- @farmdocDaily MAHA Support Survey Results
- Eric Snodgrass, NutrienAgSolutions.com
From the land to Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market report. It is the June 2025. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Mike Zuzolo.
Todd Gleason: 00:12He's a globalcomresearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas. We'll hear about a PharmDoc Daily survey done of MAHA or Make America Healthy Again and some of the surprising results from that survey. Then we'll turn our attention to the weather forecast with Eric Snodgrass as we wrap up our first half hour of the program today. If you can stay with us for the whole of the hour you'll hear not only the closing market report but also commodity week otherwise it's up online right now at willag.org with our panelists including Matt Bennett, Aaron Curtis, and Ellen Dearden all on this Friday edition to the AG programming that comes to you from Illinois Public Media. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.
Todd Gleason: 01:01July corn for the day settled at 04:42 and a half. It was up three. September at 04:33 and a quarter, a penny and three quarters higher. December up one on this Friday at $4.49 and a quarter. July beans settled five and a half higher at $10.57 at a quarter.
Todd Gleason: 01:16November at $10.37, 3 and 3 quarters higher. Bean meal down a dollar 40. The bean oil, 85¢ higher for the day. July soft red winter wheat, up nine and a quarter since. It settled at five fifty four and three quarters in the hard red at $5.49 and a quarter, up 6 and, 3 quarters of a cent for the day.
Todd Gleason: 01:35Live cattle futures in Chicago at $2.18, 80 7 and a half, up $2, and a nickel feeders, a dollar higher, and lean hogs up $2.30. Mike Zuslow's at GlobalCommerceSearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. Hello, Mike. Thanks for being with us.
Mike Zuzolo: 01:51Great to be with you, Todd. Thanks for having me.
Todd Gleason: 01:53What were the most important things in your mind about the commodity markets this week?
Mike Zuzolo: 01:58Two things. You know, why did the soybeans rally and break free from the 2,018, price action that we had kinda set in stone last Friday at this time with both price and time. And I think the simple answer was because president Trump picked up the phone and called president Xi, and they're talking specifically about rare earths and talking specifically about Chinese students, getting visas really helped soothe the mindset of the trade, the sentiment of the trade. And so we went back to more of a friendly bean price action. And one of the things we've noticed here, Todd, in the last several months since the the fears of a trade war have become increasing, is that as the trade fears increase, we see the dollar go down, the gold go up, wheat and corn tend to be bought against the soybeans.
Mike Zuzolo: 02:56And then when we go to the opposite of that and trade fears wane and sentiment improves that we're coming back around, we see soybeans find a lot of buying and a lot of support at the expense of the dollar and and typically at the expense of the wheat and at the corn. Now this week was a little bit different, which I was glad to see in that there is more geopolitical risk put into the WTI crude oil and the wheat, less demand risk to the downside that has been serving as a break to both of those commodities. That's a really key element, I think, as we come back into next week's trade because we are seeing that counter seasonal move in the wheat market as of Friday's close with us making a new monthly high and only about a penny away from taking out the May high in the wheat. So we see the soybeans making new monthly highs going after that $10.75. May high is the next resistance, and we see the wheat doing the same thing, but for different reasons.
Mike Zuzolo: 04:02And I kinda like that that that they're finding their support from different areas. One thing I did not like this week was the corn market finding a lot of resistance in the July and that July corn spread going back to a carrying charge and hitting about a ten month low on Thursday. That was matched on Friday, but we were able to get back up a little bit more premium and and take ourselves off the floor to close 6 or 7¢ discount the July or back to a carrying charge against the December futures.
Todd Gleason: 04:33So you are of the opinion that wheat is finding support geopolitically. Is it also finding any support from the idea that the rainfall across the Southwest, Kansas, as well as through parts of Missouri and Illinois, so hard red and soft red both, that might cause a disease issue at some point or a harvest problem?
Mike Zuzolo: 04:59I think that'll come the next couple weeks. I think what the trade is looking at in the wheat specifically is what we talked about last week with China and the whole Northern Hemisphere, essentially, whether you're looking at The United States or looking more closely at the Black Sea and even more closely at at the Chinese wheat belt with harvest starting over there, actually coming in early in provinces that represent almost 50, almost 60% of their typical wheat production. And that's getting a lot of press this week. Bloomberg had an article, I think it was midweek, talking about some private analysts, I believe, in China that didn't wanna go on the record, but said that they could be looking at five to seven year lows in production. That's big news when you're talking about the world's largest wheat producer, even if they'd have ample stocks and don't want to import more from The United States, it still could take quite a bit off the balance sheets and I think make the market take notice.
Mike Zuzolo: 05:53I'm really glad this is happening, this week because then we get ready for the big, WASDE report on the twelfth, and that's gonna be one of the keys to be watching, I think.
Todd Gleason: 06:02Yeah. So you're thinking this is supply driven and that it may very well show up in the global numbers that the World Ag Outlook Board puts together for Thursday of next week.
Mike Zuzolo: 06:11That's exactly right. I think that, you know, the idea of the less demand risk that I was talking about a minute ago, that's been serving as a break in terms of the funds wanting, I think, to buy in or cover shorts in their big net short position, in perceived demand. And so this really could change the dynamic as far as perceived demand by the funds if we see both Russia and China have a crop that's on the low end of the five year range or even below the five year average or five year range. And I think both of those countries are on tap for that if they don't see a big pattern shift really, really soon.
Todd Gleason: 06:46Historically, you like to see wheat lead the marketplace. Do you believe that's where we're headed at this point?
Mike Zuzolo: 06:53I really have to, Todd, because of our weather here in this country coming around pretty nicely. Having said that, you know, Illinois has got the good to excellent crop conditions of 67%. I believe that's the second worst or the worst in five years. We've got other states like Nebraska and South Dakota and Ohio that are in that camp as well or close to that situation as well. So I mean, we're not out of the woods, but we I think have dodged a major 2012 type scenario.
Mike Zuzolo: 07:21At least this first go round right at planting and right after planting. So, yeah, when I look at the the global picture and The US picture, it seems to me wheat needs to be the leader to the upside here.
Todd Gleason: 07:31Tell me a little bit about as we close out our time together, and we've got, oh, a minute, minute and a half, The livestock sector and the cattle market this week.
Mike Zuzolo: 07:41Yeah. Great thing you brought up. I started hedges on Friday for q two and q three with my producers' recommendations to go ahead and get some hedges in place with known cost puts, just like soybeans, getting a floor underneath me because I think we're trading the screwworm border shutdown in real time through these escalating cash prices. But I also think we've got some potential real sinkholes or pitfalls ahead of us in terms of Wall Street and in terms of when that border does open. I think you'll see the funds take a lot of profit off the table, and we're getting really rich in the cycle.
Mike Zuzolo: 08:15The cycle peak has passed us, and so we really need to feed the bull. So I think this these record highs are are meant to be sold in a very conservative, known cost manner, very respectful manner, kinda like the soybeans. And if we get past the next thirty, forty five days without finding any pitfalls, that's great.
Todd Gleason: 08:32Thank you much, Mike. I appreciate it.
Mike Zuzolo: 08:33You too, Todd. Thank you.
Todd Gleason: 08:35That's Mike Zuzalo. He's at GlobalComResearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas. There are a couple of new articles that have been posted to the PharmDoc Daily website that deal with MAHA or the Make America Healthy Again initiative. They're penned by Jonathan Kopas and Maria Kallets onto Nikes from the University of Illinois, along with Brenna Ellison at Purdue University. Maria joined me to talk about these two articles.
Todd Gleason: 09:06I asked why it is that they did the survey.
Maria Kalaitzandonakes: 09:09With the Gardner Food and Ag Policy Survey, we try to assess and then track public support and public perceptions of ongoing food and ag issues. So this wave, which was conducted in May, we asked about support for the Make America Healthy Again initiative. And then we, in the last two, investigations on PharmDoc, we sort of dove into who was more likely to support the Make America Healthy Again initiative and then also what were their perceptions of the food system. So did they believe the food system was safe? And then also did they trust different food system players?
Maria Kalaitzandonakes: 09:48So that's farmers, grocery stores, government, that sort of thing.
Todd Gleason: 09:52What are some of the key takeaways?
Maria Kalaitzandonakes: 09:54One thing that was really interesting to me was we looked at who was most likely to support Make America Healthy Again initiative. So we found that political ideology, unsurprisingly, was quite predictive of support. So if you were very conservative or if you had voted for President Trump in the twenty twenty four presidential election, you were much more likely to support MAHA. But also, food system experiences were quite tied to it as well. So things like if you, had gone to the farmers market in the last two weeks, that was associated with an increased likelihood to support MAHA, whereas if you had personal or familial experiences in agriculture, so do you own a farm or does someone in your immediate family own a farm?
Maria Kalaitzandonakes: 10:39If you are living in a rural area or if you utilize nutrition assistance programs, so things like SNAP or WIC, all of those things decreased your likelihood to support And then sort of relatedly, although we've been hearing a lot of news about the focus on the MAHA moms, we didn't find a relationship between gender or having children that increased somebody's likelihood to support MAHA. So it was sort of an interesting thing to look at to understand sort of like who was most likely to support MAHA. We also found sort of some interesting perspectives that very conservative conservatives were more likely to support MAHA, but also people who were very liberal, sort of had higher rates of supporting MAHA. And then I don't know if you wanna talk about perceptions of food safety or trust, but there were some really interesting results there as well.
Todd Gleason: 11:27Let's take those up. What did your survey find?
Maria Kalaitzandonakes: 11:30I was expecting to see sort of what I've heard echoed in news stories lately, which is that MAHA supporters are broadly, think of the food system as being unsafe or broadly untrusting of food system players. And I think basically what we found is that while they broadly are not concerned about safety of the food system or while they are broadly not untrusting of all food system players, they have specific concerns. So for example, food additives or firm sizes, right, that sort of come out. And I think also when we're hearing in the news about Make America Healthy Against Supporters, we're hearing from the loudest voices, the leaders of the initiative. In our study, obviously, we're looking at sort of the average consumer in The US, so maybe their level of concern is different than sort of the leaders of an initiative, if that makes sense.
Todd Gleason: 12:21So on the average consumer side, the middle was less supportive of MAHA and less trusting of the food system? Yes. Did they say why?
Maria Kalaitzandonakes: 12:30No. They did not say why. That is an interesting question for the future. Definitely part of what we saw was that the middle was also just less informed. So the middle was, less likely to also know about MAHA.
Maria Kalaitzandonakes: 12:45So part of it may be too that if you are very liberal and or you are very conservative, you are sort of more plugged into the discussion about, the changes going on with MAHA.
Todd Gleason: 12:59Can you infer anything about their reasons for not being trustful of the system?
Maria Kalaitzandonakes: 13:06Maybe I should clarify slightly. So what I was surprised by was that Make America Health Again supporters did not have a lower level of trust in food system players than others. But it's not they have pretty similar levels. Oh. So for example, you can look at figure one in the post two, and you can see that, for example, on a scale of one, do not trust to a seven, trust very much, MAHA supporters had a 5.9 for farmers, and those who were either a negative view of MAHA or unaware of MAHA had a rating of 5.5.
Maria Kalaitzandonakes: 13:42So these are not enormous differences. What I'm surprised by, I suppose, is that the supporters of MAHA were not more untrusting given the way that they've been depicted broadly. What our work suggests is that MAHA supporters are not broadly untrusting of the food system, and similarly they are not broadly concerned about the safety of the food that's being produced in The US. They more so are having specific issues. So the two that we sort of highlight in our work is that they have concerns about food additives, which has been central to the discussion of MAHA, and then also about, the size of firms in the food system.
Todd Gleason: 14:22I'm looking forward to what you've got coming up. What's next for this series? Anything?
Maria Kalaitzandonakes: 14:27Yeah. So the Gardner Food and Ag Policy Survey continues to track, you know, perceptions of trust in the food system, perceptions of safety, and I'm sure that these things will continue to evolve. But we also respond to ongoing things. So MAHA definitely isn't going anywhere, and we'll be continuing to keep our eye on that.
Todd Gleason: 14:45That's Maria Kaletzen, the Nikes from the University of Illinois. She and Jonathan Koppas, her colleague here on campus, along with Brenna Allison from Purdue University, have written a couple of articles to this date about MAHA or the Make America Healthy Again initiative. You can read it online at PharmDocDaily.illinois. Let's turn our attention to the weather forecast now. Eric Snodgrass is here.
Todd Gleason: 15:23He's with NutriNag Solutions and Diagrable. Hello, Eric. Thank you very much for being with us.
Eric Snodgrass: 15:28Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I'm actually glad to be on because I'll tell you something, Todd. Yesterday, I was in the Imperial Valley in California. So if you don't know where that is, that's like near the Sultan Lake that's way down south.
Eric Snodgrass: 15:39In fact, I I I drove past Trump's wall yesterday. It was pretty it was pretty interesting to see that. But, where I was, it was crazy. While you all were getting rain here, alright, I was sitting in the middle of a desert at a hundred about a hundred and eight degrees. And I'm be honest with you, I don't care when people say, oh, it's a dry heat.
Eric Snodgrass: 15:55It is hot. And then I was amazed at one thing. I go up and talk to these farmers that were there. And while it was storming at home, I looked at the data around Central Illinois. And there were some places in Central Illinois over the last forty eight hours that had twice as much as the annual rainfall that I saw in the Imperial Valley in Southern California.
Eric Snodgrass: 16:18But they are all irrigated. It's all coming off the Colorado River. And it's a very interesting place. But last night as I drove home, we got diverted because of huge storms that were in the plains again. And that just really kinda tells you where where the moisture's been and where it's not been.
Eric Snodgrass: 16:33And, boy, the rain that came through here, we did need. But, you know, I get home, and I'm just looking at grass that needs to cut again and wondering when the next rain chances
Todd Gleason: 16:40Coming off the Colorado River must be one of the last places because it doesn't really, most of the time, actually reach the Pacific Ocean, if I remember correctly. It just Yeah. Is all used up by the time it gets there.
Eric Snodgrass: 16:53It is. And I'll be honest with you. You you When you go to that part of the world and talk water, you tread lightly. I they Mhmm. I'll be honest, Todd.
Eric Snodgrass: 17:02I showed them. I said, well, you know, where I am, more often than not, we're trying to manage water on the side of it as get rid of it. It's too much. You know what I'm saying? We often have a problem where we're dealing with too much water at times.
Eric Snodgrass: 17:17And it was interesting just to show them the differences between the Midwest and the Southwestern United States. But don't forget, California leads the country in their production of over 40 different fruits and vegetables. And this is what's crazy. That part of California that I was in a big crop is hay, and they will get 10 cuttings a year. So incredible.
Eric Snodgrass: 17:42That's what it's like in Southern California.
Todd Gleason: 17:443 here if we're good, four if we're really good. That is amazing. This all reminds me that you and I both like to listen to Audible books, and we have both listened to Where the Water Goes by David Owen, a great, great book. If you wanna know about the Colorado River, again, the name of the book is Where the Water Goes. I think you and I would both recommend it.
Todd Gleason: 18:09Now Oh, yeah. Professor, I have forgotten if you could remind me what's my lesson plan that I'm supposed to be following up on. Yeah.
Eric Snodgrass: 18:17Well, you know, it's it's mainly just come to class right now, Todd. That's what I think I I want you to do. Okay. So so here it is. We we do have a chance of rain this weekend, and we've seen these cooler temperatures around.
Eric Snodgrass: 18:29Right? So we are, if you planted a crop, I'm just gonna pull a date out because I just looked at it. But if you planted last year on April 15, and then you planted this year on April 15, you compare the GDDs, we had over seven fifty GDDs by a year ago. And right now we're sitting at about 600, right around where we are. And as a result, we've got a crop that just looks like it needs to jump out of the ground.
Eric Snodgrass: 18:51We have not had the heat. And so we have to balance that against this narrative of, Oh, there were supposed to be risk of summer hot, dry conditions. And remember, it's not yet summer, so we we still have time for that to go through. So we are we're about fifteen days into this forty five day assignment of watching the ocean temperatures in the, kinda Gulf Of Alaska area. They're still cold off the coast of California, which by the way, when you're in San Diego, it was barely out of the upper sixties.
Eric Snodgrass: 19:17You go over the mountains and it's a 10. So that's how it is in Southern California. But the water off the coast, they're still cool. And if we see any hint of cooling in the Gulf Of Alaska, which it is not doing today, then that starts to increase our drought risk as the Bermuda high wanders off in the Atlantic. They're kind of related systems.
Eric Snodgrass: 19:36So here we stand with incredibly wet conditions to our south continuing. Big storms to our South, 3 More Days of severe weather. I mean, from Texas all the way to the East Coast, but to our South. And after we get this weekend rain, we're gonna slide into a drier time period with the driest conditions over the next two weeks really being in Iowa. Now those Iowan farmers are not gonna complain about this for a while because they're gonna get some heat on the crop.
Eric Snodgrass: 19:58They've had some halfway decent rains recently. But I think if we manage to stretch this out really for two weeks at the end of that, they're gonna be calling for, hey, what's going on? Are we really going over toward hotter and drier? And right now, there are some hints that that could happen in the Western Corn Belt, which has been the area we've been worried about. So that's kind of my my near term outlook, Todd.
Todd Gleason: 20:20If we get out two weeks, we will be one day or maybe right at the beginning of summer. Although meteorological summer probably started June 1, but we'll begin, we'll we'll be that point where we are in summer. Are there any new outlooks that we need to discuss today?
Eric Snodgrass: 20:39There are. And and it's interesting that that this came out this way, but the new European seasonal forecast came out for for summer, which I'm just gonna call July, August, and September. Those are our hottest months. And Todd, it was I mean, it was it's trying to plant dryness West Of The Mississippi. I mean, quite a bit of it.
Eric Snodgrass: 20:59And it's trying to put heat there too. And it's also trying to do that same combination in the Black Sea while Northern China seems to be wet, while India seems to be wet. And I look at all of this and go, where's the forcing that's creating that? And what do we need to see happen? And I'll just put it to you like this.
Eric Snodgrass: 21:19If that's gonna be the case, we've gotta lose a lot of momentum in the jet stream between now and the end of this month. Secondly, we've gotta watch the ocean temperatures in the Gulf Of Alaska cool off. That would be a complement to that. And thirdly, the combination of those two events gives us a Bermuda high that leaves the Southeast Coast Of The United States where it's been. That's what's been pumping in all this moisture, and it wanders off into the North Atlantic.
Eric Snodgrass: 21:43And if any of those things happen, that's another part of your assignment for the rest of this month. If any of those things happen or if I start professing they're happening, then we've got we've got a problem. Like, that's gonna be a a midsummer pattern flip, and it could produce some regional drought. But let me just give you some numbers here to finish this up.
Todd Gleason: 22:03Okay.
Eric Snodgrass: 22:03I preseason, I was worried of the Western Corn Belt at 60% risk of drought. I gave you that number. I reran those odds based on what we now know has happened in the Southern Plains and the Mid South with all that rain and the rain that's coming. And that has reduced the drought risk kind of in a central area around Iowa specifically to 45%. Okay?
Eric Snodgrass: 22:26But the historical odds of building drought from now through summer in Iowa are still at about 30%. So what's the moral of the story? We're down. We're down from where the original projections were, but we are still above the historical average on risk of building drought into that area, which is what we're gonna have to continue to monitor. So there it is, Todd.
Eric Snodgrass: 22:46That's the new evidence. And when we talk next Friday, I'll even have more model data to share with you and possibly toss in some analog years to think through as well.
Todd Gleason: 22:54Excellente. Hey. Thank you much. You bet. Eric Snodgrass is with NutriNag Solutions and Agribal joined us on this Friday edition of the closing market report.
Todd Gleason: 23:03It came to you from Illinois Public Media. I'm Illinois Extension's Todd Gleeson.