Nov 03 | Closing Market Report

Todd Gleason: 00:00

From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois, this is the closing market report for the November 2025. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Kurt Kimmel at agmarket.net. Get a broader look at them from Ed Usd, agricultural economist at the University of Minnesota, and hear about the soybean crush from Joe Jansen at the University of Illinois. And then as we wrap up our time together, we'll take a look at the weather forecast too.

Todd Gleason: 00:29

We'll do that with Mark Russo at Everstream Analytics on this Monday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. December corn for the day settled at $4.34 and a quarter. It was up 2 and 3 quarters of a cent. The March at $4.46 and three quarters, two and three quarters higher.

Todd Gleason: 00:51

And May at $4.55 and three quarters, up 3 and a half cents. November beans, 20¢ higher. $11.19 and 3 quarters of a cent, the settlement price. January at $11.34 and a quarter, up 19¢. The March up 16 and a half at $11.40 and a quarter.

Todd Gleason: 01:07

Bean meal futures down 80¢ for the day. The bean oil, a dollar 16 higher. Weed futures in the soft red, up 9 and a half at $5.43 and a half, and the hard red at $5.31 and three quarters, up 7 and a quarter. Both of those in the lead December contract. Live cattle futures at $2.52 and a half cents higher on their settlement price.

Todd Gleason: 01:28

Feeders up $4.62 and a half, and lean hogs down 67 and a half cents. Crude oil just about unchanged for the day. Gasoline, a penny and six tenths of a cent higher per gallon. It's at a dollar 91 and 7 tenths of a cent. Here to talk about these numbers and so much more is Kurt Kimmel.

Todd Gleason: 01:46

He is with agmarket.net. Hello, Kurt. Thanks for being with us today.

Curt Kimmel: 01:50

Well, hello, Ty. Glad to be here. Very good.

Todd Gleason: 01:53

It is a big Monday relatively speaking, and we used to have lots of moves in the 20¢ mark. Not so many these days, but they're becoming more often, particularly in the soybeans. What happened in that marketplace that pushed so much higher?

Curt Kimmel: 02:07

Yeah. The this these last two weeks have been very exciting. The the soybeans and the soybean meals led the charge higher in through here. It's a classic though, there was a lot of producers selling beans off the combine, so it went into commercial's hands and over time and through here we've seen some buying interest. On the day, as far as the beans goes, commodity funds were buyers about 4,600 soybean contracts going in midday.

Curt Kimmel: 02:37

What we're seeing is just follow through, usually you see buy the rumor, sell the fact, but there's some coverage that still needs to take place. The trade sorting out, the time window on the purchases, but it looks like there's some fairly large purchases still be had here up front. The overall purchases, there's not been Chinese purchases so far this calendar year until just recently, but however, there were some older purchases rolling from last crop year to this crop year, so there's ideas, there was some purchases on the books, but there's ideas that as we move on forward here, there'll be at least a 5,000,000 metric ton announcement from one of the buying agencies out of Asia on purchases and that could occur here in this November 5 to November 10 time window. But the market is saying, the market is basically saying, as I mentioned there, that there's some fairly large demand needed to be covered here upfront. Seasonally, traditionally, usually, oftentimes the first two weeks of November are firm, but I think I'm gonna go with the old adage that maybe at least the bulls could have Thanksgiving here as long as something's not posted on social media in the middle of the night to upset the apple cart here.

Todd Gleason: 03:59

That does sometimes happen more often than not these days than before. I do want to know about soybean sales. I know producers made sales across the scale, and now that's in the hands of commercials. But the question is, for that which they have stored in the grain elevator, and there may be a difference for that which is stored in the bin. Should they make additional sales in your opinion?

Curt Kimmel: 04:26

Yeah, that's a great question because, you know, standard answer, everybody's a little bit different, a little bit different situation. I think step one is to sit down and go back in your records or at least look back to see what the cash value was, when you took it to elevator or put it in the bin, what the basis was, what the futures was then versus now. That'll give you the idea of whether you're ahead or behind on carry charges and so forth. We've been having these guys move, gals move, beams here on this up move, and we've been doing replacement in case this thing stays much firmer than expected. Brian Split, on our technical side of the equation, for a long, long time, out $11 as a swing point.

Curt Kimmel: 05:17

November bees closed $11.19 and three quarters. So if we maintain a move above $11 past history these bees have run up to $12 so if you do move it, we do like doing a little bit of a replacement here so you don't feel like you've missed out on the move here. But the bottom line is push the pencil and see where you are because we're basically over a dollar from these recent lows here, Todd.

Todd Gleason: 05:44

It was a disappointing day for corn despite the fact that it did settle higher, but only up 2¢ or two and three quarters of cent compared to the 20¢ that the November bean contract moved higher. What do make of that marketplace?

Curt Kimmel: 05:57

Well, I think it's spread activity. You know, rising tide floats all ships, the soy complex, took charge. Bean oil was up over a 100 points, they reversed that spread, meal's been the leader, meal was down, bean oil up, but I think it's mainly spread activity by buying beans, selling corn. Buying wheat, selling a little bit of corn, we heard that maybe there's possibly a little bit of wheat business taking place in the world export market, so that has given the wheat the fundamental catalyst to kind of hang in there. If you look at the wheat chart in through here, we've kind of broken the downtrend line in through here, we're moving up above some moving averages, so as a whole in through here, you look at the technical picture and the fundamental picture here, we're seeing at least the grain market here have a little bit of leg under it.

Todd Gleason: 06:53

And finally, USDA did announce that there will be a November crop production report despite the fact the government is still closed. It was scheduled for next Monday, the tenth, but will come on the fourteenth. What should we watch?

Curt Kimmel: 07:06

To answer your question, I think Stonex will be out this afternoon. They did a producer survey, and, of course, they'll digest those numbers. Then a lot of these private, analysts will be out here to give us the ballpark or the trading range to look at on what to expect on that report. But I would think the bean number would be steady if not firm. The corn number probably a little lower from the last estimate from the WASDE.

Todd Gleason: 07:29

Thank you much. I appreciate it. You bet. Take care. Kurt Kimmel is with agmarket.net joined us on this Monday edition of the closing market report.

Todd Gleason: 07:37

It does come to you from Illinois Public Media online on demand at willag.0rg. You're listening to the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. Some things of note. We are celebrating forty years of the closing market report and more than 30,000 interviews, 10,000 episodes, and of course the podcast was established twenty years ago. One of the very first and longest lasting podcast along with commodity week.

Todd Gleason: 08:10

Thank you for listening of course at willag.org willag.org. There you'll find today a link to the farm assets conference. It was established in 2014 and to the Illinois farm economic summits. The way to register for both of those, those are coming up in the month of December. The farm assets conference in Bloomington, that'll be on the twelfth day.

Todd Gleason: 08:35

That's a Friday in December. And then the following Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, we'll be in DeKalb on the fifteenth, Peoria on the sixteenth, and Mount Vernon on the seventeenth. We hope to see you there but you need to register right now. Don't wait, do it today. All the details are on our website at willag.org where you can find them at farmdocdaily.illinois.edu.

Todd Gleason: 09:15

Ed Ossett now joins us. He's with University of Minnesota, an agricultural economist there. Hello, Ed. Thanks for being with us. We have a whole lot of ground to cover.

Todd Gleason: 09:24

First, a nice rally in soybeans again today. There were a lot of, I guess, shipments, that were, released, and that we could see. Although USDA numbers will start coming out again fairly soon, including the USDA crop production report in November, which generally isn't important, but we haven't had one since September. So that'll be good news too.

Ed Usset: 09:47

Becomes important if you haven't heard from them. Becomes important. It

Todd Gleason: 09:51

does. So tell me how you received all the news from Asia last week, particularly the 12,000,000 metric tons that apparently needs to be, according to the White House, purchased by the end of this calendar year, and then the other 25,000,000 metric tons that comes in 2026 for soybeans, what that works into the marketplace like?

Ed Usset: 10:12

Well, it I guess it's good. We're we're back to exporting to China. That's a good thing. The timing of these things, 12,000,000 metric tons by the January, that's, you know, that's somewhere between 400, four fifty million bushels. That's a lot to move, but I think it can be done.

Ed Usset: 10:32

You you mentioned the 25,000,000 a year for three years. And, you know, I don't I I never got clear. Is that a calendar year or crop year. I never felt like that was clarified. Just a little reminder 25,000,000 metric tons sounds like a lot.

Ed Usset: 10:51

Excuse me. Yeah, 25,000,000 metric tons sounds like a lot, but it's less than a billion bushels and not as much as we were doing two or three years ago. Nothing to sneeze at. I mean, it's a lot of soybeans, but it's not as good as we're doing two, three years ago.

Todd Gleason: 11:09

So we have all those things. So why is it on this news? Is it just excitement that has caused the soybeans to rally? Because it seems like you got news that said, hey. We had zero, but now we have half of what we thought we were gonna have for the for the calendar year.

Todd Gleason: 11:26

And we're still not sure what USDA did with its WASDE figures and the exports to China over time? Because in May, we started talking about this that it seemed like it really didn't take them all out for sure.

Ed Usset: 11:41

Mhmm. Well, I took a fresh look at the balance sheet. And if you put, you know, even the modest export numbers in there, you know, we're gonna be cutting in the stocks this crappier. And there's a modestly bullish outlook there. I don't know if it's a dollar 10 or a dollar 20 better than it was a month ago.

Ed Usset: 12:04

That's the type of rally we've had in I'm looking at the January contract. And we're still not high priced. We're only high priced relative to where we've been over the last year. $11 or $11.20 Jan January beans is not you know, it's only good relative to where we've been in the last year.

Todd Gleason: 12:26

Well, let me turn your attention someplace else. The PharmDoc team, or at least part of the PharmDoc team, Todd Hubbs at Oklahoma State University now and Scott Irwin from here on campus last week posted an article to the PharmDoc day website. We'll hear from Todd probably tomorrow on this program about the RFS as it relates to advanced biofuels, particularly, the RVOs and RINs related to soybean oil. And I'm wondering whether it's the idea that, renewable diesel and famed diesel or soy diesel, is likely to be pushed by two and a half billion gallons in the next two years, maybe two two and a quarter in the coming year that's pushing this marketplace.

Ed Usset: 13:16

Mhmm. It's helping a lot. What caught my attention a couple of weeks ago, NOPA, the the Oil Processors Association, put out a number for the September crush. 10,000,000 bushels higher than expected by the market for September. Like like it was 5% over the market expectation.

Ed Usset: 13:41

And that's wonderful news. That means this this crush is ramping up faster than the market expected. And then I took a deep breath and did a little math. And I said to myself, you know, Todd, what if we exceed our expectations by 10,000,000 bushels every month for a year? Over the course of the year, that would be a 120,000,000,000 bushels in grind and crush that we had not expected before.

Ed Usset: 14:11

And that, Todd, is 10% of what China imported from us three years ago, 1,200,000,000 bushels. I like the trend. I don't mean to put cold water on it. I like the trend. I like the fact that we're we're increasing the domestic crush, but it's going to take time to it alone will not replace exports quickly.

Todd Gleason: 14:37

And you still have the problem that you have a lot of meal with not really a home.

Ed Usset: 14:41

Yeah. Although the meal market's up too. So not high, but it

Todd Gleason: 14:46

is Must have a home somewhere.

Ed Usset: 14:48

Must have a home somewhere. I'd love it that people will say, we'll have so much more. We'll bring it to landfills. I'm like, it will not end up in landfills. They'll find a home.

Ed Usset: 15:00

They'll find a home.

Todd Gleason: 15:01

We will. Thank you much, and we will talk with you again next month.

Ed Usset: 15:05

Okay. Thanks, Ted.

Todd Gleason: 15:06

That's Ed Usset. He's an agricultural economist at the University of Minnesota. Up next, we'll dive into the long run evolution of the soybean crush with Joe Jansen from the University of Illinois. He's been exploring this concept through a series of articles that are on the PharmDoc Daily website at pharmdocdaily.illinois.edu. As you'll hear, the ag economist says the research uncovers some interesting changes.

Todd Gleason: 15:46

When you crush a 60 pound bushel of soybeans, the standard calculation assumes you'll get 11 pounds of soybean oil, 44 pounds of soybean meal, four pounds of hulls and one pound of waste. But when Illinois' Joe Jansen looked at the data he found a slightly different story. Those proportions aren't as fixed as one might think he says and the difference is reshaping the nature of soybean demand.

Joe Janzen: 16:12

Let's start with our key finding. Waste rates in soybean processing have declined by 44% since the nineteen sixties. We're talking about going from 2.7% waste down to just 1.5 today. Essentially, the industry figured out how to extract a percentage point more value out of every single soybean. This might seem small, but when you're processing billions of bushels, these small improvements add up to significant gains.

Todd Gleason: 16:38

Here's the important part of that change. While waste was going down, soybean oil extraction rates were going up.

Joe Janzen: 16:45

Not only were crushers wringing more output out of each bushel, but the composition of that output was changing. Back in the mid nineteen sixties, a typical bushel yielded about 18% oil. Today, it's nearly 20%. That means each bushel of soybeans produces about 10% more oil than it did sixty years ago. Importantly, the gains in oil output were larger than the decline in waste, so the composition of the crush was changing.

Todd Gleason: 17:12

Now why does this matter? Well, enter the renewable diesel boom. Starting around 2020, demand for soybean oil as a biofuel feedstock exploded. If you're a soybean processor, you'd like to dial up oil production while leaving meal production fixed. The problem, of course, is that soybeans come in fixed packages.

Todd Gleason: 17:31

You can't make more oil without making more meal, but the data since 2020 suggest it is possible to extract more of the oil that is already in the bean.

Joe Janzen: 17:43

Since 2020, right when renewable diesel took off, soybean oil extraction rates have been consistently above their sixty year trend line. This suggests the market is adapting in real time. The changes aren't huge. Changing the composition of the crush is like turning an ocean liner. It doesn't occur instantaneously.

Joe Janzen: 18:03

But there is some evidence of a response.

Todd Gleason: 18:06

It seems then that the soybean industry may have a little bit more flexibility than the standard board crush margin suggest. When the market conditions change, producers, processors can adapt by tweaking extraction and improving efficiency. It's not instantaneous, and it's not unlimited, but it is happening, says Joe Jansen.

Joe Janzen: 18:27

So what does this all mean? First, those standard industry calculations about crush ratios, the one that assume exactly 18.3% oil content, might need updating. It seems that the soybean industry might have a little bit more flexibility than the standard board crush margin suggests. Last, this has implications for farmers, food prices, and fuel markets. When processors can squeeze more oil out of the same amount of soybeans, it changes the economic equation.

Todd Gleason: 18:54

The PharmDoc team will explore those potential changes going forward. You may look for them online at the University of Illinois FarmDoc daily website. Mark Russo now joins us from Everstream Analytics to take a look at the global growing regions. Hi, Mark. Thanks for being with us today.

Mark Russo: 19:15

Hello, Todd. Thanks for having me.

Todd Gleason: 19:17

Let's begin in South America. What's your early season assessment of growing conditions for corn and soybeans in Argentina and Brazil?

Mark Russo: 19:26

Yeah. The start of the growing season has been very good across, much of Brazil and Argentina. We've seen planting progress, generally at a steady pace across most areas, and much of that is due to what's been a good increase in soil moisture during the first kind of six weeks of the rainy season. At time, there's been a little bit of irregular rainfall in parts of Brazil, but over small scale areas rather than anything, that large large scale. And so with the exception of a few kind of drier pockets here and there, again, the vast majority of summer crop acreage here has, enough topsoil moisture for proper germination and establishment.

Todd Gleason: 20:12

Do you expect conditions to stay good in the coming couple of weeks?

Mark Russo: 20:15

We do. In fact, the next couple weeks looks even better compared to recent weeks as we are seeing a bit more uniform rainfall across Brazil and Argentina with most summer crop acreage seeing near to above normal rainfall, and then temperatures generally seasonal, if not even a degree or two cooler than average.

Todd Gleason: 20:37

Here in The United States, please start in the Southwest, actually in Oklahoma and Kansas with the hard red winter wheat growing regions, and then we'll work our way through the Corn Belt and the harvest.

Mark Russo: 20:47

Yeah. Beginning in the plains hard red winter wheat belt, they continue to be in good shape with adequate to abundant soil moisture reserves here as planting continues here and begins to be wrapped up across most of the plain states. While the pattern is drier and warmer here coming up, that's not of any concern since the since moisture is in very good shape. And then across the Midwest corn and soybean belt as well as the Midwest soft red winter wheat belt, soil moisture here a bit more variable with some areas such as Central Northern Illinois and then up north into Wisconsin and Michigan. That's where soil moisture here is a bit limited, which for Midwest soft red winter wheat, that is a concern here as a crop that has just been planted here gets established before going dormant.

Mark Russo: 21:43

So that's really the only, you know, area of note in terms of detrimental weather with corn is what we've been harvesting here wrapping up. This drier pattern is will continue to be quite favorable.

Todd Gleason: 21:55

I know most of this will be a spring based function, but do you see during the winter months enough precipitation gathering to alleviate any of the drought conditions, particularly in Central Illinois and parts of the Midwest?

Mark Russo: 22:10

We do. We think there will be opportunities to improve over the winter. The big question is, is it more in liquid form or is it in frozen form here coming up? But the overall setup for this winter, which does look to feature similarities as last winter with more variable temperatures and opportunities for precip that looks to be in place this week or this winter. And, the the one thing also to note is that, you know, last year, some of the driest conditions were biased up north, including the northern half or so of the Midwest.

Mark Russo: 22:48

This year is looking a little bit different with at least more opportunities for both rain and snow here in the overall setup.

Todd Gleason: 22:56

Thank you much. I appreciate it.

Mark Russo: 22:57

You're welcome, Todd.

Todd Gleason: 22:58

That's Mark Russo with Everstream Analytics. He joined us on this Monday edition of the closing market report that came to you from Illinois Public Media, I'm Extensions, Todd Gleason. Doctor. JACKSON: