Todd Gleason: 00:00

From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois, this is the closing market reported as the February 2025. I'm extension's Todd Gleeson. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett from agmarket.net. We'll hear from John Jones, crop scientist, agronomist here on the Urbana Champaign campus of the U of I. He was speaking yesterday at the crop management conference in DeKalb, and I asked him a bit more about nitrogen rates and the MRTN.

Todd Gleason: 00:30

And then as we close out our time together, we'll take up the weather forecast too with Mike Tenura of t storm weather at tstorm.net on online during this Thursday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. Do visit us online at willag.org, w I l l a g 0 r g, where today you will find a link to the all day Ag Outlook registration page and the agenda for the whole of the day. We have a fantastic day planned for you. Please come and join us. The cost is just $40.

Todd Gleason: 01:05

Don't wait. Register now at willag.0rg. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois extension. March corn for the day settled at $4.98 up a half cent. The May at $5.12 and 3 quarters a half higher.

Todd Gleason: 01:22

In December, up 3. It settled $4.79 and a half. The March soybeans, ten forty five and a half, up thirteen and three quarters. May, '10 '60 '3, up fourteen and three quarters. And new crop November, up a dime at $10.61 and a quarter.

Todd Gleason: 01:38

Bean meal, a dollar 30 higher for the day, and the bean oil, 96¢ higher. Wheat futures soft red at $5.85 and a half, half, down six and a half. The hard red at $6.00 7 and a half, down 6 and a quarter cents. You're listening to the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. Matt Bennett from agmarket.net now joins us.

Todd Gleason: 02:00

He's traveling again today. Where are you, Matt?

Matt Bennett: 02:03

I've been over in Indiana, closer to Indianapolis. Went over and did a meeting for a group growers over there, this morning. I'm on the way back now.

Todd Gleason: 02:11

So what did they ask you as it's related to their old crop and what they should do?

Matt Bennett: 02:16

Well, you know, most of them, of course, are wanting to know how much more we're gonna get out of this thing instead of, how much should we sell. I'd rather them ask how much should we sell, but, you know, the unfortunate reality is a lot of times that's not how our mileage work. But, clearly, they were asking, in my opinion, just as much about new crop as what they were old. So, I think with old, you know, we told them, hey. Incrementally selling into the rally is what's always worked best for us, and it seemed like they, certainly were mindful of that.

Matt Bennett: 02:47

And then on new crop, you know, we told them, fair amount of risk management before that acreage report there at the March. Probably makes a lot of sense. Nice to see this spring price on corn be a little higher than last year, but, shoot, beans are gonna be, you know, a dollar or so, under what we saw last year for spring price. So, definitely a very interesting, mixture there. Looking at the soy to corn ratio, you've gotta think these acres could be awfully big.

Todd Gleason: 03:12

Well, I have to ask about that given the rally we saw in the soybean market today. Is that the bulls looking at the ratio and saying, wait a second. We need to move soybeans higher?

Matt Bennett: 03:22

You know, that might be a little bit of it. There's no doubt that, the current economics just make it tough for a guy to get super excited about growing soybeans, especially, you know, if they're in a situation where they don't have what you would call, you know, an ideal APH. So I know a lot of growers that we've talked to have said, hey. You know, my APH is ten, fifteen, 20 plus or below where yours is at. You know, we understand that you guys are gonna go corn to beans based on corn, but we we just can't make that work.

Matt Bennett: 03:53

So, there's no question that the economics look a lot different in 60 bushel than they do at 75. And I gotta think in some of those areas where maybe the sixty might be closer to normal, you've you've gotta assume that those guys are gonna lean pretty hard on Ford this year.

Todd Gleason: 04:08

Okay. So then what, have you been watching fundamentally in the marketplace? What are the drivers for you?

Matt Bennett: 04:15

I think one of the main drivers for me, of course, is gonna be, what's the South American situation look like? And they've caught up, you know, they've caught up on harvest. They caught up on safrinha planting. Argentina's normalized. Yes.

Matt Bennett: 04:28

There's gonna be some losses there. We know that. But I think we've kinda cut that off for the time being where that crop's probably not getting a whole lot smaller than what it's been. Whereas the Brazil crop probably has a tendency to grow just a little bit from where it's been. We feel pretty confident that USDA might be just a smash low there.

Matt Bennett: 04:45

The other thing I I think that I'm watching is, you know, how much the frame crop gets planted. I think in some of those provinces, they're talking about a pretty big bump in acres, percentage wise, you know, just depending. And, of course, the Brazilian growers have been paying attention to this market. They've seen higher prices as well. So, watching those things very closely, it's been very interesting to see these spreads actually widen out.

Matt Bennett: 05:09

Whereas for the longest time, you saw a lot of gold spreading. At this stage of the game, it was pretty clear that the end user certainly got their fill of corn at least for the time being. They're trying to hold those guys off from delivering right now.

Todd Gleason: 05:21

So if they're trying to hold them off, I I know that's telling you that they want them to deliver later. Does that mean that they should?

Matt Bennett: 05:29

That's a great question, Todd. I mean, you gotta weigh your options. The first thing I wanna encourage people to look at is, you know, if I've got old crop corn sitting here, what's it worth versus what it was worth, you know, late harvest time frame? And for most growers, you're looking 80¢ to a dollar. In some places, a little better yet depending on base situation.

Matt Bennett: 05:48

So, certainly, no one would fault a person for getting fairly aggressive in marketing some of that old crop. But at the same time, I understand that, that basis looks better a little farther on now. So if that corn's at home, I like I kinda like spreading that out just a little bit. Maybe you go ahead and sell some of that on down the road for a $10.15 cent better way basis. I mean, I've heard of some of these folks that have had a 25% better basis for soybeans, you know, just for March to April.

Matt Bennett: 06:17

So, that that's a big deal. But as core as far as corn goes, most of them are are centered around that 10 to 15¢ level, but that's still one heck of a a additional amount of premium, if you will, just to hold on to that corn a little bit longer. So if I'm in the mind to sell, I think I'll probably sell some down. I'll probably sell some a little bit of basis level.

Todd Gleason: 06:36

On the soybeans, when you talk to producers about new crop and they would be I I guess they would have less incentive to try to sell new crop soybean. Should they?

Matt Bennett: 06:47

Yeah. I mean, here's the easy answer, I guess, for me. Nothing's easy with marketing time. But if you can't call it a profit right now, I just don't see any reason in locking in a loose with this early in the year. There's no question that it's a very challenging time for soybean growers in here.

Matt Bennett: 07:03

And so, you know, with that being the case, if you know your breakeven is, you know, $11 cash, which I've seen a lot of those, you know, and you're looking at 60 and 80¢ below that on a cash price, really, there's no sense in getting super fired up just yet. I know that what forces us to make sales in those situations many times, you know, is just the fear of the market moving lower. But you gotta understand that, there's still a lot of water to go under the bridge. I kinda feel like if these corn acres end up as strong as what some of us think they could be, they could be a bit of a booster, you know, for soybeans. I'm not saying beans are gonna rally.

Matt Bennett: 07:40

Certainly, that ratio will change for beans to corn, and maybe that's hinged a % on corn, but with lower. But you've gotta think that a low eighties type number on acres for beans would be supportive, and maybe that's where we finally get an opportunity to see beans kinda get off the mat.

Todd Gleason: 07:55

Hey. Thank you much, Matt. We appreciate you being with us today, and safe travels.

Matt Bennett: 07:59

Yep. Thanks for having me.

Todd Gleason: 08:00

Matt Bennett is with agmarket.net. We're now joined by John Jones, soil scientist, agronomist on the Urbana Champaign campus of the U of I. He's been traveling on the crop management conferences and presenting on soil fertility, n, p, and k. I'm wondering when you're thinking about these inputs, how farmers should consider them? I mean, they know that, of course, they need fertilizers.

Todd Gleason: 08:32

These are the foods that, make a plant grow. But how should they consider them, within the system?

John Jones: 08:40

I think one of the important things to think about is when we're assessing the performance or the outcomes that we get from our management decisions. Specifically, are we gonna think of that farm field or grid point as a whole, or are you gonna separate out what benefit was provided to the crop from the fertilizer, from the soil? And I think there's benefits from piecing that apart and saying, what is the amount of nutrients or what are the amount of nutrients that were supplied by the soil versus the fertilizer? This is a little hard to do in a production context sometimes, but with a lot of capabilities of on farm experimentation and farmers and farmers and agronomists continuously running their own strip trials, where I think there's benefits are when we say this was the outcome of the exact input or nutrient applied, not just at the end of the day, bushels divided by pounds of n or pounds of n divided by bushels. If we can say what value the fertilizer actually had in relative to the soil, then we can start to identify and critically assess how we did for a management decision.

Todd Gleason: 09:47

I suppose there are two ways that you could approach that. The easy way for nitrogen is to simply use the information that you and your colleagues have developed over the years in the MRTN, or the in rate calculator that anybody can look up online to come up with a nitrogen rate for, their area. Not particularly for their soils, but they don't vary that much, I guess, across portions of the state. On the other side, it's something much more closely related to the field. What are you talking about in in relationship to these kinds of inputs and calculating them for your fields?

John Jones: 10:31

So certainly, there's we we provide guidance through the core nitrogen rate calculator tool where the data data and field research that, that's been done here at the University of Illinois extension team has has produced to provide nitrogen rate guidelines in in for different parts of the state, and that really has a very rigorous large data approach. What I was talking about at at the specific crop management conferences this year were probably more on a field scale assessing how you you did after a management decision, or let's say assessing the performance of your management decisions based off of yield and profitability and nutrient loss outcomes. Now those things we can't all measure on a given production field or or we don't have the time and and tools always to measure those on every farm field. But what we can do is take some of the research results that that we're able to produce and say, this is about what we see for your soils and your region. For example, in the the the talks recently, we were discussing the amount of soil supplied nitrogen over decades of research within different parts of the state.

John Jones: 11:40

That soil supply nitrogen varies depending on your previous crop, but then also just what conditions you're seeing during the year. What we're trying to do on the scientific side is say, can we break apart the growing season and soil conditions to know and try to predict at least some directionality of how much n is gonna be supplied by the soil. That's a challenging and and and quite a big obstacle and hurdle to to approach, but it has value because we know the variability of soil supply nitrogen to our corn crops is what muddies the water when trying to find that specific nitrogen fertilizer rate that matches what the crop needs in excess of what the soil will supply.

Todd Gleason: 12:21

What kind of experiments should farmers do, or what kind of results that they're pulling off their fields, as it's related to yield and the combine data might they be able to deploy? I'm I'm trying to figure out how a producer might go about what you're suggesting.

John Jones: 12:36

One of the options that that we have and and and my my research lab coordinates are on farm nitrogen rate trials where we we do run experiments and and provide the infrastructure to run experiments on farm fields with production scale equipment. This can be done with a precision on farm experimentation bend or it can just be done using strip trial designs. Both are are flexible enough depending on what you would prefer. What those do then is provide an optimum end rate for your given field and soil, even different parts of the field. We can take soil and plant analysis to kind of maybe track or understand conditionally what what your field is at for in terms of the amount of n that that may be present or potentially available to your crop.

John Jones: 13:20

But then essentially, we see really the meat and potatoes of of the results is what the crop response was to your to nitrate different nitrogen rates in your field. We can then say, can I provide a calibrated optimum n rate for your soil and your field, but we have to do the research and get the data locally to find that out?

Todd Gleason: 13:38

And finally, just to clarify the two sorts of things we're talking about. When you're doing on field research, that really is specific to the field, and you can put different nitrogen rates out, and you can, you can, identify the differences within those rates and what's being supplied, roughly speaking, from the soils and and what's being supplied from all of the other inputs. However, if somebody's using the MRTN and they're familiar with the long, long running, nitrogen formula, they're thinking, wait a second. I thought we stopped saying add 40 pounds of nitrogen after for soybeans, and that we won't need to use for the next year. And that's already built in to the MRTN is what I'm trying to say.

Todd Gleason: 14:27

And, in fact, the numbers of the soil supplied are also already built in. So the MRTN uses those when they're calculating. And one final note, I think that I'm not sure is clear on the calculator itself nor to those who use it, is that the number it gives you is total in applied, not the anhydrous rate, but all forms of nitrogen input.

John Jones: 14:57

Correct. When an optimum n rate or or n rate that maximizes your return to nitrogen fertilizer is is shown, it's the total amount of nitrogen per acre. That could be anhydrous nitrogen per acre, that could be UAN nitrogen per acre. But it's in a pound of n per acre unit. And, yes, the soil supply is represented in that and the pre the amount of n that's usually seen from different previous crops.

Todd Gleason: 15:22

In general, this will be a number that is lower than what producers would use. So if they see a one eighty, they have to take DAP out or map out, from that or in all sources of n that they are applying to their fields. Yes.

John Jones: 15:41

So that's correct. For the the way we calculate optimum n rates, we do consider any fall applied or spring applied. Nitrogen, that's that's with your your MAP or DAT products.

Todd Gleason: 15:52

Thank you. Anything else before I let you go?

John Jones: 15:54

Just that we're always looking for collaborators around the state. Feel free to reach out to me if if you're interested in working together on some on farm research. We will travel and are excited to meet you.

Todd Gleason: 16:03

If you're interested in getting hold of John, you can search out John Jones at University of Illinois. He should pop up. If not, you can always give me a call, and I'll put you in contact with him so that you can have your own nitrogen rate trials on your farm. We're now joined by Mike Tonura. He's the president and CEO at t storm weather.

Todd Gleason: 16:34

That's tstorm.net online. Hi, Mike. Thanks for being with us today. I want to get started, right away in South America, particularly in Brazil, where harvest is taking place for soybeans, and they're looking forward even in the midst now of planting the safrino or second crop corn. What do we know about the climate and weather situation on the ground?

Mike Tannura: 16:58

Well, Brazil is in a situation where they have below normal rainfall on the way over the next ten days. And while that's a favorable setup for soybean harvesting and for second corn planting, this is not ideal for soybeans that are still sensitive. And there are many soybeans that are sensitive. They're primarily in the South and in the North, and then with some still in that central reading, central region needing a little more rain. So this story is going to play out over the next few weeks, but in our opinion, they would do better if they had more rain.

Todd Gleason: 17:32

And then turn your attention to Argentina. What are conditions like there?

Mike Tannura: 17:36

Argentina is also in a little bit of a tricky setup. It's going to be hot over the next week. We can see that, and some of this heat is going to be pretty strong. They're already in the midst of one of their warmest, if not the warmest February on record in these key corn and soybean regions and this heat is going to be part of that. Now with this heat, there's going to be thunderstorms.

Mike Tannura: 17:56

These are going to start up on Saturday and Sunday and then flow around the country over the course of next week. So we're thinking it will be wetter than normal in most corn and soybean areas as well. So kind of a mixed bag with, you know, unfavorable heat but favorable rains. Once we get beyond the next week, temperatures go back to normal and we'll see some thunderstorms here and there. So we think that all the unusual weather is going to be packed in here over the next seven days.

Mike Tannura: 18:24

And then once we get into March, things will quiet down.

Todd Gleason: 18:27

In the broader perspective across the whole of the continent, the crop has said to be still good, by USDA, and there are some cuts, of course, in Argentina. Is your assessment that the crop remains and will continue to remain in okay shape?

Mike Tannura: 18:46

Well, these are great questions, and they're difficult to answer. The reason that they're difficult is because all the weather that we've talked about to this point is happening in the last third of the growing season, maybe even the last 20%. And because of that it's a little bit difficult to assess exactly what all of this means. Now the only thing we would say is that if you get good rains in February and March in Argentina, you typically have pretty good crops, especially for soybeans. So this rainfall setup is pretty good, and they've had some nice rains over the last couple of weeks.

Mike Tannura: 19:22

So, you know in the worst case scenario we would say that conditions in Argentina are stabilizing. If you go into Brazil this is where again we think that they need more rain. Parts of the South are very dry. Parts of the North are very dry. Parts of Paraguay are very dry and that's, adjacent to the South.

Mike Tannura: 19:43

And because of that with this rainfall forecast that's coming up, we just need to see more if we're going to have, you know, yield stay where they are today. So from wherever they are today we don't think they're going to be able to hold up that well unless the crop is being harvested is coming in way above expectations. So these are kind of the different things that everybody needs to think about but what the answer is, you know, that remains to be seen. But we can just tell you that if it would rain a lot in Brazil, then we wouldn't have a lot to talk about right now.

Todd Gleason: 20:14

In The United States, it's time to turn our attention to the winter wheat crop, particularly in Kansas. I'm wondering how it's made it through the winter months. We're not into spring just yet, but not so far away, and what your thoughts are on, the winter kill potential there that may or may not have happened and what, the moisture levels are like for them in that western part of our world.

Mike Tannura: 20:41

Well, that crop was way colder than normal over the last week. The average temperature was 33 degrees below normal and US hardwood winter wheat production over the last seven days I mean that is an incredible number to be that cold now temperatures even though they were below zero and even on the minus tens and minus twenties on parts of the crop over the last few days, most of that really cold air was over the snow covered areas and that probably hasn't done very much, if anything, to most of that crop. The only thing we would say is that if it turns out months from now that there was significant winter kill damage, it probably was actually from what happened on January 21. That was a time where it got below zero in most of the plains and there was no snow on the ground. This situation here, even though it was colder, had a lot more snow on the ground and the areas that were snow free in Oklahoma and Texas managed to stay mostly above zero.

Mike Tannura: 21:37

So we don't think there was a major impact from this cold weather that's now ending. The bigger story though in our opinion is the lack of rain. Over the last ninety days has been drier than normal and about two thirds of The US hard winter wheat crop and that's near the highs of the last ten years in February. The thing that's holding dryness back and the dryness story back is that it was very wet back in November, so we had a whole bunch of rain in November and that basically masked what's been a pretty dry December, a pretty January, and now a pretty dry February. There's very little to no rain or snow on the way over the next ten days, and this is just going to increase the pressure on this crop once we get into March and especially in April.

Mike Tannura: 22:23

The climate of this region is typically fairly dry until after about March. That's where it starts to turn wetter in the plains, and then April is way wetter than March. So we're really gonna start zeroing in on these forecasts, but not so much today or even next week. It's going to be what shows up again after March.

Todd Gleason: 22:43

Thank you so much. I appreciate all the good information.

Mike Tannura: 22:45

Yeah. Thanks for having me, Todd. Talk to you next time.

Todd Gleason: 22:47

Indeed. We'll talk with you next week. That's Mike Tenura. He is at t storm weather. That's tstorm.net online.

Todd Gleason: 22:54

Joined us on this edition of the closing market report. Came to you from Illinois Public Media. Don't forget to go online right now and register for our all day outlook. That's Tuesday, March at the beef house in Covington, Indiana. I'm Todd Gleason.