Jun 22 | Closing Market Report

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The June 22, 2026, Closing Market Report highlights a sharp contrast in global weather patterns and their developing impacts on crop conditions. In the United States, the Corn Belt and Southern growing regions are currently maintaining highly favorable soil moisture levels, setting a strong baseline for development. However, recent heavy rainfall and consecutive weeks of flooding in parts of the Midwest are expected to result in a 1% to 3% downgrade in the upcoming crop conditions report. In stark contrast, Europe is enduring a severe, record-setting heatwave with below-normal rainfall, raising significant moisture stress concerns for summer crops like corn and sunflowers, particularly in France. Meanwhile, South American harvests in Brazil are progressing smoothly with only minor, localized disruptions.
Market attention is increasingly shifting toward the upcoming USDA grain stocks and acreage reports. Driven by rapid spring planting speeds and broader financial pressures, agricultural economists project a potential increase in both corn and soybean acres, as farmers frequently favor these traditional crops during tight financial periods. This shifting landscape is further framed by long-term structural changes in Southern U.S. agriculture, which has suffered a disproportionate loss of 32 million harvested acres over the past century. This massive historical decline has led analysts to question whether federal safety nets that heavily favor cotton, peanuts, and rice are inadvertently stifling regional innovation and crop diversification.
In livestock and international trade, domestic beef demand continues to outpace expectations and remains robust, even with ongoing headline concerns regarding screwworm in Mexican cattle herds. On the geopolitical stage, Vice President J.D. Vance announced a proposed structural agreement regarding Iran, where any potential unfreezing of Iranian financial assets would require joint U.S. and Qatari oversight and be strictly earmarked for the purchase of American soy, corn, and wheat. While these geopolitical headlines introduce short-term volatility, market experts emphasize that traders must focus on strong domestic crop usage, robust export paces, and baseline supply and demand fundamentals to accurately navigate the marketplace.

00:00 The About Southern Agriculture Edition
02:02 Ag Markets with Curt Kimmel, AgMarket.net
07:35 V.P. Vance mentions a possible Corn, Soy, Wheat Deal with Iran
09:42 The Evolving US Southern Crop Problem
12:14 Commodity Markets Discussion with Chad Hart
17:50 Ag Weather with Mark Russo, Ever Stream Analytics

00:00 The About Southern Agriculture Edition

Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant University in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report. It is the 22nd day of June 2026. I’m Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason. Coming up, we’ll talk about the commodity markets with Curt Kimmel. He’s at AgMarket.net. We’ll hear from the Vice President of the United States; he made mention of American farmers after the negotiations with the Iranians over the weekend. You’ll want to hear those comments, and then we’ll turn our attention to the fundamentals of the marketplace with Iowa State University Extension Agricultural Economist Chad Hart, and wrap up our afternoon discussion by taking a look at the weather forecast with Mark Russo. He is with Ever Stream Analytics, and we’ll do all that on this Monday 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 at willag.org.

Announce: Todd Gleason’s services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. July corn for the day settled 6 lower at $4.11 and a half a bushel. September, $4.19 and three-quarters, down 5 and a half, and December, 4 and a half lower at $4.39 and a half cents. July soybeans, $11.15 and three-quarters, down 7. The August, $11.22 and a half, 5 and three-quarters lower, and $11.41 and a half the settlement price for the new crop November soybeans, down a penny and a quarter. Bean meal, $1.50 lower. Bean oil, up $1.46. Wheat futures soft red in the harvest month July, 8 and a quarter lower at $5.97 and a half, and the hard red July at $6.33 and a half, down 10 and a half cents. Live cattle futures were 72 and a half cents higher on the day. The feeders, up $3.82 and a half cents on the afternoon. Crude oil, about $2 lower at $73.73 in the WTI, and the Brent is down $1.68.

02:02 Ag Markets with Curt Kimmel, AgMarket.net

Todd Gleason: Here to discuss these numbers and talk about the agricultural markets is Curt Kimmel. He is with AgMarket.net out of Normal, Illinois. Good afternoon to you, Curt. Thanks so much. A lot of rain in that Bloomington-Normal area, farmers probably out driving around checking their ponds, I suppose.

Curt Kimmel: Yeah, hi Todd. As you said, just sick, you know, couldn’t bear to go check it real quick, didn’t want to see the bad news. But yeah, it’s a mess here locally. I had a little over two and they dumped down another 1.3 this morning here, but there’s a lot of 8-inch, 9-inch, 10-inch readings in some areas. Man, two weeks ago got bombarded and got hit again. The wind damage, though, not too bad, it kind of straightened up, but there are some areas that, of course, as we all know, received some fairly significant hail damage and just plain snapped and so forth. So yeah, the adjusters are going to be busy here. There are guys trying to talk about doing a little bit of replant, but I don’t know, time you see a pond drain off, it fills right back up, and we’re getting to the point of no return on some of this stuff. We’ll see what this afternoon’s crop conditions report says. As you know, it’s a beauty contest, and it doesn’t look very beautiful, so I would say we’re probably going to see anywhere from a 1 to 3% drop in the good to excellent category, particularly here in the Eastern Belt. And even the Deep South, man, 1-foot, 2-foot, 3-foot of rain is just not good at all. I know they say rain makes grain, and there’s another version of that too, but we’ll leave that one alone. But for the most part, we’ll see how things unfold. You know, the issue is trying to complete some spraying. Side dressing nitrogen that has gone down, now it’s a matter of trying to Y-drop it or well, pay to add some nitrogen to it. If you go back in history, the market’s kind of numb to wet conditions. I know, was it ’93 when the levees broke along the Mississippi, it got the market’s attention. But otherwise, it wasn’t until the fall where we saw some actual harvest data come out to get the market a little bit more wound up. But you know, with today’s AI trading programs and just commodity funds making up their mind, just about anything can happen. But for the most part, the funds have kind of exited the show here, and now we’re just kind of waiting here to see what type of news we get to give them a reason to add a little bit of risk premium to the marketplace. Most of the conversation probably this week is going to focus on next week’s quarterly grain stocks report and acreage report. Between now and then, we’re trying to buy. We did see some daily sales last week, but nothing here this morning as of yet. Export inspections report this morning: wheat was 393, that was in range. Corn 1.45, that was in the range. But soybeans were a little light at 241, so we’re still shipping out what we sold there, Todd.

Todd Gleason: What are you thinking as it relates to screwworm, livestock, the price of beef, and pork, and poultry? I really haven’t heard that poultry has had a difficulty with the flyways at all and disease being transferred. That happens some years, but I didn’t hear anything to speak of about that. I haven’t really checked in on egg sets and what that cost is either.

Curt Kimmel: No, that’s actually been quite quiet. I think the cattle complex has taken all the headline news for those worried about egg prices. I know we’ve had some 99-cent sales on eggs for a dozen here, so eggs have actually come back down to the pre-worry amounts. But last week’s cattle on feed report, on feed was 102, that’s about what the trade was looking for. Placements was 90%, and they were looking for 94.5%. Marketing is 88.2, the trade was looking for about 89.4%. So the main thing now is cookout featuring. The economists were wrong on beef demand. Beef demand has just been robust, staying strong. So price has not scared consumers away too far. Now they’ve shifted from different cuts of beef, but overall beef is getting used up. Screwworm, the Mexican cattle herd did not die or disappear. They’ve been battling it for quite some time. When you start talking about goats and dogs getting screwworm, and, you know, we’ll see what happens here, but I guess we should have been in the sterile fly business, Todd.

Todd Gleason: Seems like that is the case. Thank you much, we appreciate it, and we’ll talk with you again next week.

Curt Kimmel: Very good. Take care.

Announce: Curt Kimmel is with AgMarket.net. He joined us here on the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media. Don’t forget to put on your calendar of events the Wednesday morning Weed Science Field Day on the South Farms. Details at weedext.ag.org.

07:35 V.P. Vance mentions a possible Corn, Soy, Wheat Deal with Iran

Announce: Before Vice President J.D. Vance left Switzerland for the United States earlier today, he held an 11-minute press conference about the weekend negotiations with the Iranians. He wrapped it up with some comments about frozen financial assets and American farmers, saying the Trump administration wanted to make sure if it were to unfreeze that money, that the dollars would benefit the people of Iran.

J.D. Vance: Jared Kushner actually came up with a very interesting solution with the Qataris, where basically again, if there are any frozen Iranian assets that are unfrozen, then we have approval over that process, the Qataris have approval over that process, and then the money would actually go to buy American soy, American corn, and American wheat.

Announce: The Vice President called the plan a classic Trump deal.

J.D. Vance: Where if Iranian assets are ever unfrozen, they’re going to go to make American farmers richer and to feed the Iranian people.

Announce: Iran’s annual agricultural imports of those three commodities generally amount to about 350 million bushels of corn and 80 million bushels of soybeans—both mostly from South America, Brazil, and Argentina—and 140 million bushels of Russian wheat. Vance’s comments, as you heard, were filled with many “ifs” that would need to be met before any grain movement from the US to Iran were to take place. You’re listening to the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media on this Monday afternoon. Our theme music is written, performed, produced, and courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer Tim Gleason.

09:42 The Evolving US Southern Crop Problem

Announce: Now up next, the US South has lost nearly 32 million acres of harvested farmland over the last century. That’s a decline that far outpaces the rest of the nation. As Congress considers the future of the federal farm safety net, new analysis suggests current crop subsidies might actually be stifling Southern farm innovation. Over the past 100 years, the US South has experienced a sharp and disproportionate decline in harvested crop acreage compared to the rest of the nation. Combined, the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia have lost 32 million harvested acres. That’s a 38% drop, and far greater than the 10 million acre, 4% reduction for the rest of the states in the nation over that same period, the last century. Now, this disproportionate loss of farmland reflects a relative decline in the overall competitiveness of Southern agriculture, writes Carl Zulauf in a new article posted to the farmdoc daily website. In it, he details an 82% decline of the South’s cotton harvest over the last 100 years. That’s down about 30 million acres. While cotton dropped, peanuts and rice grew, but only by 3 million acres, a figure equal to roughly 10% again of those lost cotton acres. Those are the three commodity crops tracked by USDA. Now, Zulauf writes about the policy implications of what he calls this competitive decline in Southern agriculture. While heavy farmland losses originally justified extra financial support from the federal government for Southern crops, he thinks it may be that those same subsidies are now hurting the region. By heavily subsidizing a very narrow set of commodities—cotton, peanuts, and rice—the current policy risks limiting innovation and diversification into other crops. Zulauf’s article concludes with three policy questions regarding the future of the federal farm safety net. First, he asks, has the disproportionate support for cotton, peanuts, and rice ended up hurting US Southern agriculture in total, in part by inhibiting diversification and innovation in other crops? Second, would the US South benefit from a crop safety net rebalanced to be more similar across crops? And finally, if the US wishes to continue to provide more assistance to Southern crop agriculture than to the rest of US agriculture crops, should it be as federal-state matching programs open to all US South crops?

12:14 Commodity Markets Discussion with Chad Hart

Todd Gleason: Let’s consider now the fundamentals of the marketplace with Iowa State University Extension Agricultural Economist Chad Hart. Thank you, Chad, for being with us. I think maybe I’m at this point in time looking at the marketplace saying, should we discount what’s happening in the Middle East, or at least not consider it as often as we have in the past, and really turn our attention back to supply and demand and strict fundamentals and what that means? What have you been thinking about this marketplace?

Chad Hart: Well, I think as you look at the marketplace and what we’ve been through over the past six months, we’re basically grabbing the latest news story, whatever it might be, riding it to its illogical conclusion, and then coming back the other way again. And so when we look, the fundamentals have been sort of ignored for a while, and so to a degree, yeah, we need to settle back in again here. As we’re looking now, the idea is, the war in the Middle East looks like it is settling. We’re still worried about what that means for the long term for the energy markets, and that will feed through to the ag markets. But we also know that we’ve got a couple of growing crops out there that got off to a pretty good start when it comes to planting progress, and so far, so good on conditions. And so we need to start paying attention to what’s actually happening with those crops.

Todd Gleason: And when you do that, what does it tell you?

Chad Hart: What that tells me is where we are and where we’ve been over the past couple of months. If you sort of split the difference between the high and the low, that’s probably where we should be. What we are sitting on here is, I would say, pretty good-looking crops, but in this case, as we look at usage of those crops, that usage continues to, let’s call it, surprise me. And, you know, I believe in this case, it’s sort of as USDA has especially laid out on the corn side. As you’re looking at their 2026 estimates, where usage looks like it could exceed production, that should mean for slightly better prices as we’re moving forward over time.

Todd Gleason: A week from tomorrow, USDA will release the end of the month grain stocks and acreage figures. Since you’re talking about usage, what do you think those numbers will tell us in the grain stocks?

Chad Hart: I think on the stocks, I think it’ll hopefully tell us a pretty good story. Like I say, as I continue to look especially at corn exports, they continue to move at a much stronger pace than we usually see at this time of year. So that should be helping us out. Yes, I know we took in a record crop last fall, but we’ve also been using that record crop up as fast as we ever have for the past seven, eight months. So I think we’re going to get a decent, let’s call it a more positive story coming out of stocks. But what I do worry about is the other report, the acreage report, because given the speed at which we planted this spring, that usually means we plant more than we said we were going to in March.

Todd Gleason: Do you mean to say there’ll be more corn and soybean acres?

Chad Hart: I’m thinking more both, just because of the speed at which we got both of them in, plus, let’s call it, the weakness when I look at all the other competing crops. The idea is that corn and soybeans have been the places where farmers have sort of hunkered down when financial times are difficult, and I think that’s what we’re staring at here in 2026.

Todd Gleason: Is there a reason to think that the southern states, particularly the Southeast, will plant many more soybeans?

Chad Hart: Well, that’s where I’m really concentrating on, to see just how much moved there. We know the financial stress has been a bit more difficult down there, especially with some of the disasters, the hurricanes that have come in over the last few years that were very ill-timed for agriculture down there. So I can see them grabbing onto soybeans as sort of a life raft of hope here, to try to get a good crop in here that is looking to not only see a rebound in exports, but the biofuel story seems to be very positive as we look right now.

Todd Gleason: Crop in the ground, corn and soybeans, farmers sometimes will wait until then to start marketing the new crop. How far along do you think they ought to be?

Chad Hart: Oh, I’ll put it this way, I wish they were much further along than they are. I think for a lot of folks, if you think back to what we’ve just been through within the past month and a half. As I always like to tell farmers, if I don’t know anything about the crop year, I will tell you that you probably are looking for that seasonal high between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Little did I know that we would probably see our high on Mother’s Day and our low here on Father’s Day, but we’re close to that. So we’ve seen some sizable swings here. I think we did see some farmers take advantage of those early opportunities in May, but I think a lot more were sitting on the sidelines thinking, oh, this has got to keep going as we look into the rest of the summer, and it just wasn’t there. So as I look now, I think we could see, let’s call it, some back-end weather pressure building in after all the drought’s not gone as we look out towards the West, but we won’t probably see the prices that we just had a month ago.

Todd Gleason: Hey, thank you much, I appreciate it. We’ll talk with you again soon enough.

Chad Hart: Thank you, sir.

Announce: That’s Chad Hart, he’s an Agricultural Economist at Iowa State University and with extension.

17:50 Ag Weather with Mark Russo, Ever Stream Analytics

Todd Gleason: Let’s check in on the growing regions across the planet. Mark Russo is here, he is with Ever Stream Analytics. Hello Mark, thanks for being with us.

Mark Russo: Hi there Todd, thanks for having me.

Todd Gleason: You know, it’s rained, it was kind of a long spring which hasn’t been terrible, and the United States, am I right that most everybody looks pretty good in corn and soybean country these days?

Mark Russo: Yeah, that is certainly the case here, especially here in the heart of the Corn Belt where we’ve seen abundant rainfall, a lack of any kind of heat. Although there may be a few complaints that actually some heat is needed to accelerate crop development in a few areas, there has not been here recently any kind of extreme cool weather or extreme heat here. So that has set the stage here for really good soil moisture right now across the vast majority of the Corn Belt, and that’s also what extends across the southern US growing areas. Even up across the northern plains spring wheat areas, they have good soil moisture and have had a generally favorable pattern.

Todd Gleason: So if not in the middle of the country or in the West do we have problems? What if we go east and across the Atlantic or the pond and check out Europe, what’s happening there?

Mark Russo: Yeah, right now we’re seeing another record-setting heat wave across Europe. In fact, in countries like France, and France is actually Europe’s largest corn-producing country there in the EU, they are in now day six of a record-setting heat wave that’s going to continue all of this week before breaking a little bit next week. But that is where the most significant heat stress to summer crop development will be. And it’s not just in France, it’s across all of Europe, even extending a little bit into Ukraine as well, as this ridge of high pressure, and what is the strongest ridge of high pressure across any ag belt across the Northern Hemisphere, that’s where it’s going to set up shop here for much of the next week or two. And along with the heat stress will be below-normal rainfall, so that will result in increased moisture stress, and especially for those areas where already there’s low soil moisture due to some long-term dryness, this is becoming more and more concerning for summer crops, especially for corn and sunflower as crop stress continues.

Todd Gleason: So as you make assessments about how much damage has been or could be done to the crops across Western and I don’t know about Eastern Europe, is it a dire straight yet or are we just on the precipice of something that could be very bad?

Mark Russo: Um, the fact that it’s here in late June and not yet to the corn pollination stage, we’re not quite there in terms of irreversible yield damage. But we’re starting to get to that point, especially once we get to around July 1st, and then we’re looking out into more of the middle to end of July and see if the same weather trends continue or if things are changing. And what we’re looking at right now is that we don’t see much in the way of any significant changes here in July, meaning that we expect more heat and dryness risks across Europe. There’ll likely be some variability as some parts of Europe are hotter than others, or maybe a few areas pick up a little bit better rainfall. But the macro theme of a higher risk of heat and dryness does look to continue into next month as well. And we feel of all the Northern Hemisphere growing areas, including here in the Midwest and the US, and then also in China, the biggest risk overall for issues is in Europe.

Todd Gleason: And finally before I let you go, let’s check in on South America. It’s the end of the growing season there, how are conditions for harvest and the close out of the season?

Mark Russo: Yeah, across Brazil across the largest corn-producing area in and around Mato Grosso and Center West, the outlook for harvesting continues to be favorable. There is a little bit of rain around, and this is the dry season, but it’s more scattered in nature and should not result in any significant harvest disruptions. Further south though, in and around Paraná, the main southern safrinha corn acreage, that’s the area where harvesting is just starting, and they’re in a pretty active pattern here coming up. So there will be some disruptions here. This doesn’t look like any kind of major problem or issue, but a little bit of a slowdown in harvest progress across that area here going into the early portion of July.

Todd Gleason: Hey, thank you much, I appreciate it.

Mark Russo: You’re welcome Todd, thanks for having me.

Todd Gleason: That’s Mark Russo, he is with Ever Stream Analytics and helped us to wrap up this Monday edition of the Closing Market Report. It came to you from Illinois Public Media. I’m Todd Gleason.