Todd Gleason: 00:00

From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market report. It is the March 2025. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Greg Johnson.

Todd Gleason: 00:12

He's at TGM. That's totalgrainmarketing.com. We'll hear from Gio Prezofontes. He's an extension agronomist based here on campus at the University of Illinois and has some information on updated fact sheets for both corn and soybean production in the state. And then as we close out our time together, we'll take a look at the weather forecast too.

Todd Gleason: 00:33

We'll do that with Drew Lerner. He's at World Weather Incorporated in Kansas City. We'll do something of a world wheat tour in the Black Sea area, China, and The United States. We'll talk about the growing regions here and in South America too as we make our way through this Wednesday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world.

Todd Gleason: 00:57

Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. Greg Johnson from TGM, total grain marketing dot com now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. Hi, Greg. Thank you much. The market has been relatively quiet mostly because Monday, USDA will update the prospective plantings report.

Todd Gleason: 01:17

This is a survey of producers across the nation, to get an idea of what they believe they expect to plant in the way corn and soybeans. And the grain stocks numbers will be updated as well, not also a survey, but mostly a real accounting of what's on hand. Let's start with that one if we can because it's based on numbers that you will be familiar with, and the reporting that elevators like TGM, do on a monthly basis. Can you tell me what that survey is like for you?

Greg Johnson: 01:51

You bet. The, overall numbers are probably friendly corn as far as expectations. Last year at this time, the stocks number was 8,300,000,000 bushels for corn. This year, the average trade guess is 8.1. So tighter stocks this year than last year, so that hopefully will offset a little bit of the anticipated increased planting acres.

Greg Johnson: 02:20

And then of course, we've got weather to talk about beyond that. But at least the corn stocks number is lower, smaller than it was a year ago. Not so the case with soybeans. Last year soybean stocks number on the March report was 1.84. This year they're looking for 1,900,000,000 bushels.

Greg Johnson: 02:38

So, a little bit higher number on the beans and similarly on the wheat. Last year, 1,100,000,000 bushels of wheat. This year, 1,200,000,000 bushels of wheat expected to be the stocks number. So we're looking for kind of a friendly stocks number on corn and not so friendly on soybeans and wheat.

Todd Gleason: 02:56

Just about the workings of that grain stocks report, and we've talked about this before, as it's related to the off farm stocks, those that are in facilities like, the elevator you set at. How does USDA collect those numbers, and how does it differ at all from the monthly numbers that you report to the United States Department of Agriculture?

Greg Johnson: 03:21

It's basically the same. They just ask how much we have on hand as of a certain date for all of our TGM facilities. We fill that out and get that back to them. So it's not much different than the monthly supply, the monthly stocks report. Where the difference usually comes in is the on farm stocks report because obviously there's not that many elevators.

Greg Johnson: 03:46

They can basically survey 99% of the elevators. But farmers, they just have to take a small percentage and hope that that's a representative sample of all the on farm stock. So the off farm stock, the elevator stock's usually pretty accurate. You can get caught up a little bit if there's a train in transit. You know, we've taken it out of our books, and and maybe it's not quite to the destination yet.

Greg Johnson: 04:11

So every once in a while, you'll see a little bit of a issue there. But I think that's usually pretty similar from year to year. So I think USDA does a good job of adjusting for that. So I guess, you know, the only, unknown or, variable, that that would throw those numbers off would probably be the on farm stocks.

Todd Gleason: 04:33

It appears on the other report that's due out, the prospective plantings number, that most believe, the corn figure will be at least the 94,000,000 that USDA has put into the ag forum figures, and there are several numbers that are well above that. What are your thoughts?

Greg Johnson: 04:53

Yeah. I guess I've been saying 94 and a half all along. It it feels like there's a little bit of switching here in Illinois where we usually don't see a lot of switching. And so if we're seeing a little bit here in Illinois that's pretty steady from year to year, I would think the peripheral states, the Dakotas, the Kansases, the Missouries, the Kentucky's, that can switch a little bit more, we'll probably see a few more corn acres out of those peripheral states. And so I know I've heard some numbers as high as 96,000,000 acres.

Greg Johnson: 05:24

Hopefully, we we don't see a number that high, but average trade guess is 94.4, and I guess that's probably well, I guess that's the average guess, that's kinda where I'm at. Not to say that it can't be a little bit higher or a little bit lower, but that's what the trade's looking for on corn. And as I say, that's probably enough acres, so the stocks number helps a little bit, but, that many acres of corn, we could have a very good, carryout if we have a normal yield.

Todd Gleason: 05:53

And then can you talk a little bit about how you begin to figure the supply and demand tables, the monthly reports, particularly the May report when the first new crop tables come together. Once you have the USDA's AgForm average yields and the prospective plantings figures and the updated ending stocks for old crop in the April numbers. You you have enough numbers there really to get a a pretty good handle on what USDA's May report might look like?

Greg Johnson: 06:26

Exactly. You know, the the you you could just take a trend line yield, which is probably gonna be in the one eighty something category, multiply it by that planted acreage number that we get on Monday. Harvested acres are usually 91 and a half percent of whatever we plant. So you can get a production number pretty easily. Add that to the ending stocks number, which may get adjusted based on the stocks number that we get on Monday, and you've got your supply side of the equation pretty well locked down.

Greg Johnson: 06:56

Now on the demand side, USDA, when they put that May report out, will look at whether we're ahead of pace or behind pace as far as exports are concerned. They'll look at the last few cattle on feed numbers, hog numbers, to come up with a livestock number, which is our biggest use of corn. And then they'll also look at the pace of ethanol production and crushing to see to get a number there. And we're slightly ahead on ethanol. We're slightly ahead on exports.

Greg Johnson: 07:24

We're behind on livestock, so we've got two out of three that are a little bit friendly. So at this point, you would anticipate those those numbers to translate over onto the demand side and, you know, come up with a ending stocks number at that point.

Todd Gleason: 07:42

Have your phones been quiet now as it relates to farmer sales?

Greg Johnson: 07:46

Yes. Yeah. We had a nice rally there after the January 11 crop report on into mid February. And ever since then, the mark since February 18, we made our highs and we've sold off since then and we're kind of back to where we were prior to the January crop reports. And so between the fact that overall price level is not very attractive to farmers considering where they were a month and a half ago, and then considering the fact that there's a lot of unknowns about the tariffs, which may or may not get extended on April 2, and then there's also the unknowns about the acreage and stocks number on Monday, Traders have been hesitant to take much of a a position one way or the other, and farmers have been unwilling participants.

Greg Johnson: 08:30

They're gonna bid it out. I mean, they've all talked about dry weather potentially, so that's, also limiting, their enthusiasm to get anything on the books. They'd like to either see it rain a little bit more in April and May before they get real aggressive on sales or see a rally in the price.

Todd Gleason: 08:47

Yesterday, when we talked with the ag economist from Kansas State, he suggested that basis in the Western Corn Belt had weakened, and was a bit surprised by that given, ethanol and, of course, feedlot demand there. What's happening in our part of the world?

Greg Johnson: 09:04

We continue to see basis start to improve. Now we're improving from, you know, extremely weak historically weak levels. That January rally that we had, caused farmers to do a good job of selling corn. They probably sold a bigger percentage than what they normally do, and so we had a massive movement of corn off the farm in January and February. And that weakened the basis to some historically wide levels for that time of year.

Greg Johnson: 09:33

Ever since then, with the combination of the market selling off and the fact that the farmers had already sold a big chunk, farm sales have slowed up and basis has improved. So we're still not back to where we were historically or even last year, but we probably, I know we've improved 11¢ from a month ago. So, you know, that gives you some idea on both corn and beans that the basis has improved, 10 to 11¢ on both corn and beans this month. So, but we're still not as good as we were last year or at a historical five year average, let's say.

Todd Gleason: 10:06

Hey. Thank you much, and I'm looking forward to talking with you tomorrow for our commodity week program.

Greg Johnson: 10:11

Sounds good. Thanks, Todd.

Todd Gleason: 10:12

That's Greg Johnson. He is with TGM. That's totalgrainmarketing.com. This past week, the crop scientist at the University of Illinois announced they had updated the soybean and corn management sections of the agronomy handbook with a couple of new fact sheets. I called and asked Yo Prezefontes, the Extension Agronomist on campus, why that happened.

Giovani Preza-Fontes: 10:40

Yeah Todd, a quick background on the fact sheet here. We first published those in 2023 and the overall goal was to provide updated research based information on corn and soybean management while we are working on updating the corn and soybean chapters in the agronomy handbook. Right? So if you look at the Illinois agronomy handbook, the corn and soybean chapters, they were last updated in 02/2009. By the way, doctor Amerson Abseger and I have been working on those, and we think that we will have them updated this year.

Giovani Preza-Fontes: 11:15

So, again, the overall goal was just to provide some updated information to to for our farmers and growers and and prediction practitioners, on corn and soybean management in Illinois.

Todd Gleason: 11:28

So not the agronomy handbook, but a series of fact sheets. What's new for corn and soybean production?

Giovani Preza-Fontes: 11:34

Yeah. You know, the overall idea was to update the fact the fact sheets every other year or so as we generate more data from the the the research trials that we do. On the agronomy side, I'm trying to remember here, but I think we updated our database on both corn and soybean yield response to planting dates. So we added eight more trials total from 2023 and 2024. So our database contained about 43 trials for corn and 32 trials for soybeans in the past ten years.

Giovani Preza-Fontes: 12:09

It was interesting to see that it didn't change our recommendations actually. We still see a similar response on both crops where yields are maximized anytime between mid to late April. But again, just adding more trials into the database that definitely give us more confidence on the results. We also added more information on seeding rates. I was able to summarize some of the data that Doctor.

Giovani Preza-Fontes: 12:35

Neff Seger has from the trials that he has done between 2016 and 2018. So on average, what we found, and this is looking at the economic optimum plant density, which is I'm I'm more interested in because it takes into account the price of of the seeds and and the price of grain. So you you're maximizing profitability rather than productivity. So if you look at the economic optimum plant density for corn, we found that on average it's about 34,000, 30 four thousand five hundred plants per acre for corn on average, and for soybeans we see about 110 to 120 plants per acre. Again, plants per acre not seeding rates.

Giovani Preza-Fontes: 13:21

I think that's where we we often see the maximum return on seed investments.

Todd Gleason: 13:26

You talked about yourself and Emerson Naftsicker, emeritus agronomist at the University of Illinois. Who else from the crop science side was involved in the updates?

Giovani Preza-Fontes: 13:36

Yeah. We have pretty much all the extension specialists involved here because if you look at the fact sheets, we kind of broke down into sections for crop management, soil fertility and nutrient management and pest management, right? So looking at the weeds, insects and diseases. So that included myself, Boris Camilletti, Aaron Hager, John Jones and Nick Sider. We were all involved in the fact sheets.

Todd Gleason: 14:04

Thanks, Gio. Gio Prezofontes is the Extension Agronomist based on campus at the University of Illinois. We were talking about the updated crop management fact sheets for corn and soybeans. It's probably easiest to find them by visiting our website at willag.org, and then you'll find a link just above all of the articles listed to Crop Central. Once you hit that link, you'll find an article entitled Soybean and Corn Management in Illinois twenty twenty five.

Todd Gleason: 14:34

That 'll be what you're looking for. Drew Lerner now joins us from World Weather Incorporated in Kansas City, though he is in Alberta, Canada again this week. Hi, Drew. Thank you for being with us. How's the weather where you are today?

Drew Lerner: 15:01

Actually, it's not too bad. Yesterday was just absolutely gorgeous. I I drove for several hours yesterday, and sunshine was abundant. You know, I'm as far north right now as I've ever been in crop country, which is near Manning, Alberta. But, you know, the sun stays up here a long time these days.

Drew Lerner: 15:20

So it was beautiful all the way into the middle of the evening and just just gorgeous. Beautiful country up here. Anyway, enough of that, I suppose.

Todd Gleason: 15:28

Well, let's not talk about Canada at the moment, but the Black Sea area. Winter wheat, had, I think, not a particularly good time. It's been awfully dry in parts of that world. What does, what do the Russian and, Ukrainian growing areas look like today?

Drew Lerner: 15:46

Yeah. You know, we did get into the ground up there very poorly. There it was there was no moisture around, and the crop didn't emerge and establish very well. And there was all that talk about poor emergence and crop losses over the winter. And a lot of that ended up to not necessarily be completely true.

Drew Lerner: 16:07

There was certainly some poor emergence and establishment wasn't great, but they never got into any real serious problem with temperatures over the week, over the weekend, over the winter. And so they ended up with their crop in relatively fair condition. There's been some brief periods of light rain and snow periodically over the winter. The topsoil is a little bit more moist than it was last fall. And so their crops are greening up a little bit now.

Drew Lerner: 16:35

And, I think we've got some moisture out there. And I think I think that we're going to see enough moisture here in the next week to week and a half that there will be some additional incentive to wake up the crop and to get it to think a little bit about sending new tillers and maybe some root repair. And if that ends up being the case and we can perpetuate that through a big part of April, that it may be surprising to see how well they end up doing because they didn't they didn't kill the crop over the winter. Again, some of it didn't emerge, and that's that's a different story. But, I think for the most part, there's some potential for a little bit of improvement here.

Drew Lerner: 17:11

And it's not just Russia, by the way. Eastern Ukraine is in the same boat as well as Western Kazakhstan. And believe it or not, central parts of Turkey have been dry by us for months. And they too all of these areas are gonna get a little bit of moisture for a while.

Todd Gleason: 17:27

Does that dry dryness extend further to the east into the growing regions of China?

Drew Lerner: 17:32

It's a separate area in China that's drying down, but that's a good question. Indeed, in the last ten days or so, we have had a steady decline in moisture across China. It's been warming up. Temperatures have been above normal. It's not unusual to be relatively dry biased weather wise in the Northern part of China in their winter wheat.

Drew Lerner: 17:55

And, they're one of wheat production areas across the Yellow River Basin in North China Plain. And that area has been dry, but it has been warming up enough that the topsoil moisture has been accelerated in a drying trend. And so now we're very short on the topsoil and have marginally adequate to slightly short subsoil moisture. The crop is starting to wake up. It was well established.

Drew Lerner: 18:19

It's very important to keep a close eye on that region over these next few weeks. They have plenty of time for improvement. I certainly am not waving any serious, production, you know, threat flag at the moment, but it is something to kind of keep an eye on. And then further south, that dryness does extend down into the northern half of their rapeseed production area, and that area is not likely to see much moisture for a while. They did alright for a while, but now it's getting a little dry.

Drew Lerner: 18:47

And I would imagine a week to week and a half from now, if the dryness is still in place in some of these areas, they'll be getting some notice from the marketplace.

Todd Gleason: 18:56

Let's stay in the Northern Hemisphere before we check on the crops in South America. The Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas area has been really dry. Are things changing at all?

Drew Lerner: 19:06

No. They're not. And, you know, I don't think you're gonna see a serious change in the next thirty days. North America weather is locked in at the moment, and I think you're gonna find this pattern is going to prevail through a big part of April. So what you see is what you're gonna get.

Drew Lerner: 19:23

There will be a couple of events that may come through some of the hard red winter wheat areas, mostly the central part of the plains, but it won't be any different than what we've seen in the past couple of weeks. And so a little bit of beneficial moisture, but not a big soaker. And for the Southwest Plains, in particular, Southwestern Kansas and Southeastern Colorado into the Texas Panhandle, and for that matter, all of West Texas, I doubt seriously there's gonna be much in the way of meaningful moisture. Certainly nothing for the next couple of weeks. And maybe they could get a quick system that might go through in late April, but I think they're kind of stuck where they are.

Drew Lerner: 19:57

Temperatures are bouncing around quite a bit. You if you haven't noticed that, you know, we see temperatures in the seventies and eighties over a couple of days, and then we turn around and drop the temperatures below freezing and that's been ongoing. So there's a lot of heaving topsoil taking place in parts of the region. There's there's also a lot of stress on the crop that is already kind of struggling. Of course, we've had the big dust storms that have gone across the region as well.

Drew Lerner: 20:21

And livestock areas aren't doing all that great either. It it's a little stressful for the animals to see such wide swings in temperature before they lose their winter coat. And, grazing conditions are not gonna be very good this spring if we can get a decent amount of moisture in the Southwest Plains sometime pretty darn soon.

Todd Gleason: 20:38

Locked in dry out in those areas in the Eastern part of the Corn Belt, I suppose, in Iowa as well. Are we looking to experience a continuation of gray and sometimes rainy but still behind moisture content over the next month or so?

Drew Lerner: 20:57

Yeah. I think that's a good way to put it. Yeah. There will be periodic precipitation. The amounts are gonna be lighter than usual for quite a few areas.

Drew Lerner: 21:05

The highest frequency of rain will continue in the Eastern Midwest, and so those areas may experience a little bit of a sluggish start to the spring field work. And the Western Corn Belt, I think that when they get the weather to be cooperative, there's going to be all kinds of aggressive field work that takes place out there. But for a while, I think the producer is going to be a little bit cautious about getting into the fields too quickly because we do have this dry air and we are seeing these temperatures drop pretty wildly to the to freezing and below. So getting started too early might end up hurting somebody down the road. That's the only negative thing I can see, though.

Todd Gleason: 21:43

And finally, an update on crops in South America.

Drew Lerner: 21:46

Yeah. The situation down there still is as good as it was last week. Everybody's getting rain, at one time or another. Now there's some dry pockets out there. Don't get me wrong, but I think every one of the dry pockets except in the Northeast Of Brazil will get some timely rainfall.

Drew Lerner: 22:01

And when I talk about Northeast Brazil, I'm talking about minor production areas in Bahia and Northern Minas Dres. None of the major safrinha corn areas are involved with that. The safrinha corn areas that are a little drier in the South part of Brazil, and that area is very likely to see a couple of good frontal systems come across, if not several, as we go forward through the next few weeks. So I think there'll be timely rain in that area. And again, not much of a reason to be concerned about safrinha crops until that monsoon season ends.

Drew Lerner: 22:31

And then we have to take a snapshot to see how good the moisture profile is and we can then determine what the outlook is going to be for crops as they go through reproduction.

Todd Gleason: 22:41

Hey. Thank you much. I appreciate it. We'll talk with you again next week.

Drew Lerner: 22:44

You bet. Have a good week.

Todd Gleason: 22:45

You too. That's Drew Lerner. He's with World Weather Incorporated in Kansas City. Joined us on this Wednesday edition of the closing market report that came to you from Illinois Public Media. It's public radio for the farming world online on demand anytime you'd like to listen to us at willag.org, w I l l a g 0 r g, or search us out in your favorite podcast applications.

Todd Gleason: 23:07

I'm extensions Todd Gleason.