Todd Gleason: 00:00

From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois, this is the closing market report. It's the March 2025. I'm Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason coming to you from the AgTech Conference on the Urbana Champaign campus of the U of I. Coming up, we'll talk about Research Park and the impact it is having on agriculture. We'll also discuss today's commodity markets with Matt Bennett at agmarket.net on this Thursday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Medium.

Todd Gleason: 00:30

It is Public Radio for the farming world.

announcer: 00:33

Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois extension.

Todd Gleason: 00:39

Well, because I'm here at the AgTech conference, no updated settlement prices from the CME Group in Chicago. However, corn up 78¢ in the old crop, new crop around three to four, soybeans up about 15¢ in the new or rather old, and the new crop up around 11¢. Matt Bennett is here from agmarket.net. Hi, Matt. Thank you for being with us.

Todd Gleason: 01:01

Can you give me a broad overview since you've been in Denver of the marketplace and where you see it trading? Yeah.

Matt Bennett: 01:08

I mean, I I feel like there's there's no question. Of course, we fell, precipitously. A lot of that was due to tariff talk, tariff, implementation that, we thought, that we'd seen, but, you know, essentially the market, probably oversold just a little bit too much. I mean, and the reason I say that, Todd, is that we're awful early in the growing season, of course, or, you know, a little bit of stuff, I guess, been planted south, but, getting closer to growing season in our part of the world. And we have no weather premium, in my opinion with, you know, Decor going back down close to that $4.40 level this week, that we hung out at basically most of the winter.

Matt Bennett: 01:48

And so, you know, the market, definitely had a little bit of a bounce today. Of course, a lot of that was due to talk, but, tariffs on Mexico would be, halted for a month and that, you know, some of that would be going on with Canada as well. You know? And so I don't know. To be honest with you, you gotta keep your head on a swivel with this, tariff stuff, but it it definitely, shows you just how big of an impact, you know, some of these tariffs might have, you know, if they are put in place.

Matt Bennett: 02:15

I mean, you know, part of the problem, of course, is when our when tariffs go in place, they're not always easiest thing to take back off, you know? So I think the trade's been very sensitive to this.

Todd Gleason: 02:26

A lot of volatility in the marketplace. Can you get a handle on what direction we are headed at this time, or is it day to day?

Matt Bennett: 02:34

Yeah. I mean, our bias is that this market is probably, done going down for the time being. We feel pretty confident that, you'll have a shot at seeing better prices in here. You know, the thing is is that the growers sold an absolute mammoth amount of corn over the last several weeks. We feel like the grower is at most 25% ownership at this point.

Matt Bennett: 02:55

And so we, we gotta think that with any inclement weather, whether it's in South America this spring with mother nature, whether she cooperates, and then, we'll see what kind of acres we look like. But overall, you've got to think that this market could have some fireworks this year, you know, especially when you're looking at world stocks, lowest we've seen since 2016. So, and that's on corn I'm talking. And of course, world wheat stocks continue to be whittled lower as well. So I do think from a feed grain perspective, there's some fundamental reasons to have support under the market.

Matt Bennett: 03:27

Now on soybeans, clearly, the world situation is completely different than The US. But as we look at these acres, I mean, you could be having some fairly low acre numbers here for US, soybeans. And if that's the case, again, you've got to think there's gonna be some support for this market.

Todd Gleason: 03:43

Did the strength in the soybean market surprise you today as compared to what happened with corn?

Matt Bennett: 03:48

Oh, a little bit. But at the same time, you know, soybeans had an awful rough time this winter. You know, I mean, you're looking at bean prices down here, March beans. Do they trade it a little bit below $9.99? You know, I mean, we we saw nine on the board here today.

Matt Bennett: 04:01

So, with that being the case, you know, I think that maybe we've just gone a little bit too far. I mean, you'll get no beans at $10.21 and a half and virtually nobody can get $10 beans out of the field right now. So that also leads you to believe that it's gonna be tough. Yeah, corn's no beauty queen at 04:50, but at the same time, I think a lot of growers, especially in areas that they can't grow what I would call better yielding beans, we're super blessed here in Central Illinois with the kind of beans we've been growing the last few years. But you get farther North and, people talking about sixty, sixty five bushel APHs, it's just really tough to be able to say you can make money at $10 beans.

Matt Bennett: 04:38

You gotta have a incredibly low cost structure, putting those things in the ground. So, it tells us that, you know, this bean market might be able to at least, get some support in here, maybe, try to, keep a few acres if you will, because in The US, balance sheet's gonna look extremely tight if you get into the low eighties on acres, and I think that's

Todd Gleason: 05:00

Given normal growing conditions, what should producers think about marketing the new crop corn and soybeans? And I'm guess, I'm thinking USDA seasons average cash prices in that four and ten range. That's what we're hearing from the farm doc team. I'm not sure that you're very far off of those unless there is something that happens in the weather. What do producers do given the potential for the market market to go higher, but a norm for it not to.

Matt Bennett: 05:29

Yeah. I mean, I like doing what I call a worst case scenario where we're stepping in there and buying a floor, you know, putting ourselves in a spot that if the market rallies, you know, maybe we get capped on a handful of bushels. And, you know, something that I'm talking about is maybe buying a very aggressive, put, you know, on some sort of a rally in here. I don't want to get super aggressive, with $4.50 corn. When we did trade to $4.79 and three quarters, I think that there's a chance you could go higher here.

Matt Bennett: 05:57

I mean, than the last twenty years, your your spring insurance price has been, you know, you've rallied above that every year, you know, at some point or another. Now, sometimes it's only been $3.04 cents. But at the same time, you've got to think there's a decent chance, with that February average of $4.70. You know that we've got a shot at at least another 20¢ in here if history is any prediction. So I've got to be a little more cautious and getting aggressive right now.

Matt Bennett: 06:26

And bottom line is if you can't, say you can make money in here, there's no sense in getting scared into making a sale, out of fear that the market's gonna move lower if you can't make that kind of sale work. Hey. Thank you much. Hey. Thank you too.

Todd Gleason: 06:40

That's Matt Bennett. He is with agmarket.net. As you know, I'm at the AgTech Summit here on the South end of campus at the University of Illinois at the I Hotel. We're now joined by the chancellor of the U of I, Robert Jones. He made the keynote address to kick off our program for the day.

Todd Gleason: 07:01

We're in Ag Research Park. Well, I call it Ag Research Park, but Research Park here on campus. You talked about something, I find of interest. It's about the collaborative efforts that take place between campus and industry and what Research Park has meant, in this case, the ag tech side. Can you give me a broad view?

Robert Jones: 07:22

Well, I can tell you it is gratifying to be here the tenth year for the ag tech summit, which I think is, an example of what I've been calling radical collaborations, where you bring together people from industry, from private companies, from universities, from startups to come together to, share knowledge and to think about how they move forward as a collective to find some of the most troubling, important, challenges that face our society. And that's no no issue more important than the future of food production, food security, and all the innovation that's come out of agriculture. It's no longer about row crops or grain crops. It's about other ways of thinking about everything from bowel manufacturing to producing different kind of proteins using bioprocessing and fermentation. And so this summit is a way that really gives me great assurance that this community will always be a driver of AgTech because it is deeply in vain in our land grant mission, and we are able to bring a large group of people from around the country and not around the world, to convene annually to share ideas and best practices and to work on collective impact strategies that's going to move the ag sector forward and will continue to be one of the fastest growing sectors, not only in the state, but in the nation and in the world.

Todd Gleason: 08:52

As a crops physiologist Mhmm. It appears that this is your passion. I have heard you speak many times. This is one of the places that really strums your heart.

Robert Jones: 09:03

It is. I identify with the land grant mission, particularly, in the notion, of foods production, food security, and that's why it's been such a a great opportunity of me to have led this university for the last nine years. And I leave with a great sense of assurance that it will always be a leader in this sector, and I certainly hope something that I've done and something I've said is given a greater sense of urgency that we gotta keep gathering. We gotta keep innovating, but most important, we have to work seamlessly together, because ag is just I mean, you think about it. Why?

Robert Jones: 09:40

We're the leaders in AI, and a lot of that AI is applied directly to agriculture. It has transformed how farmers or growers produce food and technology agriculture is a technology driven industry now more so than it ever has been. And I submit to you in the next five to ten years through things like IFAB and biomanufacturing, it will contain a BSO. So as one of the few chances who are deeply, deeply immersed in in agriculture and food production. This has really been the high point of my academic career.

Todd Gleason: 10:17

As you move to the Northwest to lead another university, how do you view the University of Illinois' role across the planet in the agricultural world?

Robert Jones: 10:28

Well, it continues to be huge and, you know, Washington is not a land grant university, but it is a public university. It shares some of the same values without being technically a land grant university. It's not part of the land grant mission, but it certainly embodies most of the same principles, and they have some innovative work that goes on in both plant and animal science, some important connection between food and health. They have a major in health care system. So I'm not backing away from my land grant roots by going to another land grant university.

Robert Jones: 11:02

It's just a different opportunity to integrate across all of these disciplines because it's all about outcome.

Todd Gleason: 11:10

Chancellor Robert Jones, of course, is here on campus at the University of Illinois, and we were discussing what he called radical collaboration, related to Research Park, some of the things that are happening there, some of the 2,100 employees that belong to companies from other places, companies, not government, or the university, and the some 800 students that are working with them. And then I wanted to talk about this collaborative effort and what that really means as it's related to some of the work that the College of ACES has been doing through IBRL or the Integrated Bioprocessing Research Lab. This looks at unique functions related to the farm, agriculture, and particularly the crops that come off of them and how you can use them in really different kinds of ways. Ted Netland is here. He's with Boston BioProcess, which was a Boston company, but is now a Champaign, Illinois based company.

Todd Gleason: 12:13

Both has, an office on campus and in Research Park. Thank you for being with us. You've been working with I IBRL, and I think of it oftentimes as the place that spawns, interesting microbes. Our listeners will be used to the idea that these are used in the production of biofuels. You are a company that does exactly what with those biofuels, and how is it that you're working with IBRL?

Ted Netland: 12:44

Sure. We, we work across a number of industries, and not just biofuels, but also food, feed, different kinds of functional enzymes, and various things that you can make using microbes because really a microbe is just a production mechanism. So it's the same thing as using any other kind of manufacturing technique. As long as you can create a sequence of DNA that spits out some sort of product that has a function, you can make it using a microbe. So really we have lots of different end markets that we that we work with.

Ted Netland: 13:09

And our and our role is really a business to business service provider. So we help companies that are small and looking to make some kind of a product that's exciting using biomanufacturing, figure out how best to actually manufacture that product, and then help them get to commercial scale. So we work with small companies as well as very large ones that are industrial providers.

Todd Gleason: 13:27

Can you give me an example of what that might look like? What what already exists potentially that people might be familiar with or some other something that you're working with?

Ted Netland: 13:40

Sure. Great example of this is the the, the enzymes in your laundry detergent are made using biomanufacturing. So it's things that have a very functional, property to them that you can make in relatively small quantities and valorize at a at a relatively high price. Recently, there's been a slew of companies that are looking to try to make food products without using animals, for example. So if you're looking to make, cheese without taking milk from a cow, you can actually directly make cheese proteins using microbes as well.

Ted Netland: 14:06

So anything that you can kind of find, in the wild that's that's derived from an animal product or a or a or a plant, you can typically create, you know, a mirror version of that using a microbe, oftentimes for lower costs. And that's really the driving force behind a lot

Todd Gleason: 14:21

of this. I mentioned in the introduction for you that you had been a Boston company, Boston Bioprocess, pulled up stakes, moved to Champaign Urbana. Was it Research Park that caused that to happen?

Ted Netland: 14:36

Yeah. Absolutely. It was really the university. So we we started as a as a quite small company, with three grand ambitions, but we we realized fairly quickly that we needed to have a larger scale partner to access the the talent and the equipment that we needed to make the business function. And so, you know, our original goal was to build a lot of that ourselves.

Ted Netland: 14:51

And, we, we realized that we could partner with the university and really accelerate our growth quite a bit. So we moved over to the CU area in March of twenty twenty three, and we've really been growing like a weed since then here.

Todd Gleason: 15:05

Tell me what you bring in this collaborative effort to the university and how you collaborate across the board with them because I think that's the important part of a research research park, the industry partners, the government partners, the university as a partnership.

Ted Netland: 15:22

Yeah. So one thing I should mention is that around half of our staff now have some affiliated affiliation with the university. So, that could be undergraduates that we hire directly as, associates in our lab. We also have software engineers with with a UAUC background. We have PhD scientists from the university.

Ted Netland: 15:38

We've drawn a lot from the university talent pool and kept a lot of talent in the area. We're also, frankly, pushing the boundaries on the industry quite a bit. We're doing a lot of work for how to model different kinds of micro growth better. We're trying to figure out how to make the the client experience better. And a lot of that r and d effort directly benefits the the area insofar as it, really creates a a a hub for this kind of industry and this kind of innovation.

Ted Netland: 16:01

So, I I think that we've really set up a symbiotic relationship with the the university in in, in a couple different ways.

Todd Gleason: 16:08

Yeah. So you are now a platform, middle platform for the development of products, when somebody has an idea but doesn't really have the well wherewithal to have the talent to quite get there, and you're working with the university in the process Mhmm. To create enzymes or other products.

Ted Netland: 16:28

That's right. That's right. Yeah. We help companies learn how to manufacture industrial scale. I think that's fair to say.

Todd Gleason: 16:34

Thank you very much. I appreciate you taking time with me today. My pleasure. Ted Netland is with Boston Process. Now let's bring this back to the farm and how Research Park, the industry that is there, and the university work together to bring products directly to the farm.

Todd Gleason: 16:52

There are a couple of folks with us. Chris Harbart is here. And you might be familiar with his name. He was a cofounder of Aggreble. We still talk with Eric Snodgrass each and every week now with Nutrien Ag Solutions.

Todd Gleason: 17:05

And we're also joined by Ken Page. He is a university professor, and had been for many, many years, a forty year career here. Can you tell me first who you are and what it is you did on campus?

Ken Paige: 17:21

Yeah. I'm a professor in the department of ecology, evolution, and behavior. I was a professor. I'm a full professor at this point, Emeritus. I just retired, joined Frenzy full time.

Ken Paige: 17:37

I've I've taught courses in conservation biology, ecology, evolution, plant genetics.

Todd Gleason: 17:46

So Ken, you have worked within Research Park for a long time, and you have a nose to find really interesting companies. So can you put this together for me? We talked with the chancellor about radical collaboration. We talked with, Boston Process about long term three, five, seven year out kind of functions related to bioprocessing, and you have brought a couple companies along to the farm. What are we working with today as it relates to this company called Frenzii?

Chris Harbourt: 18:24

So Frenzii is, a great opportunity for us to commercialize wonderful intellectual property that's come from Ken and Ken's lab over his career, and turn that into something that can become a product for farmers that can boost soybean yields. That's at a high level, really, what we're doing. We've we've come up with a way to increase soybean yields through Ken's research and do that reliably and repeatably year after year in a in a way that, increases soybeans as much as 30% yield overall.

Todd Gleason: 18:55

Why is frenzy in Research Park?

Ken Paige: 19:01

It it came from field studies I did forty years ago when I was a PhD student. And, I studied plant grazer interactions, ultimately that led to the discovery of increases in yield. That was a controversial topic, both in

Ted Netland: 19:19

agriculture and

Ken Paige: 19:19

biology, and probably still is today. Genetic realm. I do molecular genetics work. I was a postdoc in a molecular genetics lab. So from that, I've discovered a gene and the process that increases the yield, and it's, it's it's quite unique.

Todd Gleason: 19:44

If farmers are interested in this kind of technology, they wanna learn more about it. Can they find it some place to learn? Can they look for a frenzy on the web? How do they do that?

Chris Harbourt: 19:55

Yeah. So we're in a research phase of the company. We're just now popping our heads up and talking about the company for the first time, getting in relationships with the seed companies that are there. Combination of the frenzy technology is having the right seed and then doing our process to that seed once it's in the field. So we're working hard right now to get the seeds that we need in the farmer's hands at the volume that will be needed to realize all of this.

Todd Gleason: 20:21

Can you talk to me just a bit about the technology? Because it is molecular and genetic technology. Is the technology you're using, inserted into the seed itself or the genome? Or is it someplace else?

Ken Paige: 20:36

Yeah. It's someplace else. It's it's not inserted into the gene. Even though I can do that and I have done that, we don't need to. It's a native tree.

Ken Paige: 20:46

It's one that's naturally found in not only soybeans, but a lot of other other crop plants. And, and we're bringing some of those to to, into the mix. Let's put it that way.

Todd Gleason: 21:01

What has Research Park meant to you as it's related to this product?

Ken Paige: 21:04

Yeah. Well, I found Chris. I I decided in 02/2017 that the end of my career here, that I would start a business off of the research work because we were working on soybean. I had in fact, I had my last PhD at that time. And, we we, finished him up, and I retired from the university.

Ken Paige: 21:27

I joined Frenzy, and so we brought it. I I met Chris here at Enterprise Works at, Laura's request, the director. And, and so I sat down with Chris, and and we ended up with a company in our hands pretty quick.

Todd Gleason: 21:45

Chris Harbor, you brought many companies through this process. How long do you think we have left before we see frenzy technology in the field?

Chris Harbourt: 21:54

We're gonna be commercial in '26. So we've got one more growing season here of testing and scaling with farmers across the growing region. And in '26, these products are gonna be on the market ready for farmers to, try to achieve higher yields at soybeans.

Todd Gleason: 22:07

How much of an increase?

Chris Harbourt: 22:09

We're seeing conservatively 30%. Sounds fantastic. When I first met Ken, barely believed it myself. We went to the field, saw it. When you get your eyes on it, you know it's real.

Chris Harbourt: 22:19

We're gonna be doing a number of field days and those sorts of things to get people's eyes on it, to see that it's real. But it's a it's a game changer in the world of soybeans.

Todd Gleason: 22:28

We'll follow frenzy, keep track of when you come to commercialization, and I wanna see it in the field. Thank you, Chris Harpert and Ken Page, for being with us. I'm at the AgTech conference today here on campus at the University of Illinois exploring what Research Park and the collaborative efforts that happen here can do for agriculture and producers. You've been listening to the closing market report from Illinois Public Media on this Thursday afternoon. I'm U of I Extension's Todd Gleason.

Todd Gleason: 22:55

Thank you for joining us here at Research Park and the AgTech Conference. Visit us online at willag.org. That's willag.00rg.