- Darren Woods, ExxonMobil
- Mike Tannura, Tstorm.net
From the land grant university in Urbana Champaign, Illinois, this is the closing market report for the June 2025. It's USDA report day. I'm extension's Tut Gleason. Coming up, we'll review this morning's world ag supply and demand estimates figures with Matt Bennett of agmarket.net. We'll hear from the CEO and Chief Financial Officer at ExxonMobil and some comments he made during a German Marshall Fund conference held yesterday and the day in Brussels, Belgium.
Todd Gleason: 00:31Then we'll turn our attention to the weather forecast with Mike Tanura on this Thursday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. July corn for the day settled at $4.38 and a half, a penny and a half higher in December at $4.40 and a half, three quarters higher in July soybeans down 8 and a quarter today. Settlement price at $10.42 at a quarter a bushel. November new crop down 2¢ at $10.27 at a quarter.
Todd Gleason: 01:02Bean meal up 30¢. The bean oil 41¢ lower. July wheat soft red down seven and three quarters at $5.26 and a half, and the hard red July at five twenty two and three quarters, down three and three quarters of a cent. Matt Bennett from agmarket.net now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. Hi, Matt.
Todd Gleason: 01:22Thanks for being with us. Can you recap the June USDA WASDE figures for us from this morning and what you thought were the most important numbers from it.
Matt Bennett: 01:34Yeah. So you look at the corn report, and quite frankly, you know, ag market, we actually predicted a one three six five and a one seven five zero, which is what the USDA came out with. We got kind of lucky again. But we are in agreement with the USDA that demand continues to grow. The only thing I think is a caveat moving forward is what new crop demand might look like with that huge South American crop.
Matt Bennett: 02:00But as far as today's report went, hey, we just tightened up once again. No changes to the bean report. It was interesting to note that the USDA did not adjust Brazilian corn production, which, you know, they've been at that one twenty nine, fairly high number for a while, one twenty nine, one thirty. And so they didn't feel the need to adjust it higher even though, you know, the safrinha crop has clearly grown in most people's eyes over the last month or two. So to be honest, it wasn't a real active report.
Matt Bennett: 02:29I think a lot of folks, as soon as they saw the numbers, already started thinking about the June 30 planted acreage report, to be perfectly honest with you.
Todd Gleason: 02:37Mhmm. So let's look forward to that, report. It's not only the acreage report, but the grain stocks numbers start with acreage. Do you think corn or soybean numbers will be changed?
Matt Bennett: 02:46Yeah, I don't really think we're going to see a lot in the way it changes. I think there's clearly been some areas that could be going to prevent plant. We know that Ohio down through the Delta parts of Southern Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky certainly would be labeled as areas that you could consider some prevent plant. But at the same time, you know, what's it gonna look like in the West or in Northern Illinois or Iowa? You know, there's no doubt that there was areas that were able to get out and run, with a nice dry spring.
Matt Bennett: 03:19And you've gotta assume some of those acres could have gone to corn because at the time, corn penciled better than soybeans. So, I don't think you're going to see a lot of changes there on quarterly stocks. It remains to be seen. Demand's been awfully good. Ethanol numbers were just fantastic this week.
Matt Bennett: 03:36Big drawdown in ethanol stocks as well. You've got to assume with where the exports are running, which is 96 percent of what USDA's new number was as far as today goes, that you're going to continue to see there's been a big drawdown in stocks. And so it's interesting that some folks, like for instance, in North Dakota are seeing a fifty, sixty, 70 over basis, whereas people are seeing the opposite of that in Indiana, Ohio into the East. And so I do think there's areas of the Corn Belt that's got a lot of corn. I just don't think you're gonna get any bearish stock surprise June 30 because there's areas that have no corn.
Todd Gleason: 04:15Well, let's talk a little bit about what producers should do and the things that they consider, moving through this month of June, as it's related to the stocks report and the number of acres that have been put into the ground, particularly in the Eastern Part Of the Corn Belt, farmers in parts of Southern Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio will be looking at very late planted crops. Maybe you can give me an update on what you think those might be and how they would impact the marketplace and basis in those levels or in those areas.
Matt Bennett: 04:49Yeah. There's no doubt in my mind that you're gonna see strong basis levels all the way into harvest in those parts of the world. And coincidentally, those are the areas that have been hardest hit as far as how many corn acres might have gotten into the ground, especially in what you would call optimum conditions. So it could be a situation where people get blessed somewhat by a really strong basis. At the same time, you don't know what the board is going to do.
Matt Bennett: 05:17But bottom line is to get corn out of the farmer's hands, whether it's old crop or new, that part of the world has certainly had to do a little more work when it comes to basis. And so I've got to think that growers overall have to still be a little bit patient, see if this weather plays out into their favor. It's really tough for a grower right now to sell sub $4 cash fall corn and sub $10 cash fall beans and feel good about it. And so I just as soon see what mother nature's gonna deal us here, especially for those that were aggressive on crop insurance. I don't know that there's a ton of incentive to step in here and get aggressive as far as sales go.
Todd Gleason: 05:55Tell me why that's the case.
Matt Bennett: 05:57Well, I mean, ultimately, you're protected. I mean, 85%, of course, is lower than where we're at today when you verse $4.70 spring price. But some folks had add on features, and they've got higher yield protected than others. At the same time, when you move forward, do you want to, at this point in the marketing year, lock in a loss? And so, unfortunately, the vast majority of growers would be doing just that unless they assume a massive yield.
Matt Bennett: 06:26So if you sell now, and let's say mother nature does come in and and then, decide to maybe set in with a dry, situation earlier than it did a year ago, if you don't, if you're selling now, you're assuming massive production. And a lot of us are looking at really good prospects. But if you don't get that huge production and you're oversold and then the market mark is higher, you gotta be cautious. The funds are short, around 200,000 contracts of corn, one fifty to 200. If we have weather, Todd, they're gonna do more than cover that short.
Matt Bennett: 06:59They're gonna go long. So I wanna stay very flexible in how we market this crop.
Todd Gleason: 07:03And there is time at least through the month of October for this natural put that you have in place.
Matt Bennett: 07:09Yes absolutely so you're protected essentially all half to two thirds of the way into the October that's pretty much set as far as those decent no averages go.
Todd Gleason: 07:19Hey. Thanks much. We'll talk with you again next week.
Matt Bennett: 07:22Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Todd Gleason: 07:23Mhmm. Matt Bennett is with agmarket.net. Today's agricultural news, the US house of representatives is set today to vote on h r four, which would cut funding for USAID and the corporation for public broadcasting or PBS and NPR. The federal funding supports some 1,500 broadcast stations around the nation, including the willag.org agricultural programming that originates from Illinois Public Media here on the U of I campus and market to market from Iowa Public Television. Congress has less than forty five days to act on the bill if it is to reach president Trump's desk.
Todd Gleason: 08:06It includes a rescission of already appropriated funding for both PBS and USAID. Well, yesterday, US secretary of agriculture Brooke Rollins was in front of the house agriculture committee where she was asked by Illinois representative Nikki Budzinski about USAID funding that has already been subject to the Trump administration's Doge cuts.
Nikki Budzinski: 08:29Madam secretary, I ask you to please look into the importance of the soybean innovation lab for American agriculture. Is that something that you would be willing to take a look at?
Brooke Rollins: 08:39Yes. I'd be very willing to do that and follow-up. That would be very helpful.
Nikki Budzinski: 08:42Yeah. You, secretary. Thank you. I yield back.
Todd Gleason: 08:44Budzinski told Rollins during the hearing that the research the soybean innovation lab does not only supports developing nations, but it supports domestic growers through the development of soybean genetics in a way that maintains The US farmers' global dominance in the soybean market and that it introduces brand new international markets to American products. Let's turn now to the Association of Equipment Manufacturers. According to recent data, it says US sales of combines and tractors dropped in all categories during the month of May. Total agricultural sales were down 12% and combine sales were down 21%. The biggest drop came in four wheel drive tractor sales, which were off by nearly 40% last month.
Todd Gleason: 09:28Self propelled combine sales were down 21% in The United States. In contrast, Canadian combine sales rose 16% year over year in May, and the sales of four wheel drive tractors were up 35%. And finally today, the price of a barrel of oil has moved into the mid $60 range this week. Patrick DeHaan with Gas Buddy says last week's solid US jobs report encouraged oil investors.
Patrick De Haan: 09:58As well as now China and US, authorities, meeting together to discuss trade. The trade talks ongoing have boosted the optimism that the economy may, be starting to grow again in the months ahead, potentially seeing a less of a risk, in tariffs if The US and China can come to some agreement.
Todd Gleason: 10:21Dahan thinks the American economy is in a decent place right now, which is why the oil prices moved higher at the beginning of the week. He adds he's expecting this ability to stick around for the foreseeable future.
Patrick De Haan: 10:33I don't really see any reason that oil prices would break out and go above 70. Not really a whole lot of reasons that oil would go down below about 60 or $58 a barrel. So I think we'll continue to see prices relatively range bound unless there are, you know, seismic shifts in the global economy or tariff policy. That is, one of the things we'll be watching for this summer.
Todd Gleason: 10:55The GasBuddy analyst added now that the eastern half of the country is in hurricane season, that could impact oil prices as well, especially if a strong storm hits key locations. When it comes to fuel prices, Dahan noted diesel prices are at the lowest levels reported since October of twenty twenty one, and gas prices are around $3 per gallon nationally. And that's a look at today's agricultural news.
Todd Gleason: 11:32Because both corn as ethanol and soybean potentially as SAF or as soybean diesel or renewable diesel are both intertwined with the energy sector of the global economy. I thought it'd be interesting to listen to Darren Woods today, who's the chief executive officer and chairman at ExxonMobil. He was speaking yesterday at the German Marshall Fund conference in Brussels, where he started by saying that diversification was key to the company's success.
Darren Woods: 12:04I don't think that, as a company, we bet on any one place in the world being the bedrock of of, our company. Instead, we we recognize the importance of diversification, not only in the businesses that we invest in, the products that we, make, but also in the places that we do business.
Todd Gleason: 12:25ExxonMobil, by the way, is the largest producer of oil and gas in The United States. It's based in Texas. The CEO was asked how he navigates the political cycles that are taking place in The United States and in Europe.
Darren Woods: 12:39Well, I think if I look at what's, say, what's happening, what's happening is happening in The US, what's been happening in Europe, frankly, perspective on a lot of the policy that's come out, particularly in the area of climate change, hasn't been linked to fundamentals. We've had, ideology out there driving a lot of the thinking behind that and leading to a lot of the policy that frankly on both sides of the Atlantic have been flawed. And coming back to what is it that's going to ultimately allow society to significantly reduce emissions, address the risk of climate change, and at the same time support economic growth. To recognize that are 4,000,000,000 people in the world that are living in intense energy poverty and striving for a better life, that how do you address those needs and so coming back and thinking about how is the world going to tackle this significant challenge and do it in a way that doesn't force choices that frankly most societies and communities around the world won't be willing to make. You've got to do it affordably.
Darren Woods: 13:46You've got to do it in a way that doesn't impede economic growth and doesn't ask people to lower their standards of living and don't prevent others from rising and and having a better standard of living. There are ways to do that. We refer to it as the end equation.
Todd Gleason: 14:02That end equation under diversification, says Darren Woods, has ExxonMobil looking at itself as not an energy company, but a technology company, where they're already making moves to include more than just combustion based products, things for electric vehicles, clothes, makeup, and much more. But it also includes looking forward in ways to decarbonize, particularly as it's related to the electricity that will power AI server farms.
Darren Woods: 14:32And the question, I think facing every economy is is how and certainly in The US is how do you support that growth, enable the development of AI, which I think rightly so people are seeing as an incredibly important competitive dynamic, as well as a national security dynamic. And so there's a lot of aspects which lead, I think, every country to think hard about developing that capability and maintaining some level of competitiveness around the world in those different spaces.
Todd Gleason: 15:04So here's how ExxonMobil is addressing those issues.
Darren Woods: 15:08We're a very big producer. In fact, we're the largest US producer of oil and gas. And most of it's coming out of the Permian basis, so unconventional oil that many of you I'm sure heard about. We made a commitment several years ago to take the production of our Permian, fields, to net zero scope one and scope two, for those of you who are familiar with the emissions that we generate and the emissions that we cause to be generating supporting our business. We're going to take that to net zero.
Darren Woods: 15:37So we are developing decarbonized natural gas from a production development standpoint. We also have invested in the world's only large scale end to end carbon capture, storage, and transportation system. So there's no other another company in the world that has the ability to capture, transport, and store CO2 at the scale that we do in the Gulf Coast Of The US. So we have a decarbonized natural gas, we have a system for capturing emissions and transporting and storing them. And we are taking the combination of those two things and offering opportunities for the technology companies to to build data centers in the Gulf Coast Of The US to take advantage of this endowments to basically have virtually decarbonized low carbon data centers.
Todd Gleason: 16:28Darren Woods is the chief executive officer and chairman of ExxonMobil. He made his comments yesterday at a German Marshall Fund conference that took place in Brussels, Belgium. In context, it might be worth considering how the carbon pipelines in the Northwestern Part of The United States and even transitioning here into Illinois might be considered as it relates to the carbon markets, data centers, and why for instance the governor of Iowa just this week vetoed a bill that would give farmland owners eminent domain protection from pipeline builders. Let's check the global growing regions with Mike Tanura. He's at t storm weather.
Todd Gleason: 17:22That's tstorm.net online. Hi, Mike. Thanks for being with us again this week.
Mike Tannura: 17:26Hey, Todd. Thanks a lot for having me. Always great being here.
Todd Gleason: 17:29Begin here in The United States and discuss the growing regions across the Corn Belt and into the Northern Plains.
Mike Tannura: 17:36Well, I think the big story for corn and soybeans is that we have a lot of rain that's on the way over the next five to ten days. We have a couple of waves of energy that'll pass over the next two to three days, and then there's several more behind that. So we think that between all this, we're gonna see a pretty good dumping of rainfall over the period of time that we're discussing here through next week. So let's just say anywhere from a half of an inch on the low side to two and a half inches on the high side, and with everybody else or most people pretty much in between there. So if that happens like we expect, then we'll have nice soil moisture going into the June.
Mike Tannura: 18:12The only thing that we have a tiny bit of concern about, regards to temperatures, it's been a little bit cool here and there over the last one to two weeks, and that'll continue into next week. But once we get beyond Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, it should turn quite a bit warmer, and we even might see some heat in southern growing areas. And when we talk about heat, we're talking about high temperatures in the mid nineties to low one hundreds. That will primarily be in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Though there are some signals that they could extend into Arkansas and maybe even parts of Far Southern Arkansas and Southern Illinois.
Mike Tannura: 18:45So we'll be watching that. But even if that does happen, it's only the June. So warm and hot weather at this time of the year is generally beneficial. I know producers are out there saying that they could use a little bit of heat to get the crop moving along, and that looks to be on the way once we get one to two weeks out. The concern is that if that were to last.
Mike Tannura: 19:06Now if you have heat at the June, especially once you're in the July, that's a different story, but we're not going to out forecast the weather here. In the near term, we have quite a bit of rain on the way over the next week, then a lot warmer. And generally, that should be beneficial for corn and soybeans with any concerns over hot weather coming after that period of time.
Todd Gleason: 19:26Let's turn your attention to wheat across the planet in the Northern Hemisphere in particular. Can you start with the wheat crop in The United States? What worries might you have, and then we'll move to Russia and Ukraine.
Mike Tannura: 19:40Well, the spring wheat story is pretty fascinating. We had a major rain event around May 15, and that's what contributed to those very low condition ratings. The proportions of spring wheat that were rated good and excellent a couple of weeks ago were pretty low, one of the lower on record to start the season. Since then, the ratings have been coming up, and that's been because of the lack of rain since then. So all those wet conditions have gone away, and now they have somewhat dry conditions.
Mike Tannura: 20:06But they're starting to flip over to the level of concern because it basically hasn't rained since then. And if this lasts another two weeks, now we're right in the middle of the key part of the season and has been dry and it stays dry. Now we think there are going to be thunderstorms around, so that's kinda negating the story a little bit. Even though it will be a lot warmer in the Northern Plains, it also should be wetter. We were seeing some rain today, and we think this is the part of the newer pattern that's developing.
Mike Tannura: 20:33If you move further north into Canada, they did not get that big rain in the May, and they're basically in a drought. And that includes pretty much 75% of the spring wheat and the canola crop in Canada. Now if we don't see rains there, again, a big problem ahead, but it looks like we're going to tap into some decent thunderstorms not only over the next few days, but next week and possibly even the week after that. So, Todd, if this whole forecast changes dramatically and we have to pull all these rain chances out, then we'll have a real story there. But right now, you know, we're kind of looking at the train coming at the crop and saying, you know, we've got a problem here, but at the same time, there's a lot of thunderstorms looming around, and we think those are gonna hit before, everything turns into a problem.
Todd Gleason: 21:18The bulk of the wheat is grown in the Northern Hemisphere on the planet. That makes, Europe and, Russia, Ukraine, France all really important. Can you update me on those regions?
Mike Tannura: 21:30Well, it looks sounds like they're having a pretty fantastic season in Ukraine and Russia and much of Eastern Europe for that matter. You might recall that back in February and March, we were concerned about a drought there. But ever since we got into March and especially April and May, we've seen some really nice rains. And it's also been very cool in recent weeks, and that cool pattern is going to last right into the end of the month. So that region is very likely having a great crop.
Mike Tannura: 21:54If you move further west into Germany and Poland, they didn't tap into the rains as quickly as Ukraine and Russia did, but they have shown up over the last couple of weeks, and that's taken some of the pressure off of their crop more than likely. The only problem that we can see is in France, and you have to keep in mind that France is the top producer in Europe of wheat, but they've never really gotten in on the rain action. It's going to be unusually warm there over the next one to two weeks. And so we think that, you know, some problems are ahead for the France wheat crop and they very likely already have some problems, but it'd be a lot different story if it hadn't been raining from Germany onto the East and without this seemingly ideal setup in Russia and Ukraine for wheat development. So kind of a mixed bag there, Todd, but this would be much more concerning for France and for the whole wheat region if we weren't seeing rains and cool weather outside of that country.
Todd Gleason: 22:50Thank you much, Mike. Mike Tenures with t storm weather. That's tstorm.net online joined us for this Thursday edition of the closing market report that comes to you from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online, on demand, anytime you'd like to listen. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.