Episode Number
10340
Episode Show Notes / Description
- Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, @AgMarket_Net
- US House Passes Farm Bill Legislation
- Illinois Farm Financials Reviewed
- Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, @TstormWeather
This April 30, 2026, Closing Market Report covers updates on agricultural markets, farm legislation, farm financials, and global weather. Analyst Matt Bennett noted that heavy rains have paused Midwest farming activities, while severe, persistent drought in the western plains has likely caused irreversible damage to the hard red winter wheat crop.
On the legislative front, Jonathan Coppess reported that the U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a modernized farm bill, though it faces an uncertain future and significant challenges in the Senate.
Reviewing farm financials, Brad Zwilling explained that while average farm debt-to-asset ratios have remained stable at 18%, the debt per acre has climbed to nearly $900, which is driving up interest expenses for producers.
Finally, meteorologist Mike Tannura confirmed the severe drought damage to southern winter wheat and observed that while the southeastern Corn Belt is experiencing cool, wet weather that may slow crop growth, the drier conditions in the northwest are currently providing an ideal environment for planting.
- US House Passes Farm Bill Legislation
- Illinois Farm Financials Reviewed
- Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, @TstormWeather
This April 30, 2026, Closing Market Report covers updates on agricultural markets, farm legislation, farm financials, and global weather. Analyst Matt Bennett noted that heavy rains have paused Midwest farming activities, while severe, persistent drought in the western plains has likely caused irreversible damage to the hard red winter wheat crop.
On the legislative front, Jonathan Coppess reported that the U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a modernized farm bill, though it faces an uncertain future and significant challenges in the Senate.
Reviewing farm financials, Brad Zwilling explained that while average farm debt-to-asset ratios have remained stable at 18%, the debt per acre has climbed to nearly $900, which is driving up interest expenses for producers.
Finally, meteorologist Mike Tannura confirmed the severe drought damage to southern winter wheat and observed that while the southeastern Corn Belt is experiencing cool, wet weather that may slow crop growth, the drier conditions in the northwest are currently providing an ideal environment for planting.
Transcript
cmr260430
- Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, @AgMarket_Net
- US House Passes Farm Bill Legislation
- Illinois Farm Financials Reviewed
- Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, @TstormWeather
Todd Gleason: From the land-grant university in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the closing market report. It is the 30th day of April, 2026. I'm Extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett of agmarket.net. We'll hear how the House of Representatives has passed a farm bill and what it needs to do now. Jonathan Coppess will have a short update as to the legislation. And then we'll turn our attention to farm financials with Brad Zwilling of Illinois FBFM, that's the Farm Business Farm Management recordkeeping service. And as we wrap up our time together, we'll talk with Mike Tannura today. He's at T-Storm Weather in Naperville, Illinois. All on this Thursday edition of the closing market report that comes to you from Illinois Public Media online on demand at WILLag.org.
Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.
In Chicago futures, in the corn pit finished the December contract down 3 and 1/2 cents at 4.94 and 1/4. July, that's the nearby, at 4.74 and 3/4, 3 lower. And the soybeans in the July down a penny and a half. The November at 11.73, a penny and 3/4 lower. And the soft red winter wheat in the July down 16 and 1/4 cents at 6.36 and 3/4 of a cent.
01:25 Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, @AgMarket_Net
Todd Gleason: Matt Bennett from agmarket.net now joins us on this Thursday afternoon to take a look at the marketplace. Hi, Matt, thanks much for joining us. First, a quick update on how things are running on the farm today?
Matt Bennett: Slow. We don't have anything going on at all because Monday, we had a lot of rain. So for the week, you know, we're looking at two and a quarter up to four and a half depending on which farm you're talking. So got quite a bit of corn planted there last week. Of course, it's not up yet. Most, if not all, the beans are up. But obviously, we're just kind of in a wait-and-see holding pattern. See if this corn that we planted makes it up. I would assume it will. But the stuff that hadn't been planted yet, we're going to have to wait till next week before we can even look at it.
Todd Gleason: It kind of appears Chicago is in something of a wait-and-see pattern as well. Though futures for wheat were off, I take it that's because there's a little rainfall in the forecast for it.
Matt Bennett: Yeah, I mean, they're trying to bring some rain into it. You know, a lot of these forecasts haven't verified very well, first of all. Second of all, the guys that we talk to in some of these areas in the west flat out just don't—I'm afraid it's too late for some of that wheat. I just don't think that that wheat crop is going to be worth a darn. So, but yeah, there's no doubt on wheat, you know, it's got to be some profit-taking at some point. Obviously, this market had gotten awfully overbought here lately. You know, corn market before today actually eight straight sessions higher. So, you know, some of these have been overbought to a degree and you would expect a pullback here and there, and that's pretty much what we got here today.
Todd Gleason: Some farmers have, at least in some parts of the Midwest, been able to set themselves aside for the moment. Watch new contract highs be made in corn. Should they be taking advantage of those for new crop?
Matt Bennett: You know, if they're behind on sales, I don't know why not. Now I know a lot of folks have called and said, hey, you know what, we've actually sold quite a bit already. If that's the case, I mean, I don't see any issue with hanging out and seeing how this plays out. In my opinion, there's a decent shot that you see, you know, an acreage switch to a degree. I don't know that it's going to be a huge one, and we don't know how good the March numbers were. So you hate to get too wrapped up in that, but there's no question if you're someone in one of these areas that hadn't been able to run much yet, if you don't have your fertilizer bought, then some of those acres are likely to switch over just simply due to availability and the cost of getting your nitrogen source secured. And so, at this stage of the game, if you're 30, 40, 50 percent sold already, I can understand not doing a whole lot, but if you haven't sold much yet, and you're not selling at some of the best prices we've seen in the last three years, I think you need to reevaluate that.
Todd Gleason: On 2027, I wonder how concerned you might be as it appears the United States and Iran are at an impasse that's not going to end anytime soon. Even the president has said it may be months, sort of under his breath, but did say it out loud. That would cost producers, particularly as it's related to fertilizers in the fall, and I'm wondering how you're thinking they should handle those inputs.
Matt Bennett: Yeah, I mean, that's the problem. A lot of guys have sat here and said, you know, this might be a really good opportunity for me to lock in some of the better prices I've seen in some time. You got to be careful. You just don't know what your input costs are going to run yet. And so I don't have any problem with a person stepping in and maybe hedging a little bit of '27. But at the same time, if you can't get a fertilizer price yet, you're kind of rolling the dice here. One thing about it is that this wheat market definitely has rallied somewhat due to what's going on in the west, you know, in the wheat country, into the plains country. But at the same time, you know, there's a lot of concern globally about just availability of urea moving forward. And with that being the case, world feed grains are certainly in a supportive type mode right now, and I'm not so sure that that's going to go away anytime soon as long as what you talked about, the war situation, you know, as long as that doesn't get rectified, I think there's going to be a ton of question marks here.
Todd Gleason: Even if it does get rectified, it may take a while to clear out the mines, and certainly there has been damage to the LNG portions of the Middle East, and those are the ones that would be producing the nitrogen because it takes liquefied natural gas to do that. We'll be tracking all of that. Anything else before I let you go for the day?
Matt Bennett: No. No, I just think there's a lot going on here and whatever we talk about today will be out of date in the morning, so you better run this this afternoon.
Todd Gleason: Hey, thanks much. I appreciate it. That, of course, is Matt Bennett. He is with agmarket.net.
06:17 US House Passes Farm Bill Legislation
Todd Gleason: The United States House of Representatives has passed a farm bill. It modernizes the farm credit title, permanently transfers the Food for Peace program to USDA, integrates the supplemental agricultural trade promotion program into the Market Access Program or MAP and Foreign Market Development programs to bolster export markets, reauthorizes the US Grain Standards Act, reauthorizes the Conservation Reserve Program, and directs NRCS to study and report on the use of winter wheat as a cover crop. The farm bill now has to go to the Senate, where it will still face problems, says Jonathan Coppess from the University of Illinois.
Jonathan Coppess: I mean, remember this is just the House. The Senate hasn't even started. And in fact, the Senate hasn't started on farm bill legislation since the 2018 bill expired in '23. They've never produced, the committee's never produced anything. So, I don't know. The steps to get into law are going to require all sorts of challenges in the Senate.
Todd Gleason: The House version of the farm bill passed after year-round E15 was jettisoned along with legal protections for pesticide-producing companies.
07:35 Illinois Farm Financials Reviewed
Todd Gleason: I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason. We're now joined by Brad Zwilling. He is with Illinois FBFM, actually with FBFM across the states of Illinois and Indiana now. Tell me first, Brad, about what has been happening over the last, oh, I don't know, year, 18 months or so, and how Illinois and Indiana are working together?
Brad Zwilling: Yeah, so we've always had a desire from Indiana people that, hey, are you going to work here in Indiana with us? And so we've had cooperators along the border that has worked with some of our bordering offices. And we've kind of had a former staff move over and start working at a tax accounting firm over around Indianapolis. And then he was getting ready to retire. So we looked into that and started our business over there out of that office and have been adding those clients. And he kind of went all over in Indiana. So we've kind of worked through those. And then we put an office in West Lafayette as well. So we're moving around. We've got adding clients and spreading the information about good recordkeeping throughout the state of Indiana.
Todd Gleason: I'm sure that data as it flows in will be interesting to compare to what you have for Illinois. But let's do talk about Illinois farms in the FBFM or Farm Business Farm Management program. And some of their financials at the moment. You went through these on Thursday morning, April 30th, for a farmdoc daily webinar. Folks can find that by looking under webinars and events at farmdocdaily.illinois.edu. Tell me about the first slide you have in that set and what you're looking at.
Brad Zwilling: Yeah, we were kind of just showing the financials and saying, you know, really, things kind of held their own, got a little bit better after the 2025 year. So what we're looking at is the debt-to-asset ratio would be the first thing as a whole. And really, our debt-to-asset ratio is kind of been down to kind of the lowest point we've had at 18%. And that's kind of fluctuated between 18 and 20% all the way back to about 2011. And then stayed at 18% again in 2025. And that one I will caution you, you need to make sure you look at your age of your farm, because that varies a lot. But on average, our debt-to-asset ratio stayed the same. And that's interesting when you look at another piece of that slide on our debt per acre. And that really has been taking off since that, you know, 2006, 2007 timeframe when we started buying a lot more equipment, buying some farm ground, and we had the run-up in grain prices. So we're at almost $900 an acre debt on those farms to look at. But that tells a story when your debt-to-asset ratio hasn't really been increasing. We know our assets are increasing a lot faster than our debt has been increasing. But it causes some pause and some thinking when we look at the interest expense, because our interest expense is growing the last couple of years. Because we know that the interest rates, we were in such a low interest rate environment, now that those rates are back up, I don't want to say normal, but a little bit higher range than we're used to. And so that debt per acre, because of the debt we've got, and a little bit higher interest rates, has caused that debt to interest or debt per acre to go from about $30 an acre to now $50 an acre in 2025.
Todd Gleason: Excluding the interest, you and your colleagues, Gary Schnitkey, throughout that build-out period of the ethanol build-out into the late teens, had said farmers just weren't making investments that appeared to be too large, and that bears out as it's related I guess to the debt-to-asset ratio. But that interest payment is a problem. Can you tell me about it and then maybe more about what the components of net worth might be and how you work them together?
Brad Zwilling: Yeah, so just looking at that interest payments, you know, we know that we've been buying a lot more machinery the last couple of years. But the other thing that came into play was a little bit more operating debt. We haven't really needed operating debt because of the higher prices in 2020, '21, and '22. And then we go into those components of net worth. That was just an interesting piece just to kind of think of that, taking your assets minus your liabilities and looking to see that over time what percent that's been, right? So it's not, you know, we think of working capital as your current assets minus your current liabilities. So we have that piece, and as a total of net worth, because net worth is taking your assets minus your liabilities. Our net worth has typically been about 15% working capital, about 30% intermediate, and over 50% long-term net worth, which would be primarily your farmland. So when you, so that, what that means is of our total net worth on our farms, most of that is tied up in farmland. And that's good to think about when you're doing transition planning, when you're, and this is on the average farm, right? So it's interesting to look at. There's one year that really blipped in there and that's 2007. That's because we had a really high increase in our inventory because of our grain prices. So it really kind of shrunk down some of the other things when we talk about, you know, land. Land really didn't change value in 2007, it's because of those current assets really bumped up. So, but it's interesting to see and understand and think about those ratios. They really haven't changed. This slide went all the way back to 2002 and those percentages didn't change.
Todd Gleason: So very stable, or at least it looks very stable. What does it tell you about profitability, liquidity, solvency, those sorts of things?
Brad Zwilling: Yeah, so we look at those things. And the graph that we had is looking at some really high income years, '21 and '22, and then what the last three years have been. And we know those have been very variable and lower income and some negative years even in there. Just to kind of point out with 2025 that stayed about the same. Our income was up from 2024, a little over 50,000 with the subset that we have here. But when you look at some efficiency measures, it looks better. We have operating expenses came down a little bit, down to 75%. And our operating income went up to 0.08. We'd like to see that 20% over time. But we aren't there yet. It's going to take some higher income, higher prices to get to that ratio. But the key is on the liquidity side, that's our big issue and thought process is our working capital still is strong on average. And it stayed about the same in '24. But we really had been eroding away at our working capital from '23 and '24, losing about 100 to 150,000 those last couple of years. And we kind of stopped that in 2025.
Todd Gleason: And that brings us to your final slide in the set, or at least this part of the set we're talking about at the moment. And it relates to how much a family might spend and what their living expenses look like. That's a space that's really hard to rein back in once you begin spending.
Brad Zwilling: Yeah, it is really hard. But I think this is the bright side of things we've seen the last two years. Our family living has stayed at about 102,000 in 2024 and 2025. It was 105,000 in 2023. So our family living stayed about the same. Our off-farm income has been increasing. It went up from about 65,000 in '24 to over 72,000 in '25. So that's a good thing. We're generating off-farm income to help take care of some of those things. And our taxes have come down because our farm income has been down. So when you kind of combine all the things that go into family living and taxes, you're looking at a total of about $131,000. 102 of that is our family living, and the rest would be about 32,000 of taxes. But when you subtract off that 72,000 of off-farm income, then you're only looking about 60,000 has to come from the farm. And we would have had almost, or we had a little bit more than that on this study for our farm income to cover that. So we were eating away at net worth to cover some of those family living and tax costs that we have.
Todd Gleason: Hey, thank you much, Brad. We appreciate it. We've of course been talking with Brad Zwilling. He is with Illinois FBFM. That's the Farm Business Farm Management recordkeeping service, now available in Indiana as well. So if you're listening in Indiana, check them out if you'd like to. If you'd like to learn more from Brad or Gary Schnitkey and Nick Paulson, they were all on a webinar earlier today. It'll be up on the farmdoc daily website trying to look at how producers might be able to control costs, I would think, not only the rest of this year, but going into 2027 as well. That's at farmdocdaily.illinois.edu, and then look under webinars. It'll be in the archive section. Or it might be easier just to go to youtube.com/farmdoc.
17:03 Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, @TstormWeather
Todd Gleason: Let's turn our attention now to the global growing regions and the weather in each of them. We're now joined by Mike Tannura. He's at T-Storm Weather, the president and CEO there in Naperville, Illinois. Online at tstorm.net. Mike, I'd like to start in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas as well, maybe parts of Colorado, as it has been very dry for portions of the hard red winter wheat growing regions over the past several months. Has it yet reached a point of great concern?
Mike Tannura: Well, it's been very concerning for a while. If you look at rainfall over the last three months, the coverage of dryness on that crop is the highest in more than 14 years of record, looking at it through different angles. And that just tells us that we have a major drought that's in progress. And the problem there is that even if we start to get really good rains over the next four to six weeks, the yield damage has very likely been done because the key part of their season basically starts in February and runs through April, and then weather, the importance of weather starts to diminish once you get into May and June. So some damage has clearly been done. It's just a matter of how significant is it. There is some rain out there in Colorado and Kansas today, but these totals are pretty light and it's not going to be enough to turn things around. There will be some heavy rain later today and especially tomorrow to the south, but most of that rain is going to be limited to northern Texas, and it's going to be in the part of Texas where there's not really all that much wheat. The panhandle region where there's a lot of cattle, corn, and wheat is going to miss out on most of that. And so we think that this story is basically going to continue. Once we get into next week, there are some rain chances out there, and those will even continue into the middle of May. But none of them look very heavy. And Todd, our bigger concern for hard red winter wheat going forward is actually going to be shifting further to the north once you get into Nebraska, but especially South Dakota and Montana. Now, these production areas are not as great as those to the south, but they do account for 20 to 25 percent of the US crop, and they're also less advanced than further to the south. So they can certainly benefit from rains going forward more than the southern crops. The problem there is that it looks pretty dry for the next 10 to 14 days. There's not really any good rain chances out there. And because of that, we're a little concerned that the story might be shifting to one where we already did some damage to the central and southern crop, and now the northern crop's not doing all that great either. So certainly things are being watched out there, and you need to keep on watching them all the way through the end of May.
Todd Gleason: Turn your attention now to the Corn Belt. What do you see across those regions?
Mike Tannura: Well, as you know, planting has been racing forward, especially for soybeans. As we move forward, that same area of dryness that we're concerned about for northern hard red winter wheat, well, that same setup is going to be affecting the northwest third to half of US corn and soybeans. And dry weather this time of the year for that crop or those crops is good just because you can plant with that type of setup. So I think that conditions will be improving with northwestward extent for corn and soybean planting. Across the southeast half where a lot of the crop is already in the ground, it looks a lot stormier going forward. There's not really too much rain on the way over the next few days, but starting Sunday and Monday, and then especially Tuesday and Wednesday, a big cold front is going to move through, and that should make for some pretty decent rains across Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and then points onto the south. And it also will keep temperatures much cooler than normal. You know, that's one thing that we haven't talked a whole lot about to this point in time, but we're in a very cool air mass across the Corn Belt today, and that's going to linger all the way through the first third of next month. And generally, corn and soybeans like warmer weather this time of the year because that helps them to grow the fastest. But at this point in time, they're going to be growing somewhat slowly. Now, all of that said, it's only early May. A lot can change later on next month and into June. So this is not a major problem, but maybe not ideal with conditions a little wetter and cooler than ideal for the southeastern half of corn and soybeans, but then drier with northwestward extent for planting.
Todd Gleason: Now turn your attention to safrinha, or the second-crop corn in Brazil, please.
Mike Tannura: Well, they've had some good to great rains over the last several weeks, and even extending all the way back into March. And because of that, we don't really have too many concerns over soil moisture at this point in time. The forecast is not very promising for rain, especially for the northern 50 to 70 percent of the crop over the next 10 days. But keeping in mind that May is typically a pretty dry month. They only average around one to two inches of rain in Mato Grosso in May, compared to eight to nine inches just a few months ago. And that just gives you an idea of how rapid that transition from the wet season to the dry season is. So dry weather in May, while maybe not ideal, is not all that concerning because rains all the way up until this point in time have been pretty good. So we certainly would like to see a little more rain for the Brazil corn crop going forward, but we're not setting off alarm bells just because this is somewhat typical of their climate and we've had some pretty nice rains to date.
Todd Gleason: Hey, thank you much, Mike. We appreciate it, and we'll talk with you again soon enough.
Mike Tannura: That sounds great, Todd.
Todd Gleason: Mike Tannura is with T-Storm Weather, that's tstorm.net online. He helped us wrap up this Thursday edition of the closing market report that came to you from Illinois Public Media. Don't forget, we'll record our Commodity Week program this afternoon and post it this evening by about 6 p.m. to our website at willag.org. That's W I L L A G dot O R G. Many of these radio stations will carry it over the weekend, and if you can listen to the whole of the 2 o'clock hour on a home station tomorrow, you'll hear all of the program. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.
- Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, @AgMarket_Net
- US House Passes Farm Bill Legislation
- Illinois Farm Financials Reviewed
- Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, @TstormWeather
Todd Gleason: From the land-grant university in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the closing market report. It is the 30th day of April, 2026. I'm Extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett of agmarket.net. We'll hear how the House of Representatives has passed a farm bill and what it needs to do now. Jonathan Coppess will have a short update as to the legislation. And then we'll turn our attention to farm financials with Brad Zwilling of Illinois FBFM, that's the Farm Business Farm Management recordkeeping service. And as we wrap up our time together, we'll talk with Mike Tannura today. He's at T-Storm Weather in Naperville, Illinois. All on this Thursday edition of the closing market report that comes to you from Illinois Public Media online on demand at WILLag.org.
Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.
In Chicago futures, in the corn pit finished the December contract down 3 and 1/2 cents at 4.94 and 1/4. July, that's the nearby, at 4.74 and 3/4, 3 lower. And the soybeans in the July down a penny and a half. The November at 11.73, a penny and 3/4 lower. And the soft red winter wheat in the July down 16 and 1/4 cents at 6.36 and 3/4 of a cent.
01:25 Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, @AgMarket_Net
Todd Gleason: Matt Bennett from agmarket.net now joins us on this Thursday afternoon to take a look at the marketplace. Hi, Matt, thanks much for joining us. First, a quick update on how things are running on the farm today?
Matt Bennett: Slow. We don't have anything going on at all because Monday, we had a lot of rain. So for the week, you know, we're looking at two and a quarter up to four and a half depending on which farm you're talking. So got quite a bit of corn planted there last week. Of course, it's not up yet. Most, if not all, the beans are up. But obviously, we're just kind of in a wait-and-see holding pattern. See if this corn that we planted makes it up. I would assume it will. But the stuff that hadn't been planted yet, we're going to have to wait till next week before we can even look at it.
Todd Gleason: It kind of appears Chicago is in something of a wait-and-see pattern as well. Though futures for wheat were off, I take it that's because there's a little rainfall in the forecast for it.
Matt Bennett: Yeah, I mean, they're trying to bring some rain into it. You know, a lot of these forecasts haven't verified very well, first of all. Second of all, the guys that we talk to in some of these areas in the west flat out just don't—I'm afraid it's too late for some of that wheat. I just don't think that that wheat crop is going to be worth a darn. So, but yeah, there's no doubt on wheat, you know, it's got to be some profit-taking at some point. Obviously, this market had gotten awfully overbought here lately. You know, corn market before today actually eight straight sessions higher. So, you know, some of these have been overbought to a degree and you would expect a pullback here and there, and that's pretty much what we got here today.
Todd Gleason: Some farmers have, at least in some parts of the Midwest, been able to set themselves aside for the moment. Watch new contract highs be made in corn. Should they be taking advantage of those for new crop?
Matt Bennett: You know, if they're behind on sales, I don't know why not. Now I know a lot of folks have called and said, hey, you know what, we've actually sold quite a bit already. If that's the case, I mean, I don't see any issue with hanging out and seeing how this plays out. In my opinion, there's a decent shot that you see, you know, an acreage switch to a degree. I don't know that it's going to be a huge one, and we don't know how good the March numbers were. So you hate to get too wrapped up in that, but there's no question if you're someone in one of these areas that hadn't been able to run much yet, if you don't have your fertilizer bought, then some of those acres are likely to switch over just simply due to availability and the cost of getting your nitrogen source secured. And so, at this stage of the game, if you're 30, 40, 50 percent sold already, I can understand not doing a whole lot, but if you haven't sold much yet, and you're not selling at some of the best prices we've seen in the last three years, I think you need to reevaluate that.
Todd Gleason: On 2027, I wonder how concerned you might be as it appears the United States and Iran are at an impasse that's not going to end anytime soon. Even the president has said it may be months, sort of under his breath, but did say it out loud. That would cost producers, particularly as it's related to fertilizers in the fall, and I'm wondering how you're thinking they should handle those inputs.
Matt Bennett: Yeah, I mean, that's the problem. A lot of guys have sat here and said, you know, this might be a really good opportunity for me to lock in some of the better prices I've seen in some time. You got to be careful. You just don't know what your input costs are going to run yet. And so I don't have any problem with a person stepping in and maybe hedging a little bit of '27. But at the same time, if you can't get a fertilizer price yet, you're kind of rolling the dice here. One thing about it is that this wheat market definitely has rallied somewhat due to what's going on in the west, you know, in the wheat country, into the plains country. But at the same time, you know, there's a lot of concern globally about just availability of urea moving forward. And with that being the case, world feed grains are certainly in a supportive type mode right now, and I'm not so sure that that's going to go away anytime soon as long as what you talked about, the war situation, you know, as long as that doesn't get rectified, I think there's going to be a ton of question marks here.
Todd Gleason: Even if it does get rectified, it may take a while to clear out the mines, and certainly there has been damage to the LNG portions of the Middle East, and those are the ones that would be producing the nitrogen because it takes liquefied natural gas to do that. We'll be tracking all of that. Anything else before I let you go for the day?
Matt Bennett: No. No, I just think there's a lot going on here and whatever we talk about today will be out of date in the morning, so you better run this this afternoon.
Todd Gleason: Hey, thanks much. I appreciate it. That, of course, is Matt Bennett. He is with agmarket.net.
06:17 US House Passes Farm Bill Legislation
Todd Gleason: The United States House of Representatives has passed a farm bill. It modernizes the farm credit title, permanently transfers the Food for Peace program to USDA, integrates the supplemental agricultural trade promotion program into the Market Access Program or MAP and Foreign Market Development programs to bolster export markets, reauthorizes the US Grain Standards Act, reauthorizes the Conservation Reserve Program, and directs NRCS to study and report on the use of winter wheat as a cover crop. The farm bill now has to go to the Senate, where it will still face problems, says Jonathan Coppess from the University of Illinois.
Jonathan Coppess: I mean, remember this is just the House. The Senate hasn't even started. And in fact, the Senate hasn't started on farm bill legislation since the 2018 bill expired in '23. They've never produced, the committee's never produced anything. So, I don't know. The steps to get into law are going to require all sorts of challenges in the Senate.
Todd Gleason: The House version of the farm bill passed after year-round E15 was jettisoned along with legal protections for pesticide-producing companies.
07:35 Illinois Farm Financials Reviewed
Todd Gleason: I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason. We're now joined by Brad Zwilling. He is with Illinois FBFM, actually with FBFM across the states of Illinois and Indiana now. Tell me first, Brad, about what has been happening over the last, oh, I don't know, year, 18 months or so, and how Illinois and Indiana are working together?
Brad Zwilling: Yeah, so we've always had a desire from Indiana people that, hey, are you going to work here in Indiana with us? And so we've had cooperators along the border that has worked with some of our bordering offices. And we've kind of had a former staff move over and start working at a tax accounting firm over around Indianapolis. And then he was getting ready to retire. So we looked into that and started our business over there out of that office and have been adding those clients. And he kind of went all over in Indiana. So we've kind of worked through those. And then we put an office in West Lafayette as well. So we're moving around. We've got adding clients and spreading the information about good recordkeeping throughout the state of Indiana.
Todd Gleason: I'm sure that data as it flows in will be interesting to compare to what you have for Illinois. But let's do talk about Illinois farms in the FBFM or Farm Business Farm Management program. And some of their financials at the moment. You went through these on Thursday morning, April 30th, for a farmdoc daily webinar. Folks can find that by looking under webinars and events at farmdocdaily.illinois.edu. Tell me about the first slide you have in that set and what you're looking at.
Brad Zwilling: Yeah, we were kind of just showing the financials and saying, you know, really, things kind of held their own, got a little bit better after the 2025 year. So what we're looking at is the debt-to-asset ratio would be the first thing as a whole. And really, our debt-to-asset ratio is kind of been down to kind of the lowest point we've had at 18%. And that's kind of fluctuated between 18 and 20% all the way back to about 2011. And then stayed at 18% again in 2025. And that one I will caution you, you need to make sure you look at your age of your farm, because that varies a lot. But on average, our debt-to-asset ratio stayed the same. And that's interesting when you look at another piece of that slide on our debt per acre. And that really has been taking off since that, you know, 2006, 2007 timeframe when we started buying a lot more equipment, buying some farm ground, and we had the run-up in grain prices. So we're at almost $900 an acre debt on those farms to look at. But that tells a story when your debt-to-asset ratio hasn't really been increasing. We know our assets are increasing a lot faster than our debt has been increasing. But it causes some pause and some thinking when we look at the interest expense, because our interest expense is growing the last couple of years. Because we know that the interest rates, we were in such a low interest rate environment, now that those rates are back up, I don't want to say normal, but a little bit higher range than we're used to. And so that debt per acre, because of the debt we've got, and a little bit higher interest rates, has caused that debt to interest or debt per acre to go from about $30 an acre to now $50 an acre in 2025.
Todd Gleason: Excluding the interest, you and your colleagues, Gary Schnitkey, throughout that build-out period of the ethanol build-out into the late teens, had said farmers just weren't making investments that appeared to be too large, and that bears out as it's related I guess to the debt-to-asset ratio. But that interest payment is a problem. Can you tell me about it and then maybe more about what the components of net worth might be and how you work them together?
Brad Zwilling: Yeah, so just looking at that interest payments, you know, we know that we've been buying a lot more machinery the last couple of years. But the other thing that came into play was a little bit more operating debt. We haven't really needed operating debt because of the higher prices in 2020, '21, and '22. And then we go into those components of net worth. That was just an interesting piece just to kind of think of that, taking your assets minus your liabilities and looking to see that over time what percent that's been, right? So it's not, you know, we think of working capital as your current assets minus your current liabilities. So we have that piece, and as a total of net worth, because net worth is taking your assets minus your liabilities. Our net worth has typically been about 15% working capital, about 30% intermediate, and over 50% long-term net worth, which would be primarily your farmland. So when you, so that, what that means is of our total net worth on our farms, most of that is tied up in farmland. And that's good to think about when you're doing transition planning, when you're, and this is on the average farm, right? So it's interesting to look at. There's one year that really blipped in there and that's 2007. That's because we had a really high increase in our inventory because of our grain prices. So it really kind of shrunk down some of the other things when we talk about, you know, land. Land really didn't change value in 2007, it's because of those current assets really bumped up. So, but it's interesting to see and understand and think about those ratios. They really haven't changed. This slide went all the way back to 2002 and those percentages didn't change.
Todd Gleason: So very stable, or at least it looks very stable. What does it tell you about profitability, liquidity, solvency, those sorts of things?
Brad Zwilling: Yeah, so we look at those things. And the graph that we had is looking at some really high income years, '21 and '22, and then what the last three years have been. And we know those have been very variable and lower income and some negative years even in there. Just to kind of point out with 2025 that stayed about the same. Our income was up from 2024, a little over 50,000 with the subset that we have here. But when you look at some efficiency measures, it looks better. We have operating expenses came down a little bit, down to 75%. And our operating income went up to 0.08. We'd like to see that 20% over time. But we aren't there yet. It's going to take some higher income, higher prices to get to that ratio. But the key is on the liquidity side, that's our big issue and thought process is our working capital still is strong on average. And it stayed about the same in '24. But we really had been eroding away at our working capital from '23 and '24, losing about 100 to 150,000 those last couple of years. And we kind of stopped that in 2025.
Todd Gleason: And that brings us to your final slide in the set, or at least this part of the set we're talking about at the moment. And it relates to how much a family might spend and what their living expenses look like. That's a space that's really hard to rein back in once you begin spending.
Brad Zwilling: Yeah, it is really hard. But I think this is the bright side of things we've seen the last two years. Our family living has stayed at about 102,000 in 2024 and 2025. It was 105,000 in 2023. So our family living stayed about the same. Our off-farm income has been increasing. It went up from about 65,000 in '24 to over 72,000 in '25. So that's a good thing. We're generating off-farm income to help take care of some of those things. And our taxes have come down because our farm income has been down. So when you kind of combine all the things that go into family living and taxes, you're looking at a total of about $131,000. 102 of that is our family living, and the rest would be about 32,000 of taxes. But when you subtract off that 72,000 of off-farm income, then you're only looking about 60,000 has to come from the farm. And we would have had almost, or we had a little bit more than that on this study for our farm income to cover that. So we were eating away at net worth to cover some of those family living and tax costs that we have.
Todd Gleason: Hey, thank you much, Brad. We appreciate it. We've of course been talking with Brad Zwilling. He is with Illinois FBFM. That's the Farm Business Farm Management recordkeeping service, now available in Indiana as well. So if you're listening in Indiana, check them out if you'd like to. If you'd like to learn more from Brad or Gary Schnitkey and Nick Paulson, they were all on a webinar earlier today. It'll be up on the farmdoc daily website trying to look at how producers might be able to control costs, I would think, not only the rest of this year, but going into 2027 as well. That's at farmdocdaily.illinois.edu, and then look under webinars. It'll be in the archive section. Or it might be easier just to go to youtube.com/farmdoc.
17:03 Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, @TstormWeather
Todd Gleason: Let's turn our attention now to the global growing regions and the weather in each of them. We're now joined by Mike Tannura. He's at T-Storm Weather, the president and CEO there in Naperville, Illinois. Online at tstorm.net. Mike, I'd like to start in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas as well, maybe parts of Colorado, as it has been very dry for portions of the hard red winter wheat growing regions over the past several months. Has it yet reached a point of great concern?
Mike Tannura: Well, it's been very concerning for a while. If you look at rainfall over the last three months, the coverage of dryness on that crop is the highest in more than 14 years of record, looking at it through different angles. And that just tells us that we have a major drought that's in progress. And the problem there is that even if we start to get really good rains over the next four to six weeks, the yield damage has very likely been done because the key part of their season basically starts in February and runs through April, and then weather, the importance of weather starts to diminish once you get into May and June. So some damage has clearly been done. It's just a matter of how significant is it. There is some rain out there in Colorado and Kansas today, but these totals are pretty light and it's not going to be enough to turn things around. There will be some heavy rain later today and especially tomorrow to the south, but most of that rain is going to be limited to northern Texas, and it's going to be in the part of Texas where there's not really all that much wheat. The panhandle region where there's a lot of cattle, corn, and wheat is going to miss out on most of that. And so we think that this story is basically going to continue. Once we get into next week, there are some rain chances out there, and those will even continue into the middle of May. But none of them look very heavy. And Todd, our bigger concern for hard red winter wheat going forward is actually going to be shifting further to the north once you get into Nebraska, but especially South Dakota and Montana. Now, these production areas are not as great as those to the south, but they do account for 20 to 25 percent of the US crop, and they're also less advanced than further to the south. So they can certainly benefit from rains going forward more than the southern crops. The problem there is that it looks pretty dry for the next 10 to 14 days. There's not really any good rain chances out there. And because of that, we're a little concerned that the story might be shifting to one where we already did some damage to the central and southern crop, and now the northern crop's not doing all that great either. So certainly things are being watched out there, and you need to keep on watching them all the way through the end of May.
Todd Gleason: Turn your attention now to the Corn Belt. What do you see across those regions?
Mike Tannura: Well, as you know, planting has been racing forward, especially for soybeans. As we move forward, that same area of dryness that we're concerned about for northern hard red winter wheat, well, that same setup is going to be affecting the northwest third to half of US corn and soybeans. And dry weather this time of the year for that crop or those crops is good just because you can plant with that type of setup. So I think that conditions will be improving with northwestward extent for corn and soybean planting. Across the southeast half where a lot of the crop is already in the ground, it looks a lot stormier going forward. There's not really too much rain on the way over the next few days, but starting Sunday and Monday, and then especially Tuesday and Wednesday, a big cold front is going to move through, and that should make for some pretty decent rains across Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and then points onto the south. And it also will keep temperatures much cooler than normal. You know, that's one thing that we haven't talked a whole lot about to this point in time, but we're in a very cool air mass across the Corn Belt today, and that's going to linger all the way through the first third of next month. And generally, corn and soybeans like warmer weather this time of the year because that helps them to grow the fastest. But at this point in time, they're going to be growing somewhat slowly. Now, all of that said, it's only early May. A lot can change later on next month and into June. So this is not a major problem, but maybe not ideal with conditions a little wetter and cooler than ideal for the southeastern half of corn and soybeans, but then drier with northwestward extent for planting.
Todd Gleason: Now turn your attention to safrinha, or the second-crop corn in Brazil, please.
Mike Tannura: Well, they've had some good to great rains over the last several weeks, and even extending all the way back into March. And because of that, we don't really have too many concerns over soil moisture at this point in time. The forecast is not very promising for rain, especially for the northern 50 to 70 percent of the crop over the next 10 days. But keeping in mind that May is typically a pretty dry month. They only average around one to two inches of rain in Mato Grosso in May, compared to eight to nine inches just a few months ago. And that just gives you an idea of how rapid that transition from the wet season to the dry season is. So dry weather in May, while maybe not ideal, is not all that concerning because rains all the way up until this point in time have been pretty good. So we certainly would like to see a little more rain for the Brazil corn crop going forward, but we're not setting off alarm bells just because this is somewhat typical of their climate and we've had some pretty nice rains to date.
Todd Gleason: Hey, thank you much, Mike. We appreciate it, and we'll talk with you again soon enough.
Mike Tannura: That sounds great, Todd.
Todd Gleason: Mike Tannura is with T-Storm Weather, that's tstorm.net online. He helped us wrap up this Thursday edition of the closing market report that came to you from Illinois Public Media. Don't forget, we'll record our Commodity Week program this afternoon and post it this evening by about 6 p.m. to our website at willag.org. That's W I L L A G dot O R G. Many of these radio stations will carry it over the weekend, and if you can listen to the whole of the 2 o'clock hour on a home station tomorrow, you'll hear all of the program. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.