Dec 11 | Closing Market Report

Todd Gleason: 00:00

From the Land Grant University at Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market report. It is the December 2025. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett.

Todd Gleason: 00:13

He's at agmarket.net. We'll wrap up our time together by discussing the weather forecast with Drew Lerner at World Weather Incorporated in Kansas City. And along the way, I'll take you back to Kansas City in November where we talked about carbon intensity scores in corn as it's related to ethanol and its future not only here in The United States but across the planet. You should find it all of interest right here on this Thursday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online on demand at willag.org.

Todd Gleason: 00:51

Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. March corn for the day settled at $4.46 and a half up to an a quarter. The May at $4.54 to quarter, two and a half higher. And December futures, $4.65, a penny and a quarter higher for the afternoon. And nearby March or other January soybeans at $10.93 and half, up two and a quarter.

Todd Gleason: 01:14

The March, a penny and three quarters higher, and new crop November, $10.98 and a quarter, up two and three quarters of a cent. Bean meal at 90¢ higher. Bean oil, 27¢ lower, and soft red winter wheat in the March at $5.33 and a half that finished for higher for the day. Matt Bennett from agmarket.net now joins us to take a look at the marketplace on this Thursday afternoon. Hello, Matt.

Todd Gleason: 01:39

Thanks for being with us. Hope you're staying warm.

Matt Bennett: 01:42

Yep. Staying warm. It is a little chilly, but it's not as chilly as what it's gonna get. I'll tell you that.

Todd Gleason: 01:46

It is going to be brutal. Hopefully, you'll be able to stay warm over the weekend as well. What can you tell me about the marketplace in Chicago today and trade there?

Matt Bennett: 01:55

Yeah. It's kind of a quiet day, but, know, this corn market, a couple days ago, of course, we had a nice little rally after the report yesterday. We gave tried to give most of it back. And then, again, today, we come in here and, you know, you look at, for instance, the two hundred day moving average. We basically settled right next to the the average, which is about the third day in a row we've done that.

Matt Bennett: 02:19

So it sure seems to me like we're having a hard time establishing ourselves above it. We settled above it there on Tuesday. But, of course, again, today, you know, it's just one of those deals where we had some buying interest, just not quite enough. You look at those export sales that they released as of, I believe, the November, and, I mean, just massive exports. Again, like, 2,900,000 metric tons.

Matt Bennett: 02:42

It's just really been an incredible pace that we've seen. And, you know, USDA nodded their hat to that on Tuesday, going up to 3,200,000,000 bushels. So demand is phenomenal. No question about it. But, you know, you look over at soybeans, you know, while crush demand is good, of course, exports have really struggled in this bean market just seems to be floundering around right now.

Todd Gleason: 03:04

When farmers call, what are the questions they're asking at the end of the year here?

Matt Bennett: 03:08

Well, you know, essentially, some of them have seen a basis push here and there and saying, hey. Should I go ahead and move some corn in here? And I I think it, you know, for most growers, they're gonna try to core some bins this time of year anyway. I don't see anything wrong with stepping in and selling some corn here. Yes.

Matt Bennett: 03:24

The demand has been incredible, but we know a ton of corn is going to be moving once the first of the year rolls around. And so and who knows? If enough doesn't move, they'll probably start allowing some deliveries on the Jan sometime in December. It's always a possibility. We saw it happen in November.

Matt Bennett: 03:43

And so a lot of growers are just wondering, should we go ahead and sell a little bit of cash corn in here, especially where they can get a push? Now it's not going on everywhere, but especially east of here, you know, we hear about guys getting pushes pretty consistently. So, you know, that's one of the biggest questions. And, of course, people are wanting to talk about '26. You know?

Matt Bennett: 04:01

Twenty six ever gonna rally? Are we gonna be looking at an insurance price again, same thing as last year, you know, somewhere in that area where it's really tough to make a decision to step in and sell if you're not assuming big yields. You know, you just can't find much black ink. So those are the big questions I've been getting.

Todd Gleason: 04:18

When you talk to them about 2026, is there different marketing advice for corn and or soybeans, or are they roughly, the same advice?

Matt Bennett: 04:28

Yeah. I mean, I think that if you're gonna step in and do something, I don't have any issue at all with that getting started. In fact, ag market, you know, we've made some sales more so on soybeans than corn. Most of what we've done has had a pretty flexible flavor to it where we're actually giving ourselves room to run to the upside on soybeans. I believe we sold a call on maybe 20% of production up there around 12:50 to give us a chance, you know, to lock in that four at 11 or higher as far as put options go.

Matt Bennett: 04:59

You know, on corn, yeah, there's a couple of different ways to approach this thing, but certainly, can do a very similar strategy and put your ceiling up there at $5.20, $5.30, wherever you wanna put it. But you can also consider as far as bushels going in the bin next fall, you know, hedging somewhere up here at $4.70 or better. You'd about have to make the assumption that the carry from these to July, you know, would be similar to what we saw this year, which got up to around 35¢ at one time. Spent a lot of time over 30. You might be able to work your way into some bin corn or in that $5 area.

Matt Bennett: 05:35

And yeah, I don't want to get super aggressive there, but I know most people have already locked in fertilizer prices, which were excessively high. You know? And so you've got to be very cautious as to not have any corn sold into that situation. So there's different ways to approach 26. By all means, by all means, sitting on our hands, probably not one of them.

Todd Gleason: 05:54

Outside markets sometimes have an influence on the marketplace or maybe even on longer term decisions. The interest rate drop that the Federal Reserve put in place yesterday, down a quarter of a percent make much of a difference?

Matt Bennett: 06:06

Yeah. I mean, the the thing that made the difference as far as outside markets today, in my opinion, you look over at the dollar and it's just pretty much gotten smoked today. You're down 50¢ basically. And so you look around at commodities and of course, beans and wheat were a little bit higher, nothing excessive. But you look at some of these other commodities and how they're handling the interest rate decision as well as the dollars move.

Matt Bennett: 06:31

And you've got silver today, again, making a new all time high and gold's trying to look like it maybe wants to go back up and revisit its all time high. So there's no doubt that owning commodities has become fashionable for your big money player. It's kind of a safe haven, and, you you see the dollar continue in this direction. I I really don't see that trend changing.

Todd Gleason: 06:54

On that note, do you expect more exports, if the trend does not change and the dollar continues to get cheaper?

Matt Bennett: 07:01

Absolutely. If you if you continue to see this dollar get cheaper, there's no question in my mind, you know, this is gonna us in a really good stay close to maintaining. All along, I felt like it should certainly back off, but there's no doubt there's been a lot of interest in owning, you know, importing US corn. To this point, yes, Mexico has been the lion's share, but, boy, you know, Japan's taken a fair amount of corn. You know, South Korea has been in hunting for corn, so there's no doubt that, you know, we've got a lot of interest in buying US corn.

Matt Bennett: 07:34

I don't think that that's gonna go away anytime soon.

Todd Gleason: 07:36

Anything on the livestock market? We've been talking about the beef cattle and prices there for some time now.

Matt Bennett: 07:42

For instance, let's look at feeders first. You know, you just go out to the March. And in the March, we closed today up here in this 03/3787 or 67 is where we closed. Now the gap is 03/3750 up to $3.45. So, you know, is this market gonna push another 6 or $8 higher?

Matt Bennett: 08:03

I certainly think that that's what the market acts like it wants to do. I mean, we've basically traded higher about 10 out of the last twelve days. And so, you know, after we kind of went in a couple weeks ago and established ourselves a low both for fats and feeders, there's been a lot of buying come into this thing. The cash market's been strong. Fundamentals are still good, then screwworm, basically ensuring that there's not gonna be a time timeline right off the bat to go ahead and bring those cattle north, in my opinion, is just giving this cattle market a much needed shot in the arm.

Todd Gleason: 08:36

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

Matt Bennett: 08:38

Absolutely. Thank you.

Todd Gleason: 08:39

Mhmm. Matt Bennett is with agmarket.net. Do visit our website, willag.org, willag.org, if you've not registered but are planning to come and walk in to one of the upcoming PharmDoc conferences, including the farm assets conference tomorrow and the Illinois farm economic summit series or IFAS series in Peoria and Mount Vernon and DeKalb next week. Get yourself registered first even before you come online because if you show up at the door, we're gonna make you open your phone and fill it out and pay right there via your credit card. So fill it out first before you come.

Todd Gleason: 09:24

It'll be the same process, just a lot easier if you do it from your laptop. Now up next, we'll return to the National Association of Farm Broadcasting Convention in November. As you know, I was doing some elevator pitches with quite a few folks there, and then continuing on if I found what they were telling me about of interest. That happened with carbon intensity and corn.

Brian Jennings: 09:51

Brian Jennings, CEO, American Coalition for Ethanol. Our members are farmer owned ethanol producers focused on tapping into new markets all around the world. Today, a lot of that has to do with carbon intensity. So by virtue of investments these plants have made in their facilities and in the future, hopefully, by virtue of working with farmers who will be delivering lower carbon corn to their facilities, We expect to unlock new markets and new tax credits. There's a new tax credit in The United States called the 45 z clean fuel producer tax credit.

Brian Jennings: 10:23

Could be very beneficial once we get rules from treasury. Most of our export demand, record exports this year, predicated on low carbon. So this

Todd Gleason: 10:32

CI score that we're talking about as it's related to carbon has a lot to do with clean energy, with sustainability, some to do with SAF or jet, ethanol jet fuel. Can you talk about what is the impetus to push behind that? Because it's an international push at this point.

Brian Jennings: 10:55

That's right. Carbon might be taking and climate might be taking a temporary sort of back seat right now domestically, understandably. But around the world, US ethanol is in gigantic demand for two reasons. Number one, US ethanol is low cost. Number two, US ethanol is low carbon.

Brian Jennings: 11:14

And almost every other country on the globe has some sort of carbon pollution reduction policy. And so they're looking for a lower carbon liquid fuel. They're they're not going to electrification. They're trying to figure out how to decarbonize liquid fuels. And we are The US ethanol industry is a shining star when it comes to that opportunity, and so there's a tremendous demand for US ethanol.

Brian Jennings: 11:38

Producers have made a lot of investments in their facilities to become more efficient. They're burning fewer BTUs of natural gas for every gallon of ethanol they crank out. They're producing more ethanol per bushel that they grind of corn. And so every single time ethanol producers innovate and become more efficient, they also happen to be reducing their carbon score, which is gonna help them tap into these new markets. What is the what was the average, gallons per bushel at the beginning of ethanol's production in the '2 mid February compared to today?

Brian Jennings: 12:15

Yeah. Well, today, an average ethanol facility, maybe average to leading ethanol facility, is producing more than three gallons for every bushel of corn that they bring into the facility. At the beginning of the industry, it was about two, maybe 1.8, maybe two gallons at most. And so using that same bushel of corn, figuring out technology innovations, and other efficiencies, and just getting a lot more out of that bushel. It's just the same thing can be said for what farmers have done, right, when it comes to more bushels per acre.

Brian Jennings: 12:59

It's sort of following in the footsteps of learning from farmers how they have innovated, ethanol producers, which a lot of them are farmer owned companies, have have learned to do the same.

Todd Gleason: 13:10

The export market for ethanol has been really good. You can see that in the USDA numbers.

Brian Jennings: 13:17

Where are the new places that ethanol is being exported to? Here's exciting things. India, gigantic demand there. African countries, Believe it or not, several African countries are looking at going to e five, e 10, e 15, e 20. I mean, we're not even at e 15 nationwide in The United States quite yet because congress hasn't gotten that bill over the finish line.

Brian Jennings: 13:43

Good. You have countries looking at e 20 and e 30 around the globe. Africa is a big emerging marketplace. The European Union is a huge magnet for US ethanol. Canada, over the course of time, has by far been our most loyal, reliable customer.

Brian Jennings: 14:02

And so when you layer in these new markets in Asia and in Africa on top of the Canadas of the world, you really build up that important demand and you diversify your customer base. These were beef or miles driven automobile kinds of things, I believe.

Todd Gleason: 14:21

Alcohol to jet is important. Lanza jet just this week said, hey. We're up. We're running. We're good with 10,000,000 gallon.

Todd Gleason: 14:29

That's a small plant. It's in Georgia. How important is the SAF or sustainable aviation fuel market to the future of ethanol?

Brian Jennings: 14:37

The future is the critical word that you said. We've got some work to do to get from here to there, and a lot of it has to do with bringing down the cost of further processing corn ethanol into a sustainable aviation fuel product. It's considerably more distillation. It's considerably more cost. If there are public policies in place to help bring that cost down or help provide a return on investment needed to to produce that, it's going to help.

Brian Jennings: 15:08

And you have pioneers out there like LanzaJet and others that are beginning to pave the way. Why it's critical for the future is domestically, we're talking about a 30,000,000,000 gallon market. That's more than twice. It's about two times the ethanol market today in vehicles in The United States. Globally, we're talking north of a 100,000,000,000 gallons of demand.

Brian Jennings: 15:30

And so that's why it's critical for the future is the potential to keep grinding more corn in The United States, adding value to it, producing products like sustainable aviation fuel that are gonna sustain rural communities by bringing economic benefits back.

Todd Gleason: 15:46

Interestingly, the airlines will say that one of the most important parts of using those sustainable fuels is the ability to bring them into the airport. They prefer pipelines. That generally means that the ethanol plant needs to be located within pipeline distance, a very relatively short distance. O'Hare is one of the places that already happens. I don't know about other places across The United States.

Todd Gleason: 16:13

Do you think that that's a possibility? Are there ethanol producers thinking I need to put a new plant up and I need to locate it next to Atlanta? I need to locate next to Dallas, Fort Worth, those sorts of things?

Brian Jennings: 16:27

Yeah. You you raise a really critically important point about infrastructure and airports. And I think Illinois, by virtue of O'Hare being one of the largest and busiest in the world, has probably got a pretty significant advantage. You also just think about the terminal infrastructure, the fuel storage and blending infrastructure you have in the Chicagoland area. It's incredible.

Brian Jennings: 16:50

And so, yes, companies are looking at what's the most efficient way to transport this. Right now, believe it or not, a lot of this is going on a truck, and it's then being trucked to an airport. But, yes, a pipeline would be a much more efficient process, and I think that's things that companies are looking at right now. Thank you much.

Todd Gleason: 17:07

I appreciate it. Thanks, Todd. Brian Jennings is with the American Coalition for Ethanol. He joined me here at the National Association of Farm Broadcasting Convention in Kansas City. I'm Illinois Extension's Todd Gleeson.

Todd Gleason: 17:32

Let's turn our attention to the growing regions across the planet. We're now joined by Mike Tanura. He's at T Storm Weather where he serves as the president and CEO in Naperville, Illinois. Hello, Mike. Thanks for being with us.

Mike Tannura: 17:44

Hey, Todd. Thanks for having me here today.

Todd Gleason: 17:46

Well, let let's talk about South America. Can you give me an update on conditions there and how they might be changing?

Mike Tannura: 17:52

Well, they've certainly changed a lot. It was one of the driest starts to a growing season in more than twenty five years of record across the Northern half of Brazil Soybean Belt. And that's a pretty impressively amount of dryness to start the season because if you look at Goias Amato Grosso, which is basically 40% of their soybeans, October through November was by far the driest on record going back more than twenty five years. Now everything has changed dramatically since then. It's amazing to look at some of our proprietary charts that we collect here because once we hit December 1, it just started raining across this region and it's been raining ever since.

Mike Tannura: 18:33

Just to give you an idea, on December 1, 80% of expected soybean production in Brazil had received less than half of its normal rainfall over the last fourteen days, and that was as of December 1. The reason that was so important is because that was the highest value we had for any day going back more than seven years. And so that just tells you that it was historically dry on December 1. Now that number has dropped all the way down to 12%. It's just been raining and raining and rain raining, and it's knocked that number down 68 points.

Mike Tannura: 19:08

If you measure dryness over the last thirty days or over the last sixty days, it basically fell about 40 points, which is just telling you that a huge amount of this crop got a lot of rain. Maybe the most important thing though is that there's a lot more rain ahead. They're in this weather pattern where cool fronts move out of Argentina and into Brazil, and then they dissipate into muggy air. That's a good recipe for thunderstorms, and that's going to be the case over the next ten to fourteen days, maybe even longer than that. In the near term, a heavy cluster is going to affect Parana.

Mike Tannura: 19:40

And they've been a little bit dry lately, but this is going to wipe that out for them. And so in the end, Tom, this is turning out to be a pretty fantastic December after a pretty dry start to the year.

Todd Gleason: 19:51

What else are you watching in that continent?

Mike Tannura: 19:54

Well, we have to keep an eye on Argentina. They're not as big of a producer, but, of course, they're very important for a number of reasons. But they've been drying out while it's been turning wetter in Brazil. Now normally, we would have some concern about this except that there are some rain chances out there on the horizon, and it's also not going to be too hot. There's a number of cool fronts that'll move through, and that'll keep temperatures normal to a little bit cool.

Mike Tannura: 20:18

And it's also early in Argentina to be really worried about much of anything. You know, they're still planting corn and soybeans today that'll last for a few more weeks. And then once we get into January and especially February and March, that's when we'll start really thinking about their yield potential. So for now, all is kind of quiet in Argentina, if these rains verify over the next one to two weeks like we think they will.

Todd Gleason: 20:41

And then because we're in the winter months here in the Northern Hemisphere, I'm wondering if there is any other place on the planet that you're watching that you find of interest.

Mike Tannura: 20:50

Well, we're watching winter wheat in The Middle East in particular. We had an unusual rain event move across Iraq and Iran over the last few days. They have more than a month's worth of rain over the last few days, and so that wheat crop is wet. We'll see how this pattern shapes up through the rest of the winter because it does look a little quieter going forward. But they only average around two inches of rain in the month of December, and some areas had well more than that, again, just over the last few days.

Mike Tannura: 21:18

So there's not going to be a drought story in The Middle East this season, at least not for the next month or so. If you go into Northern Africa, that's an interesting place because from Morocco through Algeria and Tunisia, they've had, you know, some major droughts over the last several growing seasons. And this one started out pretty dry, but they did have a little bit of rain last month. More importantly, it looks like a pretty nice setup is shaping up for them to produce some decent rains over the next week. They don't need a lot of rain to get things going because they do have a fairly dry climate in the northern parts of those countries, but it looks like they're going to get some rains too.

Mike Tannura: 21:57

So, you know, one of these key wheat, demand areas is going to be at least getting some okay rains for their supply for this season, at least, you know, over the next few weeks.

Todd Gleason: 22:06

Hey. Thanks much. I appreciate it. We'll talk with you again next week.

Mike Tannura: 22:09

Sounds great, Todd.

Todd Gleason: 22:10

Mike Tenuras with t storm weather. That's tstorm.net online joined us here on this Thursday edition of the closing market report from Illinois public media. It is public radio for the farming world. If you're coming to the farm assets conference at the Agra Center in Bloomington tomorrow, it's still scheduled. We'll kick off at 8AM in the morning.

Todd Gleason: 22:29

Don't forget that if you're coming from Peoria along Interstate 74, that Rivian is closed, so you'll need just to go all the way around to Market Street and then come back out on Route 9 to get to the Agra Center. Hope to see you there. Again, the farm assets conference tomorrow in Bloomington, Then next week, of course, on the road with the PharmDoc team for the IFAS series. That's the Illinois Farm Economic Summits. We'll start in DeKalb on Monday.

Todd Gleason: 22:58

Travel to Peoria for Tuesday's program, and we'll wrap things up Wednesday in Mount Vernon. You've been listening to the closing market report on Illinois Extinction's Todd Gleeson.