- farmdoc Team Reviews USDA Reports
- Mark Russo, Everstream.ai
From the Land Grant University, Interpana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market reported as the November 2025. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Kurt Kimmel. He's at agmarket.net.
Todd Gleason: 00:15We'll hear from the FarmDoc team reaction to last Friday's USDA report, and then we'll turn our attention to the weather forecast. We'll talk with Mark Russo of Everstream Analytics on this Monday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online on demand at will ag dot o r g. Have you picked up your tickets yet for the farm assets conference? I hope so.
Todd Gleason: 00:46But if not, please plan to join us in Bloomington on Friday, December 12 for a daylong event. The $80 includes your meal. The PharmDoc team will be there along with a whole series of other folks. We'll talk about the agricultural outlook for 2026 as it's related to grains and oilseeds and the livestock sector. We'll explore some new possibilities for soybeans in particular in a couple of different ways, one locally in a corridor between Champaign and Decatur dedicated to biomanufacturing and the other as it's related to renewable diesel and soy diesel.
Todd Gleason: 01:27And we'll hear from the leadership of the agricultural community in the state as well. Should be a great day. I'm really looking forward to it and hope that you will join us on Friday, December 12 at the Agricenter in Bloomington, Illinois. Visit willag.org to purchase your tickets today. Todd Gleason's services made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.
Todd Gleason: 01:49December corn for the day at $4.34 and 3 quarters of a cent. It finished four and a half since higher than March up 4¢ at $4.48, and May corn at $4.55 and a half bushel, up 3 and a quarter cents. It was really the soybeans that were leading the market higher. January up 32 and 3 quarters of a cent at $11.57 at a quarter. The March at $11.63 and a quarter, 27 at a quarter higher, and November soybeans at $11.29, up 14¢.
Todd Gleason: 02:19Bean meal up $8.30 a ton at $330.80. The bean oil, just 99¢ higher at $51.14 by comparison. Wheat futures, soft red, 7 teen cents higher at $5.44 and a quarter. In the December, the hard red, up 13 and a half at $5.28 and 3 quarters of a cent. Live cattle futures, $2.21 77 and a half, up $2.25, 400 pounds.
Todd Gleason: 02:46Feeder cattle at $326.27 and a half, up $5.72 and a half, and lean hogs, a nickel higher at $79.42 and a half. Crude oil, just about unchanged at $59.94 a barrel, and diesel fuel at $2.49 and 7 tenths, a penny and 4 tenths of a cent higher. Gasoline, to a dollar 91 and 4 tenths down a penny and nine tenths here. To help us make sense of these numbers is Kurt Kimmel. He is at agmarket.net.
Todd Gleason: 03:15Hello, Kurt. Thanks for being with us. I was oogling at the soybean number, and then you heard that catch when I got to that 17¢ move in the wheat figure. I guess that one's probably about, some, bombings that took place in, not Odessa, but one of the port cities in Ukraine. Let's start, though, with, the soybeans.
Todd Gleason: 03:39Why was that market up? It appears maybe the Nova crush was really big today.
Curt Kimmel: 03:44Well, same question on Friday. Why it was down? And it was a massive reversal down Friday. Then we had outside up today in in most of the soybean contracts. So it's a student body left, student body right.
Curt Kimmel: 04:00It's, you know, just a law a lot of uncertainty around. But for the most part, yes, there were several factors in the soybean complex. The NOPA crush report was huge, 227,600,000 bushels beet being crushed. Highest was 22.3. Bean oil stocks, 1.3.
Curt Kimmel: 04:22They're looking for about 1.257. So, we just got a huge, crushing pace going, taking place here. So meal meal consumption strong, and world protein demand's up. Meal exports are expected to be rising through here. And the thing about the soybean meal market, if you go back to the old days when things made sense, a strong rally, based off the meal has been a good market to go off of, and that we're seeing that.
Curt Kimmel: 04:57Past history, short term here has been the soybean oil, but meal has virtually from the October at two eighty up to 03:30. I mean, we're we've, just seen a $60, rise in in soybean meal, prices. The bean oil, I think it might have a little giddy up. If you look at the bean oil chart here, basically, if you never reverse that spread, that might be where your bang for your dollar is since the beans and bean meals have, substantial up movement through here. Bean oil's kind of broken the longer term downtrend line here a week ago, and we went down and tested and held it.
Curt Kimmel: 05:36So if you're looking for, something that, is probably undervalued, I I'd I'd take a look at that. But overall too on the soybean complex, the commercials were hinting, and we've actually seen a little confirmation now that there's some physical activity taking place, with, Asia. So we'll see if we see some solid, confirmation on that. But the surprising thing last night, beans did gap lower on the open. And part of that gap lower was social media spinning the idea that these beans purchases might not take place until next spring.
Curt Kimmel: 06:15Then all of a sudden here this morning, we're hearing that, maybe the rare earth part will be done by Thanksgiving, but maybe sooner than later. But, no, as our good friend Dan Zlicker used to say, giddy up.
Todd Gleason: 06:29Well, we'll see how much giddy up there is. And then am I right that it was Ukraine and Russia and the port that caused things to happen in the wheat, or was there something else there?
Curt Kimmel: 06:39No. It's a combination of things, particularly in the wheat, the commodity funds are, wanting to, accumulate some inventories in through here. Wheat was just like the other commodity there, a reversal down. All of a sudden, you know, we're back on on some strength here. Wheat, fundamental news worldwide is really, really short term, so we'll see if it holds together.
Curt Kimmel: 07:05The main headline in the wheat will be later on as we move into the spring and see what type of green up occurs. They can talk weather weather out west for a while, but the the wheat market, I feel, will probably be caught between the corn and bean, complex here as we move into early winter.
Todd Gleason: 07:26Yeah, corn lagging behind today, still probably way downburdened by the USDA only lowering the yield to 186 in The United States on Friday.
Curt Kimmel: 07:36That yield is subject to change. I I I've I've had a strong opinion, been proven wrong millions of times, but I think the Mhmm. Illinois yield's still a little too high. When I visit with producers this fall, I visit with them and I'd hear ten, fifteen bushel below last year. Then next time I visit with them, a week later, same ground, same everything, just a few miles away.
Curt Kimmel: 08:04It was 10 bushel better than a year ago, so I think the Illinois yield's still a little rich, but we'll argue yield for, oh, I don't know, eight, nine months from now. But the overall thing on corn is that I believe there's just some strong under line fundamental activity. As we saw the release, the data dump, Mexico continues to be a huge buyer of US corn. Also, to the sleeper that a few people have mentioned is ethanol demand. Ethanol exports are just huge.
Curt Kimmel: 08:35So, even though we got a lot of bushels, I think there's a good fundamental solid support underneath the corn market. Brian, our technical guy, he feels that, we've got room to move March corn up to this two, not two, but, anyway, four seventy, four eighty area. And, he's fairly optimistic with the chart formation. Same thing on these beans here on the technical picture. As long as we keep this front end above $11, our past history shows we have a shot at $14 this winter here, Todd.
Todd Gleason: 09:07Hey. Thanks much. We'll talk with you again next week.
Curt Kimmel: 09:10You bet. Take care.
Todd Gleason: 09:11You too. That's Kurt Kimmel. He is with agmarket.net. In today's agricultural news, White House meetings last week with biofuel producers and oil refiners could help resolve the long running dispute over how to deal with billions with a B of gallons of waived biofuel blending requirements under the SRE's or Small Refinery Exemptions, White House officials met separately with the largest trade groups from both industries in talks that Reuters reports signal a nearing decision on recouping waived biofuel gallons. Here's Iowa senator Chuck Grassley.
Chuck Grassley: 10:05Reallocating any exempted gallons for small refineries is very critical.
Todd Gleason: 10:11Grassley calls it a win win for the RFS.
Chuck Grassley: 10:15The renewable fuel standard remains the most efficient way to support soybean farmers.
Todd Gleason: 10:22Biofuel groups want the nonexempt refiners to make up the full 2,000,000,000 gallons of renewable fuel credits or RINs to prevent reduced demand for renewable fuels while oil refineries oppose reallocation. The meetings also touched on ways to make e 15 gas available year round. Grassley calls year round e 15 now a no brainer. Sources told Reuters the administration could package support for year round e 15 sales with reforms to the SRE program to win support from both industries. Let's stay with biofuels.
Todd Gleason: 10:59LanzaJet says it has begun full operations at its Freedom Pines fuels plant in Soperton, Georgia, becoming the first commercial scale facility in the world to produce jet fuel from ethanol. LanzaJet says its process can be scaled globally by tapping widely available ethanol sources including waste based supplies. And finally today President Donald Trump is preparing significant tariff cuts and new trade agreements aimed at easing high food prices in The United States, a top concern for voters heading into 2026. The administration last week announced a framework of deals with Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Ecuador that would reduce tariffs and other barriers on imports of beef, bananas, coffee, and other staples. President Trump and senior advisors have also signaled broader tariff exemptions are coming.
Todd Gleason: 11:54In an interview on Fox News, Trump said he would lower some tariffs on coffee while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant said fruit imports could see relief too. The New York Times reported the White House is prepping reciprocal trade changes that may include other carve outs for beef and citrus from other countries expanding on an earlier executive order targeting food items not produced in The United States. And that's a look at today's agricultural news. You're listening to Illinois Public Media. Do visit our website.
Todd Gleason: 12:26The address is willag.org willag.0rg where today you can purchase your tickets for the farm assets conference that's coming up on the December. It's a Friday. We'll be in Bloomington at the Agra Center. I hope you can join us. It should be a fantastic day.
Todd Gleason: 12:43The PharmDoc team will be there along with many others. All the details are online and your way to purchase the ticket for the farm assets conference at willag.org. Up next, we'll hear from the PharmDoc team speaking of them and their reaction to last Friday's USDA crop production and world agricultural supply and demand estimates. By the way, the theme music for the closing market report is written, performed, produced in courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer, Tim Gleason. Last Friday afternoon, just about this time, a couple of members of the FarmDog team sat down in our webinar studio to discuss the USDA reports that had taken place, both the crop production numbers and the WASDE or World Agricultural Supply and Demand estimates, the Illinois numbers in particular.
Todd Gleason: 13:54I've got the audio from that YouTube video for you to listen to right now.
Joe Jansen: 13:59Hi, I'm Joe Jansen, agricultural economist at the University of Illinois and a member of
Nick Paulson: 14:03the PharmDoc team. And I'm Nick Paulson, also a faculty member in ag and consumer economics at Illinois and a member of the PharmDoc team.
Joe Jansen: 14:10Alright. This morning, Friday, 11/14/2025, the USDA conducted a major data release on US crop production and global agricultural supply demand and trade. This was the first release since the conclusion of the forty three day government shutdown that began on October 1. Agricultural markets had eagerly looked forward to this release because USDA provides a sort of consensus building projection for key agricultural economic indicators. Probably the biggest number that the trade was looking for was the national average corn and soybean yields from the National Ag Statistics Service.
Joe Jansen: 14:44Those numbers were hotly anticipated, and USDA did maybe surprise the trade to some degree. They lowered their corn yield estimate by less than one bushel per acre from 186.7 bushels per acre to a 186 bushels per acre. Soybean yield dropped from 53.5 to 53 bushels per acre. Even with these decline, both of those numbers would still be record national averages for for corn and soybean yield. The numbers were based on operator and field surveys that apparently ran in October and November in spite of the shutdown.
Joe Jansen: 15:20Sample sizes were similar to previous years, so we have no reason to believe that these numbers aren't sort of collected in the same way and and represent the same thing that they would have in the in the absence of a government shutdown. Both of those numbers did surprise the trade to the upside. I think the trade thought, especially, that that corn yield number would come down substantially more than it did, And both of those things weighed on prices today.
Nick Paulson: 15:44And then looking at the Illinois specific yield numbers that were in the November crop production report, in contrast to what we saw for those US yields being revised down slightly, We saw the Illinois corn yield projection increased up to two twenty one bushels per acre. That was up two bushels per acre relative to the September estimate and back up to the level that it was projected at in August. Also notably, I think that would be four bushels per acre higher than the excellent yield in the state of Illinois in 2024 of two seventeen bushels per acre. The projected soybean yield in Illinois for 2025 was 65, which is held steady from the September estimate and up a bushel from the yield of 64 bushels per acre in 2024.
Joe Jansen: 16:30USDA incorporated these yield estimates into the latest world agricultural supply and demand estimates or WASDE report. The WASDE balance sheet also saw revisions to beginning stocks for the twenty twenty five, twenty six marketing year. Those came out originally back at the September, but hadn't been incorporated into the the supply and demand tables until this point. USDA also made some changes to corn exports, recognizing the strong export sales pace that we've observed to this point, upping their corn export number by a 100,000,000 bushels. The thing was that the sum of all these changes, both in terms of production beginning stocks and exports, really didn't change the overall balance sheet much.
Joe Jansen: 17:13Projected corn ending stocks were up about 45,000,000 bushels for The United States, and soybean ending stocks were down about 10,000,000 bushels. But overall, negligible changes that basically suggest we do have a big crop, and that the size of that crop might might weigh on prices, particularly for corn. We did get some more detail on export sales that might be indicative of some forward looking changes. Particularly, we saw the USDA released x large export sales data, the data that would typically come out daily when a large export sale, one in excess of a threshold of a 100,000,000 metric tons is made to a particular country in a particular day. We saw corn export sales, large export sales between October 1 and today of about 3,300,000 metric tons with Mexico being the largest buyer.
Joe Jansen: 18:11For soybeans, the numbers were substantially lower, less than less than a million metric tons. China did come into the market, which was sort of something that the I think a lot of market watchers were looking for thinking about, you know, are we going to make export sales of soybeans to China? They have made some slightly more than 300,000 metric tons, but that number in the context of overall US export sales is pretty small.
Nick Paulson: 18:36And despite maybe what would be viewed as relatively negligible overall balance sheet impacts in the latest report, we did see a increase in the projection for the twenty twenty five-twenty six marking your average price for corn. That's up 10¢ from the $3.9 projection of September to $4 in the November WASDE. And for soybeans, we saw a pretty sizable increase of 50¢ on that marking your average price up from $10 in September to $10.50 in November.
Todd Gleason: 19:08Nick Paulson is an agricultural economist, a member of the FarmDog team. He and Joe Jansen sat down Friday afternoon to talk about the USDA reports. You can watch the YouTube video anytime you'd like at youtube.com/pharmdoc or just search the internet for five minute PharmDoc. Let's check-in on the global growing regions. Mark Russo is here.
Todd Gleason: 19:37He is with Everstream Analytics. Hello, Mark. Thanks for being with us again on a Monday.
Mark Russo: 19:42Hello, Todd. Thanks for having me.
Todd Gleason: 19:44So let's begin here in The United States. Last week on Friday, USDA told us that they expect a 100,000,000 bushel more exports for corn. Soybeans were really wanting a lot to go, particularly in the next, I don't know, few months. If China would ever get into the marketplace and start buying that 12,000,000 metric tons, we'd need the Mississippi River and the basin to be ready to roll. Although I'm pretty concerned that dry conditions have, river levels super low.
Todd Gleason: 20:20What can you tell me about it?
Mark Russo: 20:21Oh, yeah. Recent dry weather has once again allowed river levels to drop. And after, you know, what were some favorable levels back at the November, things have now dropped to, in some locations, more problematic levels, such as Cairo, Illinois, and even further south, Memphis, and even New Orleans too is reaching low level threshold levels. That'll still continue here for the next several days. However, starting this weekend and even more so beyond that, it's looking like the pattern is becoming much more active across the Midwest.
Mark Russo: 21:03And not only does it look like one storm system coming through, but multiple storm systems potentially producing more widespread, you know, heavier rains, and that looks enough to to significantly improve water levels here as we go to next week and then beyond.
Todd Gleason: 21:19So there is a difference. If you're in Cairo, that's the Ohio River, and that's a different basin. So are these storms expected to trend mostly across the southern part of the Midwest?
Mark Russo: 21:32No. It looks like both the southern and the Northern part of the Midwest here coming up. Now some of the highest totals will be a bit more skewed south, so that does include the Ohio River Basin as well as the Central And Southern Mississippi River Basin. But even up north, there will be more meaningful rainfall, even a touch of snow too, but some of the highest precip totals that we've seen in numerous weeks.
Todd Gleason: 21:58When do you expect that? And what are the totals going to be like?
Mark Russo: 22:01Well, the more significant storm systems here begin to move in by the early part of next week and kind of adding up rainfall next week across much of the Ohio River Basin and Central Southern Mississippi River Basin, rainfall and a little bit of snow may have that too, but precipitation totals will generally be in that kind of, you know, one to two inches with even some localized higher amounts.
Todd Gleason: 22:28Anything else in The United States that we should take a look at? For instance, the Great Plains or the hard red winter wheat growing regions?
Mark Russo: 22:36Well, these rains, besides in the Midwest, besides improving soil moist before, as well as improving river levels, they will also improve soil moisture levels for the Midwest soft red winter wheat crop. And then for the hard red winter wheat crop in The Plains, while that area has been relatively dry lately, their soil moisture is still in good shape. And before the Midwest gets the rains, The Plains get into the rains, even more so here. So that's gonna continue to maintain what's great conditions there right now as the crop begins to head towards a dormant state.
Todd Gleason: 23:13And a quick word on South America.
Mark Russo: 23:15Overall, Argentina is the area to watch here going forward. The pattern is trending drier and warmer, kinda getting towards a more kinda classic La Nina pattern here as we move into early December. Right now, that's not any kind of problem because it's been, you know, actually, soy moisture is good, and some areas have actually been a little too wet. So drier and warmer weather will be welcome. The question becomes, you know, how long does that last here in December or beyond?
Todd Gleason: 23:43Hey. Thanks much. We'll talk with you again soon.
Mark Russo: 23:45You're welcome.
Todd Gleason: 23:46That's Mark Russo. He is with Aberstream Analytics, joined us on this Monday afternoon edition of the closing market report that came to you from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the good of all. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.