May 21 | Closing Market Report

cmr260521

- Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, AgMarket.net
- farmdoc 2026 Crop Budget Updates
- Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, Tstorm.net

Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant University in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report. It is the 21st day of May, 2026. I am Extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett. He's at agmarket.net out of Windsor, Illinois, and then we'll turn our attention to the crop budgets that the university agricultural economists, the members of the farmdoc team, prepare each year. The revisions for the 2026 crop came out this week, are posted on the farmdoc daily website right now, and up at willag.org as well. We'll talk with Nick Paulson, agricultural economist, and then we'll turn our attention to the weather forecast from Mike Tannura. He's Tstorm Weather in Naperville, Illinois. All on this Thursday edition of the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online on demand at WILLAG.ORG.

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

Todd Gleason: July corn today at $4.62 1/4, 3 1/2 lower. The December new crop settled 4 1/4 lower at $4.85. July beans, $11.94 1/4 a bushel, down 5 1/2 cents. New crop November, $11.86 3/4, down 6 3/4. Soft red winter wheat, 13 lower at $6.47 1/2 on the July, and the hard red July down 11 3/4.

01:29 Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, AgMarket.net

Todd Gleason: Matt Bennett from agmarket.net now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. Hi, Matt. Thanks much for being with us. Did you manage to get corn planted and done and all up, and about replants, are you done in the field at the moment?

Matt Bennett: Yeah, we were able to get done. Last Thursday we talked and I was actually trying to hopefully get done, and we were able to late that night. Between Wednesday and Thursday we put a lot of hours in because we knew we had a shot. We went in there and I got in about midnight Thursday. We did get rain, but at the same time we're in a pretty good spot where there was some rain, but soil temps were warm enough. We shouldn't have any problem getting the crop up and going. Let's just hope that's the case.

Todd Gleason: And there are quite a few folks that are still clearly running and trying to get a crop in the ground. Hopefully, they'll get that done in the next week or so. Will that show up eventually in the marketplace? Is it paid much attention to yet?

Matt Bennett: Not really. It's probably, and people aren't going to want to hear this, but it's probably a little early based upon the progress we've made overall. The thing is that those that have been wet, of course, just continue to stay wet and it's been super frustrating. I don't envy them one bit. Yet, overall for the country, we're actually running ahead of the five-year pace. So, there's not a lot of frustration coming from the marketplace. The other thing is there's going to be a fair amount of replanting in parts of the country too, and that doesn't always necessarily show up. I don't think it was an ideal spring by any means, but at the same time, it was good enough. I think that's been the last thing probably driving the market.

Todd Gleason: What are you thinking about in this coming week, as it's related to the corn and soybean markets? Let's start with old crop, anything in particular?

Matt Bennett: Whenever you look at July corn, what we've done here with these last two dips—like last Friday, and then the way the market traded today—we're still holding an uptrend that we started at the first of the year. Of course, last Thursday and Friday, the trade was sorely disappointed with no big news coming out of President Trump and Xi's meeting. But then you came in here when the markets closed, and you find out that a factsheet shows we got $17 billion worth of agricultural goods that are going to be sold, that would not include soybeans. We knew the soybean deal was already done, and they're going to buy more agricultural goods. So of course, the market started out like a house of fire. Now, I would point out, Todd, that a lot of folks actually got rain this last go-round that needed rain. To be honest, I know some of us got it that didn't want it. But I do think that the market would have had an easier tone to start this week if we wouldn't have had the US-Chinese trade news. For the coming week, there are going to be a lot of things being looked at. Exports today were just fantastic for corn, over 2 million metric tons. If you continue to see a penchant for that kind of demand, at the same time maybe taking a couple more weeks to get this crop wrapped up, I would think this market would hold together and continue holding these levels that it has held so far. I do kind of feel like there's a decent shot of China trying to come in and buy US corn. The reason for that is that US corn does work into China right now. Their interior prices are quite high, and we could actually ship them corn, so if there's a little bit of a push there, and they actually do buy corn, I've got to think that's going to be a supportive type of mode. Basis has strengthened a little bit in some places on these dips. I just think a producer has to understand when you're looking at cash, you're going to run out of time here whenever you get out towards pollination. I know that seems like a long ways away, but I'd be cautious to hold too many eggs in that basket.

Todd Gleason: Corn into China is one thing. Soybeans into China is a different kind of thing at this point. The 25 million metric tons, do you suppose they'll buy anytime soon for new crop delivery?

Matt Bennett: Typically they've started that buying program. Last year, of course, they hadn't done anything. They just had their hands in their pockets for a long time. I would assume there's going to be some gesturing from the US to say, "Hey, it wouldn't hurt you to go ahead and start this program if you're going to buy 25," which they supposedly guaranteed they would. When might they buy it? I think that's tough to say, but right now is typically not a time when they're buying. There's no doubt that South America still, Brazil has a lot of beans they can sell; they're cheaper on the world market. I don't expect them to do anything on old crop, it will of course be new crop. We'd like to see that happen, where they start that program here before too long, and get some of those beans shipped out in that normal window. That certainly makes it a little easier on the pipeline, because typically, we ship a lot of our beans from harvest until about the end of February, and then corn kind of takes over. Last year was totally different than normal, just due to the fact that they weren't buying soybeans. I would think that sometime this summer they'll step in on that new crop program, I just don't see them buying any more old crop beans.

Todd Gleason: Any worries about the Memorial Day weekend and one less day of trade next week?

Matt Bennett: There's no doubt that whenever you have a three-day window like that where we're closed, a lot of times you can see on a shortened trade week a fair amount of volatility. I think a lot of it is going to depend upon what news we get over the weekend. Are we going to get some sort of a war news situation? Are we going to get US-China additional detail? I think we know everything we need to know about that meeting, but are they going to come back and dispute it? As of right now, it sure looks like they haven't done so. If we don't get any major news out of this, I think we're going to be looking at weather and demand.

Todd Gleason: Thanks much. We'll talk with you next week.

Matt Bennett: Absolutely. Thank you.

Todd Gleason: Matt Bennett is with agmarket.net.

08:11 farmdoc 2026 Crop Budget Updates

Todd Gleason: Nick Paulson, agricultural economist with the farmdoc team on the Urbana-Champaign campus of the U of I, now joins us to discuss an article that he, Gary Schnitkey, Carl Zulauf, and Brad Zwilling have pinned for the farmdoc website. They've updated the crop budgets for 2026. Find it at farmdocdaily.illinois.edu. Things have changed, Nick, since the last time you put these budgets out and it wasn't that long ago. Prices in particular have gone higher. What difference does that make?

Nick Paulson: I think the big mover relative to those January numbers we put out are the higher corn and soybean prices that we're looking at now in terms of pricing prospects for that 2026 crop. We've got 25 to 35 cent higher corn prices for 2026 and more like a dollar increase on that soybean price.
Todd Gleason: So those numbers increase, but along with them came the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and higher input prices as well. How much of an impact did that have?

Nick Paulson: We did make some adjustments based on that. This is in no way meant to downplay the impact on costs that's going to have for fuel, fertilizer, and even extending to other inputs if the effects of the conflict are ongoing here over the next few months. In terms of its impact on 2026 numbers, on the fertilizer side of things, situations on individual farms can vary, but in terms of averages, we're not expecting that to have a big impact on fertilizer cost for that 2026 crop. That's more of a big concern going into 2027 if prices remain at the elevated levels we're currently seeing. Diesel fuel is a bit of a different situation. We would expect a bigger impact even on 2026 fuel costs. That's not a huge component of the overall per acre cost to produce corn or soybeans, but we're looking at 50% higher diesel fuel costs than we had three months ago. Especially as we get into harvest season, if we still see prices at that level, that is going to increase fuel costs, and that was definitely something we incorporated. But again, for 2026, those price increases tend to outweigh those cost increases. 2027 will be a different story, unless conditions change.

Todd Gleason: So in 2026 on balance, things are better. How do you see it across the state?

Nick Paulson: We tend to look at things on the enterprise level, crop level. Again, things did improve relative to January; that's maybe the optimistic or positive way of looking at things. We're still looking at crop-specific returns that are low by long-term historical standards. I think in most of our regional budgets—we look at Northern Illinois, a couple different cases for Central Illinois, and then Southern Illinois—we are still looking at projected losses for the corn side, just a little bit smaller projected losses than what we were looking at in January. Soybeans in January, we had returns closer to break-even, a little bit above in some regions, a little bit below in others. Those also improved to just above break-even levels across the state. When you look at that on a 50-50 corn-soybean rotation basis, we are looking at a slightly positive return now for 2026. But again, well below longer-term averages in terms of a dollar per acre basis. The other point that we tried to make in the article is that's still factoring in a smaller, because of the price increase, ARC and PLC payment. But still an ARC and PLC payment that if you took away, we'd be looking at negative returns in the absence of those government payments. All this still remains a lot of uncertainty for the 2026 crop year, especially with ARC and PLC because that's calculated over the marketing year, and those payments wouldn't show up until a year and a half from now, in October 2027, if those payments are triggered.

Todd Gleason: Is there a possibility at all that crop insurance would be triggered even under a normal yield?

Nick Paulson: If you're looking at a situation where your yields are at trend or right around your APH, it would take some price losses to trigger those. While you could make the argument that there will be some crop insurance payments, those would be offsetting losses on the revenue side. That would mean we had an outcome play out where prices were lower than what we're looking at right now. For 2026, current prices are quite a bit higher than what we had in the price discovery period that defined the price projections, so it would take some pretty substantial price declines from where we're currently at if we're looking at a situation with trend yields. In those situations, we'd be trading off revenue dollars for crop insurance payments, so it wouldn't necessarily improve the overall return situation.

Todd Gleason: And so the bottom line, as you write in the article, is that the increases you're seeing in fuel and fertilizer prices at the moment, since the start of the Iran war, only partially impact average costs and returns for 2026. But I'm wondering what that 2027 budget looks like. It won't officially be released for the first time until August by the farmdoc team.

Nick Paulson: Given the Iran conflict, we talked about maybe doing a pre-release, like a mini-budget release ahead of that, just to put some numbers around what we'd be looking at given current corn and soybean price levels. If fertilizers and fuel are in the range we've seen in the last few weeks, what those 2027 numbers would look like. We won't do an official release until August. But given where price levels are at, we'd be looking at another year of negative return projections. The other challenge that would start to come into play for 2027 is just the way the ARC program is designed to work; we'd be looking at lower support levels being built in from those programs. So it'd be a double whammy of higher costs—yes, higher corn and soybean prices, but lower support from those programs just because of the way they're designed and how the 5-year averages define the revenue guarantee.

Todd Gleason: The ARC program, as you said, works on a 5-year rolling average and it throws out the highest income year and the lowest income year using the middle three for that average, and it's just getting lower over time.
Nick Paulson: Yep.

Todd Gleason: All right. Thanks much, Nick, I appreciate it. Nick Paulson is an agricultural economist with the farmdoc team. You may read the updated crop budgets for 2026 online right now at farmdocdaily.illinois.edu.

16:18 Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, Tstorm.net

Todd Gleason: Let's turn our attention now to the global growing regions and the climate in each of them and the impact it's having on the crop. We're now joined by Mike Tannura, he is Tstorm Weather, that's tstorm.net online out of Naperville, Illinois, where he serves as the president and CEO and primary analyst. Hi, thanks for being with us. Let's begin in the corn belt. We've had some cool temperatures again. It's been a lengthy, on-off wet spring. What can you tell me about things coming up for the next week or so?

Mike Tannura: The cool weather is going to last for a few more days, so that's not going to change dramatically. But once we get into early next week, it will turn a lot warmer. We'll see southerly winds across much of the central US, and that will leave high temperatures in the 70s and 80s for quite a while. This will basically start right around Memorial Day, and then it should last into June. So, the cool weather is not going to be much of a topic beyond the next few days. The rainfall story is a little bit different. This is a very complex setup because we essentially have three different features in the central US. Number one, we have the remnant of a cold front that moved through earlier in the week, that's draped across the Southern US. We also have an upper-level system that's approaching the Dakotas as we speak. We also have little small waves of energy smattered all around the central US. All of these features are going to interact in unclear manners over the next several days, and that will lead to pockets of showers and thunderstorms all the way through Sunday or Monday. Our concern with this is that some of the southern growing regions are probably going to get some pretty decent totals. That setup is going to persist for a few more days next week. We think that in the end, we're going to see around two to four inches of rain from eastern areas of Oklahoma and Texas, stretching through the mid-south and into far southern areas of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Missouri. That area is going to end up being a little bit wet by the time we get into next week. To the north, it will be a little bit wetter as well, but it's hard to say if there's going to be a major event out of this. It just looks more like pockets of showers here and there. Some areas might see an inch of rain, other areas might completely miss out. So just a scattered mix of rains elsewhere.

Todd Gleason: Is it enough to slow down corn planting?

Mike Tannura: It certainly is. You don't need a whole lot of rain after some of the totals that we saw earlier in the week across the corn belt to keep planting a little slow. Our concern here is that we're now planting a little bit late. Typically, the traditional date that we would consider being late for corn planting is May 20th. That was yesterday. As we move forward, all this corn that is planted now is being planted later than ideal, and that's probably including at least 20% of the US crop. Is that a crazy number? No, we've seen years that have planted that late before. We'd like to see that number being lower, but now it's too late. It's going to be a little bit challenging going forward to keep the high end of yield potential if we don't have some pretty nice weather in the future. Whether or not that takes place will have to be determined. You really want to get that corn in earlier than now to have an ideal setup.

Todd Gleason: That takes care of the corn belt, but I do want to come back to the plains. Maybe the Northern Plains in particular, the spring wheat growing regions in the United States and the Canadian prairies? How are they doing?

Mike Tannura: The US crop is quite dry. Dryness over the last 30, 60, and even the last 90 days are all pretty high and they've been basically among the highest that we've seen over the last 10 to 15 years. That is setting off some alarm bells. If we don't see some really nice rains over the next six weeks, we're going to have a problem there because the crop is basically turning sensitive now and it's going to stay sensitive through the end of June. We're going to lead into this period with some dry conditions. There is some rain out there over the next few days and we need those to verify. We're thinking a half of an inch to maybe even an inch is possible over this period, but even that won't be enough to alleviate the dryness story. That's a concern that we have. As we move into Canada, the rain chances are a little bit better, so we're not quite as concerned there yet. Also, that crop is planted a little bit later, so a little more time before we have to think a whole lot about Canada.

Todd Gleason: Turn your attention to South America, what are your expectations for the safrinha or second crop corn there?

Mike Tannura: The dry season has started for about 70% of the crop. Until then, we had some pretty nice rains here and there, so our overall concern for that crop is pretty low. But there's not going to be another big rain over the next few weeks and that's a typical thing to happen, because at the end of May and certainly in June, it's not normal to have much rain and that's what's happening now.

Todd Gleason: And then, in Europe and the Black Sea area, can you check in on the wheat crop across that region?

Mike Tannura: The Black Sea region has been seeing some good rains over the course of the fall, winter, and even here in the spring, so we don't have many concerns over dryness for wheat in Russia or Ukraine. There are some reports that it might be a little too wet in Russia, which we could certainly see might be the case just based on the amount of rain that has fallen over the last three months, but typically at this time of the year you want moist conditions. We don't think it's really much of a topic. The only concern we might have for this area is actually a little bit further to the west across the heart of Europe. It's not raining very much in France, Germany, or Poland, which is kind of the wheat basket of Europe. We're not looking for much rain over the next 5 to 10, maybe even 15 days, so that might be something to monitor, but there's still plenty of time for them to get more rain. Overall, Todd, we don't think that this is a major concern yet.

Todd Gleason: Hey, thank you much, Mike, and we'll talk with you again next week.

Mike Tannura: Yeah, that sounds great, Todd.

Todd Gleason: Mike Tannura is with Tstorm Weather at tstorm.net online. You've been listening to the Closing Market Report on this Thursday afternoon. We'll post our Commodity Week program to the website this evening by about 6:00. Our panelists this week will include Colin Waters with the Illinois Corn Growers Association, along with Dave Chatterton of Strategic Farm Marketing, and Kurt Kimmel at agmarket.net. Commodity Week is our weekly look at what's happened in the marketplace. It'll air on our home station during this hour tomorrow in its entirety, up online by 6:00 tonight, and you can hear it on many of these radio stations over the weekend. I'm Extension's Todd Gleason.