From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois, this is the closing market reported as the January 2026. I'm extension's Tuck Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Mike Zuzlow. He's at globalcomresearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas, and we'll hear from Eric Snodgrass at Nutrien Ag Solutions in Daggerville. If you can stay with us for the whole of the hour, you'll hear our commodity week program with guests Arlen Suderman, Chip Nellinger, and Brian Stark.
Todd Gleason: 00:29If not, it's up online right now at willag.org. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. March corn for the day ended at $4.30 and a half. That was 6 and a half cents higher. The May at $4.38, up 5 and 3 quarters.
Todd Gleason: 00:47And December corn, $4.55 at a quarter a bushel, 3 and a half cents higher. March soybeans at $10.67 and three quarters, up three and three quarters. The May contract at $10.79 and a half, three and a quarter higher. And November beans up four and three quarters today, settled at $10.84 and 3 quarters. Wheat futures in the soft red, the March at $5.29 and a half, up 14ยข, the hard red up 15 at $5.42 and a half, and live cattle futures up $2.10 for the Friday afternoon.
Todd Gleason: 01:18Mike Zerzla, globalcommresearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas now joins us to take a look at the marketplace for the day and the week. Hi, Mike. Thanks much. Hope you're staying warm there in Atchison.
Mike Zuzolo: 01:29It's a tough job, Todd. It's not gonna get any easier either. We just started to feel the, Arctic Express hit us, and it's just gonna go down from here. So now we're hoping we don't get hit with the big snows like everybody's talking about.
Todd Gleason: 01:42Let's turn your attention to the marketplace. Can you talk about the exports and what they've been like for this week?
Mike Zuzolo: 01:48Yeah. I mean, this is one of those markets that if you've been following our closing market reports since the WASDE report and the commodity week that we you and I did since the WASDE report, one of the big questions out there had been, will the trade really buy into the bigger corn numbers especially? And in light of especially these outside market forces, and I have to say before we touch on the exports and the details of the exports, we hit a $100 an ounce silver prices on Friday, Todd, and we've had a terrific run up in natural gas, gas thanks to the weather. The wheat and the cattle markets found a lot of extra support thanks to the weather. Soybeans found support earlier this week thanks to demand and the soybean oil and the continuation of what's going on with the RVO and the 45 z.
Mike Zuzolo: 02:41And so it really was a question the only really big question out there was, okay, what does the demand look like in the export front in the aftermath of the WASDE report, especially for the corn. And the weekly export sales were not only a marketing year high for corn, they were four point o million metric tons, and that's almost 158,000,000 bushels in one week. And 31% of that came from unknown destinations. And is that China? Is it The Middle East because Ukraine can't supply or hasn't been supplying as much in the past?
Mike Zuzolo: 03:18We don't know. I've been talking to some colleagues in Chicago trying to find out who the unknown destination could have been. But it's one of those things where it really does leave you with a sense that if you put together the WASDE report and the bearishness of that report and then the $100 an ounce silver prices, either the trade isn't really participating in that big of an ending stocks number in corn or and or the trade is seeing this inflationary issue take hold very strongly in the metals with the dollar going negative on the month, making new monthly lows on Friday. And instead of doing just in time JIT type buying, we're gonna have end users probably go to a CYA, get it bought because it's gonna be more expensive just because of higher inflationary pressures later down the road. And so the the very welcome piece of the puzzle here in the aftermath of the WASDE report and hopefully will give us something to work with as far as profitability in '26 marketing.
Todd Gleason: 04:23So which which side of that issue do you land on? Is is it inflationary, or is it that other side of the marketplace?
Mike Zuzolo: 04:33I'll follow the eighty twenty rule right now just so I don't get sucked into fighting city hall when it comes to the USDA numbers. I think 80% of it is inflationary pressure. I've seen a lot of talk about commodity index funds coming back. We've talked about that. But I do think 20% is, in my opinion, Illinois and Iowa are still a big question mark in terms of harvested acres and yield, harvested acres to planted acres percentage and yield.
Mike Zuzolo: 05:05I just can't seem to get my mind wrapped around based upon what my producer clients. And I've had several this week again in Central Illinois and and others in Iowa and Missouri talk to me about this yield just isn't there. And so I think that the spreads and the cash market are gonna tell us a lot here in the short term because you you would think that the inflationary push would last maybe two, three weeks, I would guess. But then if we continue to see a strong corn market, especially without any South American weather issues, then maybe the trade is really looking at a tighter supply.
Todd Gleason: 05:47Now on the inflationary side, and I'll have to ask this question, does that does that lead you to think that producers and I don't know whether you're telling them to do this. But if it truly is inflationary, does that mean while the input prices are high, purchase them sooner rather than later and make sales than later?
Mike Zuzolo: 06:06Yes. To the first question about the inputs, as long as those inputs have come down. I I talked to a producer in Indiana this week about unleaded, locking in some unleaded and filling tanks, and his price had not hold hardly come down at all over the last thirty days. So broad brushing it, yes. In theory, you would want to look at inputs now and in theory then look at sales later.
Mike Zuzolo: 06:29But I would I would also argue pretty strongly if I go back to the nineteen seventies, nineteen eighties, if interest rates start to go up and that works us into a recession and keep in mind, we just did over 4% growth in the third quarter this week for The United States GDP. Tax cuts are coming. Potentially, Federal Reserve rates are coming. All inflationary factors. And so this inflation, I'm not just manifesting out of nowhere.
Mike Zuzolo: 06:55This is this is the real deal
Todd Gleason: 06:56because Heat heating up the the economy. Right. Yeah.
Mike Zuzolo: 07:00Exactly. And so if you have that type of phenomenon going on, but then you start to see interest rates say, wait a minute. We can't afford all this. And interest rates start to go up, then you go into a recession. Commodities just don't do well in recessions.
Mike Zuzolo: 07:13And so, yeah, you don't want to assume that this is a a low that's gonna be around a long period of time if if it's led by this, and and we go up sharply higher.
Todd Gleason: 07:23So we're 8020. That's the 80%. The 20% says, maybe the supply really isn't there. And on the world stage, we're short as well?
Mike Zuzolo: 07:32I would say the world is more respectful of wheat and crude oil because of geopolitics and weather. Have we taken any supply out of the production mix for 2026? No. But they're starting to generate some risk premium and and try and anticipate maybe that happening. But I'd say both Baltic, Black Sea, and US hard red wheat belts are on the watch list right now.
Todd Gleason: 07:57And today, a a lot about logistics, particularly for cattle and wheat, I guess. I mean, this storm, and the cold that's gonna stick around for a long time really has built in some premium.
Mike Zuzolo: 08:08Yeah. Excellent point. And I think this is where the cold storage report Friday afternoon and the very important cattle on feed report because the placements once again have a 10 and a half percent range. We just don't know what's gonna get placed at this point when you have that big of a range, but it's nice to have those two reports butt up against Friday's closing this weather because if the reports happen to be bearish, price negative, then do does the market react to that, or do do they see more fear in the weather? Me, personally, as we've talked about, I'm very nervous about the calving crop.
Mike Zuzolo: 08:38We have to have a good calf crop, especially, if we have need for more retention later in this year. Where's that retention gonna come from if we don't have a good calf crop? So I think the weather could be an extra critical factor in the price action the next thirty days.
Todd Gleason: 08:55Hey. Thanks much. We'll talk with you again soon.
Mike Zuzolo: 08:57Thank you, Todd.
Todd Gleason: 08:58And, of course, is Mike Zuzlow. He's at globalcolumnresearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas. Let's take a look at the global growing regions now and the weather and each of them. We're joined by Eric Snodgrass. He is with Nutrien.
Todd Gleason: 09:17Thank you very much for taking some time with us, Eric. I appreciate that. Let's start with the cold weather here in the Midwest. We have not only cold, but a winter storm that is brewing and coming our way. Can you tell me about this?
Eric Snodgrass: 09:31Yeah. So ten days ago, we started to watch between Alaska, the Arctic, and then Scandinavia. So that that bridges the the North Pole. We started to watch heat build in from both sides, one side from Alaska in the Bering Sea and the other side from Scandinavia towards Svalbard, and all that warm air just shoved up into the Arctic, and what's there in the Arctic has to go somewhere. And so a lot of it is coming down through Canada.
Eric Snodgrass: 09:53It's right now over the top of us, and it's gonna be here for a while. We're not gonna be able to get rid of some of this cold air consistently, I think, for several more days, maybe at least another ten days, which gets us, of course, well into the February. Now this is gonna be the coldest air of winter easily in terms of also how sustained it's gonna be. And you talked about the winter storm that's riding on the over the top of this high pressure cell that's sitting over us. I mean, look outside today.
Eric Snodgrass: 10:20We got clear skies for the most part. I mean, it's all high pressure, but what's happening is out of The Gulf, about a mile above our heads, we're flipping the direction back around. So we're gonna cloud up this weekend. Still gonna stay cold, but we're gonna cloud up, and we're gonna start to see snow overspread the area as we work our way through Saturday into Sunday. Now there's gonna be kinda two parts to this system.
Eric Snodgrass: 10:40So there's gonna be a lead push and then a secondary push on Sunday. And what'll be tricky about it, Todd, is attempting to figure out just how much snow we're gonna get. And what's what's odd is this usually doesn't happen this way, but the farther south you go in Illinois, the greater the snowfall totals are going to be. National Weather Service has some of Southern Illinois picking up six to 10 inches of snow out of this. We may get we may get better than two inches.
Eric Snodgrass: 11:03There's a chance we get over six inches of snow here, but the reason for that is because it's so cold that the liquid to snow ratio that we typically use won't apply. So, you you have your normal winter temperatures, you say, well, one inch of liquid will give me 10 inches of snow. But when it's this cold, it's more like one to 15, or maybe even one to 20. So it's gonna be that light, fluffy snow that's gonna be blowing around here. But, man, it's it's cold.
Eric Snodgrass: 11:28It's full on winter, and I wish I was in Southern Florida.
Todd Gleason: 11:31It is so yeah. I know. It is so cold. Apparently, trees are going to explode. I don't get what well, what is that about?
Eric Snodgrass: 11:38Well, Todd, this this is a testament to where we are with our communication in the 20, you know, twenty first century here. And and what I mean by that is that, you know, there was a apparently, I I haven't seen it officially, but apparently a meteorologist on social media put out a map that said, watch out Northern Tier of The United States. It's so cold, trees are gonna explode. Now, they don't really explode. Just to be clear, you can get a tree cold enough that it begins to split its bark, and, yeah, it can crackle and make some noises.
Eric Snodgrass: 12:10But I, all of a sudden, after this guy made this this announcement, and he's a pretty popular Internet meteorologist, you know, all it was was like fake videos of trees just exploding through a forest, and everyone's asking me about it. Like, oh my gosh. What do I need to do? And I'm like, nothing. Like, I mean, I've got trees in my yard that were here during the 1978.
Eric Snodgrass: 12:32I had them here in the 1989 and 1999. I mean, these these were also brutally cold winters. And guess what? The trees are still around, and they're not gonna explode. But, you know, it's it's hype, and it gets a lot of attention, and that that's just how it goes.
Eric Snodgrass: 12:47But what is real, Todd, is that there will be a lot of snow from I mean, I'm talking Albuquerque, New Mexico all the way through the Northeast. It's gonna hit our nation's capital pretty hard. It's gonna hit the Mid South hard with several inches of snow. And to the south of that, we're looking at a major, major ice storm. And I can always tell when it's a major ice storm because the stock price of Generac has gone up 15% since we started forecasting this.
Eric Snodgrass: 13:12I was talking to my my boss, who lives in Memphis, my boss's boss I should say, and he said that Lowe's sold out of 200 generators in under an hour. So they're they're all preparing for a massive ice storm. It's gonna be incredibly disruptive. And given how cold this is, this is a pretty dangerous situation for people. So I would rather have you worrying more about the impact of the cold on on humans and the impact of cold on on on our animals, especially our livestock, and worrying about traveling in this ice and snow than worrying about trees exploding.
Eric Snodgrass: 13:43And please, please, please do not please do not run generators indoors. There's every year we have a problem with that. If power goes out, people, for some reason, light those things up inside. And I just read a book, Todd. You know when I always you and I always talk about books.
Eric Snodgrass: 13:59Last week, I read a book called The Poisoner's Handbook. Mhmm. And one whole section of it was about carbon monoxide poisoning, and I'll tell you something. You gotta be careful with that.
Todd Gleason: 14:09Remind me not to travel with you after you read that book.
Eric Snodgrass: 14:13Gotta tell you something funny, Todd. I came over to my wife, and I said, hey. I just finished this book called Poisoner's Handbook. And she's like, oh, yeah? And I said, yeah.
Eric Snodgrass: 14:20There's there's about 50 different ways I just learned how to kill somebody. And she goes, I'm a nurse. I've already known all those ways. Anyway, know that's off topic.
Todd Gleason: 14:29But Don't try those on me. Okay. That's right. So so a couple of things. I did see the the post on x from the meteorologist, and
Eric Snodgrass: 14:37that was earlier in the week.
Todd Gleason: 14:38I held off until today talking about it, actually. The snow ratios are really wild when you hit that much. Oh, and I I checked my trickle charger on the battery on my generator yesterday to make sure it was actually up and running.
Eric Snodgrass: 14:53Good idea.
Todd Gleason: 14:54Yes. What's the rest of February look like? We're not there yet, but I kinda like to know what that outlook is.
Eric Snodgrass: 15:00Well, okay. So let's go back to some years I tossed out in the last couple weeks when we talked. First one is 2018, also 2014, and 2009. They seem to be pretty good analogs for this winter. And if you look at those and combine them, we weren't done with accessing Arctic air during the month of February.
Eric Snodgrass: 15:17In fact, we had to we had quite a bit of it at times. And knowing that the polar vortex is still disrupted and weak, which it is right now as well, means that I think we'll have an easy go of getting cold air in place when it wants to versus those winters when it resists. Right? We just we stay more mild. I don't think that's gonna be the case.
Eric Snodgrass: 15:34But this whole pattern will over like, it'll it'll it'll collapse on itself. Maybe that's the way to think of it. And we're gonna get some mild air back in, but I just don't know how long it lasts. What I am hoping is like what happened in 09/14, and '18 is that the Ohio Valley, the Mississippi Valley, and the Delta, it was wetter. We had moisture, and we need that.
Eric Snodgrass: 15:56Because going into this, Todd, I mean, the drought monitor's not lying. We are in extreme drought here in Champaign County. We've got very dry conditions that stretch from Texas all the way to the Mid South, and those are regions that that need it. In fact, this morning, was talking to guys up in North Dakota. They're they're bone dry there as well.
Eric Snodgrass: 16:12So we're gonna put a lot on the transition out of winter into spring in terms of reviving what has been a very, very dry last several months.
Todd Gleason: 16:20Before I let you go, a quick word on South America.
Eric Snodgrass: 16:23Yeah. So South America, they're gonna be watching this La Nina transition just as closely as we are. And over the next ten to fifteen days, Eastern Brazil to the Center West might be wetter than average. And as a result of that, I wonder if it'll slow down their harvest progress, which is moving pretty quick. But Southern Brazil and Argentina is drier, and that's very characteristic of a La Nina.
Eric Snodgrass: 16:44And if they stay drier much longer than the current forecast, which again is about ten days of dryness, then we may need to start talking about what it would look like if Southern Brazil had to peel back on yield potentials for both corn and soybeans, and what that might look like for Argentina, which I'm sure you heard they kinda pulled back on some of the estimates of the size of their crop there because of less than ideal weather so far this spring and and summer. So there's gonna be a story brewing there, Todd. I don't know how big of a splash it's gonna be in markets until we get the safrinha crop in, but, we gotta keep an eye on South America.
Todd Gleason: 17:14Hey. Thank you much, Eric. That's Eric Snodgrass. He is with Nutrien Ag Solutions and Agrabal joined us on this Friday edition of the closing market report right here on Illinois Public Media. You may find and listen to it again if you'd up on our website at willag.org.
Todd Gleason: 17:33There, you'll also find our commodity week program. If you can stay with us, you'll hear all of that program on our home station. If not, a portion of it, then you can always hear it all at willag.org. Many of these stations will carry it over the weekend. Commodity week is next.
Todd Gleason: 17:56Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. Well, welcome to commodity week. I am Todd Gleason. Don't forget that coming up on the March, you can join us for all day ag outlook at the Beef House in Covington, Indiana. If it's not there yet, it will be soon.
Todd Gleason: 18:14Information on how to register at willag.org, willag.org. This is our thirty sixth annual event. Let's turn our attention now to the marketplace. Chip Nellinger is with us today from Blue Reef Agra Marketing. He's out of Morton, Illinois.
Todd Gleason: 18:32Brian Stark joins us from the Andersons in Mansfield, Illinois, and Arlen Suderman is with us from Stonax in Kansas City, Missouri. Let's get a list of items that we should take up. I think, Arlen, we'll start with you. What's on your mind this week that we should discuss?
Arlan Suderman: 18:47Yeah. I think now that China's confirmed that they've bought the 12,000,000 metric tons of soybeans even though USDA hasn't confirmed it yet, our cash sources do. I think the question, what's next for China? What can we expect next is probably worthy of some discussion with some implications for the ag commodities.
Todd Gleason: 19:04Brian Sark of The Andersons on your list.
Brian Stark: 19:07I think the biggest one, not to highlight something that's we've talked about before is repeat, but obviously given last week's major surprise bearish surprise USDA report, what that means for cash basis here as we proceed forward. I think certainly probably has to do a lot more heavy lifting with plenty supply in the futures market depressed.
Todd Gleason: 19:31And Chip Dallinger at Blue Reef Agri Marketing.
Chip Nellinger: 19:35Yeah. I'd I'd kinda dovetail with what Arlen said. I I think technically the bean market is at a very, interesting, important kind of inflection point. So you got the the China fundamental stuff going on. I think technically we're at an important point on the bean chart, as well here right ahead of the South American bean harvest picking up the pace.
Todd Gleason: 19:56Okay. So I do want to start with corn. Brian Stark, I'll pick up with you, as it relates to the USDA report. A lot more corn around than had been expected, some 17,000,000,000 bushels in The US harvest this year. How has cash basis held up in the face of that number over the past two weeks?
Brian Stark: 20:19I think it's been relatively flat. I think the end user went into the report, maybe focused on spot needs, and I think they come out of the report still living in that hand to mouth arena. We don't see a lot of coverage out beyond the current seasonal movement we typically see after the January 1. The producer did a pretty good job, insulating himself a little bit for what he needed to move in the short term prior to, the January 12 crop report. And I think that's bought him a little bit of time.
Brian Stark: 20:53But certainly from an end user perspective, as we look across, it does not feel like, there's a lot of deferred coverage and rightfully so because the producer wanted to see, expecting maybe a friendly report January 12. So I do think that there will be some stability, call it over the next thirty to forty five days on the corn side. The producer has chosen to move corn to generate cash here short term, held off maybe a little longer on soybeans. And we can tie that into what Chip and Arlen were talking about maybe where the bean market's going to go. But I think from a corn perspective, basis is probably going to have to do some heavy lifting as we approach March and the spring months, where there is not a lot of coverage done.
Brian Stark: 21:41So I'm I'm fairly friendly to corn basis here in East Central Illinois, West Central Indiana once you get past the February time frame.
Todd Gleason: 21:49Arlen Suderman, I'd like to stay in the near term for just a moment related to basis. Export market for corn has been really good. Corn exports start to pick up this time of year, generally speaking. I'm wondering if you will if you think that will happen. And then I do have a question to follow-up as well.
Todd Gleason: 22:07As it's related to the Mississippi River, the Saint Louis, draft has just dropped dramatically in the last nine days. And, of course, it's that time of year when ice shuts things down on the Upper Mississippi River as well. How are you viewing all those things put together? So, the export market itself for corn and then the the river system in the middle part of The United States.
Arlan Suderman: 22:34Yeah. The cold air coming down in the winter storm and ice and the snow, particularly Midwest is cold and snow. It certainly isn't gonna help transportation either, whether it be river truck or rail for that matter. So that's going to be problematic for for moving grain going forward. Certainly helping to keep the tight supply and farmers aren't going to be excited about getting in and opening those bin doors either in the near term.
Todd Gleason: 22:59That's Arlen Suderman. You may hear more from him online at willag.org, and many of these radio stations will carry the commodity week program over the weekend. Our guests included Arlen along with Chip Nellinger and Brian Stark. You have a great afternoon. I'm Illinois Extension's Todd Gleeson.