and come through the area, taking us again down to a frost. I don't know if it's going to be as far south as where Matt Bennett farms in southern Illinois; he may get by without a frost event. I think central to northern Illinois, we are going to see some cooler conditions in the low to mid 30s. To be honest, early May even looks a little cool for us as well. Normally, if we're trying to get a crop established, we want it to just crank on heat early. All of our heat was really early this year, and now we're getting a little bit more of a flux in the temperatures. By the way, Todd, earlier this week, I also got another question about how windy this spring has been. It's not as windy as last spring, which was the all-time record setter for Illinois going back almost 50 years, but this is a top 10 windiest March into early April that we've had. I looked back at the statistics, and man, has it been windy these last few springs.

Todd Gleason: You mentioned May. Do you have a forecast for that month?

Eric Snodgrass: I do. With some of the cooler weather coming in May, we are actually expecting an early May to have some more wide open windows to get the crop put in. If we can get by without having too much cool weather that stops us, it should be a nice open time period to get a crop established. It is not going to last long. There are a lot of indications as this El Nino continues to develop that we're going to go back over stormier and wetter. There are windows opening up in the forecast, even one right away after this front comes through tonight into tomorrow. I'm also seeing rain coming back into the plains and into the southeast as well, which has been so very dry.

Todd Gleason: I know May is far enough out that that's difficult. Anything for summer?

Eric Snodgrass: I have 10 different models predicting El Nino, and eight of them are predicting a very strong El Nino. Some of them are predicting the strongest El Nino on record. We're all trying to balance what that's going to look like. If I'm growing corn in Illinois, I'm going with what the government just put out yesterday. They have us as a cool summer. Not hot, not 2009 cool or 2014 cool, but a cooler summer with decent rain. The European model is a bit warmer and a bit stormier. And the newest model run by the National Multi-Model Ensemble has actually got us pinned down for drier. Todd, if you're unaware of what I just said, our models right now are predicting everything is a possibility for summer. They're all over the place, and nothing is clear. I would just tell you, think about 2015, 1997, 1991, 1982, and 1972. Those are also years that built in big El Nino events like the one we're about to see, and they could be decent analogs. For the most part, those years were not disastrous years for yields across much of the Midwest.

Todd Gleason: We'll check with you about the randomness of weather again next week. Thank you much, I appreciate it.

Eric Snodgrass: You bet, Todd. Thank you.

Todd Gleason: You're welcome. That's Eric Snodgrass. He is with Nutrien Ag Solutions and Agrible. Joined us on this Friday 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.org. Now, if you can stay with us for the whole of the hour, you'll hear all of our Commodity Week program that's coming up next. If not, you can hear it online right now at willag.org. Or you can search out Commodity Week or the closing market report by name and listen to them on demand on your favorite podcast applications too, places like Apple and YouTube Music, as well as Spotify, and so many more, including the NPR One app.