- Matt Bennett, AgMarket.net
- WILLAg News Update - oh SNAP
- 2024 ECO SCO Payment Estimated
- Mike Tannura, Tstorm.net
From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois, this is the closing market reported as the June 2025. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett from agmarket.net. We'll hear about ECO and SCO estimated payments for last fall's harvest for corn and soybeans in Illinois and across the nation. We'll do that with Nick Polson from University of Illinois and the FarmDoc team and we'll talk about the weather too with Mike Tanura, T Storm Weather and along the way we'll take a quick look at what's happening with the bird rule in Washington DC as it relates to SNAP benefits and the one big beautiful bill all on this Thursday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media.
Todd Gleason: 00:49It is public radio for the farming world online on demand at willag.org where we're hopeful that you will also hit that donate button at the top of the page or go to willgive.org prior to the end of the month, June 30. We'll need everything in the bank that we're going to use next year. By that date. Our fiscal year ends then, and we start using what's in the bank on July 1. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.
Todd Gleason: 01:21July corn for the day down three quarters of a cent. December a penny and a half lower. Nearby July beans two and a half lower. And the November contract down 2ยข. Wheat futures for the soft red seven and a quarter lower.
Todd Gleason: 01:34They settled at $5.21. Matt Bennett from agmarket.net now joins us to discuss the marketplace. Hi, Matt. Thank you for being with us. I'd like to start with corn.
Todd Gleason: 01:45Can you lay out what you think's been happening over the last several sessions?
Matt Bennett: 01:50Well, Todd, it's obviously been an ugly market. There's just not been a whole lot in the way of anything good to talk about. You know, whenever you look at, what's probably driving the market the most is, of course, in my opinion, this big Brazil crop. I mean, AGRICONSULT comes out this week at one twenty three three on safrinha. That was up 10,000,000 tons.
Matt Bennett: 02:11I mean, that's a significant that's three, four hundred million bushels of corn. And so, yeah, that's just up from the previous estimate. So, clearly, the trade is known for some time, you know, that this Brazil crop is is gonna be a big one. And I think that what most people are looking at is they're looking ahead. Hey.
Matt Bennett: 02:28What's the new crop balance sheet gonna look like if you have to extract, you know, I don't know, two, four hundred million bushel out of The US export thing? I'm not saying we will. I just think that that's something that's been weighing over the market because I still think usage is strong. I still think you'll have a tight quarterly stocks number next week. But the other thing that's probably hurting the market, of course, is this acreage thing, and I do think acreage will come in fairly high next week.
Todd Gleason: 02:52Yeah. So those reports are due out on Monday, acreage and grain stocks numbers. To put the numbers from Brazil, and this was not from CONAB or where we usually would get figures from a different private consultancy group, it was something in the neighborhood of a 14 bushel to the acre yield increase. It was just an enormous number. I think it was per acre.
Todd Gleason: 03:16I don't think it was per hectare, but it was it was an increase of inordinate size. So that's putting a lot of pressure on the marketplace. You have new contract lows in both July and December corn. This is happening a full month before it did last year, two months, I think, for December corn. How do you see that playing out in the near term?
Matt Bennett: 03:38Well, part of the problem that you've got, of course, Todd, is that so many people are looking at really good crops. You know? You just don't have a lot of people driving around saying, hey. It looks rough here. It looks rough there.
Matt Bennett: 03:49Now, hey. Where I'm at, south of you a little ways, we haven't caught any of these rains here lately, so we're actually dry. I mean, I wouldn't say we're hurting yet. Most of this corn's rolling. It's a good defense mechanism for it.
Matt Bennett: 04:02But bottom line is we're gonna need some rain before long because these 95 degree days, while the corn is still growing, it's really, it's really struggling through this kind of heat. And, of course, these really warm nights, it's not the end of the world, but we don't want these really warm nights after pollination because that typically does not bode well, for you to build a big ear. But, you know, part of the problem is that everyone's looking at big crops right now. So right now, you've got, a lot of yield forecasts out there above that one eighty one from the USDA. So if you see something like that paired with a 95 and a half, 96, and coincidentally, our number is ninety five eight, We feel pretty strongly that you gain more acres in the areas that we're able to run with good progress and efficiency this spring than what you probably lost in Ohio down through the Delta.
Matt Bennett: 04:51So, you know, if you plug a ninety five eight into your balance sheet with a one eighty three yield, it's not a number that you're really gonna wanna look at too close.
Todd Gleason: 04:58Do you have combined acreage for corn and soybeans going up? Meaning do you also have a bigger number for soybeans?
Matt Bennett: 05:04No, do not. So we're at 83.2 on beans. We feel like you probably lost a handful of acres in the switching process. Now we feel like some of those acres that, you know, were abandoned for corn probably went to soybeans. We just feel like in Nebraska, Iowa, Northern Illinois, and into the Dakotas, there was a fair amount of folks that were able to roll good with corn, had good conditions, and just kept right on rolling.
Matt Bennett: 05:30So, we feel like that those acres most likely came at the expense of soybeans. So, we're looking at total acreage being fairly similar. I could see it being up though, Todd, given the fact this spring was actually a pretty good spring. Didn't have a whole lot of super, wet areas other than, of course, Ohio through the Delta.
Todd Gleason: 05:48Grain stocks also due out on Monday morning at 11AM central time. The cattle and feed number was down. You have, the number of birds earlier in the year drastically reduced at some points, and then of course you have to throw ethanol into that mix. How much do you think was used and what will that number show as to what's on hand still in The United States for corn?
Matt Bennett: 06:13You know, there's a lot of different guesses out there that we're gonna be down anywhere from 200 to 400, maybe even 500,000,000 bushels from a year ago. If you look at the balance sheet right now, they're calling our ending stocks being down over 700,000,000. But of course, you gotta factor in a three quarters of the way through the year type scenario. So, do I think we'll be down maybe 400, 450,000,000 bushels from a year ago? I think it's a very distinct possibility.
Matt Bennett: 06:39Yes. That feed number is probably gonna have to get adjusted at some point, but at the same time, exports are still probably 50 to a 100,000,000 bushels too low. Whereas ethanol margins have creeped back into profitability to where we're running pretty darn good ethanol numbers every week here lately. So I think usage is gonna still remain strong. I think you'll still have a tight stocks on both old crop and new in July.
Matt Bennett: 07:03It's just here in June whenever you get this acreage number. I'm just afraid that it's gonna be one of those numbers that's gonna throw a cold, damp cloth on everything.
Todd Gleason: 07:11Are you very worried about the price of soybeans at this time?
Matt Bennett: 07:15Well, I thought it was beans were so resilient there for so long. You know? They really performed well, better than what we thought they were going to. But right now, beans certainly looks susceptible. I mean, you're in a situation where, whenever you see the crude oil market go down, soybean oil goes down.
Matt Bennett: 07:32And then when soybean oil goes down, the bean market really struggles. So we can tell that a big reason that we're able to rally was due to the fact that soybean oil was so strong with the news from the RVO. I mean, you're gonna have to get renewable fuels data. You're gonna have to get weather something to feed the bull in that bean market because without a steady dose of bullish information, it's really struggling to put together a continued rally. So, we thought anything above $10.50 was a good way to, you know, come in there and at least add to a few sales, not get super aggressive.
Matt Bennett: 08:04But the problem once again, Todd, is that, you know, $10.50, you have to get a ways above that to get a cash price where most people feel like they can live with it. So it's it's a tough game right now. And am I concerned about bean prices? Yeah. I'm concerned about bean prices.
Matt Bennett: 08:17But for right now, I don't wanna get super aggressive. If I can't show a profit, I wanna at least see what maybe mother nature has to hold here over the next, oh, three, four weeks.
Todd Gleason: 08:26We'll talk with you again next week. Thanks much.
Matt Bennett: 08:29Oh, absolutely. Thanks, Don.
Todd Gleason: 08:30Mhmm. Matt Bennett is with agmarket.net. In today's agricultural news, senate Democrats are battling against the one big beautiful bill's cuts to federal snap support. The bill's provisions increase states responsibility for snap cost, modify work requirements for recipients, and could lead to substantial benefit cuts for millions of Americans, they say. Senate ag committee ranking member Amy Klobuchar says Americans will also feel the pinch at the grocery store.
Amy Klobuchar: 09:04We're here for one simple reason and that is that this bill will raise grocery costs for so many families. The congressional budget office has confirmed that this big beautiful bill would take food assistance away from 4,000,000 Americans, including 1,000,000 seniors, 800,000 parents with school age children, and 1,400,000 people who live where it's hard to find a job.
Todd Gleason: 09:29The Minnesota Democrat says more than half of the American public does not like what's in the bill.
Amy Klobuchar: 09:34According to the latest Fox News poll, 60% are opposed to this bill, and two to one Americans think it will hurt their families.
Todd Gleason: 09:42The governor of Kansas, Laura Kelly, too, says she strongly objects to what's in the bill.
Laura Kelly: 09:48This deeply unpopular bill is expected to gut snap benefits, endangering our most vulnerable and resulting in detrimental effects to our economy.
Todd Gleason: 09:57This political posturing may not be necessary as the senate parliamentarian who acts as a legislative umpire has ruled against the key snap provision in the president's one big beautiful spending bill. Elizabeth McDonough says the snap provision to force the states to pick up a sliding amount of food stamp benefits based on payment error rates violates a senate rule. The Byrd rule, named after the late West Virginia senator Robert Byrd, prohibited legislating on budget reconciliation bills. Here's Iowa senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican.
Chuck Grassley: 10:32I think there's still going to be attempts to, look at alternative ways to craft some form of state cost share that complies with the Byrd rule. So this might not be over yet. Hopefully, it's not.
Todd Gleason: 10:46But if the ruling stands, it would be a big win for Democrats who targeted SNAP savings in their long running farm bill feud with Republicans and would punch a huge funding hole in the GOP tax bill. Grassley has some long standing, though so far unsuccessful, ideas on other kinds of savings.
Chuck Grassley: 11:06Get rid of the proposal to increase payment limits from a 125,000 to a 155,000. We can also increase savings by closing the actively engaged loophole that allows Wall Street bankers to case government checks meant for farmers with dirt under their fingernails.
Todd Gleason: 11:25But without a quick solution or a senate override at the parliamentarium, action could be slowed. President Trump has set a goal of having the bill on his desk by July 4. And that's a look at today's agricultural news. USDA the 2024 crop year. These might trigger some crop insurance payments for last fall's harvest.
Todd Gleason: 12:04The county yields are used by the risk management agency to determine Area Plan payments including the Supplemental and Enhanced Coverage Options or ECO and SCO. County corn and soybean yields for Illinois were mostly at or above trend lines. Exceptions include counties in Southern Illinois for both crops and some Northern Illinois counties for soybeans. Payments for revenue based crop insurance ECO and SEO plans for twenty twenty four corn and soybeans will be triggered in many counties in Illinois and prevalent across The US for 2024. This is in part because the final harvest insurance prices calculated last fall were lower than insured prices, says University of Illinois agricultural economist Nick Paulson.
Nick Paulson: 12:49Final harvest insurance prices for corn and soybeans in 2024 were below springtime projected prices. For corn, the harvest price was $4.16 or 10.7% below the projected price of 4.66 For soybeans, the harvest price was $10.03 a bushel or 13.2% below the projected price of $11.55 These insurance price declines for corn and soybeans in 2024 result in the potential for payments from higher coverage level revenue insurance plans such as ECO and SCO.
Todd Gleason: 13:24For instance, in the state of Illinois, Paulson estimates corn payments will be triggered in forty three of the 102 counties for crops insured at 95% ECO. Soybean payments will be triggered for 91 counties. Likewise, Paulson says SEO and ECO payments for last fall's corn and soybean harvest should be triggered in most counties across The United States.
Nick Paulson: 13:46For corn, we estimate 70% of counties will trigger payments on revenue based 95% ECO coverage, while 56% of counties will trigger payments on 90% ECO coverage. 48% of counties will trigger SCO payments. For soybeans, 86% of US counties will trigger payments on revenue based 95% ECO coverage. Nearly 75% of counties will trigger payments on 90% ECO, and 65% will trigger payments on SCO. Payments are less likely or limited to 95% ECO in a small band of counties to the Central Corn Belt.
Nick Paulson: 14:22This includes Southern Iowa, Northern Missouri, Central Illinois, and Indiana.
Todd Gleason: 14:26Revenue losses severe enough to trigger maximum payments occurred in a number of counties in the Plains states including the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Some counties in Minnesota and Wisconsin will also trigger maximum payments along with areas of Kentucky, Ohio, and most counties in the Southeast and up the Eastern Seaboard.
Nick Paulson: 14:47Payments to producers who purchase coverage in 2024 will help to partially mitigate the poor returns to corn and soybean production. The prevalent payments from ECO and SCO in 2024, along with increased subsidy rates for ECO beginning in 2025, and proposed increases to SCO subsidy rates and coverage levels in the current House and Senate proposals for the Farm Bill will encourage even more use moving
Todd Gleason: 15:12Use of the federally subsidized ECO and SEO crop insurance program has been relatively low. Again, the University of Illinois agricultural economists expect this to change over time. If you'd like to learn more about the payments in your county, you can do that by looking up the June 17 article authored by Nick Paulson on the PharmDoc Daily website at pharmdocdaily.illinois.edu. You're listening to the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media. Our theme music is written, performed, produced in courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer, Tim Gleason.
Todd Gleason: 16:01We're now joined by Mike Tenore. He's the CEO and president of tStorm Weather. That's tstorm.net online. Hello. Thank you for being with us again on Thursday.
Todd Gleason: 16:12The weather has been interesting for this growing season, and we're set up, at least at this point, it appears, to have a really good corn and soybean crop across the whole of the Midwest. I guess you'd call it kind of quiet at this time. What are you seeing?
Mike Tannura: 16:28Well, it's certainly been quiet because of all the rain that we've seen. If you look at the rainfall amounts over the last two to six weeks, they've been pretty great across a pretty nice area. It hasn't been too wet for most people, and it hasn't been too dry for most. Even though temperatures were cool early in the period, it's been really warm lately, and that's helping out with growth. Because of that, the weather just isn't really providing us with much to talk about because typically at this time of the year, you're watching out for a few different things.
Mike Tannura: 16:59You don't want it to be too wet, you don't want it to be too dry, You don't want to have some extreme heat situation. Basically none of those are on the table as we speak today. And because of that, things are very quiet. The only thing we would say, maybe to provide at least a little bit of a counter argument, is that the overall health of the corn and soybean crops don't match the weather perfectly. Weather, we would say, has been pretty much favorable for this growing season so far.
Mike Tannura: 17:29But if you look at those condition ratings, and we're talking about the proportions that were rated good and excellent as of a few days ago, they're not super high. They're actually pretty average for this time of year, so that does provide at least a small argument that maybe everything isn't perfect out there.
Todd Gleason: 17:46Let's turn your attention to the next, I don't know, five to seven, five to ten days. What kind of weather conditions are you expecting?
Mike Tannura: 17:54Well, have another few days of rain to get through. We have an upper level system that's moving across the Northern Corn Belt and bringing some nice rains to Minnesota today, and that's also extending into parts of the Dakotas. So corn and soybeans there are getting some nice rains, and we'll see a few more pockets of rain and thunderstorms all the way through Monday. And so just a little more rain now. Are we going to see big, huge, gigantic rainfall amounts?
Mike Tannura: 18:19Probably not, but we do want to point out that Nebraska overnight saw some really big totals. More than seven inches fell in and around the Grand Island region and then some areas, to the south and east from there, so well over three inches of rain. So Nebraska is pretty much done for right now. They've had a lot of rain, and they'll be able to ride that out for a long time.
Todd Gleason: 18:38So that gets us to the end of the month of June. I do want to talk about July and August just a bit. Let's play a game, I guess. Relatively speaking, I've traveled across the Corn Belt enough to know that you can go into pollination. That'll start to happen the July in some places, but mostly mid to the end of the month with good moisture levels and have a crop even if it stops raining, the rest of the way out.
Todd Gleason: 19:09Can you talk to me, at least for corn, can you tell me, what you've historically seen in parts of the Corn Belt, and what that means to a crop if we get to pollination with good moisture?
Mike Tannura: 19:22Well, the scenario that you're describing with having good moisture and then all of a sudden everything changes has happened in the past, so it's always a possibility. Probably the most notable time was in 1983 when rains basically shut off for July and August, and it turned incredibly hot. It was one of the hottest summers on record. And that was preceded by one of the cooler springs on record. So that was a very unusual year.
Mike Tannura: 19:44So that certainly can happen. And if it were to turn unfavorably warm and unfavorably dry, say around July, and then through the end of the season, well, that would matter more than the weather up to that point in time because, you know, the key part of weather basically starts now and then lasts for about six more weeks. So, you know, if you have a unfavorable close to the season, that'll start removing all the favorableness that you were talking about back in May and June and maybe even into early July. So the season is not over yet, but Todd, the more likely scenario is that we basically don't have a crazy weather situation. And because of that, it's going to be hard to have a real small crop here.
Mike Tannura: 20:28Now, is it going to be a bumper crop? That'll be affected by what happens from July 10 forward as well. If we were to stay nice and rainy and also temperatures dropped a lot and were a lot cooler than what we're experiencing today, that would certainly reduce stress levels on corn, and that would make it possible to have a really fantastic crop and probably a crop that most people would be surprised about. So the point though is that it really is the weather that's starting now and then especially in two, three, four weeks from now that's going to start to drive yield potential. This is still kind of the very beginning of the season.
Mike Tannura: 21:02And even though we are moving into the heart of it, it's really a matter going forward that drives your yields.
Todd Gleason: 21:07Can you put soybean yield in that same sort of historical context?
Mike Tannura: 21:12Yeah, well soybeans are less temperature dependent. I mean, we've certainly seen that just by watching Brazil, even watching The United States. But soybeans don't care so much about how hot it is or how cool it is. What they really like is rain. And so if you can give them nice rainfall throughout the entire season, that's how you get a really nice soybean crop.
Mike Tannura: 21:31And we've seen that a few times in the past. But the point here is that this is kind of the same story. If it were to stop raining around July 10, you could have a pretty poor soybean crop because what really drives soybeans is that last six to seven weeks of its cycle, which doesn't start again until about July 10. So I guess the point here, Todd, is that even though things look really great right now and we don't see any reason to have a major concern going forward, You know, you can't throw in the towel now and walk away and come back next spring and start thinking about things. This is really the time to pay attention to it even if things do look great today.
Todd Gleason: 22:09Hey. Thank you much, Mike. We appreciate you taking so much time with us today and giving us that historical context.
Mike Tannura: 22:14Sure, Tad. Always great talking to you.
Todd Gleason: 22:16Mike Tanura is the president and CEO of t storm weather. Find him online at tstorm.net. You've been listening to the closing market report from Illinois Public Media on this Thursday afternoon. Don't forget to visit our website at willag.org where later today you'll find our commodity week program. We'll record around 02:15.
Todd Gleason: 22:36Should be up on the site by 6PM, probably much earlier than that today. And of course, you can always make a donation to Illinois Public Media as we finish out our fiscal year by June 30. That's Monday. We need to have everything in the bank that we'll be using next year. We thank you for your donation.
Todd Gleason: 22:56You can do that at willag.org. Hit the donate button at the top of the page or willgive.org. You have a great afternoon. I'm Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.