Apr 27 | Closing Market Report

cmr260427

- Curt Kimmel, AgMarket.net
- Middle East Ceasefire Fails to Ease Fertilizer Price Surge
- farmdoc Webinar on Controlling Costs 11am Thursday
- Chad Hart, Iowa State University
- Mark Russo, EverStream.ai

Todd Gleason: From the land grant university in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the closing market report. It is the 27th day of April 2026. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up we'll talk about the commodity markets with Curt Kimmel from agmarket.net out of Windsor, Illinois. In Ames, Iowa, we'll discuss the agricultural fundamentals with Chad Hart, economist from Iowa State University. And then we'll turn our attention to the weather forecast with Mark Russo out of DeKalb, Illinois, and Everstream Analytics. All on this Monday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online on demand at willag.org.

Announcer: Todd Gleason's services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.

Todd Gleason: May corn for the day settled at $4.60 and 3/4, up 5 and 3/4 of a cent. July 4.69 and 1/4, 5 and 3/4 higher. And December at $4.89 and 1/2, up 5 and 1/4. May beans 13 and 1/2 higher, they settled at $11.77 and 1/4. July $11.92, up 13 and 1/2 cents. And November up a dime, they finished at $11.65 and 3/4. Bean meal $9.50 higher. Bean oil for the day up 35 cents. Wheat futures for the soft red July 13 higher, $6.29 and 3/4. The hard red July at 6.75 and 1/4. Both of those of course the harvest month, up 5 and 1/2 cents. Live cattle futures for the day $3.72 and 1/2 higher. Feeders up $6.50. Lean hogs 27 and 1/2 cents higher for the afternoon for 100 pounds. Crude oil in the West Texas or the WTI at $96.76, up 2.36. And the Brent at $108.86 a barrel, up $3.53.

01:52 Ag Markets with Curt Kimmel

Todd Gleason: Here to talk about these numbers is Curt Kimmel from agmarket.net. Hello Curt, thanks much. We had an interesting weekend. The market stayed very calm through that, though it did begin to rally during the day. What was the main impetus behind it?

Curt Kimmel: Well, several factors. We'll hit the soybean market part of it first. Evidently there was some meal from Argentina bound for the EU or the Netherlands. They saw two to three cargoes had trace amounts of this HB4 gene in it. It's been approved by the US. In fact, it's been approved by China back in 2022. They rejected those loads. Basically, I didn't know anything about it until today, but it's a gene that's been bred in to help drought, make it more drought resistant. I guess I think it's from the sunflower part of the plant. So they said it's like 13 years ago or so they've been doing this. And so that showed up on the radar and that triggered some pretty decent buying in the meal. Meal finishing what, from 8 to 9 dollars higher. Unwinding of the meal oil spread, that spilled over into the soybean complex. So that's putting the beans in a position on the technical charts to maybe challenge some overhead resistance here. So it's nice to see starting out the week here strong.

Curt Kimmel: Corn wise, Brazilian corn is basically kind of on the short side for moisture. So that's providing some support in the corn complex. It continues to kind of climb the wall of worry here. We're hitting some retracement levels back up to the upside, so it's getting in a position to maybe challenge their highs.

Curt Kimmel: Then on the wheat side of the equation, there's just been some irreversible damage that's going to be hard to fix in the western wheat belt. And too, there's some isolated cases where there's been too much rain all of a sudden. This afternoon's wheat conditions report is expected to show 29% in the good to excellent category versus last week's 30% good to excellent. So that wheat crop continues to be downgraded or a little bit of a concern even though we have ample supplies around the world.

Todd Gleason: The meal would be playing particularly from Argentina an outsized part in today's trade mostly because this is where meal is shipped out of. Argentina, that's their primary source of shipping. For the soybean, they don't ship many whole soybeans. Brazil, the United States mostly shipping whole soybeans. The United States would be the west coast for bean meal, and that's brand new as a development related to soybean oil. How long do you think that this can play in the marketplace? Because if they're really rejecting those loads, they'll have to fulfill it from somewhere, and I'm not sure where that'll be easily done from.

Curt Kimmel: Yeah, exactly. We'll need to see confirmation of this and see if there's some additional concern. I don't know if they're playing from the Chinese handbook of trading commodities or not, you reject it and all of a sudden you buy a discount from that location. So the trend needs to continue. Two or three cargoes, you know, they, like you said, they're fairly large amounts there. So we'll have to monitor that as we go. Bean meal has been on the short side due to the fact that the trade's been more interested in buying oil, selling meal. So the most emphasis has been on the bean oil side of the equation. But yeah, it's definitely a new item that snuck in the back door here that we need to watch.

Todd Gleason: You mentioned the Crop Progress report. What do you think it will show for corn and soybeans today?

Curt Kimmel: As a nation, we're going to be maybe at average, a little above average. Corn planting progress expected to be about 23% complete as a nation. Soybean planting progress 22% complete as a nation. Now locally on east from our area, there's some producers well done with beans and maybe half their corn in. As you move north and northwest, a little slower progress or start. I'd say we're probably 25 to 30% complete. Now one spot I want to single out, Iowa. You take that eastern part of Iowa into portions of that northwestern Illinois, they're, they're, it's awful hard to turn a wheel there. Might be only 5% and some not started yet. So we'll have to watch that area real close, Todd.

Todd Gleason: Hey, thank you much Curt. Curt Kimmel is with agmarket.net.

07:02 Middle East Ceasefire Fails to Ease Fertilizer Price Surge

Todd Gleason: One quick ag news item today, along with a webinar announcement for this coming Thursday. We'll start with the news. The ceasefire in the Middle East has eased the price of crude oil, but nitrogen fertilizer prices have yet to follow. Retail prices for urea and anhydrous ammonia (the UAN solutions) climbed right through the mid part of April, as shipping in the Strait of Hormuz remains far below pre-conflict levels. Insurance barriers, of course, continue to deter ship owners from returning to the route, too. Writes University of Illinois agricultural economist Gary Schnitkey on the farmdoc daily website. You can look for that article.

Todd Gleason: For agriculture, the effects of this disruption are evident in nitrogen fertilizer prices. Urea is up about 41% from the week before the fighting started in February. And anhydrous ammonia has increased by more than 30%. These fertilizer prices are adding roughly $30 to $55 an acre in cost for this year's corn crop. Those costs would be added to the $40 to $80 per acre losses the U of I Ag Econ team already pegged for the 2026 corn crop in their January crop budgets.

07:55 farmdoc Webinar 11am Thursday

Todd Gleason: The farmdoc team will discuss how producers might go about mitigating these losses this week. They host a free webinar Thursday morning at 11 a.m. Central Time. Look under the webinar events section on the farmdoc daily website to register. Or you can go to our website at willag.org and look in the calendar of events, that's 11 a.m. this Thursday. A farmdoc webinar you can register for free right now.

Todd Gleason: You're listening to the closing market report on a Monday afternoon. Our theme music is written, performed, produced, and courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer Tim Gleason.

08:59 Commodity Markets Discussion with Chad Hart

Todd Gleason: I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason. Chad Hart, extension economist at Iowa State University, is now on the line with us. Hi Chad, thank you for taking some time on a Monday. At the time you and I are talking in the 11 o'clock hour, when the markets had begun to rally, it appears that some war premium is being put back into the marketplace. I'm wondering what you think about that to begin with, and whether that is something that producers can count on over time, relatively speaking, or whether it dissipates quickly?

Chad Hart: Um, it's nothing that we can count on over time, but I will say it this way. The longer the conflict goes on, and the more we see, let's call it the bottleneck within energy, that means we know that those energy costs are going to stay higher for longer and longer, which lends some credence to, yeah, we can bank on a little bit of this. The other thing I'll say though is that when we look at, you know, putting this war premium on, at basically the same time we're putting some weather premium on. So we're getting reinforcing shots from two different factors helping push prices higher.

Todd Gleason: Because as we talk, I think probably the rainfall has passed you by, running through us here on the 27th day of April. And while we have been ahead, this will slow things down, and I guess that's the kind of weather premium you're talking about, and or maybe some of the drought in South America for corn as well?

Chad Hart: Well that's true. I think we can flip this several different ways. As we think about Iowa into northern Illinois, you know, we've seen, if you will, a little bit too much water show up and slow us down. At the same time too, when you look across the US, roughly 60% of the continental US is right now in some sort of drought conditions. And we've actually been watching, especially the more moderate to extreme drought areas getting larger. So we've got places where it's too wet, we've got places where it's too dry, and as you mentioned, internationally, we're sitting here going, okay, if we're staring at a super El Nino possibly later this year, we know that's going to have a large impact as we look down towards South America, it's also going to impact Australia. And let's face it, we know that that hits the Black Sea region as well. And so you're looking at weather conditions pulling in both directions sort of on the marketplace, depending upon what area of the world you're looking at.

Todd Gleason: Futures however look forward, but the cash marketer really thinks, needs to think of the marketplace I think as normal until it's not, as they try to make decisions about when to market. What are you telling producers?

Chad Hart: Sure, and right now it's a, you know, a story of staring at whether we're talking old crop or new here. Um, you know, as we're looking at new, one of the things that's fascinating to me right now is, as you look at the corn market for example, what we've built up over the past couple of weeks has put us back up near those highs we saw when the war first broke out. So it's, again, offering a spring opportunity that we haven't seen in a couple of springs. Where we could be making some moves here, it's, you know, a good 20 to 25 cents above that insurance price we captured when we bought our crop insurance. And so that's not a bad little, um, capture there as we're looking at new crop. Old crop, I think is one of these deals of folks are trying to ride this wave out and just see how far the war and weather premiums could take us to try to take advantage of the seasonal highs that we tend to see here in the late spring. And so I think it is helping support some folks that have stored, you know, last year's record crop for a while, giving them some opportunity to maybe capture better prices and recover some of those storage costs that they've built up.

Todd Gleason: Talk to me about the fundamentals of supply on the global and domestic level, and how they play off against one another. Maybe particularly with wheat, because wheat and corn are a different thing. Wheat where we are the last resort, corn where we are the first resort.

Chad Hart: Yep, and you know, when we're looking here, I think we're used to thinking of us like in the corn market, where we are the dominant market. When you think about global supplies of corn, we are basically the biggest producer, but we're pretty much the biggest user as well, and so therefore whatever's really happening in our market sort of chains its way through the rest of the global corn market. Flip that on its head when you're talking about wheat, and I would argue we're making that change in soybeans as well, where we're not the dominant market, we are sort of a, we're a big player, but we're by no means the biggest player. And that means that global conditions outside the US can have a much larger influence on our market here in the US. Like I say, wheat we've been here for a while, when you look at, you know, we have decent exports but we're, you know, not the biggest exporter, in fact we're sort of a residual exporter in some of the markets that we deal with there. And so we definitely see more swings due to what's happening with Australia or Argentina in those markets than we do say in like the corn market. And I think that's something that's developing as I look at soybeans because we used to be the dominant market there, and now we're not, with Brazil taking the top spot on production and China taking the top spot on consumption.

Todd Gleason: When you look forward for soybeans, particularly as it's related to renewable volume obligations or the RVO, biofuels, biomass based diesel of some sort whether that's FAME or renewable diesel, and domestic consumption goes up, does that necessarily mean that we will have a more stable internal price but not widely ranging compared to what the futures market might be?

Chad Hart: Uh, I'm going to argue not necessarily, because it really depends upon, are those sales that we're doing on the biofuel side truly replacing everything that we're losing when it comes to the export markets? That has been one of our challenges here, and in fact as we look over the past five years we've had in the bean market, we've basically had usage matching our production, we've been holding ending stocks at fairly low levels across the past several years, and yet we've watched prices decline over time because of what's happening in the global space as opposed to here what's happening in the US space.

Todd Gleason: What are your thoughts as it relates to the summer months this season? I know you've been looking at, of course as you discussed, the dry areas around the midwest. Probably thinking about 1988 is my guess. Um, should producers think that way?

Chad Hart: Uh, I would say we need to be watching for it but I wouldn't be betting on it or expecting it. One of the things that if you, you know, if we think back over the past five years, the drought we see today I would argue is, you know, still hanging on from the one that we had, you know, starting back in 2020. We've been watching this drought sort of move throughout the country over the past five, six years, and we've been watching it grow in scale and size sometimes of the, you know, sometime throughout that five year period, but yet it's never really taken a big bite out of production. There is concern about that as we're looking forward, but we also know that hey, we've experienced, you know, waves of this drought already over the past five years and we've been able to produce through them. So it'll be interesting to watch, like I say, it's kind of weird to me that we're sitting here in Iowa and Illinois, like I say, we're actually a little too wet where other parts of the corn belt are definitely too dry and that's been leading to inconsistent planting progress across the country, but that doesn't necessarily mean lower yield potential when we come to the end of the year.

Todd Gleason: Thank you much. I appreciate it.

Chad Hart: Thank you.

Todd Gleason: That's Chad Hart, agricultural economist with extension at Iowa State University in Ames. The United States Department of Agriculture will update its planting progress at 3:00 p.m. Central Time today.

17:51 Ag Weather with Mark Russo

Todd Gleason: Let's take a look at the weather forecast for the growing regions across the planet. Mark Russo is here, he is with Everstream Analytics. Hi Mark, thanks for being with us. A little rainfall coming across the midwest today, pretty good sized storm, I'm wondering what you think about it in the corn belt, and the remnants of it tonight too as well, and how much rainfall we might have in the I states, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, maybe Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, those places.

Mark Russo: Yeah, we are seeing a pretty potent storm system cross the corn belt here today, and this is producing a myriad of weather ranging from heavy rains to winds to some tornadic activity, and also some larger hail and straight line winds, all associated with this general, you know, storm system that in and of itself is producing just some windy conditions because of what we call the pressure gradient associated with it. But as that clears the area here later on tonight, early tomorrow, then um, there will be several days of drier weather before another system clear comes through. In general though, it's pretty close to a normal type of springtime pattern, again several days with rain, then you go through several days of dry weather, and then rain's returning. Right now we're not seeing any kind of real excessively wet pattern, so for some of the areas that did pick up like 1 to 3 inches of rainfall or localized higher amounts from this current storm, upcoming systems don't look quite as potent or will produce quite as as heavy rainfall. So that's the precip side of things. On the temperature side of things, did want to highlight that after another few days of generally warmer biased temperatures, that then readings will cool down to slightly below average readings by, you know, this upcoming weekend and then continuing into next week. So any corn or soybeans that have been planted, that's going to slow things down a little bit, there's no frost concerns or freeze concerns at all with this cooler weather, but just from a growth standpoint or emergence and growth, that cooler weather will keep things on the slower side.

Todd Gleason: Are we talking every 3 to 5 days for the rainfall events?

Mark Russo: In general here, yeah, and with the upcoming systems, that activity within those windows of rain will be generally, you know, light to moderate and scattered in nature.

Todd Gleason: And then if you turn your attention to the plains states, from North Dakota to Texas, what do things look like there?

Mark Russo: Yeah, the area that we're watching with continued missing out on rainfall, that's areas of western Kansas into eastern Colorado, they do have some opportunities for rain, these systems that are impacting the corn belt are tracking also across the plains, but they're producing the higher precip amounts further east. So for those western areas, the amount of rain here doesn't look significant enough to, um, to improve soil moisture and turn around the situation. It'll help a little bit, but more rain is needed and at this time we're not seeing any kind of big pattern change that would produce, you know, above normal rainfall across the driest areas within the plains.

Todd Gleason: Are there other places in North America that you're watching closely?

Mark Russo: Yes, we are watching the Canadian prairies, where spring wheat and canola planting is just starting up. Usually spring wheat starts to get planted here in late April and early May and then canola a little bit later, and right now conditions are not very good for planting across Canada primarily due to a snowstorm that has impacted most of the prairie provinces. And that combined with some cooler weather is going to keep things on the slower side from starting up as we look out over the next, uh, week to 10 days. After that though, there are some indications of warmer and drier weather kind of looking out towards later next week, uh, and beyond. Uh, so if that rolls forward, that will begin to improve the situation as we, uh, progress, start progressing through May.

Todd Gleason: And if you could provide a word maybe on the safrinha or second crop corn in Brazil?

Mark Russo: Yeah, overall still very good here, although some drier and warmer conditions at this late stage of the season, likely depleted a little bit of soil moisture in places such as center west, but they had a good, uh, soil moisture base going into this kind of end of season, uh, warm stretch. And, uh, and then at the same time, uh, the southern belt in around Parana has received some meaningful rainfall lately. So all in all, no, you know, big issues for safrinha as we end the rainy season there.

Todd Gleason: Hey, thank you much.

Mark Russo: You're welcome, Todd.

Todd Gleason: Mark Russo is with Everstream Analytics joining us here on the closing market report for this Monday afternoon. Do visit our website if you get the opportunity at willag.org. That's w-i-l-l-a-g dot o-r-g. I'm Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.