Dec 10 | Closing Market Report

Transcript via A.I.

Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant University in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report as the 10th day of December, 2025. I'm Extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Greg Johnson. We'll hear from the USB—that's the United Soybean Board—something I did with them at the National Association of Farm Broadcasting Convention. And then we'll turn our attention as we wrap up our time together to the weather forecast. Drew Lerner will be here from World Weather Incorporated on this Wednesday edition of the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media.

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

Todd Gleason: March corn for the day settled at $4.44 and a quarter, down three and three-quarters of a cent. May, three and three-quarters lower at $4.51 and three-quarters. December new crop, down two cents; settlement at $4.63 and three-quarters. January beans up four; settlement price there at $10.91 and a quarter. November new crop at $10.95 and a half, three-quarters of a cent higher. And soft red winter wheat down a nickel at $5.29 and a half for the day. That in the March contract.

Greg Johnson now joins us from TGM, that's TotalGrainMarketing.com, the elevator right here in Champaign County. Hi Greg, thanks for being with us on a Wednesday. Looks like trade is, well, rather calm today. What can you tell me about it?

Greg Johnson: We are exactly right in the middle of the range that we've been in since the first of October. March corn has been as low as $4.25 in that timeframe. It's been as high as $4.57. Today we're at $4.44, which is three cents higher than the midpoint. Beans are five cents lower than the midpoint. So we are stuck in a range.

We did have a government report yesterday that was a little friendly to corn. We had a nice little rally yesterday in the corn market. But as we all knew, they weren't going to change the yield until the January 12th crop report. But at least they raised exports, raised demand, lowered the ending stocks a little bit. And so I think the stage is set that if we do get a lower yield on January 12th, that might be our next reason for a move higher. But until then, I guess I fully expect corn to be in this sideways trading range until we get to that January 12th crop report.

Todd Gleason: Yeah, the January 12th also is the release of the December 1 grain stocks figures. That probably will give USDA a pretty good cue on first-quarter usage and an idea of whether they need to adjust the feed and residual number, I would think.

Greg Johnson: You're exactly right. And I want farmers to keep that in mind. Everybody's focused on the yield, and I do think along with a lot of other people that they will drop the yield. Let's say they drop it by three, three and a half bushels an acre. That takes 300 million bushels off of the supply side of the equation. But as I've said on this show many times, that feed demand number is too hot. That probably needs to come down by at least 150 if not 200 million bushels. So 300 lower on the supply side, 200 million lower on the demand side, the net would be lowering that carryout by about 100 million bushels. And it's at 2 billion right now. So possibly we could get it down to something closer to 1.9.

That's not $5 corn, but it does set the stage for supportive prices. And then we go on from there to see how many acres we're going to plant, what kind of weather we get, whether we see the exports continue at this very torrid pace. So I think we're setting ourselves up for a nice little base of support here in corn and then waiting to see what happens with those numbers on January 12th.

Todd Gleason: Why do you think exports are so good? Is it the Gulf or is it just Mexico?

Greg Johnson: A lot of it's Mexico, but a lot of it is the corn in South America. Brazil had a pretty good corn crop, but they're using a lot of their corn for ethanol. So they have less corn available for export. So we really have, you know, the most stable supply of corn available for export. And so we're seeing Colombia, we're seeing the Eastern Asian countries buying corn from us. So I think that's really helping us out as far as being a reliable supplier of corn to all these other countries.

Todd Gleason: So it's about demand in Brazil as much as anything because it's consuming a crop that would have been put into the marketplace but now is not as they've created a corn ethanol demand. And I think feed usage there probably is really good too. On the soybean side, what are you watching today?

Greg Johnson: Well, it all boils down to whether South America has some problems in the Rio Grande do Sul, that southern Brazil area. They are a little dry. But again, Brazil is a big country, so you almost need to expect some problems. They're not going to have a 100% perfect crop everywhere. And it's also early too. I mean, they just got all the beans planted. So I think they could put up with a little bit of dry weather. The critical time is going to be in that January, early February timeframe. We'll see what the weather does by then.

You know, people are talking about this pattern changing quickly from a La Niña to an El Niño. It's something to talk about. But when the beans are just six inches tall, I guess I'm not too worried, you know, even if they miss rain for a couple of weeks. But that certainly will become a bigger influencer as we get into January and February. And then of course, in addition to the South American weather on soybeans, it'll still boil down to the Chinese, how many bushels they're going to buy so far. What they've been buying has been government purchases. We haven't seen the private Chinese companies come in and buy soybeans yet because they're cheaper out of South America. So, you know, how many beans will China buy and then what kind of weather will South America have? I think those are the two things that can influence the bean market here over the next 30 to 45 days.

Todd Gleason: How low would beans have to be in order for us to be on equal footing with South America today?

Greg Johnson: Yeah, at one point about two weeks ago, I think we were 75 cents higher than Brazil. So now beans have sold off probably 50 cents since then. So we're probably still 30 cents higher than Brazil. You got to remember that we have... even though the tariffs have come off to some extent, there still is a 3% tariff on...

Todd Gleason: 13...

Greg Johnson: Is it 13? 13? Yeah.

Todd Gleason: Yeah, well, there was 3 plus another 10 and then there was an additional after that that got removed. So I think it's 13.

Greg Johnson: Yeah. So that still makes our... it's going to make our beans awfully hard to compete with South American beans without that tariff. So, we're getting closer, but we really don't want to see beans have to drop that much in order to get below South America. I think the better thing for us would be to see what kind of weather South America has and hope that China just honors their commitment to buy the 12 million metric tons of soybeans.

Todd Gleason: In the year's coming up, if sales need to be made to pay bills or for tax purposes, those will happen regardless. What are you telling producers otherwise?

Greg Johnson: Set targets. I still think we can make new highs in corn. I don't think we've seen our highs yet. We may have to wait till January 12th, but I'm okay with waiting. That's now only 30 days away and every day is one day closer to that.

With soybeans, we've had a very nice chance and a lot of people did take advantage of this. January beans were $10.20 in October. They went all the way up to $11.70. That was a $1.50 rally. And now we're back below $11. So I really don't want to sell beans below $11. But if we can get back into that $11.30 to $11.50 range for soybeans, I think that's a great place to sell old crop soybeans. And as far as new crop soybeans, we've had two opportunities to sell $11 cash beans. That's $11.30 on the board. Now we're below $11 today. So once again, I'm not in any hurry to sell beans below $11, but I don't see what's wrong with selling $11 cash beans. And so we're encouraging people to get offers in to get new crop beans sold if we get back to $11. And on corn, if we can get to $4.75, $4.80 on the December futures, that's $4.50 cash corn. Not real overwhelming, but $4.50 with a good yield, that may be a pretty good price when it's all said and done.

Todd Gleason: Okay, thanks much. We appreciate it.

Greg Johnson: Hey, thanks Todd.

Todd Gleason: Greg Johnson is with TGM, that's TotalGrainMarketing.com. One quick note, if you have not purchased your tickets for the Farm Assets Conference or the Illinois Farm Economics Summit, still time to do that online at willag.org. You can purchase them there or at the farmdocDaily website, farmdocdaily.illinois.edu. If you're coming to the Farm Assets Conference and depending on which way you're coming into Bloomington, you may try to take the Rivian Drive exit off of I-74 between Bloomington and Peoria. Don't do that because Rivian Drive is actually closed and you'll just get lost. And Google might get you through it, but best just to come off from 74 and Market Street or Route 9 and then go out to the Corn Growers facility, the Asmark Center in Bloomington on Friday. And I hope to see you there.

Up next, a little something from the National Association of Farm Broadcasting Convention held last month. There is an event called Trade Talk where essentially all the folks that are involved in agriculture are put in one room and the radio broadcasters do interviews with them. I tried something different this year and asked some of the associations, organizations, and businesses to give me their elevator pitch. And if it was something I was interested in, well, I just followed up.

Philip Good: Philip Good. I'm a farmer from Macon, Mississippi, where I grow corn, soybeans, cotton, cattle, and catfish, actually serving as the chair of the United Soybean Board. And I am here on behalf of your soybean checkoff dollars. We are responsible—and I say we, I along with 77 farmer directors that are outstanding farmers from across the nation—are working to invest your checkoff dollars for research, education, and promotion. And we all know how desperately we need demand. And so that is our top priority this year as we look to diversify our demand both domestic and international. And so we are doing that through growing soybean inclusion rates in pig diets, poultry our number one customer, new uses, and in the export and international markets we are working to grow those both in emerging and developing countries along with our partners WISH (World Initiative for Soy in Human Health) and USSEC (United Soybean Export Council). And I'm happy to report that exports are up 30% outside of the China. So that's the bright spot for our checkoff dollars.

Todd Gleason: I want to follow up with a couple of things. First, aquaculture because I think it's interesting. Was a push in the 90s, early 2000s in parts of the Midwest—just too cold really to make it work even if you were indoors because generally wasn't heated. How does that work for you? Is it a good market?

Philip Good: I have been growing catfish since the late 90s. So yeah, I've been in the business almost 30 years. I buy fingerlings and then sell food fish, both channel and hybrid catfish. And so they... we feed a 28% protein soy-based feed that's a floating feed. The catfish come up and eat that off the surface. And one of the exciting things about aquaculture is feed conversion. When you think about how they convert a feed to an actual product, they're right there with chickens. So yeah, they're quite a feed-converting tool.

Todd Gleason: If I remember correctly, it's either 0.8 to 1 or 1 to 1 on conversion. 4 to 1 for hogs, 8 to 1 for beef, I think those numbers are correct or pretty close. So conversion is really economic. Because you are in aquaculture, because you have a floating feed, probably had to have research done to figure that out. I do want to ask a couple of other questions related to checkoff dollars and how you allocate them for research and how important the Land Grant institutions are within that process.

Philip Good: Oh, Land Grant institutions and our universities are extremely, extremely important. They are doing research for us across the United States. Some of them are partnering with each other and using, you know, cooperating and making that an extremely joint effort. When I think on the supply side, soybean cyst nematode is the number one yield robber for us in the nation. This year Red Crown Rot raised its ugly head in parts of the upper Midwest. So our Land Grant universities have a lot of research, are continuing to do research and update us on that end. When it comes to feed conversion and, you know, we just talked about aquaculture: Mississippi State University, Auburn, Idaho... across this nation, different universities have different specialties because of the region and the area and their professors and their employment that they have there at those. But yeah, extremely important. Appreciate all of them and especially the combined efforts.

Todd Gleason: I was privileged to travel to Haiti with the Illinois Soybean Association to with the World Initiative on Soybean in Human Health. I'm wondering how impactful the demise of USAID might be on the programs that are related to WISH?

Philip Good: You know, along with you, I've had the opportunity to travel to a lot of different countries. I think about Korea. When I was there, I never realized the higher rate of lactose intolerance that they have in their Korean population. There... soybean, soy drinks and soy nutrition are literally saving lives. Going to Japan, realizing how important their food source... they're depending upon us and so many countries for the food for their nation. When I think about that around the world, we've had the opportunity to go to the Central Americas this past year. We were in everything from Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia doing everything from raceway technology, teaching them in aquaculture, increasing their inclusion there for the poultry industry. This coming February, we have the opportunity to lead a group of farmers to Egypt where in February we'll be looking at the markets there in Egypt. So it's a diverse world. We are blessed in America to be able to feed that world and to share some of our excess with them. So yeah, great opportunity.

Todd Gleason: Thank you Philip. Philip Good is with the United Soybean Board and he is a farmer.

I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason. Let's turn our attention now to the weather forecast for the growing regions across the planet. Drew Lerner is here with World Weather Incorporated. He's in Kansas City. Hi Drew, thanks for being with us again on a Wednesday. Let's start in South America today. They've got a crop that's up and running and it looks like while it's had some dry spells that it's doing pretty well. What can you tell me about it today?

Drew Lerner: Yeah, you know, Brazil did have kind of a rocky road there from September into the end of November. And there was quite a bit of persistent below-normal soil moisture present, but they were getting some timely showers. I don't think everybody benefited equally, so I do think we shaved off a little bit of yield during that time period. But we're turning things around right now and we're starting to see much better rains occur across the north where we have had those moisture deficits for quite some time. And the last two soil assessments we did, one late in the weekend and one yesterday, both showed a very definite improving trend. A lot of the dryness that had been there previously is now gone.

It's still dry in a few spots in Mato Grosso do Sul and Goias, a few pockets in the northeast of Brazil and maybe a couple other spots, but it's really not broad-based. And we are still seeing another wave or two of significant rain coming up as we move forward through the coming seven days. So I don't think there's really much reason to be very concerned about the crop at the moment. I guess the marketplace thinks the same thing since the soybeans prices on the futures market have been coming down here the last few days.

So outside of that, on the Argentina side of the fence, we did firm up the soil a little bit here this week and it is a little too dry in parts of Cordoba and La Pampa, mostly in the topsoil, and even far western Buenos Aires. Now these areas probably won't do real well with precipitation as we move forward through the coming week to ten days. There will be some rain but it's not going to be very high volume. And so the drier tendency may continue to expand a little bit. But for those folks out there who want to see a drought evolve in Argentina to help the market, I just don't think we can put that together. There is no heat in any part of South America right now, nothing abnormally warm, let's put it that way. And so we'll see drying for sure, but we're not going to get those temperatures in the 90s and over 100 degrees that we've seen in past La Niña events that really pushed us over an edge. So I think these crops will bounce around, probably come back in a fairly good fashion as we get into the latter part of December and maybe into January as well.

Todd Gleason: I tell you, I can listen closely and I can hear in the background just the chant: "La Niña... La Niña..."

Drew Lerner: Indeed.

Todd Gleason: Maybe not. Maybe not. Let's turn your attention to colder climes. Here in the United States it looks like Arctic air is going to come back in with a fierce force over the weekend. What do you see for that?

Drew Lerner: Yeah, there is a very impressive cold air mass building up in the Arctic. This is still left over from the stratospheric warming event that occurred in mid-November and the polar vortex is still out of place. In fact, we're going to see a secondary low-pressure system, a secondary polar vortex if you will, that will form over northeastern Canada as we go forward into this weekend. And that helps to feed into this cold surge coming up. And we will see the temperatures Saturday, Sunday, and Monday get extremely cold. We are expecting to see a couple of extremes to minus 30 or slightly colder in the northeast part of North Dakota and/or northwestern Minnesota. We'll see negative 20s and negative teens surrounding that. And then we will see sub-zero readings all the way down to northeastern Missouri and northern Illinois into parts of northern Indiana.

But we do have snow on the ground in the soft wheat areas, so that's going to be helpful. But boy, it will be stressful once again for livestock and travel is going to be kind of a mess. We did pick up a significant amount of snow here yesterday from North Dakota into portions of Wisconsin and Minnesota—three to ten inches occurring across some of that region. And we'll see a little bit more snow ahead of the coldest air coming in just to help it feel a little bit more miserable. But it's really the wind and the temperatures that are going to be a real bite as we go forward through this weekend.

And next week though, after we get behind this, I think we'll start warming up and we might be able to hold it in a near-to-above-normal range for a while, especially in the plains.

Todd Gleason: Oh that would be really good. On the plains, you didn't talk about them. Does this cold affect the hard red winter wheat growing regions say in Kansas, Oklahoma, parts of Texas? And do they have very much snow cover?

Drew Lerner: Yeah, good, good question. They are snow-free and they have been left out of most of this cold air that we've seen so far. And the cold coming up this weekend will once again be shunted to the east. So we do not expect the temperatures in Nebraska southward to parts of Texas getting anywhere near cold enough to raise any concern. I should say that some areas in Nebraska may get down close to zero, but the coldest air is probably going to be outside of key hard red winter wheat areas, so more likely northeast and east-central parts of Nebraska rather than the southwest which is more important. So yeah, I don't think there'll be any reason for concern about the crops in that area.

Todd Gleason: The other regions with winter wheat of course stretch from France all the way through Western Europe into Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and Russia. What do the crops look like there as it's related to cold weather and snow cover?

Drew Lerner: Yeah, Europe and Asia both have had unusually warm weather while we've been fighting all these bouts of cold. I think there's only been one or two short-term periods of cold weather in those areas and certainly was not threatening to crops when that occurred. We have a ridge of high pressure right now over Europe that is creating more warmth in the European continent. But on the forward side of that ridge, on the eastern side, there is a strong northerly flow of air starting to evolve and there will be a cold surge this weekend, Friday through Sunday, in western Russia. And it will get down into parts of Ukraine and Russia's Southern Region where the temperatures probably get down in the single digits Fahrenheit. There may be a couple spots that slip slightly below zero. But we also expect to see a little snow come ahead of that. So they should be protected well enough to avoid any kind of a winterkill event and they too will rebound rather quickly back to a warmer scenario next week.

Todd Gleason: Hey, thanks much. We'll talk with you again next week too.

Drew Lerner: You bet. Take care.

Todd Gleason: You too. Drew Lerner is with World Weather Incorporated in Kansas City, joined us on this Wednesday edition of the Closing Market Report that came to you from Illinois Public Media. It's public radio for the farming world online on demand anytime you'd like to listen where? At WILLAG.org. I'm Extension's Todd Gleason.