May 11 | Closing Market Report

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Todd Gleason: From the land-grant University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, this is the closing market report. It is the 11th day of May, 2026. I am Extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we will talk about the commodity markets with Curt Kimmel. He is at agmarket.net. We will hear from Andrew Margenot today, too. He is a crop scientist at the University of Illinois and has been doing a great deal of research on phosphorus and stream banks. You will want to listen to that one. As we close out our time together, we will get a quick update on the weather forecast. Mark Russo is out of the office for the afternoon, but I will let you know what is going to happen for the week across the Corn Belt as we make our way through this Monday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online on-demand at willag.org.

Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. July corn for the day settled at $4.75 1/4, 4 higher. December at $4.97 3/4, up 4 1/4. July beans at $12.13, a nickel higher. November at $11.94 3/4, up 5 1/4. Wheat futures in the July contract up 15 at $6.34. The hard red July up 10 1/2 at $6.86 1/4.

01:31 Ag Markets with Curt Kimmel

Todd Gleason: Curt Kimmel is here from agmarket.net to discuss a very busy week for agriculture. It starts tomorrow, Curt, with the USDA WASDE report, which will include the first set of numbers for the new crop. Then it continues on Wednesday evening into Thursday morning, so by the time we have the closing market report out Thursday afternoon, we should know something about the President Xi and Trump meeting. On that same day, Brazil will release its eighth look at the size of the crop there. A lot is going on. What is the most important thing, do you suppose?

Curt Kimmel: Probably the report tomorrow, our first new crop estimate. The average trade guess is dialed in here at just over 2 billion bushels. The bean demand might be a little slow. We will see what comes out of this Asian US-Chinese meeting at the end of the week going into the weekend. I think the subject is going to be more about Iran than anything else, but we will see how it unfolds.

Tomorrow is the crop report. This afternoon, though, we have the crop progress report. We expect about 60% of the corn crop to be in the ground and about 50% of the soybeans. It looks like the fairly dry forecast is slowly starting to warm up. As you drive around the countryside, you can see some crop starting to row in some areas. It is the time of year when we are starting to see the crop pick up some momentum. Once we get it up, then we will trade the weather forecast later on. Also, this afternoon we will have some crop conditions, particularly in the western wheat belt. We will see what type of ratings materialize out of that. There is maybe a slight improvement on some rain events that took place. The eastern wheat belt is expected to continue to show strong soft red winter wheat potential here. We do have that crop tour taking place this week in Kansas, the wheat quality tour. We will have some ideas with boots on the ground reporting on crop size, along with the unknown of abandoned acres on the wheat crop out west. We will continue to watch that.

It is a fully packed week here with something about every day to look at, along with headline news. One other thing I forgot to mention this morning: we did see a 380,000-ton corn sale to Mexico. That was divided up into 220 old and 160 new. South Korea stepped in and picked up 128 corn. Even though we are seeing some higher prices here, demand is still holding in there, Todd.

Todd Gleason: So, new crop corn and soybeans flirted with $5 and $12 respectively. What might push those above that level, and how likely is that to be the case? What also might be the issues that would push it lower?

Curt Kimmel: To continue the upside here, we have to continue to see good demand around the world for US corn and soybeans. The biggest factor is the commodity funds. They have a huge net long position on all agricultural products. If they continue to have an appetite to accumulate some agricultural inventory, I think that will keep the market firm through here. If they happen to give up confidence in ownership of these products, all of a sudden, we could trend the other way.

Seasonally, the grain market holds together about this time of year. Once the crop is in the ground and starts to roll over, they have the buying and selling power in their hands. There is fear if they turn sellers on some type of world event, improved weather, or big production prospects. There are a lot of moving parts, but we do not want to let $5 corn and $12 beans get away from us.

Todd Gleason: Producers should be positioned to take advantage of that during the week, or do they need to make their positions solid before anything happens?

Curt Kimmel: Anytime in through here, you can put some price floors in to keep your upside open. This headline news could happen in the middle of the night, and then it is too late. I think you have to use the up days to raise your floor and continue to leave your upside open for the most part. When I came in here and saw the crop report and corn was limit down, that risk continues to be around. As we keep moving higher, the risk becomes to the downside. Right now, I still think we are in get-it-up mode here for a while, Todd.

Todd Gleason: Alright, thanks so much, Curt. We appreciate it.

Curt Kimmel: You bet.

Todd Gleason: Curt Kimmel is with agmarket.net.

07:06 International Year of the Woman Farmer Commentary

Todd Gleason: Here is a bit of commentary from me because I just do not quite understand why it is the Trump administration, without explanation, opted not to appoint four women to the United Soybean Board. I had asked them, but the USDA did not give the women—including the one that has already served two three-year terms and had been elected treasurer in December, putting her on track to be the board chair in the future—any reason for the denial.

2026 is the International Year of the Woman Farmer, as declared by the United Nations. The aim is to raise awareness of the role of women in agri-food systems and the challenges they face, including land tenure, financial and technical constraints, and limited access to services and education. The UN does not mention the other things, the ugly things, the "you can't do it" things. The USDA has long looked past the politics of most nominees to check-off funded boards like the USB because they are chosen from those elected by their peers, other farmers, to represent them.

So, one of two things has happened: the Trump administration has exercised a right it enjoys not to appoint someone based on their politics (I have not checked the women's political backgrounds), or it is even worse. Let us hope it is the politics thing. The farmer in me does not like that either, but it surely sits a lot better than the alternative excuse.

08:45 Phosphorus Loads & Streambanks

Todd Gleason: Today, we will explore the phosphorus load into the nation's waterways via streambank erosion and how landowners can effectively set about stabilizing the banks and, consequently, the channel. We will begin with a soil scientist leading a team of researchers and students here on the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois.

Andrew Margenot: My name is Andrew Margenot. I am a soil scientist at the U of I. I have been here since 2017. My research team of 40-ish personnel, students, postdocs, and techs, works on soils from the perspective of nutrients and how to make their use more efficient for crops while also reducing the losses to surface waters. We also work on topics of soil health, carbon sequestration, and heavy metal pollution. Overall, we are trying to understand how we can better manage soils to keep doing what they do well, which is to help support food production.

Todd Gleason: You have any ongoing research that focuses on phosphorus loss from stream bank erosion?

Andrew Margenot: We sure do. That is one of our flagship projects. Currently, we are working with multiple funders. The first one to invest in this research was Illinois NREC, and now we have support from the National Corn Growers Association and the US Soybean Board.

To give a bit of background here, streambanks naturally erode. That process can accelerate with human actions. The important point is that in very flat areas like Illinois, streams try to find the lowest point in the landscape, and they do that by meandering. Think of a snake writhing back and forth. If you were to take a sky-high view of a landscape and fast-forward the time scale, you would see over the course of decades the streams across the state meandering back and forth. As they meander, they slough off the streambanks. Sediment, that is soil, enters the water body. That sediment naturally contains nutrients, especially a lot of phosphorus.

So, streambank erosion is a relatively overlooked and under-measured source of non-point phosphorus loading. Arguably, it is not really an agricultural source from the perspective that it is not fertilizer phosphorus. There is ongoing research that we are doing asking how the hydrology modified by farming—things like tiling—leads to more bank erosion. We have some evidence that it actually decreases bank erosion. There are still a lot of questions on the extent to which streambank erosion is a non-ag, non-point source of phosphorus losses. The evidence suggests it is largely a non-ag, non-point source.

Todd Gleason: Is the reason that the streambanks are a larger load of phosphorus because they are deeper into the soil profile rather than just the top few inches?

Andrew Margenot: That is part of it, Todd. It might help to think about some numbers here. If we think about a typical application of phosphorus fertilizer, say diammonium phosphate (DAP), that is roughly 200 pounds of DAP per acre. That is about 92 pounds of P2O5. On an elemental phosphorus basis, because P2O5 is a made-up designation, we are talking on the order of roughly 30-ish pounds of P per acre. When we harvest a very high-yielding corn crop, say 250 bushels, about that amount is coming off in the grain itself.

If we measure soil for phosphorus content by the Bray or Mehlich test, we are talking about 20 to 50 parts per million phosphorus of what is extractable. Soils in Illinois, if we go all the way down the profile, have 15,000 to 25,000 pounds of P per acre. The magnitudes of the native phosphorus are orders of magnitude higher than what we are applying as fertilizer. This makes sense. We have the richest soils in the world because the parent material is loess. This is a fine, silty powder that was blown in after these glaciers receded. The loess we have in this part of the world is some of the highest fertility loess in the world. It is quite full in phosphorus, naturally roughly 300 parts per million. That is why we have a lot of phosphorus in these streambanks. As you pointed out, Todd, we are eroding the entire bank, so there is a lot of material and sediment falling in.

Todd Gleason: Why is it that farmers, landowners, and the public might be concerned about this kind of sediment and nutrient loss?

Andrew Margenot: There are at least four reasons that I can think of. The first one is that if we think about what states like Illinois have done in terms of our nutrient loss reduction plans or strategies, the first step is to understand apportionment: where is the P coming from? Same for nitrogen, of course. Broadly speaking, we have two divisions: point sources (there is a pipe, you can measure the emissions, like a wastewater treatment plant in Chicago) and things we cannot measure that are diffuse, not in one location, called non-point sources.

When we think about carving up the sources of apportionment, the state plan talks about reductions in point and non-point sources. The problem is because we measure non-point sources by difference, not quantifying the within-non-point source contributions means we do not have the finesse to understand what is ag versus non-ag. When we measure point source, we have a good number on what is being given out for P. We know what is exiting the state because we have gauges on the rivers that drain into the Mississippi or the Ohio. When you subtract from the total the point source by difference, you get the non-point sources.

I am saying "sources" plural because ag is certainly a contribution to phosphorus losses from fertilizer, from erosion of soil from fields. But there are other non-agricultural sources within the non-point source sector. In Vermont, for example, they include agriculture, forested lands, wetlands, and streambank erosion. If we are not able to distinguish what is ag versus streambank erosion, we just have it all as non-point source, and in many states like ours, we incorrectly think of non-point source as synonymous with agriculture. That is wrong. That means we are counting streambank erosion as an agricultural source when it is not.

Todd Gleason: As we began our conversation, you told us that streams, creeks, and rivers meander much like a snake would on the ground over a long period of time. Are there conservation practices that farmers or landowners can adopt that would reduce this meandering and stream bank erosion and nutrient loss?

Andrew Margenot: If this is a natural process, should we really think much about trying to mitigate it? Let us talk about why it might make sense to attempt that. Evidence suggests from work from our group funded by NREC and USB/NCGA that streambank erosion is roughly 30% of phosphorus loading. That is quite a bit; that is almost a third. That is based on data from Iowa and meta-analyses where we look at every peer-reviewed scientific article ever published in the world and in the US. All these data converge on an average of 30%. In some places, it is as low as 4%; in some places, it is 80%.

It is a natural process, but that does not mean humans cannot exacerbate it. We have just finished a study finding that in some places, if you tile-drain the watershed, you can increase the flashiness of the stream, meaning when it rains, there is a surge of water. The stream has more power, and more power tends to entail more bank erosion. So, there is a question of: by tiling and trying to think about how we manage tile effluent at the watershed, might that be a way to mitigate bank erosion?

What we found is that on a global scale, looking at all studies ever published, tiling decreases stream flashiness and thus presumably bank erosion if you have low-infiltration soils. Think of flat land with a lot of clay content. The water cannot get through the soil, so it runs off the surface. By tiling in those systems, you help absorb the rainfall, and you decrease the flashiness, thus you presumably decrease the bank erosion. In some locations, we find the opposite happens. If soils already infiltrate well, tiling increases subsurface drainage and thus there is more flashiness. On average, globally speaking, there is no effect of tiling on more stream flashiness and higher infiltration soil watersheds. Of course, context matters.

What could farmers or landowners do? There are two things. One that we know works but is very expensive is to shield or armor streambanks. This makes sense if you have a stream bend where there is massive erosion. One common way is to put riprap. This could be old car hulls used on the bank, as NRCS did back in the 60s. Now we use concrete or dead trees to buffer the power of the stream water hitting the bank. But this is quite expensive and not really scalable.

The other approach is to think about how we manage water with wetlands. If there is a drainage ditch with a lot of stream velocity and power, can it go into a buffer wetland that effectively slows down the water? The name of the game here is to slow the water down. That has not been studied, but I think it is a promising avenue. The third approach is we might want to rethink how we channelize ditches. Ditches help collect all the water from the main tiles that drain. A lot of times, they have been channelized or straightened by the US Army Corps of Engineers. The problem is that if you have a straight ditch, the water picks up velocity and sloughs off a lot of erosion. I think that is a low-hanging fruit opportunity to try to rethink how we manage the ditches. A lot of that is under the Army Corps of Engineers' jurisdiction.

Todd Gleason: Andrew Margenot is a soil scientist here on the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. You are listening to the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online on-demand at willag.org. Our theme music is written, performed, produced, and courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer Tim Gleason.