Todd Gleason: 00:00

From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois, this is the closing market report for the February 2025. I'm extension's Todd Gleeson. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett. He's at agmarket.net out of Windsor, Illinois. We'll hear from Jonathan Koppas, agricultural policy specialist here on the Urbana Champaign campus of the University of Illinois, a member of the farm dog team who also will be at next week's all day Ag Outlook at the beef house.

Todd Gleason: 00:28

Pregistration for that program ends, by the way, tomorrow. Make sure you visit our website, wilag.org, to get yourself signed up. Do it today, right now. And then as we close out this program today, we'll talk with Mike Tanuram. He is at t storm weather, that's tstorm.net online, during this Thursday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Medium.

Todd Gleason: 00:51

It is public radio for the farming world online on demand anytime you'd like to listen at willag.0rg celebrating forty years of this program, some 10,000 episodes, and more than 30,000 interviews. I have some news from University of Illinois Extension's NLRS or nutrient loss reduction strategy team. I host the nutrient loss reduction podcast. The Illinois corn growers and the Illinois Department of Agriculture received a special allocation of EQIP funding, about $15,000,000 This allocation was not tied to the Inflation Reduction Act and is not impacted by any freezes, but the catch is that farmers need to work with their local NRCS office by tomorrow. That's Friday, February.

Todd Gleason: 01:45

They were able to bring $15,000,000 into Illinois to address the dust storms and nutrient loss reduction efforts. Rankings for these funds will be elevated You'll need to call your local NRCS office. They have specific maps and can tell you whether you're in one of the areas. Priority practices are cover crops, no till, and strip till. They have talked with state officials about a multi year scenario where you plant cover crops ahead of your soybean acres and you use no till strip till ahead of corn.

Todd Gleason: 02:23

Again, your local office should be able to walk you through these options, but you'll need to call them probably today and certainly by tomorrow. Call your local NRCS office. You're asking about special funding pools for the topsoil conservation and nutrient loss reduction efforts. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. March corn for the day settled at $4.64 and 3 quarters, 13 and a half cents lower than May at $4.81, down 12 and a half.

Todd Gleason: 02:55

And new crop December at $4.61 and 3 quarters, down 5 and a quarter cents. March beans at $10.22 and 3 quarters, opinion three quarters lower. May at ten thirty seven and a half down four. New crop November down three and three quarters, ten forty one and three quarters, the settlement price for that contract. The bean meal at $2.90 90, that finished down $2.50 for the day.

Todd Gleason: 03:16

The bean oil at $44.75.22 lower. Soft red winter wheat at 5.46 threefour dollars down $19.25 The hard red in the March at $5.71 and a quarter down 13 quarters of a cent. Live cattle pewters, a dollar 50 higher. The lean hogs, down $3.92 and a half. And feeders, up $2.02 and a half.

Todd Gleason: 03:38

Matt Bennett from agmarket.net now joins us to take a look at what's happening in Chicago. Although, Matt, you are at the Ag Forum in Washington, DC, where this morning, USDA released its updated supply and demand figures for the 2025 crop year. They put planted acreage at 94,000,000 acres and yielded one eighty one, not one eighty one and a half or one eighty two. What do you think of those figures?

Matt Bennett: 04:07

Well, you know, ultimately, I think it wasn't a surprise for anyone. I think most of us felt like acres in that 93 and a half, 94 range was probably where they'd come in at. They usually come in, I think, with what I would call kind of a conservative type number. There's no doubt whenever you look at the economics of the situation, you could make a case for higher acres yet, but I wasn't surprised with the 94. I think one eighty one is probably something we're gonna be living with here for a while.

Matt Bennett: 04:34

Of course, we've never proven that we can go one eighty or better. But I think the first year mother nature cooperates, we should be able to eclipse that. So I think it's believable. We can go along with it, but I think corn acres, will go up from here and bean acres might have a hard time, getting up to 84.

Todd Gleason: 04:50

Yeah. So the, soybean figures did show an 84,000,000 planted acres. You think that'll be hard to get to? 52 and a half for yield there. I don't suppose that was a surprise.

Todd Gleason: 05:00

Yeah.

Matt Bennett: 05:00

I mean, it wasn't a big surprise. I think, of course, if you're gonna limit soybean acres, then you're probably gonna have, you know, maybe a little bit easier time getting to a decent yield there. I guess from my vantage point, beans are really gonna struggle to get the acres this year with the lack of profitability we've seen over the winter months. Now, of course, they're making a little bit of a, a rally, if you will, versus corn anyway. You look at the relatively speaking type of action as far as that ratio goes, we've come off of those multi multiyear lows, soybeans to corn.

Matt Bennett: 05:32

And so, it might be too little too late. They're just not a lot of profit, not a lot of meat on the mountain. So, Todd, I think it's gonna be really hard to get bean acres. Yeah. I don't know.

Matt Bennett: 05:41

82 and a half to 83 is kinda what I'm using right now, but, we haven't submitted any official guesses yet for that end of the, end of the month report.

Todd Gleason: 05:49

I I must ask, are you making a presentation at the Ag Outlook Forum?

Matt Bennett: 05:54

Yeah. I'll be the grain and oilseeds luncheon, presenter. So, typically, they bring someone in from the industry that will present their, for the Grain and Oilseeds lunch. And so this year, they asked if I'd come out and do this. If, people wanna watch, they can watch virtually.

Matt Bennett: 06:08

So there should be, several people watching that, from a virtual standpoint. But, heck of a good crowd here as well, so there's a lot of people in person too.

Todd Gleason: 06:16

What time are you on tomorrow?

Matt Bennett: 06:18

Yeah. It'll be around 12:30 eastern time. So, if someone wanted to tune in in and watch, they gotta keep that in mind. It's be 12:30 eastern.

Todd Gleason: 06:25

Alright. And then are you going from there to the commodity classic?

Matt Bennett: 06:28

Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm actually gonna go home, for a day, and then I'll have to fly out to commodity because I've got some stuff that we need to do there on Sunday and then the early risers on Monday, and I'll be back home Tuesday. So it's it's it's pretty busy time travel wise.

Todd Gleason: 06:41

I know you will not be because if your travel be able to make our all day, I got lucky. We'll miss you at that event. Looking back at this week now or today even in the marketplace, what are you thinking?

Matt Bennett: 06:52

Yeah. I mean, there's no doubt we've taken the shine off this market. Trend has certainly been violated, from a, you know, a technical standpoint. It doesn't look near as good as what it did here for quite some time, or the funds are gonna pull out and, you know, be done with this corn market? I have a hard time thinking that will be the case.

Matt Bennett: 07:12

In all honesty, I feel like, these restricted world stocks, restricted US stocks are something that they're gonna wanna be around for because when you see a real rally, you know, it's when you built that demand base and then it intersects with any sort of supply shock. So I think the funds are still kinda taking a look at some of these weather anomalies that we've looked at. I know there's been a lot of folks talking potential for drought this coming summer. I think they wanna see if the safari crop's gonna pan out. Are we gonna be able to get mother nature to cooperate in The US in 2025?

Matt Bennett: 07:43

Because, you know, if one of those two doesn't happen, I think that they're gonna wanna be long to market, and that's why they've built this long

Todd Gleason: 07:50

position. Yeah. So restricted, you're talking about the 1,540,000,000 bushels ending stocks for the 2425 growing season or the marketing year we're in right now for corn. USDA in the act outlook put that back up at 1.965 by the time we get to the fall of twenty six. So, really, there's only a set amount of time if we have a normal growing season here, I suppose.

Matt Bennett: 08:18

Yeah. I think one thing we have to be cautious on, Todd, is that, the five out of the last five years, the number that they gave us in February was actually higher than what the final number was in January. So, typically, what they're gonna do is they're gonna predict good conditions. They're gonna could, predict normal conditions. And if you go back, for instance, to how big of a miss there was for 2024, February 24, they predicted a two and a half billion bushel stocks number, for your final carryout, whereas, they only missed that by about a billion bushels.

Matt Bennett: 08:50

So I don't wanna put too much stock in that number, so to speak. We gotta remember, a lot of things can change, but by all means, five out of five years, they've been too high. And I I think that that's a a pretty good track record.

Todd Gleason: 09:02

Consumption seems like it appears to hold fairly good in the new set of numbers USDA released, particularly the feed and residual number. That's at 50 5,900,000,000 bushels up from 5.775 currently.

Matt Bennett: 09:17

Yeah. And that's interesting, of course, because birds are gonna be your biggest consumer of corn from a grain consuming animal unit type situation. But, you know, I think whenever we're looking at this, of course, cattle numbers are low. We know that. But they're definitely building some, additional demand in there.

Matt Bennett: 09:35

You gotta remember that's also your residual. And so residuals kinda like their fudge factor type deal. And so I guess from my vantage point, yes, they're saying demands can stay awfully strong, but they are concerned that if you have big acres and a big yield, you know, you're gonna have a heck of a lot of corn sitting around. I think where I'm kinda putting my focus as much as anything on is these world stocks numbers because this is the lowest our world stocks have been on corn since 2016. And so, we've definitely whittled these things down.

Matt Bennett: 10:06

And I think that a lot of people wanna take a look at, hey. What does it look like to have a supply shock with all this demand?

Todd Gleason: 10:11

Thank you, Macho. I appreciate you taking some time with me, and safe travels.

Matt Bennett: 10:15

Absolutely. Thank you, John.

Todd Gleason: 10:17

That's Matt Bennett. He's at ag market dot net. Came to us from the Ag Outlook Forum in Washington DC today. Tomorrow, he will make a presentation. You can see that online at 11:30 central time.

Todd Gleason: 10:30

Just search USDA Ag Outlook for him. Should pop up, and you'll be able to watch if you want. Then, of course, he'll be at Commodity Classic after that for next week's early riser on Monday. If you've not purchased yet your tickets for the all day I got look, don't wait. Right now is the time to do it.

Todd Gleason: 10:49

The program is Tuesday of next week at the Beef House in Covington, Indiana. The farmdoc team will be there. The Will Ag analyst will be there. Neil Dahlstrom, author of Tractor Wars, will join us. By the way, the documentary based on his book will air on WILL channel twelve this weekend, Sunday at noon.

Todd Gleason: 11:08

That's just after Market to Market. You'll want to tune in to that. And you want to purchase your copy of Tractor Wars, you can find a link on our website at willag.org or farmdocdaily.illinois.edu. When you register for the All Day Ag Outlook, bring that book with you, and Neil will sign it. You might also bring your copy of Back to the Futures, written by agricultural economist Scott Irwin, or one of the two books that are available from author Jonathan Koppas, a member of the FarmDoc team, agricultural policy specialist at the U of I.

Todd Gleason: 11:43

Speaking of Jonathan, I pulled some soundbites from him so that we could talk a little bit this afternoon about farm policy. He'll be at the all day outlook again signing books and up in front in a panel discussion as well. But first, let's hear from him today as it's related to the farm bill that has yet to be put in place for 2024 or now 2025. He was asked to explain what's in the farm bill.

Jonathan Coppess: 12:13

Anytime you have a bill the size of a farm bill, you're you're building a coalition across a whole bunch of interests. Obviously, some of the primary interests are the farm groups, so commodity groups, you know, the corn growers and soybean farmers, wheat farmers. Then you have a lot, as as was mentioned, with conservation programs, a variety of groups who are interested in having, conservation on the ground and and maybe protecting habitat or cleaning up waterways. Obviously, those who, are benefiting from the SNAP program, the food assistance program, those interests are also very much involved. Rural communities, also, have, you know, development assistance in the bill.

Jonathan Coppess: 12:51

So you you really do in its best operation, a farm bill brings together this huge coalition of a variety of interests that that work together to kinda negotiate out the pieces, which then gets you a big, a big count of votes in both the house and the senate. So that's it's you know, there's there's a big moving piece, in the whole farm bill.

Todd Gleason: 13:12

Now most of the time on this program, we think about the farm bill as it's related directly to commercial agriculture. However, it does impact other types of agriculture across the nation, particularly smallholder farms.

Jonathan Coppess: 13:27

Yeah. It's one of the challenges. As you can imagine, you're you're spread out across the country and and, you know, farmers different production processes or different farm systems, you know, may or may not find their way in. And and I think that the farm programs, are designed by congress, but they're limited to really just farmers of a certain set of of crops. And so one of the challenges, and this is something that's been debated in recent farm bills, pretty significantly, is how do we reach more and more farmers in different types of farms?

Jonathan Coppess: 13:58

So the smaller vegetable farm, that that may not have, you know, the programs the same way. Can crop insurance be improved for something like those farms? So I think it depends on how congress designs the program. The crop insurance program has certainly grown, in the last ten to twenty years to incorporate or be more available to more and more of those farms. And then, you know, there are historic challenges, across different programs and how they've been designed and how they've been implemented and operated.

Jonathan Coppess: 14:26

And, you know, another example are the loan programs that are generally designed to help farmers get started, or help farmers who are struggling to get credit. So the farm loans are another direct kind of access point for often smaller farmers or farmers who are really, you know, like I said, getting started or trying to trying to find credit where where, you know, the banks may not be lending to them.

Todd Gleason: 14:47

Another part of the agricultural legislation we reference as the farm bill includes the funding that comes to research institutions like the University of Illinois.

Jonathan Coppess: 14:58

It it it's one of the incredible operations of USDA, not just the data and the information that goes out, but how much is invested in. And I I I'm proud to work at a land grant university and work with Cooperative Extension. And so how much goes into the deep research and the amazing wealth of research we have around all sorts of issues, including addressing the risks from extreme weather events and other challenges that farmers face year in and year out, and then working with land grants and extension service to help translate and interpret that research so that farmers can use it in their fields and across the country in different landscapes. And so it is as broad as you can imagine the research portfolio being for something that that deals with hundreds of millions of acres of production and and extreme weather and and uncertain weather events as well as market and market information and challenges, with crop prices and those sorts of things. So it goes kind of the whole gamut, including research around new products, around new processing facilities, how do we advance biorefining and bio processing efforts, all of that research or most of that research is gonna be funded by and in cooperation with with USDA, and the program's then reauthorized by the Farm Bill.

Todd Gleason: 16:09

Finally here, as the Trump administration sets about reconfiguring Washington, DC and government services, Jonathan Koppas considers what impact it might have on people right here in our community.

Jonathan Coppess: 16:23

You know, one of the areas that you that we didn't talk about yet that I'll just mention is the school lunch program. So all the kids across the country that, you know, get get meals at school, that could be an area that if it's disrupted, people would notice that. Certainly, the SNAP program, the food assistance to low income families And conservation, there is far more demand for those programs. I would watch for things like the data that farmers, you know, that farmers and markets use in terms of what's you know, what we expect yields to be or production numbers and how that impacts markets. So anything that disrupts that could also impact farmers.

Jonathan Coppess: 16:57

And the crop insurance program is incredibly important. And and and, again, you know, disrupting that operation could, certainly, hit farmers sooner rather than later. And then I think there's the long term issues. You know? Investing in research takes time.

Jonathan Coppess: 17:13

And so if those investments change, you may not see it right away, but what does it do down the road? How does that impact, our ability to innovate and and and respond and adapt and adopt, around some of the challenges we face from climate and weather?

Todd Gleason: 17:28

Jonathan Coppas is an agricultural policy specialist, a member of the farm doc team here on the Urbana Champaign campus at the University of Illinois. He'll also be on stage at next week's All Day I Got Look at the Beef House in Covington, Indiana. That's Tuesday, March. You'll want to be there. Make sure you register right now.

Todd Gleason: 17:47

Don't wait. Preregistration ends tomorrow. You can sign up at willag.org, w I l l a g 0 r g. And in the agenda that you see there, you'll find a link to two of Jonathan's books. They're called Between Soil and Society.

Todd Gleason: 18:05

That's his most recent book. And The Fault Lines of Farm Policy. You can buy one or both of them at a 40% discount. The link is right there in the agenda. Bring those books with you or the books for Neil Dahlstrom, Tractor Wars, or Scott Erwin, Back to the Futures, and the authors will sign them.

Todd Gleason: 18:40

Let's check-in now with the CEO and president of t storm weather at t storm dot net online. Mike Tenara is here. Hi, Mike. I hope you're having a great Thursday.

Mike Tannura: 18:50

Yeah. Having a great day, enjoying the sunshine, and looking forward to some more warm weather here.

Todd Gleason: 18:55

Yeah. It's fantastic here. I wanna know, though, what weather is like in Argentina. Brazil has been getting dry in some places?

Mike Tannura: 19:07

It certainly has. There's an upper level high that's located over Southern Brazil, and that's limiting rainfall across this region. That high is going to stick around for at least another ten days, that's also going to induce heat. This will leave corn and soybeans in Southern Brazil and Paraguay quite a bit drier than normal over the next ten days and some of that dryness will also extend into the central and northern regions especially in Bahia, Munasterize, and Goyas. So this whole region accounts for quite a bit of corn and soybean production, and that is something to watch.

Mike Tannura: 19:42

Now the reason this story is maybe not super clean is because there's a mix of crop development that's taking place. A lot of soybeans are being harvested now so those aren't being affected by this but there still are sensitive soybeans out there. On top of that we're in the middle of second corn planting. About two thirds of that crop is planted and dry weather early doesn't really mean a whole lot to it, but the potential problem is that if this lasts for more than ten days, then all of a sudden you'll start to need some rain for that crop. So there's some things to monitor in Brazil for sure.

Todd Gleason: 20:18

Is this, high having an impact because they don't respect borders in Argentina at all?

Mike Tannura: 20:23

It certainly is. That high is keeping the main storm track stuck across Argentina, and this is a setup that's conducive to heavy rain. A number of waves of energy will move across the Key Growing Belt going forward, and that will induce thunderstorms every day in different parts of the growing region. In the end, we're thinking four to eight inches of rain is coming up over the next ten to fourteen days, and that's 200% to 400% of normal. That's a lot of rain because they already had some big totals over the last few days, and it's going to pretty much completely wipe out the dryness story, that's been dominating for a while, and it's going to turn into a wetness story.

Mike Tannura: 21:03

So we'll see what happens there, but they're also kind of in this mixed area of weather because first corn will be harvested pretty soon, late corn would benefit from some of this rain, but then it becomes a question of whether this is too much, and then soybeans also, you know, they've been pretty dry now they're moving into March, they're going to turn wet. How is that going to affect yield development? So there's a lot of things that are happening there, but the weather is pretty clear. Heavy rain in Argentina and not much in Brazil.

Todd Gleason: 21:33

And finally, are there other places across the planet that we should be watching and that you're concerned about at all?

Mike Tannura: 21:38

Well, I think the one that you need to watch, not only for the next few weeks, but going into April and May, is around the Black Sea. If you look at wheat production in Russia and Ukraine, they both have pretty high coverages of dryness over the measured over the last sixty days and over the last ninety days. This is indicative of a developing drought. There's very little rain in the forecast over the next two weeks so that'll take us right into the March and this dryness story will only become more notable. Now if you start to get great ratings later in March and in April then the whole story pretty much goes away because their key period for weed development is set about a month later than what we have in The US.

Mike Tannura: 22:20

So say mid April through mid May and even into June. That's the key period. So it's a little early to be overly concerned about it, but it certainly shows up on the data that we collect, and we think that'll be something to watch in the future.

Todd Gleason: 22:34

Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Mike Tannura: 22:36

Yeah. Thanks for having me, Todd.

Todd Gleason: 22:37

That's Mike Tenure. He is with TSTORM weather. That's tstorm.net online. Do visit our website. Sign up right now for the All Day Outlook preregistration.

Todd Gleason: 22:47

Ends tomorrow. So don't wait. Willag.0rg. And, by the way, the end of the month is the crop insurance setting month. We'll have those numbers at the end of the day tomorrow, and you'll be able to hear from Gary Schnitke on Tuesday about those crop insurance and ARK and PLC decisions.

Todd Gleason: 23:06

I'm Illinois extensions, Todd Gleeson.