Jun 25 | Closing Market Report

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The June 25, 2026, edition of the Closing Market Report, hosted by Todd Gleason, provides a comprehensive overview of agricultural markets, national news, and weather forecasts. Market analyst Matt Bennet of AgMarket.net discusses the day's surprising market rally, attributing the upward movement in corn, soybeans, and wheat primarily to short covering by funds ahead of the volatile June 30th acreage and stocks reports. In agricultural news, a major development out of Washington, D.C., reveals that provisions for year-round E15 sales and billions in economic farm aid have been included in a national security supplemental request. The program also features a call for volunteers for the University of Illinois's regional corn rootworm trapping network and a historical segment by Rod Bain commemorating a century of USDA Radio broadcasting. Finally, meteorologist Mike Tannura of T-storm Weather details the current wet and cool conditions across the Central U.S., warning of an impending major weather pattern change that is expected to bring a sustained and potentially damaging heat wave to the Corn Belt by early July.

02:44 Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, AgMarket .net
09:10 Year Round E15 and Economic Aid for Farmers
11:11 U of IL Looking for Rootworm Trap Volunteers
12:24 A Century of USDA Radio
17:04 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 25th day of June 2026. I am Extension’s Todd Gleason. Coming up, we’ll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennet. He’s at AgMarket.net. We’ll catch you up on some of the agricultural news out of Washington, D.C., for the day, and we’ll hear from Rod Bain. He’s part of the USDA’s radio service and has been helping us periodically take a look at the 100 years’ worth of broadcasts that come out of that agency. And then, we’ll turn our attention to the weather forecast as we wrap up our time together. We’ll talk today with Mike Tannura at T-storm Weather. That’s tstorm.net online, right here on this Thursday edition of the Closing Market Report that comes to you from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world.

announce: Todd Gleason’s services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.

Todd Gleason: July corn for the day settled at $4.14 and three-quarters, seven and three-quarters of a cent higher. September at $4.24 and a quarter, up eight and a half, and December $4.43, eight and a quarter cents higher. July soybeans $11.27 and a half, the settlement price, 18 and three-quarters higher. August $11.37, up 20 and a quarter, and November soybeans $11.57, up 22 cents. Bean meal futures $4.60 higher at $308.20. The bean oil at $70.81, $1.35 higher. Wheat futures, July contract, $5.91, up five and a quarter. For the soft red, the hard red July at $6.20 and a half, three and a quarter cents higher. Oats, by the way, in the July contract at $2.73 and three-quarters, down nine cents on the afternoon. Live cattle futures at $247.22 and a half, 70 cents higher. Feeder cattle at $373.30 per hundred pounds, up 37 and a half cents, and live hogs on the day at $96.60, they finished a dollar higher. Crude oil at $71.89 a barrel, up $1.55. Diesel fuel or heating oil at $3.20 and eight-tenths of a cent per gallon, nine cents higher, and the wholesale price of gasoline today at $2.90 and two-tenths of a cent, up 11 cents even. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is about 260 points higher. The S&P 500 up around 24 to 25 points, and the NASDAQ is up 356 and a half points on this Thursday afternoon.

02:44 Ag Markets with Matt Bennet, AgMarket .net

Todd Gleason: Matt Bennet from AgMarket.net now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. Hello, Matt, welcome back. Thanks for being with us today. I’d like to dive right in to what’s happening in Chicago because there is a bit of a rally on the marketplace today. Can you tell me if there was an impetus behind this? What was it that pushed it higher?

Matt Bennet: Yeah, I mean, ultimately, you know, you looked at the market to start the day and you saw corn, beans, and wheat up, you know, and I think some of us were wondering if our screen was even correct because it’s been a while since we’ve seen all three of those up at the same time. But you know, essentially what you’re looking at, in my opinion, you’ve got a report out Tuesday. Of course, funds have been selling the daylights out of all three commodities, particularly corn, where they’ve got a pretty decent net short already. And I think that, you know, ultimately they’re probably positioning ahead of evening is one thing. The weather still looks good. I mean, 68% good to excellent on corn is good. Most people in the Midwest are mowing their yard every four or five days, so it’s hard to get a rally, but there is definitely more talk every day, especially with the forecast not backing off, that we could be looking at some issues with way too much rainfall in a pretty decent chunk of the corn belt. So, you know, I think that maybe the funds have decided enough’s enough, at least for the time being, until they see what those numbers look like on Tuesday.

Todd Gleason: So they let the pressure off and the market just floated higher with what, the commercials in buying?

Matt Bennet: Well, I mean, I think one thing is that the grower has likely stopped selling, you know, whether you’re talking old crop, new crop, whatever. I just think that the grower decided enough was enough as far as chasing this thing lower and maybe making sales based on fear, so you lost that hedge pressure. And so I think that it was a—I don’t know there was a lot of speculative buying. I think more than anything it would have been short covering, mostly from the funds who’ve been getting, you know, a lot of sales on here lately.

Todd Gleason: So they’re just evening up at this time. Do you expect this to continue right through the June 30th reports?

Matt Bennet: I don’t expect a lot of up between now and then, quite frankly. You know, I would like to see the market move higher. Obviously though, this Tuesday report is typically one of the more volatile ones of the year. Obviously, we’ve got acres, we know that, but you also have of course quarterly stocks. And so whenever you look at the acreage, you know, the average trade guess is 95.1 on corn. Our official number is 94.9, we’re not too far off everyone else. It’s a really tough report to gauge because a lot of people are benchmarking it versus the March intentions and that’s not always a great number, quite frankly. This year, the response rate was not good, and so you kind of wonder how good that intentions was. And so, you know, you could see something quite a bit different from what March intentions look like potentially. So, you know, if it’s on the bearish side, the only thing that we’ve got going for us is the disappearance appears to be fairly good. And I know there’s been a lot of questions here recently with some of the ECO payments that’s gone out, you know, if you benchmark some of these county yields with the state yield, I know that people did that in the state of Iowa and they said it looked like maybe USDA was a little high. So, in those years where we find USDA maybe overestimated yield, we typically start to find that out a little bit more on the June quarterly stocks than maybe necessarily the March ones. So there’s always a chance that we could see a little less as far as stocks are concerned than what the trade is expecting.

Todd Gleason: What story are the charts telling Brian Split, your colleague, at this time?

Matt Bennet: Yeah, I mean the charts definitely don’t look good for corn. I mean, if you look at beans, that’s where actually you’ve got decent chart activity. I mean, you know, we haven’t come close to new contract lows by any means, whereas, you know, you look over at July, you know, we made a new low here on the session on Thursday before taking off and moving sharply higher. You look at December corn and, same sort of story, you know, we went down and made a contract low there for December corn and then we turned around. Pretty impressive move though, you know, because we actually went down to $4.31 and a half and then closed over 10 cents higher than that. So a pretty nice little move, pretty good little bounce, but by all means, when you look at the charts, beans look significantly better than corn. But again, corn’s extremely oversold so it’s got that going for it.

Todd Gleason: Am I right that that December corn contract made a contract high in May and a contract low in June?

Matt Bennet: Yeah, I mean, yes, absolutely. The problem with that of course is that a lot of times whenever you see that reversal, there’s no doubt that you can see that trend continue. Now, May highs are not all that common, but when they have happened, it’s typically spelled pretty tough prices for the rest of the year. I think this is a very interesting year, you know, in that we don’t know what acreage is. We know that these input costs have provided some headwinds towards producers planting corn. And so, you know, maybe you’ll get some sort of a friendly surprise that will change us around from what we’ve seen in the past as far as May highs go.

Todd Gleason: Now as you mentioned, the December corn contract doesn’t look so good on the charts or price. However, the November soybean contract doesn’t look really too terribly bad. Can those two actually diverge with corn staying much lower and beans finding a way and a path higher?

Matt Bennet: You know, it’s always a possibility, but at this stage of the game, you know, I feel like beans are fairly high. I mean, I’m not going to say I’m bearish, but I do think that a grower that hasn’t sold very many beans yet needs to pay close attention in here. There’s no doubt over the last couple three years, we’ve seen very few times when prices have been up here or higher. And you know, so if you don’t have a lot sold, you know, you’ve got massive risk as far as Tuesday’s report goes, you know, it might not be a bad idea to lock in some sort of worst-case scenario if you haven’t gotten many beans sold yet because these price levels, they’re certainly attractive versus what the average has been over the last three years.

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

Matt Bennet: Absolutely, thank you.

Todd Gleason: Matt Bennet is with AgMarket.net.

09:10 Year Round E15 and Economic Aid for Farmers

Todd Gleason: In today’s agricultural news, a major breakthrough for US agriculture. President Trump has included year-round E15 and billions in new farm aid in his Iran war supplemental request to Congress. The almost $88 billion war request addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson was signed by Trump’s budget director Russell Vought. It includes $10 billion in temporary economic aid for row and specialty crops planted this year, and over a billion dollars for ag storm losses in Florida. It would also codify year-round sales of E15 nationwide, says the Chairman of the Senate Agricultural Committee, John Boozman.

John Boozman: So it won’t just be a military bill, it will be a thing that a lot of people are interested in, and I think agriculture, this bridge payment, will be a big part of that. I think it will ultimately help the whole package move.

Todd Gleason: Long-time E15 supporter and Iowa Senator Charles Grassley argued year-round sales is a good fit with the national security bill.

Charles Grassley: E15 predicts national security by supporting American farmers and expanding homegrown fuels. Expanding access to clean American-grown fuel reduces our reliance on international sources of energy.

Todd Gleason: The House passed the nationwide consumer and fuel retailer choice act earlier and the Senate has a companion E15 bill. But the Senate bill, unable to pass by itself in the face of oil industry opposition, needed to be attached to something a bit more promising. That has now turned out to be the Iran war supplemental, which may still face political opposition, but the President’s request was hailed by the Renewable Fuels Association, Growth Energy, and the American Soybean Association as a big boost for struggling farmers, ethanol producers, and consumers.

11:11 U of IL Looking for Rootworm Trap Volunteers

Todd Gleason: Well, for several years, the University of Illinois has participated in a regional corn rootworm beetle trapping network. The goal is to understand on a regional basis how rootworm populations are changing, including the prevalence of northern corn rootworms, the risk to first-year corn from the variant western corn rootworm, and simply identifying areas where the rootworm population might be growing. Those producers and others who are interested in participating will be provided sticky traps for as many fields as they wish to monitor. They can contact Nick Seiter, field crop entomologist at the University of Illinois, for more information. Search him out at nseiter@illinois.edu or you can give him a call. His email address though is nseiter, that’s n-s-e-i-t-e-r, @illinois.edu. And that’s a look at today’s agricultural news.

12:24 A Century of USDA Radio

Todd Gleason: Up next, we’ll hear the second in a periodic series of stories we’ve been listening to about the 100-year milestone of USDA’s radio service. Rod Bain has more.

Rod Bain: Think about how much technology has changed over the last century. Mind-boggling. Light speed, particularly the last two decades. Those perhaps are some of your initial thoughts. Now in the context of advancing tech over the 100 years of USDA radio, former radio reporter producer Gary Crawford tends to think…

Gary Crawford: Most people don’t really care about how we do it, just so we do the job and they hear what they need to hear on the air.

Rod Bain: Yet as you listen to this program through your local radio station, or by streaming or download in some capacity, or perhaps use your smartphone to edit various forms of content for social media platforms, consider how USDA distributed radio programs when it first began its operations in 1926. Agriculture Department historian Wayne Kinley says for the popular Aunt Sammy programs, scripts were mailed out to radio stations nationwide to be voiced by local talent.

Wayne Connolly: So you would have a radio announcer up in the Northeast who had a Northeast accent. You’d send a script down to the South and you’d have someone reading the script doing the radio program in a Southern accent, so it’s more relatable to the people in that area, on the farm and so forth.

Rod Bain: As national radio networks were established, USDA radio staff provided live and recorded reports during nationally aired and syndicated programs. Former radio and TV service chief Lane Bady recalled in a 1985 interview, distribution of shows like Agriculture USA via audio tape.

Lane Beatty: That became a syndicated program. They went out every week on tape. We added Agri-Tape, a weekly tape service… about 4,000 reels of radio tape go out of that office every week to stations.

Rod Bain: The mediums used for feature program distribution progressed from cassette tapes, compact discs, to today, digital download and streaming. In the case of USDA’s radio newsline, some farm broadcasters, such as the late Yankee and Rita Frazier of RFD Radio Network, recall how stations used to receive stories via the phone lines.

Rita Frazier: One of the overnight engineers’ jobs was to call on the phone the USDA 800 number. And so he would have a stack of carts fresh from USDA, and you’d go through them and you’d pick the ones you want. And Gary would say, “Story one is the Ag Secretary… they were all a minute or less…” “Gary Crawford, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington.”

Rod Bain: Speaking of Gary, having served 50 years with USDA radio, he experienced firsthand the rapid pace of advancing technologies and their equipment.

Gary Crawford: We started out with old, ancient reel-to-reel quarter-inch tape and went through the cassette era, then we went to mini disc, which was a short-lived audio format, and then finally to digital recorders and flash drives.

Rod Bain: Laptop computers with audio editing software, combined with digital recorders to make up today’s field equipment, filing stories from anywhere. Record, edit, and distribute audio by smartphone. The tech is indeed there, but former USDA radio reporter producer Brenda Curtis recalls in several instances, much more was needed to record an event or file a report.

Brenda Curtis: This big aluminum box… what I carried all the equipment in. I would say that that box suitcase, when it was filled, would weigh between 25 and 30 pounds. That was your tape recorders, your tape, extra cords, because you never knew what situation you were going to come upon. Different microphones, different plugs, inputs, outputs, whatever…

Rod Bain: Whether coverage was at the Secretary’s office at USDA headquarters, a farm property across the country, or an assignment Brenda was on phoning in reports from somewhere around the globe…

Brenda Curtis: I called the report in, fed him some tape, and then he would edit back here…

Rod Bain: From time to time in 2026, this program will look at USDA radio’s centennial. I’m Rod Bain reporting for the US Department of Agriculture in Washington, DC.

Todd Gleason: And I’m Todd Gleason on the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. You’re listening to the Closing Market Report on this Thursday afternoon. Do visit our website at willag.org, w-i-l-l-a-g.org, where you can stay up to speed on the latest information from the markets and weather, or you can check out what the faculty here on the campus of the UI, particularly the ag economists, crop scientists, and animal scientists, have been up to.

17:04 Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, T-storm Weather

Todd Gleason: Let’s turn our attention now to the growing regions across the planet and the weather in each of them. Mike Tannura is here. He’s at T-storm Weather in Naperville, Illinois. tstorm.net online. Hi Mike, thanks for being with us again.

Mike Tannura: Hey Todd, it’s always great being here and thanks again for having me.

Todd Gleason: We’ve really had lovely weather across this part of Illinois. Much of the corn belt, maybe more rainfall than some would like. Can you talk just a little bit about what we’ve had and then turn your attention to the next few days?

Mike Tannura: Well, most of the Central US has been pretty wet over the last several weeks. And so at this point in time, there’s no major crop concerns from dryness, though you could argue that some areas are too wet. And a lot of that is centered right on Illinois. So we’re kind of here at ground zero for the wetness story. So the other thing about this is that it’s been pretty cool. We’ve seen some very nice temperatures over the last couple of weeks, and I’m sure some producers might argue that it’s a little bit too cool because typically you want warm weather in the first part of the growing season because that’ll help the corn and soybeans to grow the fastest. But with these temperatures only topping out in the 70s and dropping down into the 50s at night, that’s not exactly what we would consider ideal. We’d like it to be a little bit warmer. But I think Todd, the bigger point is that soil moisture right now is looking pretty ideal, maybe a little bit too wet. But the one concern we do have about that is that there is more rain ahead. A system is developing as we speak across Kansas and Nebraska, and that is going to sweep across the southern half of the corn belt through tomorrow. A swath of moderate to heavy rain is ahead, and this is especially going to be near and south of Interstate 80. And then stretching into southern areas of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. And so that’s going to put a swath of one to three inches down, which normally we would say, hey, that’s fantastic to see at the end of June. But it is going to affect some of these areas that are too wet, and that’s where we’re going to see at least a little bit of field and river flooding as we move into the weekend.

Todd Gleason: You mentioned because of the cool weather we could use a little heat to pick up the growing degree days across the corn belt. It appears that may happen next week?

Mike Tannura: Well, it’s a very slippery slope because you would like to see some very warm weather when the crop is starting to grow. The potential problem though is that the crop is going to be pollinating in the not too distant future, and once you get into that phase of development, you don’t want any more heat. You can’t make up for what happened prior. So we don’t want to see any heat. But the problem is that we do have a major pattern change that’s developing. We’re going to see temperatures turn sharply warmer from Sunday through Monday. We’ll see this cool air mass that we have today lasting right through Saturday, but then all of a sudden, it is going to be full-on heat. We’ll see high temperatures well into the 90s, and we’ll see low temperatures only in the 70s, and maybe even the upper 70s to near 80 in some areas. And that’s going to last for at least five to seven days across the corn belt. And because of that, we do have a little bit of concern because if that lasts beyond that period of time, now all of a sudden we’re talking about July 5th, July 6th, July 7th. And that type of heat at that time of the year is the type of thing that starts to ding corn yields.

Todd Gleason: I know you’re concerned about the heat, but are you concerned about the change in the pattern?

Mike Tannura: Well, that is a big concern and this is something that we deal with many times in the summer. Probably the biggest difference between what we see coming up and the next one is that this upper-level high that’s going to form because of this heat is very large. And when you get a large upper-level high, they don’t typically just show up for one day or even five days and then just disappear. This thing is going to be around the Central US for a while. The big question is whether it’s going to set up near Illinois, or is it going to set up further west near Colorado, or maybe even a little bit further west than that, say near Utah. And this will have a huge influence and effect on the weather across the Central US. If you end up with the first scenario where the core of this high is in the corn belt, well that’s a classic formula for a pretty sustained heat wave right into the middle of July. If it’s a little bit further west, say around Kansas, then we’ll probably see some sort of cool front move through around next weekend, around July 4th. And that would turn temperatures back to normal for maybe around half of corn and soybeans, while the other half would still be hot. And then in that third scenario, that’s where everything just changes and you have a pretty ideal setup where you have a high way off to your west, that allows cool fronts to move through, and corn and soybeans are very happy with that type of weather pattern. We think the most likely one is that middle one, where some areas are going to turn cooler around 10 days from now, and that will tend to keep things looking at least normal for about half of US corn and soybeans. But we don’t think all the crop is going to get out of this one. We think the Northwest half is going to end up with fairly sustained heat because it should last through next weekend and then into that following week of July. And that’s what we need to watch because small shifts in this pattern are going to lead to big changes in weather, and this isn’t something that should just be ignored. I mean, this is happening. It’s just a matter of timing it out and seeing how long it lasts.

Todd Gleason: Thank you very much. We’ll talk with you again next week, Mike, and see how things are developing.

Mike Tannura: Sounds great, Todd.

Todd Gleason: Mike Tannura is with T-storm Weather, that’s tstorm.net online. You can find and listen to him again if you’d like online at our website as well, at willag.org, in the Closing Market Report, or you can search it out in your favorite podcast applications by name, Closing Market Report. You have a good afternoon. That wraps up this edition. I’m Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason.