- farmdoc Crop Insurance webinar
- Drew Lerner Weather
From the Lende Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market report. It is the February 2026. I'm extension's Tug Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets, really about anhydrous ammonia as it's related to the commodity markets and nitrogen too.
Todd Gleason: 00:19That with Stonex's Josh Linville, he analyzes fertilizer for them. Greg Johnson from TGM, Total Grain Marketing is out of the office for the day. We'll finish out our program as usual by hearing from Drew Lerner at World Weather Incorporated in Kansas City. However, Drew has sent to me his forecast rather than being with us live. He's making presentations elsewhere today.
Todd Gleason: 00:44Along the way, we'll also hear from USDA about some of the historic radio program that has been put together over the last century by that agency, and we'll take a look too at a couple of news items from the PharmDoc team. You'll wanna stay with us for that. And I'll also remind you to visit the PharmDoc website or our website at willag.org. At either place, you can sign up for the all day ag outlook. It's coming up on Tuesday, March at the Beep House in Covington, Indiana.
Todd Gleason: 01:17Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. March corn for the day settled at $4.27 and a half cents. That was a penny and a quarter lower. The May down 3 quarters of a cent. Settlement price there at $4.36 and a half.
Todd Gleason: 01:32And December corn, $4.59 and 3 quarters up a penny and a half. Soybeans, $11.24 a bushel, a penny and a half higher. The May at 11:39 and a half up too. And November soybeans, the new crop, 4¢ higher, settled at $11.10 and a half cents. Bean meal at $3.00 3 up $2.20.
Todd Gleason: 01:51The bean oil at $57.00 $5.22 cents lower for the day. Wheat futures, soft red up 9. Settlement price at $5.37 at a quarter, and the hard red at $5.38 and a half, 8¢ higher for the afternoon. Live cattle futures in Chicago at $240.97 and a half cents, $3.55 higher. Feeders at $3.67 45, up $2.67 and a half cents, and lean hogs for a 100 pounds, a dollar 65 lower at $93.85 for the day.
Todd Gleason: 02:22Crude oil, $64.54 a barrel, 58¢ higher. Diesel fuel or heating oil at $2.43 and 8 tenths of a cent, up three and nine tenths in gasoline on the RBOP. The wholesale price, a dollar 97 and a half a gallon. That's up a penny and 6 tenths of a cent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average about 25 points lower at this hour and the S and P five hundred up around twelve and three quarters of a point.
Todd Gleason: 02:50Don't forget to visit us online at willag.org. That's willag.org, where you can find and sign up for the all day ag outlook coming up at the Beef House in Covington, Indiana. It's on the March. It's a Tuesday. The cost is just $40.
Todd Gleason: 03:06The full agenda is there. We have a great day of the basics for you, including crop insurance and the fundamentals of the marketplace, land values to all at the beef house, but you need to sign up today at willag.org. We're now joined by Stonex's Josh Linville. He follows fertilizer for that company. Thanks, Josh, for taking some time again with us today.
Todd Gleason: 03:28I know you've been watching the price of urea, all kinds of nitrogen sources, over the winter months. Tell me what you've seen as we head into what may be a very early season for anhydrous rigs to run across the Midwest?
StoneX: 03:46Yeah, so unfortunately what I've been seeing is a lot of reasons for farmers not want to hear anything I have to say. It's not very much of it's been good news. Of course, lot of what we watch is Gulf base, is NOLA base, because that's kind of our, you know, our base point for North America fertilizers. And since the December, when urea prices dipped to their lowest level, prices are up over a $100 a ton since that point in time. And a lot of that continues to be driven globally.
StoneX: 04:10It's a lack of Chinese export expectations. It's a lack of European production. They're still at 75% production rate. It's Trinidad production issues. It is fear of a US Iran fight shutting off flows from the Persian Gulf.
StoneX: 04:23And then when you start to look at it and you look at kind of nitrogen expectation is for 2026, we keep building this corn crop. It keeps getting to be a bigger number being discussed by the marketplace and that builds nitrogen demand overall. So that has just continued to provide more and more price strength to the urea market. But to your point, it has been just in Kansas City. Anhydrous rigs are already running at a well, a full month ahead of when they would normally do it around here in Kansas City, St.
StoneX: 04:51Joseph area. Hearing a lot of great forecasts, lot of fields being cleared off, drying off, frost coming out across large parts of the Corn Belt. We could have an exceptionally early start to anhydrous and the forecast continues to hold, it could be a very early and long run. Anhydrous is still the cheapest form of nitrogen out there to the farmer, and if they get the chance, I think you're gonna see them pile onto it. That's gonna have some impact on the anhydrous price, of course, but you could start stealing some demand away from things like urea and UAN if this continues.
Todd Gleason: 05:21I have a twofold question to follow-up on that. In The United States, over the last decade, I believe there has been a transition from, imported anhydrous ammonia or in supplies to, nitrogen being produced in The US near The Gulf. First, is that correct? And am I right that it's about 90% of the n h three that is applied in The United States that comes from that area or plants in The United States? And then because of that local production in The US, is the price of anhydrous lower than the price of other sources?
StoneX: 05:59Yes. On the first part, we do produce a lot more of the anhydrous that we use every single season, every single year. And when you look at it, our production versus our demand, most of what we produce, it stays here to compete demand. I think we still import a little over a million ton in from the rest of the world from places like Trinidad. A lot of those tons go into that Eastern Corn Belt pipeline, which services all the way Indiana, Ohio.
StoneX: 06:26But that has helped our price, but you are still seeing you were seeing a premium inland anhydrous price versus a lot of points around the world, but it has helped keep anhydrous as a cheaper option out there because there is so much of it out there. There's always been a lot of people talking that oh and I just gonna go away. It's dirty. It's this it's that it's dangerous. We have not seen that.
StoneX: 06:49Anhydrous continues to be a very popular nitrogen source for a lot of farmers out there.
Todd Gleason: 06:53What are you suggesting to producers at this point as they look forward to the spring in their anhydrous or urea nitrogen needs?
StoneX: 07:01That is a great question. And unfortunately with where we are today, so close to the start of spring season, a lot of our options are off the table. A lot of the time to sit there and look for a great opportunity where maybe grain prices jump and nitrogen prices fall, lock in that better ratio, We're running out of that kind of time. The best conversation I or the best advice I can give today for the farmer is have the conversation with your supplier on what you plan on using and when you plan to use it. The farm gate has as expected given the financials for the last couple of years and this year has been much more reluctant in stepping forward to buy their needs.
StoneX: 07:38And the supply side, the retailer, the co op, whoever you buy from, well, they can't take all the price risk. They can't sit there and say, well, I know normally I'm 5,000 ton. I've only sold 500, so I'll just take the risk on the rest of this. Prices are high. They remember 2008 and 2012 when prices fell out of bed.
StoneX: 07:55They can't handle that kind of a year. So they had been more conservative on their buying pattern. That has a distribution system. And so all of us to sit there and say that the market feels like it's got a lot of pent up demand that could cause some in season logistical issues. I don't wanna go as far as say, oh, there won't be anything.
StoneX: 08:13It's gonna be shortages. Like, those types of stories. But it is a situation that we need to watch because there can be short amount of time when it's the most important to have that supply there and it just isn't because we bought it just a little bit too late. Having those conversations ahead of time saying, I'm not willing to secure it today, but here are my expectations can go a very long way in having the market set up and ready to go for you.
Todd Gleason: 08:35Can I ask, do you know why the nitrogen supplies have been constricted? Is China doing that as a policy, or are there other issues? And also, is the EU constricting for a reason?
StoneX: 08:48Yes. So it's multiple reasons, and there a lot of them are globally driven. We always look at it from our own backyard and say, what are we doing to call this? These, we are actually still, you look at our NOLA urea price, we are still a little bit of a discount to world replacement today. That's how much we've been following the rest of the world and China, they are normally one of the biggest exporters in the world.
StoneX: 09:08They normally export five, five and a half million tons. They might change this program after the Chinese New Year here on the seventeenth. But as of right now, we have worked that they're not going to export again until August. When your biggest exports stop there until August, Europe continues to struggle with not only their green energy initiatives, but they've also cut off their napkin, their cheapest price of gas from Russia. And so their nitrogen production overall is still about 75% of normal.
StoneX: 09:35That's millions of tons of nitrogen fertilizer not being produced. That farmer in Europe isn't sitting there saying, well, guess we'll go without this year. They're going out to the world and they're competing with folks like us to get those tons and get them brought into the country. Trinidad has been having UAN anhydrous production problems because of the lack of gas supplies. A lot of production turnarounds for repairs have been happening.
StoneX: 09:56So it's a long, long list of reasons. And again, most of these, most of this list sits outside of The US, outside of our jurisdiction, outside of something we can do directly to change it.
Todd Gleason: 10:07Second crop are safrinha corn is going in the ground now in Brazil, particularly in Mato Grosso. I don't recall because this is the second crop on that land following soybeans, generally speaking, how much fertilizer they use to
Todd Gleason: 10:25the yields that they have. It's clearly not what The United States would be using because the yields aren't nearly that high. Do they have a restricted issue with anhydrous ammonia as well?
StoneX: 10:35We've not heard any reports of them struggling because again they don't apply anhydrous quite like we do. They're a little bit more reliant on things like urea. So and even there we have not heard of any supply shortfalls or anything there. They sit they act as though they are sitting comfortably.
Todd Gleason: 10:51Your stable mate, in the last time I checked, the desk mate next to you, Arlen Suderman, will join us tomorrow. When you have conversations with him about fertilizer and the size of the corn crop in The United States, does that center around just acres being added over time?
StoneX: 11:08Yes. So when we look at 2026, I can tell you from our fertilizer demand models, we are still using 93,000,000 acres of corn this year. And it's not because we think corn is fantastic and so profitable and all these other things because we look at corn, it's the best option of a bunch of really, really bad options. When you listen to the crowd that's sitting there saying 95,000,000 acres of corn for 2025 or 2026, they make a very compelling argument. And frankly, if we didn't take a typical conservative approach into our models, we'd probably already be there.
StoneX: 11:39In fact, I heard somebody yesterday at a conference say, hey, they've been hearing the company out for saying they think it could be as high as 97,000,000 acres. So the more acres we add is just more supply. We're sticking on top of an already oversupplied marketplace. And so that lowers the grain price. And at the same point that raises fertilizer demand, which of course raises fertilizer prices.
StoneX: 12:01So it's a double edged sword, but the farmers doing the only thing they really know how to do and that's just survive year to year.
Todd Gleason: 12:07Hey, thank you much, Josh.
StoneX: 12:08Absolutely. Thank you, sir.
Todd Gleason: 12:09Josh Linville is a fertilizer analyst for Stonex located in Kansas City, Missouri. By the way, USDA will release its first set of figures detailing the corn and soybean acreage possible in The United States this growing season during the Ag Forum this month, and then the first official set of numbers will be released with the prospective plantings report at the March. It is a survey of farmer expectations. In today's agricultural news, a couple of stories from the University of Illinois FarmDoc team. They've updated their online crop insurance evaluator tool.
Todd Gleason: 12:53The revised tool takes into account recent increases in premium support for the supplemental coverage option or SEO and the enhanced coverage option or ECO as well as increases in support for the combo product. As a result of these premium support changes, they say many farmers may consider taking ECO and SEO and potentially lowering RP coverage levels, particularly for soybeans in the central part of Illinois. You may see the full article on the FarmDoc Daily website. Tomorrow, the University of Illinois Ag Economist will host a live webinar at eleven a. M.
Todd Gleason: 13:27Central Time detailing the upcoming crop insurance decisions. It will be posted to YouTube later in the day at youtube.com/@farmdoc. You may sign up to attend live on the Farm Doc Daily website under the webinars and events tabs. By the way, once you've opened that, you'll also find a link to the March 3 All Day Ag Outlook. It too will feature a presentation on crop insurance decisions.
Todd Gleason: 13:52Tomorrow's webinar, of course, is free. The All Day Ag Outlook is $40, but it includes lunch at the Beef House in Covington, Indiana. Elsewhere from the FarmDoc team, the build out of grain storage capacity in The United States has stopped. That according to U of I Ag economist Joe Jansen, he writes on the FarmDoc Daily website that grain storage capacity grew in parallel with production from 2000 to 2019 at roughly three fifty million bushels per year but has stagnated since across all regions and all facility types. Now, the stagnation, thanks Janssen, combined with continued production growth has led to record high capacity utilization rates, particularly in on farm storage.
Todd Gleason: 14:37The 2025 crop brought these tensions to a head with December 1 on farm utilization reaching 80%. What's less clear, he says, is why investment in grain storage capacity dropped. It's also difficult to determine if current US storage capacity is enough for efficient operation along the grain supply chains. The grain industry, from the farmer outward, thinks Jansen will need to consider these questions as it addresses the continually shifting geography of global grain production and consumption in years ahead. And that's a look at Fay's agricultural news.
Todd Gleason: 15:25Up next, we'll celebrate one hundred years of USDA radio. You know, the agriculture department's radio service has served the public since 1926, and it's almost as old as the medium itself. And over its century, USDA radio has provided information about farming, ranching, and the department in a variety of ways and formats. Rod Bain has more on USDA radio over the years in this edition of Agriculture USA.
Rod Bain: 15:54Acknowledged as the first commercial radio broadcast ever, nineteen twenty presidential election results by Pittsburgh's KDKA in November. Soon after, agricultural and consumer news and education programming became a staple of both commercial and public radio entities. That included US agriculture department market reports transmitted by an authorized 35 radio stations in 1922. USDA meanwhile conducted its own experiments in the fledgling medium. By 1926, a separate radio division was created, joining its highly acclaimed motion picture service in presenting agricultural information to the public.
Rod Bain: 16:35One of the department's first efforts at radio came through a collaboration with the then Bureau of Home Economics.
USDA Radio: 16:42One of the things they did is they put together a radio program to reach the family farm, specifically the women on the farm.
Rod Bain: 16:49USDA historian Wayne Coddley describes the format of the program featuring the character Aunt Sammy.
USDA Radio: 16:56The first five minutes was kinda like, some were gonna make things a little bit more efficient. Back then, they even had people volunteering to wear pedometers. They kinda recorded and then they kinda figured out, okay. If you move things around here, can save more time, be more efficient in the home, in the kitchen. And in the middle five minutes was we're going to give you a recipe.
USDA Radio: 17:12So now grab a piece of paper, pencil, and sit down. We're gonna give you a recipe. Last five minutes was send us your questions. General enough, we'll answer your question.
Rod Bain: 17:20Within the first month of broadcast in 1926, over 10,000 letters pertaining to Aunt Sammy and her recipes were directed to USDA. Two years later, the agriculture department would begin the first of several collaborative programs with the major radio networks.
USDA Radio: 17:38The National Farm and Home Hour.
Rod Bain: 17:44With the familiar voice of host Everett Mitchell presenting ag and rural news and his trademark greeting to open the show during its over three decade run.
Everett Mitchell: 17:53It's a beautiful day in Chicago. Oh, it's a little on the cloudy side. The temperature's in the thirties, but it's a great day to be alive, and I hope it's even more wherever you are.
Rod Bain: 18:03Contributing regularly to such national network radio programs, staff of USDA's radio and later television service. Names making up a hall of fame broadcast roster, including the man who had served twenty five years as radio and TV service chief, Lane Beatty, recalling contributions of one of his predecessors, Wallace Catterley.
Wallace Cadderly: 18:25We also furnished special features like a home economics talk.
Rod Bain: 18:28Also, radio service head and grab the award winning jazz engineer.
USDA Radio: 18:32It's hard to say what you can do if you wanna really work at it. Jack Towers was putting together every week a half hour American farmer program with gaps in it for certain theme music and for an ABC announcer, and he was shipping these interviews and so forth out on tape out to ABC, and that went on for some years.
Rod Bain: 18:50Another radio network farm and rural show USDA initially contributed to under Lane Beatty's watch.
Lane Beaty: 18:57The Clear Channel Broadcasting Service, Hollis Sevey, he had started a regular weekly program called Agriculture USA. Somebody decided they didn't want to spend the money on this thing anymore, so Sevey came around and asked USDA if it would take over Agriculture USA, and we did.
Rod Bain: 19:13A program you are listening to at this moment. A program with an over seventy year run. I'm Rod Bain reporting for the US Department of Agriculture in Washington DC. And I'm Todd Gleason coming to you from the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign where WILL went on
Todd Gleason: 19:30the air in 1922. Let's take a quick look at the weather forecast. Drew Lerner is not available to us today. However, we do have his weather forecast. He says that Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Far Southern Brazil's driest areas will get some rain over the next week to relieve their persistent dryness.
Todd Gleason: 19:51Rainfall of, inch to two inches will be common. A few amounts, nearly three inches as well. This should impact most of Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Paraguay, and Rio Grande do Sul, ending concerns about crop conditions for a little while in those places. Some follow-up rainfall will be extremely important, he writes, so crop improvement is quite likely as a result of the next seven days of rain. The Center West and Center South parts of Brazil will also experience a good mix of rain, some sunshine, a little less frequency and intensity for the rain, from the southern areas, to Sao Paulo and Mato Grosso.
Todd Gleason: 20:31In other growing regions across the planet China will experience more frequent rainfall in the Yangtze River Basin next week and on into the end of this month. The moisture boost there will be great for preparing rapeseed for more aggressive crop development and the moisture will also help improve pre planting conditions for spring crops in China coming back across Eurasia through Western FUSU or the Former Soviet Union crop areas. They'll see some frequent bouts of snow, a little rain through early next week. The area to be most impacted will be West Of The Ural Mountains and North Of Ukraine where moisture totals of rainfall can be expected in the one to two inch range. Now in The US Southern Plains, Drew Lerner writes, wheat and livestock areas will get rain Friday and Saturday.
Todd Gleason: 21:22Rainfall of one to two inches will be common with some totals over three inches in Central And Eastern Oklahoma, Northern Texas, Moisture totals of two tenths to three quarters of an inch and a few locally greater amounts are likely in Western Oklahoma, Southern Kansas. And the Texas Panhandle, the moisture will be good for future wheat development, which may occur aggressively if the temperatures stay far above average for too long. The Central US Plains to Northwestern Ohio and Southern Michigan, by the way, are unlikely to see much moisture of significance over the next week. Precipitation should fall soon enough after that, though. Temperatures in the heart of North America, he says, will be well above normal.
Todd Gleason: 22:04During the next week, the heat will reduce winter hardiness and stimulate some green and winter wheat crops in the Southern Plains, Delta, and the Southeastern States. Some cooling is predicted for the February. And that's a look at Drew Lerner's weather forecast. Of course, you've been listening to the closing market report on this Wednesday afternoon. Do visit our website.
Todd Gleason: 22:26The address is willag.org there you can sign up for the all day outlook and in the calendar of events you'll see a way to sign up for tomorrow's webinar from the PharmDoc team. It's an early look at crop insurance decisions. There will also be a segment on crop insurance, of course, at the AllDAG outlook. The cost for that one again is just $40. It occurs on the March at the Beef House in Covington, Indiana.
Todd Gleason: 22:53If you've not signed up yet, please do right now. Don't take any more time. Get yourself signed up for one of the best opportunities you have to listen to the PharmDoc team at the end of this winter meeting season. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.