$40 at go.illinois.edu/alldayagoutlook
- Naomi Blohm, TotalFarmMarketing.com
- USTR Ag Negotiations and ARS Plant Path
- Don Day, DayWeather.com
From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market report. It is the February 2023. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Naomi Bloem.
Todd Gleason: 00:14She's at totalfarmmarketing.com out of West Bend, Wisconsin. We'll hear a couple of items from the United States Department of Agriculture, one of them related to trade and the negotiations that are taking place across the planet and how USTR, that's the United States Trade Representative's Office, is handling them. And then we'll turn our attention to plant pathology, with a plant pathologist out of Oregon who has been working on a really fast paced and command lined or computer oriented way to figure out exactly what a disease is and the DNA behind it. We'll do all of that before we talk with Donde. He's a day weather in Cheyenne, Wyoming, who will give us an update on the forecast over the next five to ten days and take a look at the transition from La Nina to El Nino all on this Tuesday edition of the closing market report from Illinois public media.
Todd Gleason: 01:15This public radio for the farming world online on demand at willag.org, where today you can pick up your tickets for the all day ag outlook. It's just a week away. That's right. Only one week from today, we'll be at the Beef House in Covington, Indiana. We sure hope you'll join us.
Todd Gleason: 01:33You need to pick that ticket up right now. You can do so on our website at willag.org, willag.org. The cost is just $40. That includes the morning cinnamon roll and coffee, the noon hour meal from the beef house, the farm doc team, including Gary Schnicki talking about crop insurance. Joe Jensen will be there to lay out the fundamentals of the marketplace.
Todd Gleason: 01:56Joanna Colucci, who's now at Purdue, will be back to talk about competition from South America, Brazil in particular. She's written an article that's up on the FarmDoc Daily website that outlines some of that. You'll want to take a look at that as well. We'll also hear during the day from our regular bevy of analysts that you hear either on the opening or closing market reports from Illinois public media. It's fantastic day, and it'll kick off with Eric Snodgrass and his look at the weather forecast too from NutriNet Solutions.
Todd Gleason: 02:27We'll do it next week, but you need to be at the beef house to find out all those details. Go to our willag.org page and purchase your ticket right now.
announce: 02:38Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.
Todd Gleason: 02:43March corn for the day settled at $4.27 and 3 quarters, up a quarter of a cent. The 05/04/1938 and a half, a penny and 3 quarters lower. And December corn settled at $4.63 and 3 quarters of a cent. That was down 3 quarters of a cent for the afternoon. March beans at $11.39 and a half, up five and a quarter.
Todd Gleason: 03:03The May $11.55 and a quarter, 5 and a half cents higher. And November soybeans, $11.21 and a quarter, up 4¢. Bean meal futures, $2 higher. Bean oil, up 64¢. Weed futures in the March contract at $5.67 and a half, down 2, and the hard red at $5.54 and a quarter, down five and three quarters of a cent on the afternoon.
Todd Gleason: 03:27Live cattle futures in Chicago at $239.10, down 15¢. Feeder cattle, three sixty two twenty, up 85¢, and lean hogs at $95.80 per 100 pounds. The settlement price there up $2.10. Crude oil, $65.63 a barrel, down 68¢. Diesel fuel, just about unchanged to $2.51, and natural gas for the day at $2.83 is down 9¢ on the afternoon.
Todd Gleason: 03:56The Dow Jones Industrial Average around 392 points higher, and the S and P up 46 points. Naomi Bloom from totalfarmmarketing.com now joins us not from West Bend, Wisconsin, but you are in San Antonio, Texas at Commodity Classic today?
Naomi Blohm: 04:13Yes. I am. So the show officially gets going tomorrow, Thursday and Friday, but we're getting all set up today, and there are a lot of folks coming into town. Definitely a big group of people expected, always just a neat experience to gather with other folks in the industry and farmers, just to all be able to share ideas and come together in one spot. It's pretty fantastic.
Todd Gleason: 04:39Well, I will look forward to talking to you in the future to see what the folks there had to say about the commodity markets. However, I'm interested today in what you have to say about the trade over the last week or so, particularly Monday and Tuesday, given the Supreme Court's decision on Friday of last week and the president's move to use section one twenty two to impose apparently, a 10% across the board, tariff on incoming products and what that meant, if anything, to the agricultural markets.
Naomi Blohm: 05:16Yeah. I think, you know, initially, it just created a little bit of confusion. But when the dust settled, here's here's my understanding of it. So by eliminating the tariffs from the supreme court, but now president Trump's saying he's adding new 15% global tariffs. So what it means for China, and I think that's the one that we're all the most kind of excited and curious about, my understanding is that now the tariff rate for China is actually gonna be reduced from 32% to 24% when all is said and done.
Naomi Blohm: 05:45So there's still some potential room, maybe for future negotiations as President Trump goes to China in April, but the marketplace today, you know, just kind of trading in a sideways pattern here for the short term. Corn, soybeans, and wheat, Monday, Tuesday, all tested some resistance areas on daily charts. If we don't get any specific news to get through those resistance areas, we could see a little bit of a pullback, I think, as we head into the end of the week. Now we're also needing to pay attention to the President's conversation tonight on national television, his State of the Union address. There's a lot of curiosity in there if he's gonna address the tariffs, if he's going to address high food prices, if he's going to address anything on the cattle side with high beef prices.
Naomi Blohm: 06:36So pay attention to that tonight, and then Thursday is the next round of US and Iran conversations, and we'll see if there's anything that comes to that as well.
Todd Gleason: 06:47So there is a fleet, that has been moved into position. Actually, I believe there are two now in that area. I'm wondering how much of an impact that might have on the marketplace. I suppose it depends a lot on how things go on Thursday. But when you think about it, do producers need to protect themselves in some way, or is this just another of an issue that producers will have to ride out?
Naomi Blohm: 07:12Yeah. So watching the conversation with US and Iran and and if there's not anything that really comes to a positive decision, if president Trump moves to become more aggressive with military action in the region, my guess is that that would send crude oil prices screaming higher, which in turn could take the corn prices higher. With it, we could see more short covering from funds exiting still short positions on corn, still short positions on wheat, just to kind of move to the sidelines. Further short covering could make the market move a little bit higher. But as far as any big significant rally from there, it would have to be dependent, I think, on specific aggressive military action, and and that we may not for a couple weeks yet.
Todd Gleason: 08:00The other thing I want to ask you about is acreage figures that you are dealing with out of your home office and where they stand and how they compare to what USDA put forth in its Ag Outlook Forum.
Naomi Blohm: 08:17Yeah, so with the Outlook Forum, the USDA, you know, saying there's gonna be 3,800,000 more acres of soybeans to be planted this year, closer to 85,000,000 acres. And then of course on the corn side, they're looking for a reduction of acres down to 94,000,000, which would be about 4,800,000 acres less than this year. So from client conversations that I've had, lot of people still saying primarily sticking more with the regular rotation type of thing, and I do feel like corn acres will be down some from last year, just naturally, and soybean acres to be a little bit higher as well. So where it all actually comes into play, that'll be definitely more transparent once we get to the March 31 acreage report for sure. But with the spring pricing that we have now, when you look at the crop insurance price, like November beans are near $11.04 which is above last year's number of $10.54 for the spring price.
Naomi Blohm: 09:16So I mean, maybe does that get encouraged to more soybean acres and potentially some of those fringe acres or in other states, maybe like in the South, where cotton prices haven't been as attractive. So I do agree with the USDA outlook form of sentiment of more soybean acres than last year, less corn acres than last year, but as far as specific number, I'll wait and set the USDA, I have to say, March 31.
Todd Gleason: 09:43Anything else you've been watching that we have not discussed for the day?
Naomi Blohm: 09:46Well, keep an eye on that cattle market, that maybe is in peril just from a technical standpoint. We know that the cattle feed report had been supportive in general, but we're still keeping an eye on Greeley Colorado, if they're gonna have a strike there potentially or not. Again, if President Trump, he make any mention of high beef prices in the State of the Union address tonight, those are always those little hiccups or nuances that could create a little bit of a ripple effect to market prices the following day. So plenty of things to be keeping an eye on.
Todd Gleason: 10:16Thank you much, Naomi.
Naomi Blohm: 10:17Thank you.
Todd Gleason: 10:18That's Naomi Bloom. She is with totalfarmmarketing.com. You're listening to the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. Our theme music is written, performed, produced, and courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer, Tim Gleason. Do not forget today to visit our website.
Todd Gleason: 10:39The address is willag.org. That's willag.org. Why? Because, well, one week from today, we'll be at the Beef House in Covington, Indiana for the annual all day Ag Outlook, and we hope you'll join us. It's a great day.
Todd Gleason: 10:54Tickets are on sale. They cost just $40 through Friday of this week, and next Tuesday, you can join us for the Beef House meal, the cinnamon rolls and coffee in the morning, and, of course, the FarmDoc team and many of the analysts that you hear on WILL AM five eighty willag.org each and every business day of the year. We'll cover all kinds of topics. The full agenda is online, but the important part really, the important part is that you join us. Don't wait.
Todd Gleason: 11:23Go to the website right now, willag.org, and order your tickets today. Now up next, a little something from USDA. The dual methods of reciprocal trade agreements and rapid response trade missions, they say, are part of The United States' new efforts to increase agricultural ag exports and in turn to boost the nation's economy. Rod Bain reports.
Rod Bain: 11:50Agricultural exports. It remains a vital part of the total US economy with sales projected for 2026 to be at $173,000,000,000 a b dollars. Needless to say that number could rise by the end of the year if exports increase beyond forecast like what occurred in 2025.
Rod Bain: 12:12How might that happen? One strategy has a two pronged approach. The first aspect is reciprocal trade agreements between The US and various markets. As US trade representative's office chief agricultural negotiator Julie Callahan explains, those agreements are leading trading partners to commit to
Julie Callahan: 12:31Removing non tariff barriers and also providing preferential tariff concessions for US agriculture.
Rod Bain: 12:38So as an example, with a recent RTA between The US and Taiwan
Julie Callahan: 12:43Duty free access addressing the beef and pork non tariff barriers that we at USTR had been tackling for years and years trying to break down these unnecessary non tariff barriers that were preventing us from fully accessing their market.
Rod Bain: 12:59And in the case of all reciprocal trade agreements, those also include
Julie Callahan: 13:03Commitments to not limit market access when specialty cheese manufacturers want to export cheeses that are protected by EU geographical indications.
Rod Bain: 13:16The issue of European Union geographical indicators for cheese and other food products has long been a challenge for our nation and other competitors as it has been used as a tool to limit market access in some cases. The chief ag negotiator says with the framework of these new trade deals
Julie Callahan: 13:33Every trading partner, we want them to commit to allowing our dairy producers to have full market access.
Rod Bain: 13:40The second part of strategy to boost US ag exports is what is known as rapid response trade missions. As agriculture undersecretary for trade and foreign agricultural affairs Luke Lindbergh notes, these differ from the traditional ag trade model and that these are visits by USDA officials and more importantly ag producers and agribusinesses almost immediately after reciprocal trade agreements are signed.
announce: 14:06People in these countries wanna meet our farmers, guys with the dirt under their fingernails, who can tell you why their beef is different or their soybeans are raised slightly better or whatever that might be. And that's the people they wanna talk to. And so we have launched this set of programs where we're bringing over farm groups quickly, in many cases weeks after these agreements get locked in to expose our producers to the market and begin to build those buyer seller relationships.
Todd Gleason: 14:34I'm Rod Bain reporting for the US Department of Agriculture in Washington DC. Let's stay in Washington DC for the moment and with USDA. Have you ever wondered what pathogen is impacting your plants? Data crunching to determine potential threats to plant health now can occur within hours instead of months or even years. That's courtesy of a new open source platform.
Todd Gleason: 15:00Whether you are a plant pathologist, a horticulturalist, a forest manager, maybe a backyard gardener, Nick Grunwald foresees a possible future data source to keep plants healthy and safe.
Nik Grunwald: 15:14In ten years, I foresee a future where we could ask Siri or Alexa, tell me about this pathogen. Where is it found?
Todd Gleason: 15:22Grudwald is an agriculture department plant pathologist in Oregon and says that the work he's doing now, along with his colleagues, stems from some automated data pipeline work on a platform called pathogen surveillance.
Nik Grunwald: 15:37A bioinformatics pipeline that can analyze genomes of pathogens basically with minimal intervention from scientist. So one command line statement, and it just runs, analyzes the data, and tells you what you have.
Todd Gleason: 15:51This platform, over a decade in the making, addresses significant challenges when it comes to identifying pests and disease that threaten plants, and in turn, developing real time preventative responses.
Nik Grunwald: 16:03It has become very cheap to sequence a pathogen of any strain of pathogens, fungi or mycetes, bacteria, you name it, even nematodes. But what is really excruciatingly slow is analysis of the data.
Todd Gleason: 16:17Or put another way, in the realm of pathogen genomic sequencing and determining identification of existing of new variants, Grunwald says what currently takes a graduate student one to three years to analyze now takes just hours. You may have heard him say earlier command line statement. Computer talk, of course. That makes sense as the pathogen surveillance platform relies on open source software.
Nik Grunwald: 16:42So anybody in the world can use this for the intended purpose of identifying pathogens or pests using whole genome sequences.
Todd Gleason: 16:49To serve as an open data source to get a better idea of how the pathogen surveillance platform works in real time. Grunwald provides this example.
Nik Grunwald: 16:59We were contacted by the California Department of Food and Agriculture that they had a new fungus on a new host, and now they had several samples from other hosts, and they had never seen this before. Soon afterwards, the plant clinic at Oregon State University and the Oregon Department of Forestry identified similar samples here in Oregon. So we sequenced all those roughly 30 isolates and found that they're all the same species. Basically, we sequenced those and put them into our pipeline. And overnight, it ran.
Nik Grunwald: 17:29And by the next morning, we had a phylogenetic tree with all 30 samples identified to species
Todd Gleason: 17:35as well as data such as genetic, regional, and host diversity for pathogens. This program was provided to us by the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington DC. Let's check-in on the global growing regions now with Don Day. He's a day weather in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Hi, Don.
Todd Gleason: 18:07Thanks for being with us. Sometimes we pop around the planet, but I'd like to stay just in The United States today. And I wanna talk about a couple of things, but let's begin with just the weather forecast. You can start with that big snowstorm if you want that took place earlier in the week on the East Coast, but give us kind of what this next five to ten days might look like.
Don Day: 18:28Well, when you have a storm of that magnitude, you usually have a little bit of a breather, so to speak, where there won't be a lot going on, and that's really the case here for probably the rest of the work week and and into the start of the weekend. For a lot of the Central United States, not much going on. There'll be a little bit of snow and colder weather in the Northern Great Lakes, and we will see some chilly temperatures move into Northern Plains and some of that coolness will will reach the Midwest but it won't come with much in the way of any significant precipitation. But for folks up in the Northern Plains, the Northern Great Lakes, it's gonna be a pretty chilly weekend. Now once we get into the time frame of early to mid next week, we do start to see the weather pattern get a little bit more busy, and that starts with maybe a little bit of shower activity moving across the Corn Belt Sunday night into Monday of next week.
Don Day: 19:22And then we're going to see the Pacific push systems across the West that will travel west to east across the Lower 48 as we get into the first couple of weeks of March. And honestly, that's exactly what you'd expect as you go into that month of March. Usually, the weather pattern starts to get more active and it certainly looks like that's what's going happen.
Todd Gleason: 19:43There will be many that are hoping that those weather patterns carry enough rainfall that deficits, which have piled up across parts of the middle part of The United States, can dissipate. Do you think that will be the case?
Don Day: 19:55Well, I certainly think it'll help. But when we get into these very dry areas, and as you mentioned, there's some extensive dryness in pockets in many areas, you have to treat it like eating an elephant, one bite at a time. But there are signs that the activity we'll see in March will be followed by more in April. So a little bites into those dry areas, cautiously optimistic we'll be able to make some nibbles into some of those dry areas as we look at the next four to eight weeks.
Todd Gleason: 20:27How much does that depend on a transition from La Nina to El Nino?
Don Day: 20:32Well, the speed and the timing is certainly what everybody wants to know. And that's probably the most difficult thing to model is the rate of change. There's pretty good agreement in our long range forecasting modeling that that we will see a slow ramp up of the transition taking place here over the next three months. And honestly, you wanna see a slow transition. You don't wanna just all of a sudden jump into a moderately strong El Nino.
Don Day: 21:03So what we're seeing right now in The Pacific is the Nina is gone in all technical aspects of it. And now we're in this neutral phase and should be through the month of March, should be into April and May, which for a lot of the lower 48 would mean fairly typical spring conditions where you're you're going to see a lot of averages, temperatures, and precipitation. One little wrinkle I have to throw in is that the northern latitudes still are holding a lot of very cold air. In fact, in Greenland this week, they will get close to 85 to 90 degrees below zero. Hasn't been that cold in Greenland since the early nineties.
Don Day: 21:48So that's an indication that there's cold air up there. And as we get warmer in the lower latitudes, as we transition, that could be kinda like gas and matches, which does mean an active pattern. More spring storms are are gonna be possible.
Todd Gleason: 22:02Hey. Thank you much, Don. I really appreciate it. And, usually, I'd say, we'll talk with you again next week, but that's not going to be the case as we'll be at the all day outlook. So we'll talk with you not next week, but in two weeks.
Don Day: 22:14See you then.
Todd Gleason: 22:15Dundee is with Day Weather. He is in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Joined us on this Tuesday edition of the closing market report that comes to you from Illinois Public Media. We are just one week away now from the All Day I got. Look.
Todd Gleason: 22:27If you've not gotten your tickets, still you have an opportunity through Friday. You can pick them up for $40, and that includes the morning cinnamon roll and coffee, the noon hour meal from the beef house, the farm doc team throughout throughout the day along with the analysts that you hear regularly here on Illinois public media. Oh, and Aaron Hager will be there to talk about weed science and weeds that you might be battling this spring and summer in your fields, you can sign up now for the All Day Ag Outlook at the Beef House at willag.org. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.