- Dudley Smith Winter Meeting Interviews
- Don Day, DayWeather.com
From the land to Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market report for the February 2026. I'm Extinction's Todd Gleason. Happy birthday to my brother Rob. It's USDA report day.
Todd Gleason: 00:12Coming up, we'll talk about this morning's report and how the trade reacted with Naomi Bloem. She's at totalfarmmarketing.com and then we'll hear from the Dudley Smith winter meeting. I hosted that meeting earlier today and still are on-site in Taylorville. We'll talk with Travis Mateer extension specialist in beef cattle production and Grady Gullickson who is a PhD student in animal science both made presentations this morning then as we close out our time together we'll take a look at the weather forecast too with Don Day of day weather in Cheyenne, Wyoming on this Tuesday edition of the closing market report from Illinois public media. It's public radio for the farming world where right now on the website, you can purchase your tickets for the AllDag Outlook.
Todd Gleason: 00:56Just $40. It's three weeks from today.
announcer: 00:59Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.
Todd Gleason: 01:04March corn for the day settled at $4.28 and 3 quarters unchanged. May at $4.37 at a quarter up a quarter, and December corn at $4.58, a penny higher for the day. March soybeans, $11.22 and a half, 11 and 3 quarters higher. The May at 11:37 and a half up 12 and a half cents, and November soybeans, ten and three quarters higher. Settlement price there at $11.06 and a half cents.
Todd Gleason: 01:28Bean meal futures up $3 for the day. The bean oil, 58ยข higher. Wheat futures in the soft red, a half lower at $5.28 and a quarter. And the hard red in the March at $5.30 and a half, up a penny in three quarters on this Tuesday afternoon. You're listening to Illinois Public Media.
Todd Gleason: 01:46Naomi Blohm from totalfarmmarketing.com in West Bend, Wisconsin is now here to take a look at the marketplace. Hi, Naomi. Thanks for being with us today. First, let's begin with world ag supply and demand estimates released at 11AM this morning. Central time, there were some numbers changed in the corn, but nothing in the soybeans.
Todd Gleason: 02:06What did you make of it?
Naomi Blohm: 02:07Yeah. Usually, this February report does not have a lot of big dramatic changes, because the January report had all the fireworks. And then on this report, they don't do any changes to production, only modest tweaks to demand as far as US numbers go, and that's exactly what happened today. So on the corn side of things, the USDA did a nice little increase on demand for corn for export, now 3,300,000,000 bushels, up from 3.2, and that dropped carryout down. We now have US carryout for corn at 2,100,000,000 bushels, down from 2.2 last month.
Naomi Blohm: 02:44And no changes for soybeans in The US numbers at all. So that was interesting to see.
Todd Gleason: 02:51So the trade, I think, was thinking there might be some changes just on usage. However, when the president made his announcement as it's related to the 8,000,000 metric extra tons of soybeans, That was not a deal, so USDA went to put that in. But there were some possibilities that there might be some other numbers that could have been tweaked just a bit. Still this morning, before the report, USDA, rather CME Group numbers were higher. They dropped immediately after the report, but managed to end the day just about where they started, I think.
Naomi Blohm: 03:25Yeah, you're right about that. So throughout the morning before the WASDE report, soybean prices just started inching a little bit higher and higher and higher. And then when the report came out, beans backed off a little bit because there was no big dramatic news, bullish or bearish, on the report itself. And the USDA, on the global scale for soybeans, for the Brazilian soybean crop, increased production now 180,000,000 metric tons, up from January's number of one seventy eight, and then they kept the Argentina soybean estimate unchanged at 48.5. So we kinda think today that the reason that the beans just held that strength overall, a little bit tied to soybean oil prices working a little higher today, soybean meal prices working higher.
Naomi Blohm: 04:11So soybeans, though, still, trading, a little bit lower than Friday's peak high price, but we're waiting to see some definite more demand news from China on the flash sales in the morning. And just a couple things to be aware of next week. We have a lot of random things that are kind of a big deal that could affect market prices. So Monday markets are closed for President's Day. Tuesday starts the Chinese holiday, the Chinese New Year, Golden Week.
Naomi Blohm: 04:42A lot of times, we don't see a lot of demand for ag products from The United States, during that time frame as China has kinda closed down for the week. Seasonally, corn and soybean futures have a tendency to top out in the February, so that's next week. Thursday and Friday, the USDA Outlook Forum. And then on Friday, the Supreme Court gets together, and that's the next chance that we might see an update on tariff news. So now with this report out of the way, we're gonna be focusing on looking for any kind of demand from China and keeping an eye on all of that opportunity for various news factors for next week.
Todd Gleason: 05:20As soybeans have made their way back to kind of that $11 range in the new crop, and higher ranges for old crop as well, particularly given they're back to where they were on those highs from last week. Does it offer an opportunity, do you think, for producers at all? Or are you willing to stand aside and wait still?
Naomi Blohm: 05:40I would really encourage producers to continue on soybeans, old crop and new crop, to make some sales here. The bottom line, in my opinion, if China does not come in and buy this additional 8,000,000 metric tons, the soybean market probably is going to struggle to trade much higher from here, because the USDA confirmed today bigger supplies out of South America. Record ending stocks still on soybean carryout, so nothing has really changed there. So continue to focus on cash sales. Now I would add, if by chance China did come in and buy that extra 8,000,000 metric tons, well, then that would really dramatically change the balance sheet.
Naomi Blohm: 06:24But we have to really ask ourselves with the cheaper prices out of South America at harvest right now, are they gonna step up to the plate and be buyers?
Todd Gleason: 06:32So they didn't say when they would buy. The idea is that maybe they'll buy, of course, before we get to the end of this marketing year. That would put them in the normal shipping time frame, I guess, for soybeans in the new crop. So all kinds of things at play there to think about. What are you considering in the corn market?
Todd Gleason: 06:53That extra 100,000,000 bushels of corn that will be exported, says USDA. That gives gave a nice little lift.
Naomi Blohm: 07:01Yeah. It was, you know, it's just really nice to see that strong demand there, without a doubt. But unfortunately, the bottom line is that we're still dealing with carryout over 2,000,000,000 bushels at 2,100,000,000 bushels. So for corn to rally higher from here, it would take either China actually coming in to buy beans because that would change the soybean balance sheet. If beans would rally higher, that would probably take the corn along with it on a competition for acres for the coming spring, or it's gonna take a dramatic weather issue on the safrinha crop, which is just getting planted right now in Brazil, that second crop corn.
Naomi Blohm: 07:37But for weather watching down there, that doesn't really come into big weather watching time frame until mid to late March as they are getting more into the heart of their production season. So, in the short term, we might just see this corn price mark time trade sideways in a new sideways trading range until we wait for some actual fresh news.
Todd Gleason: 07:59Hey. Thank you much. I appreciate it. We'll talk with you again next week.
Naomi Blohm: 08:02Thank you.
Todd Gleason: 08:03That's Naomi Bloem. She is with totalfarmmarketing.com. Well, as you know, I'm at the Dudley Smith Farm Winter Meeting in Taylorville today. This is organized by Travis Mateer. He's an extension beef specialist.
Todd Gleason: 08:22Thank you, Travis, for taking some time, for having me come down to, host and see the event today as well. I appreciate that. I'm wondering about the Dudley Smith research, and beef cattle because this is a farm, but it is a working farm that really has had beef cattle on it for some time.
Travis Meteer: 08:40Yeah. It's actually got a tenant. So the university works with an active farmer, and per cattle producer to to have cattle there and farm the land. And so it really it's a there's a lot of working pieces to it, but the mission and the goal is what we're after and and and have been. So the Dudley Smith initiative, really is taking some of the flattest, blackest farm ground in the center portion of the state.
Travis Meteer: 09:05We're inter we're integrating livestock. We've got managed grazing systems just side by side with research plots. It's a really unique farm, but one that I think serves a tremendous purpose in illustrating for decades now, the impact of livestock and how livestock can live on a row crop operation and be synergistic. The Dudley Smith Farm, you know, has a tremendous long history, and it's, it's active. It's it's got a board of local folks that are invested in it.
Travis Meteer: 09:40And, these programs are fun because there's so much community involvement. It's, it's got real life farming and, research that play hand in hand side by side.
Todd Gleason: 09:51Now as you would have thought, we talked some about, pasture today. Also a lot about cover crops. And when we asked how many in the audience used cover crops, I was surprised that it was probably, well, 65 to 70% of them have cover crops in their rotation. Do you see more cover crops in the livestock sector, or is that just something that happened here because we're located near the Dudley Smith initiative? And frankly, I don't think most of them were from the immediate area that we're in in the audience today.
Travis Meteer: 10:25Well, having livestock is one of the the fastest ways to make cover crops pay because it's forage, it's feed for cattle, and other ruminants too. And so I think when we have these programs, the folks that are doing this, they wanna learn the next step because it's it's working for them, and they wanna know how to make it better. And so I honestly wasn't surprised at all to see those hands go up. We've been talking about, and I should say, extension, other entities, grazing groups. We've been talking about the benefits of cover crops for years, and, you know, I'm not not necessarily a historian, but before me and the Ed Ballard and the folks that came before me, they've been doing demonstrations at Dudley Smith with annuals and using annuals for livestock feed.
Travis Meteer: 11:13Now we all cover call them cover crops, But these annual forages, you know, and if you kinda look back to how your grandpa might have farmed and what the rotation was there, this is not new stuff. We do have new varieties. We do have new technologies, better ways to implement it. And I think right now with where the cattle market is, it's a no brainer. We have to have, in a farming operation, we have to have some sustainability to profitability.
Travis Meteer: 11:41And I I just I just don't think we can rely on government payments to make our farms sustainable. Livestock right now looks like a really good option.
Todd Gleason: 11:49Yeah. So the biggest difference between, those nineteen sixties and fifties kinds of farms was, you mentioned rotation, but those were longer rotations over years. And now the rotation is a typical corn soybean rotation incorporating cover crops, but rotating the paddocks maybe within those cover crops and how you use them with the livestock.
Travis Meteer: 12:12Yeah. I think there's tremendous opportunity. You know, our farmland a lot of times sits vacant for for six months out of the year when it's not growing that summer cash crop. And so these overwintering cover crops, not only can they keep our soil covered and reduce soil erosion, keep keep that valuable topsoil where it's at, but, man, we can make a tremendous amount of livestock feed with it. And, so I think, again, Dudley Smith for its history, the research that's going on right now, it's about synergy and how how we can make the most out of this land.
Travis Meteer: 12:44It's not cheap. Go buy an acre of farm ground. We have to figure out how to make more with less, and that's that's part of what our research is doing. And and at the same time, making more with less, but making it better, making sure that we're not losing nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. We you know, there's research that was talked about to today about that, how we can control runoff and how we can better spread moisture out, through the season.
Travis Meteer: 13:08I mean, all of these topics, I think if you're a farmer that's that's that's trying to figure this out, take the next step. Dudley Smith Research Farm has been contributing to those profitable decision making processes for years. Speaking of profits, one
Todd Gleason: 13:23of the things that you particularly looked at today during your presentation was the profitability of a beef cattle operation. Laughingly, somewhere along the line, somebody said they're profitable two out of ten years. Very profitable at the moment. You did talk about this as it's related to the value of the animals on the farm when they are really valuable, when their value is appreciating, and when their value is depreciating and what they should think about that as it's related looking forward when times are not so good.
Travis Meteer: 13:59Yeah. And so the comment you referenced, you know, cow calf's only profitable two out of every 10 years. And in history, that's that's not far from the truth. However, we are in an we're in a point in the cattle cycle at an opportunity where we have record profits. And I jokingly said, why am I talking about cost control and cow depreciation when in the current environment, in all likelihood, a cow bought four or five years ago actually has appreciated significantly in value and even that cull cow price may recover a heavy percentage of, if not all, the purchase initial purchase price of that cow.
Travis Meteer: 14:37The problem is at some point we will see this cycle turn. We know high prices cure high prices And it's important to understand that we need to to monitor that cow depreciation. And history also tells us that cattle that are placed back in the herd at the lowest inventory levels do take more calves to pay for themselves. Our inventory report recently, you know, we're not this is a slow ship that's turning. It's not 14.
Travis Meteer: 15:05It's not 15. This is not a v, a direct line up and a direct line down. This is more of a u shaped cow recovery. So I think there's still tons of opportunity, tons of time, to make sure that we're making good decisions. But I I I know this is a short statement that doesn't provide a lot of context, but if you're gonna buy a high price cow, you need to sell a high price cow.
Travis Meteer: 15:27And so if we're doing that, looking at cow depreciation and that curve, that cow really the significant depreciation that occurs is late in life. So we just have to manage that. We know if you buy a cow for a high price at the the point of the lowest inventory, then waiting for that cow to be eight, nine, 10 years old and selling her at the at the point where we've recovered the most numbers and sell at the highest inventory of the cycle, that's a great way to lose money. But if we're cognizant of appreciation and depreciation, we can keep these heifers. We can turn them into bred heifers that are profitable next year.
Travis Meteer: 16:03We can we can make young cows, and we can sell good priced young cows and still be profitable here in the years to come.
Todd Gleason: 16:09Travis, thank you much. I appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Todd.
Todd Gleason: 16:13Travis Mateer is an extension beef specialist organized the Dudley Smith winter meeting that's taking place in Taylorville today. Grady Gullixson now joins us. Grady is a PhD student in the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Illinois. Grady, tell me about the kinds of research that you're doing with cover crops at the Dudley Smith Research Facility.
Grady Gullickson: 16:34So today I was talking about some research part of my PhD where we planted cereal rye in a corn soybean rotation and just evaluating if it's possible to graze or mechanically harvest the cereal rye. We were able to graze for seventeen days, so we had 20 cows on 10 acres. And after those seventeen days, we did have to wait. So we weren't able to bale up that cereal rye right away. And so about sixteen days after that, we were able to get in, bale it up, and we got a lot of tonnage of cereal rye.
Grady Gullickson: 17:11However, the quality we found, diminished as that plant matured, which is to be expected. And we pulled off 55 tons of wet hay off that 10 acres that we planted for the the baling side. And we're just evaluating, you know, what are the pros and cons of baling or mechanically or grazing. And for grazing, we added some high quality vegetative, very lush cereal rye. And if you have cows that are in a high nutrient requirement state like lactation, it would be a very viable option for you.
Grady Gullickson: 17:46Now with the bales, you can feed it any time of the year and that's something that's very beneficial for that as well. The quality isn't there. So if you have dry cows, it'd be enough for them. But if you're feeding it to lactating cows, you would want to potentially supplement with some protein or energy.
Todd Gleason: 18:03I know this is just one year of research on the Dudley Smith research facilities near Taylorville, Illinois. Were there any conclusions that you were able to come with from just one year? Generally, that's, you know, that's not a thing in science, but just broad kinds of ideas that maybe one works better than the other or the kinds of things that you have to watch out or look forward to in the future?
Grady Gullickson: 18:27Yeah, and I think it really comes down to the individual producer, even though it is a year by year thing. And, you know, if producer has the infrastructure to graze and you get some additional grazing days before you turn them out on pasture, that's a win too, right? You're not feeding them in a dry lot. But if you have the infrastructure to go in and bale, you really only have to worry about it for two to three days of open weather to be able to get in and get the bales, and you can determine the quality that you're looking for. So it's really a lot of give and take.
Grady Gullickson: 18:59You know, this year, if we were to get in, you know, at the stage we're looking for, we got in a little later and the plant got a little bit more mature, maybe the bales would have been the, you know, the viable option this year. But it's really hard to say in a scenario when we're only looking at it one year in that same breath. It does change year to year. And if you can be flexible with it, I think that helps out your corn and crop operation even more.
Todd Gleason: 19:27I should also ask you, and you didn't talk about this, but why the University of Illinois for grad school? And what and and what drove that decision?
Grady Gullickson: 19:37So I so growing up in South Dakota, actually didn't grow up with cattle. About every other species, horses, sheep, poultry, stuff like that. And, but during my masters, did a lot more feed lot work, some backgrounding stuff. And I really like cows too. And so with Doctor.
Grady Gullickson: 19:55Shaik here at the U of I, he focuses on cow calf management and nutrition. But he's not all he's not afraid to, you know, work in that feedlot or backgrounding space as well. So I really wanted, you know, worlds in one program. And I'm getting that here. Thank you much, Grady.
Grady Gullickson: 20:11I appreciate it.
Todd Gleason: 20:11Thank you. Grady Gullickson is from the University of Illinois doing his PhD work there in the Department of Animal Sciences. The University of Illinois, as it's related to beef cattle production, is one of those places where beef cattle doesn't play an enormous role in the state, but the university itself plays an outsized role in beef cattle research. You're listening to the closing market report on this Tuesday afternoon coming to you today from the Dudley Smith winter meeting in Taylorville, three weeks from today. We'll be at the All DAG Outlook at the Beef House in Covington, Indiana.
Todd Gleason: 21:00We hope you will join us. We have a fantastic lineup for our thirty sixth annual event. Tickets are just $40, including your morning roll and coffee from the Beef House and the Beef House lunch. All the details and the agenda are online at willag.org, willag.org. Now let's take a look at the weather forecast for the day.
Todd Gleason: 21:24Dondeh of day weather in Cheyenne, Wyoming is here.
Don Day: 21:28For the first time in quite a while, we're not talking about Arctic outbreaks headed into the nation's midsection. While there's still gonna be plenty of cold in the Great Lakes in the North Eastern United States here for another week and more lake effect snows and wintry weather. We're seeing a push of more mild air coming out of the Plain States and Rockies that will bring relief to the very cold wintry pattern we've had here over the last several weeks. We're gonna see the snow for the most part stay in the Upper Midwest, the Great Lakes, and New England. And there is gonna be some pretty good rain this weekend and early next week across the Southern Plains in the Southeastern areas of The United States from portions of Oklahoma, Texas, Far Southern Kansas through Arkansas, and parts of Southern areas of Missouri into the Southeast.
Don Day: 22:13But the heart of the Corn Belt, generally not looking at much as the rain will go south, the snow will go north, and temperatures are gonna be gradually moderating. Temperatures that will be more moderate, a more mild stretch of winter weather is likely for the next week or two, but the jet stream's gonna stay active as we're gonna see some very stormy weather in the Far Western United States. And eventually, some of those storms will move across the rest of the Lower 48 as we look into the last couple of weeks of February.
Todd Gleason: 22:43Donde is with day weather in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Joined us on this Tuesday edition of the closing market report that came to you from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online on demand at willag.org. That's willag.org, Jean. Don't forget to pick your tickets up while you're visiting that website for the all day ag outlook.
Todd Gleason: 23:03It's three weeks from today. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.