Episode Number
10385
Episode Show Notes / Description
The July 2, 2026, edition of the Closing Market Report highlights commodity settlements and a shift toward a weather-driven market. Analyst Matt Bennett and industry leaders discuss the agricultural risks of the USMCA entering an annual review process rather than an automatic renewal, while Representative Angie Craig connects rising farm bankruptcies to current trade policies and reduced food assistance. On the agronomic front, entomologist Nick Seiter advises producers to scout for corn leaf aphids during early reproductive crop stages, though he notes severe outbreaks are rare. Finally, meteorologist Mike Tannura forecasts near-term cooling for Illinois and outlines competing mid-July models that predict either a beneficial cool front or a persistent heat dome during the critical corn pollination window.
02:13 Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, AgMarket.net
07:06 WILLAg News Update for July 2, 2026
11:28 Corn Leaf Aphids – when to scout and what to expect
16:00 Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, T-storm Weather
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02:13 Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, AgMarket.net
07:06 WILLAg News Update for July 2, 2026
11:28 Corn Leaf Aphids – when to scout and what to expect
16:00 Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, T-storm Weather
{{transcript | title: 'Click here to view the episode transcript.'}}
{{donate}}
Transcript
cmr260702
The July 2, 2026, edition of the Closing Market Report highlights commodity settlements and a shift toward a weather-driven market. Analyst Matt Bennett and industry leaders discuss the agricultural risks of the USMCA entering an annual review process rather than an automatic renewal, while Representative Angie Craig connects rising farm bankruptcies to current trade policies and reduced food assistance. On the agronomic front, entomologist Nick Seiter advises producers to scout for corn leaf aphids during early reproductive crop stages, though he notes severe outbreaks are rare. Finally, meteorologist Mike Tannura forecasts near-term cooling for Illinois and outlines competing mid-July models that predict either a beneficial cool front or a persistent heat dome during the critical corn pollination window.
02:13 Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, AgMarket.net
07:06 WILLAg News Update for July 2, 2026
11:28 Corn Leaf Aphids – when to scout and what to expect
16:00 Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, T-storm Weather
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Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant University in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report. It is the second day of July 2026. I’m Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason. Coming up, we’ll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett. He’s at AgMarket.net. I’ll bring you some of the latest agricultural news and information for the day, and we’ll hear from Nick Seiter, Agricultural Extension Field Crops Entomologist, about the corn leaf aphid. It’s not a problem and probably won’t be, but it is one to watch, he says. Then we’ll turn our attention to the weather forecast. Mike Tannura will be here from T-storm Weather on this Thursday edition of the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world, online on demand at willag.org. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.
July corn on the close today settled 4 higher at 4.25. September 4.23, a quarter higher. December three-quarters lower at 4.40 and a half. July soybeans 11.31 and three-quarters, five and a half higher. November 11.46 and a quarter on the close, down a penny and a half. Bean meal up $1.10 at 307.70. That’s the settlement price. Soybean oil at 66.95, settled 7 cents lower on the day. Wheat futures soft red in July down a penny and a half at 5.90 and a half, and the hard red at 6.27, three and three-quarters of a cent higher. Both of those in the harvest month July contracts. Live cattle futures at 2.39, 22.5, down $2.60 per hundred pounds. Feeder cattle at 3.60, 62.5, that finished $3.52 and a half lower. And lean hogs at $98.75, $1.70 higher for the day. Crude oil on this last trading day of the week, $68.67, up 9 cents a barrel. Diesel fuel around 4 cents lower at $3.17 and 8 tenths, and gasoline on the wholesale price, that’s the RBOB, two and two-tenths of a cent lower at $2.92 and two-tenths of a cent.
02:13 Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, AgMarket.net
Todd Gleason: Matt Bennett from AgMarket.net now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. Hello, Matt. Thanks for being with us. First, congratulations on acquiring Standard Grain and the podcast that Joe Vaclavik has done with you for a while and on his own for quite some time, too.
Matt Bennett: Joe and you guys have known him for a while as well. He asked me to do a little work with him over the years to help with all the work he was doing. Over the course of time, we realized we should just do it together because he was running out of bandwidth, quite frankly. It’s a grind coming up with all this information, but it’s a great deal for both of us, I believe.
Todd Gleason: As three University of Illinois grads—you, I, and Joe—I’m really proud of you all. So thank you. That’s a good deal. Tell me about this marketplace going into the holiday weekend.
Matt Bennett: The report certainly gave us a little bit of support. This market looked as dead as could possibly be going into the report, and then it reversed off of that with a little bit of an uptrend here the last three days. Quite frankly, today the market looked a heck of a lot better on the overnight and earlier on than where we closed. At the same time, you’re going into a three-day weekend. There’s a lot of weather being discussed. We know there was a lot of heat talked about. Some of the forecast models are trying to figure out whether this moisture is going to verify on the back side of the heat or not, but regardless, you’re in a weather market now that you’ve got the planted acreage out of the way. That’s what you trade. You trade weather, so there’s probably going to be a fair amount of volatility ahead here.
Todd Gleason: USMCA has not been signed onto again by the president, and the Trump administration has it now in an every-year review at this point. What difference does that make, do you think, given Mexico and Canada are the number one export destinations for many agricultural products?
Matt Bennett: You have to think that it’s a negotiation deal, and I sure hope that is the case. The bottom line is we have to have their markets. That’s all there is to it. When you look at corn, they’ve taken the lion’s share of corn here over the last year, and it’s no secret our exports have just been wildly fantastic. So in my opinion, we really have to try hard not to screw this Mexico deal up because we have rail systems designed specifically to take corn to Mexico in an efficient manner. They do like buying corn from us, but we have to hope we can at least be wise with how we’re dealing with them because they should definitely be looked at as a treasured partner.
Todd Gleason: It is the hardest line that the Trump administration could take within USMCA. It does terminate the deal actually, but not until 10 years out. He could pull out, I suppose, but he hasn’t. I guess there is one more step, but it seems like a pretty hard line. We’ll have to figure out how that impacts the markets over time and what the administration does with both Canada and Mexico. What else have you been watching? For instance, how are things in France? How’s the crop in Brazil? What other kinds of fundamentals have you been keeping in mind?
Matt Bennett: There is no question that there are issues with the French wheat crop. We know it has been awfully hot and dry. Of course, the corn crop over there is mostly a different type; it’s more of an organic-type crop, but it still factors into the world balance sheet. You look at South America, and corn production is going to be ample. There’s no question. I think the bigger question mark moving forward, with fertilizer prices clearly coming down some but still being quite expensive, is that it doesn’t work all that great with $2.27 corn in this $4.71 type range for the US growers. It’s probably not going to work all that great for South America either. So I do think moving forward that the market is going to be paying close attention to what it will take to ensure this record world and US demand for corn continues to be fulfilled.
Todd Gleason: Anything else before we get into the holiday weekend? We will talk with you for our commodity week program today, too.
Matt Bennett: Let’s just hope everyone can stay cool here this weekend, enjoy this 250th celebration, and I hope everyone has a great weekend.
Todd Gleason: That’s Matt Bennett. He is with AgMarket.net.
07:06 WILLAg News Update for July 2, 2026
announce: In today’s agricultural news, let’s begin with the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement. July 1 was an important date for the US-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement. Chad Smith from the National Association of Farm Broadcasting has more on the renewal negotiations underway.
announce: The US-Mexico-Canada Agreement negotiated during the first Trump administration has officially entered its six-year renewal period. Virginia Houston, the Senior Director of Government Affairs for the American Farm Bureau Federation, said the trade agreement is incredibly important for North American agriculture and industry.
Virginia Houston: July 1st is the official date by which all three parties had to agree to renew the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement. USTR now said they have not agreed to renew it, so we have entered into an annual review process with Canada and Mexico for up to the next 10 years.
announce: The review process was outlined when the USMCA agreement was initially signed.
Virginia Houston: When NAFTA, which is the predecessor to USMCA, was renegotiated, it included a novel review clause that said six years after entry into force, all three countries had to come together to agree if they wanted the agreement to renew. If they did not come to an agreement, it would kick off that annual review process, which is what we’re in right now.
announce: Houston said there is still plenty of work to do, but progress is being made.
Virginia Houston: Currently the US and Mexico are in bilateral negotiations on trade irritants around USMCA. Canada is being slower to join the party, but we do know that their government wants to be engaged and is also committed to keeping USMCA in place, as is Mexico, which is so important for US agriculture.
announce: Chad Smith, Washington.
announce: We’ll stay in Washington and with members of the NAFB reporting. This is from Susan Littlefield at the American Ag Network. She is in Surprise, Nebraska, and reports that House Ag Committee Democrats are pushing back against White House policies they say are hurting US agriculture. Ranking Member Angie Craig, a Democrat of Minnesota, says farmers are normally a resilient bunch but they’re struggling.
Angie Craig: Their markets have been decimated by Trump’s trade wars and retaliatory tariffs. They’re paying through the nose for fertilizer and diesel thanks to the President’s war in Iran. Our largest agriculture competitors like Brazil and Argentina are seizing the markets that US farmers spent decades and billions of dollars to develop because the White House has blown up trade agreements with our closest allies and chief rivals alike.
announce: Farmers are going bankrupt in rising numbers.
Angie Craig: Farm bankruptcies are up 70% this year in the Midwest and almost 50% across the country. And that’s just Chapter 11 bankruptcies. The United States lost over 15,000 farms last year. Beyond farm and trade policy, it sometimes feels like the President is determined to undermine America’s farm families.
announce: Cutting food assistance does not just hurt people shopping in grocery stores.
Angie Craig: He cut food assistance by $187 billion with the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, making it harder for Americans to afford the food our farmers grow. And don’t forget this is a supply chain. Cutting SNAP by that much also cuts about $25 billion in direct revenue to our family farmers.
announce: That was House Ag Committee Ranking Member Angie Craig. And a look at today’s agricultural news.
11:28 Corn Leaf Aphids – when to scout and what to expect
Todd Gleason: You’re listening to the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media. It’s public radio for the farming world, online on demand at willag.org. Be sure to tune in tomorrow, though the markets will be closed in observance of the July 4 holiday weekend. We will have a brand new commodity week program including, as you’ve already heard, Matt Bennett, along with Naomi Blohm and Shane Holtorf. There will also be a special program looking back at the history of corn, soybeans, and no-till in this nation. Stay with us tomorrow on our home station if you can. Otherwise, you can find both of those up online at willag.org. You’ll also find an article there right now by Nick Seiter. He’s an Extension Field Crops Entomologist. It’s entitled “Corn Leaf Aphids: When to Scout and What to Expect”. In that article, it’s clear that Nick is not terribly worried at this point about corn leaf aphids, though he thinks you should be on the lookout for them. I asked him a few questions about that. In fact, I wanted to know if he’d seen much activity out in the fields as it related to this pest so far this year.
Nick Seiter: I haven’t received any reports of corn leaf aphids in corn yet. However, they develop and reproduce most rapidly entering the late vegetative stages into the early reproductive stages, tasseling in particular. Of course, that’s where most of our corn is currently sitting in Illinois. So if you’re someone that has been affected the last couple of years by corn leaf aphid, this is really the time that you should be out scouting.
Todd Gleason: Is there any reason to think this will be a big year for corn leaf aphid?
Nick Seiter: There’s not really any reason to think this will be a particularly big year. When we have a corn leaf outbreak in Illinois, it’s a combination of large populations to our south, sensitive corn varieties, and weather systems that come from the wrong place at the wrong time and bring the aphids with them. And of course, all of this has to happen while that corn is in those late vegetative and early reproductive stages. We don’t get that combination of factors very often. 2024 was a notable exception where all of those things converged at once. Because the aphids we see are mostly coming in from elsewhere, field history doesn’t really matter. It’s just this combination of factors that all have to hit for us to see those aphid populations reach a damaging level.
Todd Gleason: I wonder if there might be anything that would make a particular field more likely to become infested.
Nick Seiter: There are several corn hybrids out there right now that seem to be pretty susceptible to corn leaf aphid. They got dinged in 2024 with that really large aphid outbreak, which is one thing, but then in some cases, they got dinged again in some spots last year, and 2025 was a much more normal year for corn leaf aphids. We weren’t seeing a tremendously large population overall. If you’re planting a hybrid that was affected in those previous years, you ought to keep a close eye on that particular hybrid again this year. Planting later also tends to make the crop a little bit more vulnerable, so we’re more likely to get those aphid flights later in the season here in Illinois. Generally speaking, the later you plant, the more likely you are to be tasseling or leading up to tasseling while those aphids are flying.
Todd Gleason: Finally, Nick, how big of a threat is corn leaf aphid overall?
Nick Seiter: In the grand scheme of things, corn leaf aphid is still a pretty uncommon pest in field corn. We don’t usually get that right combination of high aphid populations during the pre-tassel stages on a sensitive genotype in very many fields. However, if you’ve been affected in recent years, it does pay to be vigilant. The yield reductions when it does happen can be pretty serious, but again, those are relatively rare cases. Most of the time, we’re in pretty good shape with this particular pest.
Todd Gleason: Thanks, Nick. Nick Seiter is an Extension Field Crops Entomologist on the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. If you’d like to read more about corn leaf aphids, you can do that on our website at willag.org. Look for the article entitled “Corn Leaf Aphids: When to Scout and What to Expect”.
16:00 Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, T-storm Weather
Todd Gleason: Let’s turn our attention to the growing regions now and the climate and weather in each of them. Mike Tannura is here. He’s with T-storm Weather, President and CEO there, tstorm.net online, out of Naperville, Illinois. Hello Mike, thanks for being with us heading into the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
Mike Tannura: Thanks a lot for having me, Todd. I hope you have a great holiday weekend planned here for the Fourth.
Todd Gleason: I do. I’m really looking forward to the fireworks and celebrating our nation’s 250th. I think it is just phenomenal. I can’t wait. It is very American, isn’t it, getting together and celebrating? Anyway, we probably should turn our attention to the weather. Let’s divide this up in a couple of ways. Let’s start with the hot and stormy weather we’ve had. Can you tell me about that and maybe if that continues through the near term?
Mike Tannura: It will continue for a few more days. It’s pretty hot out there now, and that’s going to last through the next few days. That’ll come to an end once we get into Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, but until then, it is going to be pretty hot outside for most corn and soybeans. It’s also going to be pretty stormy, especially with northward and westward extent. Crops in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin saw heavy rain overnight, and they’re going to continue to see heavy thunderstorms over the next couple of days. Some of those are going to extend southward into Missouri and Illinois. It’s just a matter of how far south they get. But regardless of whether they make it all the way down into central Illinois or northern Illinois, everybody will tap into some storms over the next several days, not only from the current setup but from a cool front that comes on through once we get into the weekend.
Todd Gleason: Can you talk more about that? Do things change very much next week?
Mike Tannura: They’re going to change a little bit for the southeast half of corn and soybeans, which includes all of Illinois. That area is going to turn cooler this weekend and then stay cooler next week. We’ll see high temperatures in the 80s with lows in the 60s and 70s, which is around 5 to 10 degrees cooler than where we were this week. It will be a noticeable change, and a change that corn and soybeans will like. Off to the northwest though, the heat is not going to be interrupted very much by this cool front because even though it will drop a little bit here for a couple of days, the upper-level high responsible for all of this heat is basically going to reassemble in the plains. That will leave the northwest half of corn and soybeans pretty warm next week, so they’ll be looking for cooler weather.
Todd Gleason: Can you take a look further out, maybe starting Sunday the 12th of July or thereabouts, getting into that pollination timeframe? The markets are really concerned with what’s taking place across the Corn Belt.
Mike Tannura: That’s exactly right. This is where all of our attention is focused at the moment, that July 12th through 17th timeframe. There’s a lot of uncertainty there, as there always is whenever you start looking 10 days into the future, but in this particular case, it’s very difficult to determine because we can basically make the argument for two completely opposite scenarios. Scenario one is the one that would be the most concerning. That’s where the upper-level high that stays off to our west over the course of next week expands and envelops all of the central US. If that were to happen, we’d have a big upper-level high across the corn and soybean belt, and that will leave high temperatures well into the 90s with low temperatures only in the 70s to around 80. So kind of similar to what we have ongoing today, and that would be a problem because of its longevity.
The other scenario is where that upper-level high isn’t quite as big as what we just discussed. If it’s a little bit smaller, that would easily allow a cool front to roll across the top of the upper-level high, come crashing through the plains and through the Corn Belt, and leave a wide area normal or maybe even a little bit cool from July 12th through the 17th. These are two totally opposite scenarios because in the first one, you’re going to put a lot of stress on corn and soybeans. In the second one, you’re going to end the stressful period that might be ongoing until then and lead to a pretty nice weather setup in the middle of July. It’s very difficult to say which one is going to happen. We would say the odds for the hot scenario are probably around 40%, while the odds for the cooler scenario are a little bit higher at around 60%. We have two reasons for that. Number one is that we’re moving into a strong El Niño. There’s no precedent for strong heat, or at least persistent heat, when you look at it through that perspective. We’ve had this happen five times over the last 55 years, and none of those five years had prolonged heat in July and August. So that’s your historical component to this reasoning.
The other part of the reasoning is that if you look at some of these models, they do show the hints of that cool front we talked about. But one thing we know about computer models at this time of the year is that they like to show big heat 10 to 15 days into the future. It’s not because there’s anything wrong with these models, but you start pushing their abilities to project weather when you get 10 to 15 days into the future. For whatever reason, that lack of ability to fully model the atmosphere correctly usually causes them to develop heat. So you have to keep that in mind that maybe it’s just another one of these scenarios where it’s showing heat because that’s how the model often fails. We’re not totally sure which one is right, but again, 40% odds for heat, 60% for temperatures closer to normal from July 12th to the 17th.
Todd Gleason: We’ll know more when we talk with you again next week. Thank you much. I appreciate it, and you and your family have a great holiday weekend.
Mike Tannura: Thanks a lot Todd, and same to you.
Todd Gleason: Mike Tannura is the President and CEO at T-storm Weather in Naperville, Illinois. That’s tstorm.net online. Thank you for joining us on this Thursday edition of the Closing Market Report that comes to you from Illinois Public Media. We’ll record our Commodity Week program this afternoon, posted by about 6 o’clock this evening to our website. It will air during the Closing Market Report slot tomorrow on many of these radio stations, and then of course on the weekend as well. And for the Commodity Week program tomorrow afternoon on our home station, we have a very special look at the history of corn, soybeans, and no-till in the nation. You won’t want to miss that. It’s all right here on Illinois Public Media and online at willag.org. The markets are closed until Monday. I’m University of Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason.
The July 2, 2026, edition of the Closing Market Report highlights commodity settlements and a shift toward a weather-driven market. Analyst Matt Bennett and industry leaders discuss the agricultural risks of the USMCA entering an annual review process rather than an automatic renewal, while Representative Angie Craig connects rising farm bankruptcies to current trade policies and reduced food assistance. On the agronomic front, entomologist Nick Seiter advises producers to scout for corn leaf aphids during early reproductive crop stages, though he notes severe outbreaks are rare. Finally, meteorologist Mike Tannura forecasts near-term cooling for Illinois and outlines competing mid-July models that predict either a beneficial cool front or a persistent heat dome during the critical corn pollination window.
02:13 Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, AgMarket.net
07:06 WILLAg News Update for July 2, 2026
11:28 Corn Leaf Aphids – when to scout and what to expect
16:00 Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, T-storm Weather
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Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant University in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report. It is the second day of July 2026. I’m Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason. Coming up, we’ll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett. He’s at AgMarket.net. I’ll bring you some of the latest agricultural news and information for the day, and we’ll hear from Nick Seiter, Agricultural Extension Field Crops Entomologist, about the corn leaf aphid. It’s not a problem and probably won’t be, but it is one to watch, he says. Then we’ll turn our attention to the weather forecast. Mike Tannura will be here from T-storm Weather on this Thursday edition of the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world, online on demand at willag.org. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.
July corn on the close today settled 4 higher at 4.25. September 4.23, a quarter higher. December three-quarters lower at 4.40 and a half. July soybeans 11.31 and three-quarters, five and a half higher. November 11.46 and a quarter on the close, down a penny and a half. Bean meal up $1.10 at 307.70. That’s the settlement price. Soybean oil at 66.95, settled 7 cents lower on the day. Wheat futures soft red in July down a penny and a half at 5.90 and a half, and the hard red at 6.27, three and three-quarters of a cent higher. Both of those in the harvest month July contracts. Live cattle futures at 2.39, 22.5, down $2.60 per hundred pounds. Feeder cattle at 3.60, 62.5, that finished $3.52 and a half lower. And lean hogs at $98.75, $1.70 higher for the day. Crude oil on this last trading day of the week, $68.67, up 9 cents a barrel. Diesel fuel around 4 cents lower at $3.17 and 8 tenths, and gasoline on the wholesale price, that’s the RBOB, two and two-tenths of a cent lower at $2.92 and two-tenths of a cent.
02:13 Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, AgMarket.net
Todd Gleason: Matt Bennett from AgMarket.net now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. Hello, Matt. Thanks for being with us. First, congratulations on acquiring Standard Grain and the podcast that Joe Vaclavik has done with you for a while and on his own for quite some time, too.
Matt Bennett: Joe and you guys have known him for a while as well. He asked me to do a little work with him over the years to help with all the work he was doing. Over the course of time, we realized we should just do it together because he was running out of bandwidth, quite frankly. It’s a grind coming up with all this information, but it’s a great deal for both of us, I believe.
Todd Gleason: As three University of Illinois grads—you, I, and Joe—I’m really proud of you all. So thank you. That’s a good deal. Tell me about this marketplace going into the holiday weekend.
Matt Bennett: The report certainly gave us a little bit of support. This market looked as dead as could possibly be going into the report, and then it reversed off of that with a little bit of an uptrend here the last three days. Quite frankly, today the market looked a heck of a lot better on the overnight and earlier on than where we closed. At the same time, you’re going into a three-day weekend. There’s a lot of weather being discussed. We know there was a lot of heat talked about. Some of the forecast models are trying to figure out whether this moisture is going to verify on the back side of the heat or not, but regardless, you’re in a weather market now that you’ve got the planted acreage out of the way. That’s what you trade. You trade weather, so there’s probably going to be a fair amount of volatility ahead here.
Todd Gleason: USMCA has not been signed onto again by the president, and the Trump administration has it now in an every-year review at this point. What difference does that make, do you think, given Mexico and Canada are the number one export destinations for many agricultural products?
Matt Bennett: You have to think that it’s a negotiation deal, and I sure hope that is the case. The bottom line is we have to have their markets. That’s all there is to it. When you look at corn, they’ve taken the lion’s share of corn here over the last year, and it’s no secret our exports have just been wildly fantastic. So in my opinion, we really have to try hard not to screw this Mexico deal up because we have rail systems designed specifically to take corn to Mexico in an efficient manner. They do like buying corn from us, but we have to hope we can at least be wise with how we’re dealing with them because they should definitely be looked at as a treasured partner.
Todd Gleason: It is the hardest line that the Trump administration could take within USMCA. It does terminate the deal actually, but not until 10 years out. He could pull out, I suppose, but he hasn’t. I guess there is one more step, but it seems like a pretty hard line. We’ll have to figure out how that impacts the markets over time and what the administration does with both Canada and Mexico. What else have you been watching? For instance, how are things in France? How’s the crop in Brazil? What other kinds of fundamentals have you been keeping in mind?
Matt Bennett: There is no question that there are issues with the French wheat crop. We know it has been awfully hot and dry. Of course, the corn crop over there is mostly a different type; it’s more of an organic-type crop, but it still factors into the world balance sheet. You look at South America, and corn production is going to be ample. There’s no question. I think the bigger question mark moving forward, with fertilizer prices clearly coming down some but still being quite expensive, is that it doesn’t work all that great with $2.27 corn in this $4.71 type range for the US growers. It’s probably not going to work all that great for South America either. So I do think moving forward that the market is going to be paying close attention to what it will take to ensure this record world and US demand for corn continues to be fulfilled.
Todd Gleason: Anything else before we get into the holiday weekend? We will talk with you for our commodity week program today, too.
Matt Bennett: Let’s just hope everyone can stay cool here this weekend, enjoy this 250th celebration, and I hope everyone has a great weekend.
Todd Gleason: That’s Matt Bennett. He is with AgMarket.net.
07:06 WILLAg News Update for July 2, 2026
announce: In today’s agricultural news, let’s begin with the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement. July 1 was an important date for the US-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement. Chad Smith from the National Association of Farm Broadcasting has more on the renewal negotiations underway.
announce: The US-Mexico-Canada Agreement negotiated during the first Trump administration has officially entered its six-year renewal period. Virginia Houston, the Senior Director of Government Affairs for the American Farm Bureau Federation, said the trade agreement is incredibly important for North American agriculture and industry.
Virginia Houston: July 1st is the official date by which all three parties had to agree to renew the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement. USTR now said they have not agreed to renew it, so we have entered into an annual review process with Canada and Mexico for up to the next 10 years.
announce: The review process was outlined when the USMCA agreement was initially signed.
Virginia Houston: When NAFTA, which is the predecessor to USMCA, was renegotiated, it included a novel review clause that said six years after entry into force, all three countries had to come together to agree if they wanted the agreement to renew. If they did not come to an agreement, it would kick off that annual review process, which is what we’re in right now.
announce: Houston said there is still plenty of work to do, but progress is being made.
Virginia Houston: Currently the US and Mexico are in bilateral negotiations on trade irritants around USMCA. Canada is being slower to join the party, but we do know that their government wants to be engaged and is also committed to keeping USMCA in place, as is Mexico, which is so important for US agriculture.
announce: Chad Smith, Washington.
announce: We’ll stay in Washington and with members of the NAFB reporting. This is from Susan Littlefield at the American Ag Network. She is in Surprise, Nebraska, and reports that House Ag Committee Democrats are pushing back against White House policies they say are hurting US agriculture. Ranking Member Angie Craig, a Democrat of Minnesota, says farmers are normally a resilient bunch but they’re struggling.
Angie Craig: Their markets have been decimated by Trump’s trade wars and retaliatory tariffs. They’re paying through the nose for fertilizer and diesel thanks to the President’s war in Iran. Our largest agriculture competitors like Brazil and Argentina are seizing the markets that US farmers spent decades and billions of dollars to develop because the White House has blown up trade agreements with our closest allies and chief rivals alike.
announce: Farmers are going bankrupt in rising numbers.
Angie Craig: Farm bankruptcies are up 70% this year in the Midwest and almost 50% across the country. And that’s just Chapter 11 bankruptcies. The United States lost over 15,000 farms last year. Beyond farm and trade policy, it sometimes feels like the President is determined to undermine America’s farm families.
announce: Cutting food assistance does not just hurt people shopping in grocery stores.
Angie Craig: He cut food assistance by $187 billion with the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, making it harder for Americans to afford the food our farmers grow. And don’t forget this is a supply chain. Cutting SNAP by that much also cuts about $25 billion in direct revenue to our family farmers.
announce: That was House Ag Committee Ranking Member Angie Craig. And a look at today’s agricultural news.
11:28 Corn Leaf Aphids – when to scout and what to expect
Todd Gleason: You’re listening to the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media. It’s public radio for the farming world, online on demand at willag.org. Be sure to tune in tomorrow, though the markets will be closed in observance of the July 4 holiday weekend. We will have a brand new commodity week program including, as you’ve already heard, Matt Bennett, along with Naomi Blohm and Shane Holtorf. There will also be a special program looking back at the history of corn, soybeans, and no-till in this nation. Stay with us tomorrow on our home station if you can. Otherwise, you can find both of those up online at willag.org. You’ll also find an article there right now by Nick Seiter. He’s an Extension Field Crops Entomologist. It’s entitled “Corn Leaf Aphids: When to Scout and What to Expect”. In that article, it’s clear that Nick is not terribly worried at this point about corn leaf aphids, though he thinks you should be on the lookout for them. I asked him a few questions about that. In fact, I wanted to know if he’d seen much activity out in the fields as it related to this pest so far this year.
Nick Seiter: I haven’t received any reports of corn leaf aphids in corn yet. However, they develop and reproduce most rapidly entering the late vegetative stages into the early reproductive stages, tasseling in particular. Of course, that’s where most of our corn is currently sitting in Illinois. So if you’re someone that has been affected the last couple of years by corn leaf aphid, this is really the time that you should be out scouting.
Todd Gleason: Is there any reason to think this will be a big year for corn leaf aphid?
Nick Seiter: There’s not really any reason to think this will be a particularly big year. When we have a corn leaf outbreak in Illinois, it’s a combination of large populations to our south, sensitive corn varieties, and weather systems that come from the wrong place at the wrong time and bring the aphids with them. And of course, all of this has to happen while that corn is in those late vegetative and early reproductive stages. We don’t get that combination of factors very often. 2024 was a notable exception where all of those things converged at once. Because the aphids we see are mostly coming in from elsewhere, field history doesn’t really matter. It’s just this combination of factors that all have to hit for us to see those aphid populations reach a damaging level.
Todd Gleason: I wonder if there might be anything that would make a particular field more likely to become infested.
Nick Seiter: There are several corn hybrids out there right now that seem to be pretty susceptible to corn leaf aphid. They got dinged in 2024 with that really large aphid outbreak, which is one thing, but then in some cases, they got dinged again in some spots last year, and 2025 was a much more normal year for corn leaf aphids. We weren’t seeing a tremendously large population overall. If you’re planting a hybrid that was affected in those previous years, you ought to keep a close eye on that particular hybrid again this year. Planting later also tends to make the crop a little bit more vulnerable, so we’re more likely to get those aphid flights later in the season here in Illinois. Generally speaking, the later you plant, the more likely you are to be tasseling or leading up to tasseling while those aphids are flying.
Todd Gleason: Finally, Nick, how big of a threat is corn leaf aphid overall?
Nick Seiter: In the grand scheme of things, corn leaf aphid is still a pretty uncommon pest in field corn. We don’t usually get that right combination of high aphid populations during the pre-tassel stages on a sensitive genotype in very many fields. However, if you’ve been affected in recent years, it does pay to be vigilant. The yield reductions when it does happen can be pretty serious, but again, those are relatively rare cases. Most of the time, we’re in pretty good shape with this particular pest.
Todd Gleason: Thanks, Nick. Nick Seiter is an Extension Field Crops Entomologist on the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. If you’d like to read more about corn leaf aphids, you can do that on our website at willag.org. Look for the article entitled “Corn Leaf Aphids: When to Scout and What to Expect”.
16:00 Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, T-storm Weather
Todd Gleason: Let’s turn our attention to the growing regions now and the climate and weather in each of them. Mike Tannura is here. He’s with T-storm Weather, President and CEO there, tstorm.net online, out of Naperville, Illinois. Hello Mike, thanks for being with us heading into the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
Mike Tannura: Thanks a lot for having me, Todd. I hope you have a great holiday weekend planned here for the Fourth.
Todd Gleason: I do. I’m really looking forward to the fireworks and celebrating our nation’s 250th. I think it is just phenomenal. I can’t wait. It is very American, isn’t it, getting together and celebrating? Anyway, we probably should turn our attention to the weather. Let’s divide this up in a couple of ways. Let’s start with the hot and stormy weather we’ve had. Can you tell me about that and maybe if that continues through the near term?
Mike Tannura: It will continue for a few more days. It’s pretty hot out there now, and that’s going to last through the next few days. That’ll come to an end once we get into Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, but until then, it is going to be pretty hot outside for most corn and soybeans. It’s also going to be pretty stormy, especially with northward and westward extent. Crops in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin saw heavy rain overnight, and they’re going to continue to see heavy thunderstorms over the next couple of days. Some of those are going to extend southward into Missouri and Illinois. It’s just a matter of how far south they get. But regardless of whether they make it all the way down into central Illinois or northern Illinois, everybody will tap into some storms over the next several days, not only from the current setup but from a cool front that comes on through once we get into the weekend.
Todd Gleason: Can you talk more about that? Do things change very much next week?
Mike Tannura: They’re going to change a little bit for the southeast half of corn and soybeans, which includes all of Illinois. That area is going to turn cooler this weekend and then stay cooler next week. We’ll see high temperatures in the 80s with lows in the 60s and 70s, which is around 5 to 10 degrees cooler than where we were this week. It will be a noticeable change, and a change that corn and soybeans will like. Off to the northwest though, the heat is not going to be interrupted very much by this cool front because even though it will drop a little bit here for a couple of days, the upper-level high responsible for all of this heat is basically going to reassemble in the plains. That will leave the northwest half of corn and soybeans pretty warm next week, so they’ll be looking for cooler weather.
Todd Gleason: Can you take a look further out, maybe starting Sunday the 12th of July or thereabouts, getting into that pollination timeframe? The markets are really concerned with what’s taking place across the Corn Belt.
Mike Tannura: That’s exactly right. This is where all of our attention is focused at the moment, that July 12th through 17th timeframe. There’s a lot of uncertainty there, as there always is whenever you start looking 10 days into the future, but in this particular case, it’s very difficult to determine because we can basically make the argument for two completely opposite scenarios. Scenario one is the one that would be the most concerning. That’s where the upper-level high that stays off to our west over the course of next week expands and envelops all of the central US. If that were to happen, we’d have a big upper-level high across the corn and soybean belt, and that will leave high temperatures well into the 90s with low temperatures only in the 70s to around 80. So kind of similar to what we have ongoing today, and that would be a problem because of its longevity.
The other scenario is where that upper-level high isn’t quite as big as what we just discussed. If it’s a little bit smaller, that would easily allow a cool front to roll across the top of the upper-level high, come crashing through the plains and through the Corn Belt, and leave a wide area normal or maybe even a little bit cool from July 12th through the 17th. These are two totally opposite scenarios because in the first one, you’re going to put a lot of stress on corn and soybeans. In the second one, you’re going to end the stressful period that might be ongoing until then and lead to a pretty nice weather setup in the middle of July. It’s very difficult to say which one is going to happen. We would say the odds for the hot scenario are probably around 40%, while the odds for the cooler scenario are a little bit higher at around 60%. We have two reasons for that. Number one is that we’re moving into a strong El Niño. There’s no precedent for strong heat, or at least persistent heat, when you look at it through that perspective. We’ve had this happen five times over the last 55 years, and none of those five years had prolonged heat in July and August. So that’s your historical component to this reasoning.
The other part of the reasoning is that if you look at some of these models, they do show the hints of that cool front we talked about. But one thing we know about computer models at this time of the year is that they like to show big heat 10 to 15 days into the future. It’s not because there’s anything wrong with these models, but you start pushing their abilities to project weather when you get 10 to 15 days into the future. For whatever reason, that lack of ability to fully model the atmosphere correctly usually causes them to develop heat. So you have to keep that in mind that maybe it’s just another one of these scenarios where it’s showing heat because that’s how the model often fails. We’re not totally sure which one is right, but again, 40% odds for heat, 60% for temperatures closer to normal from July 12th to the 17th.
Todd Gleason: We’ll know more when we talk with you again next week. Thank you much. I appreciate it, and you and your family have a great holiday weekend.
Mike Tannura: Thanks a lot Todd, and same to you.
Todd Gleason: Mike Tannura is the President and CEO at T-storm Weather in Naperville, Illinois. That’s tstorm.net online. Thank you for joining us on this Thursday edition of the Closing Market Report that comes to you from Illinois Public Media. We’ll record our Commodity Week program this afternoon, posted by about 6 o’clock this evening to our website. It will air during the Closing Market Report slot tomorrow on many of these radio stations, and then of course on the weekend as well. And for the Commodity Week program tomorrow afternoon on our home station, we have a very special look at the history of corn, soybeans, and no-till in the nation. You won’t want to miss that. It’s all right here on Illinois Public Media and online at willag.org. The markets are closed until Monday. I’m University of Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason.