- Frayne Olson, NDSU Extension
- Mark Russo, EverStream.ai
From the land to Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market reported as the October 2025. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Kurt Kimmel. He's at agmarket.net out of Normal, Illinois.
Todd Gleason: 00:16We'll discuss a broader perspective of the marketplace, particularly as it has to do with the Northwestern part of the Corn Belt and soybean exports. Surprisingly enough corn too. From there, we'll do that with Freyne Olsen at North Dakota State University Extension, and then we'll turn our attention to the weather forecast here and in South America with Mark Russo from Everstream Analytics on this Monday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Medium. It is public radio for the farming world online on demand at wilhe.org.
announce: 00:55Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.
Todd Gleason: 01:00December corn for the day finished at $4.10 and 3 quarters of a cent. That was down two and a quarter. The March settlement price at $4.27 at a quarter, penny and 3 quarters lower. And May corn down a penny and a half at $4.36 and a half. November soybeans, $10.07 and 3 quarters, up one.
Todd Gleason: 01:17January, two higher at $10.25 at a quarter. March at $10.40, up 2 and a half cents. Bean meal futures down 90¢. The bean oil up 63¢, and soft red winter wheat down a penny and three quarters for the December. The hard red opinion, three quarters lower.
Todd Gleason: 01:32It finished at $4.81 and a quarter. Live cattle futures in Chicago, about $2.22 and a half higher. Gold futures, a $123.50 higher, and crude oil, up 69¢. The Dow Jones Industrial Average for the day is up around 600 points, and the S and P 500 is more than a 100 points higher. Here to talk about these numbers is Kurt Kimmel.
Todd Gleason: 01:55He is with agmarket.net. Hello, Kurt. Thanks for being with us. Big news, of course, for the day is happening in The Middle East. However, there remains issues with China.
Todd Gleason: 02:10The president saying over on Friday afternoon or over the weekend sometime that everything will be fine. It appears the marketplace has taken that to heart, and beans rallied not or rallied, but at least they didn't lose anymore today. What do you think of the marketplace?
Curt Kimmel: 02:27Yeah. It's kind of a a victory. We kinda priced in a no meeting taking place to on track to having a meeting. We're just subject to social media and and comments, and that that's tough because, you know, we're trying to do some great marketing and and follow some solid fundamental news, and it's kinda hard to get some solid fundamental news whenever the winds blowing two different directions at once. And also to, we've got the government shutdown, and, of course, today, Columbus Day holiday.
Curt Kimmel: 03:01So it- it- it's kind of a victory in a sense. It- it held together, particularly with, you know, the supply demand balance sheet. The last one we saw showed ample supplies, for the most part. So we'll continue to zig and zag back and forth here or up and down, according to what's on social media. When you look at the technical picture, the big chart, we've been sideways in through here, but oftentimes when you look at the seasonality of the grain market we have, some type of fall low.
Curt Kimmel: 03:36Then two, on the cycle count here, we're in search of a ten week cycle low, so there's some optimism once we get through some harvest pressure in through here that, we can, resume some some type of normalcy and and, see some recovery going, to year end. How high we go from here? It's not gonna be a tremendous rally, but, when you start looking into next year here, we're still subject to what's going on around the world that you mentioned there. And also we're subject to, you know, that South American weather. So lot of lot of things to talk about here as we go through the fall and winter, but price movement may continue to be just anchored sideways, Todd.
Todd Gleason: 04:20When farmers call, and I suspect that their numbers of calls are limited because they're really busy unless they're thinking, hey. I've got grain going across the scale, and I want to check with Kurt to see what he has in mind for that. What do you tell them?
Curt Kimmel: 04:35Well, the calls now are basically the elevator calls and say, I'm out of time on making a decision on whether to store or sell, which you're hitting at there, yes. It varies, and it varies from region to region, too. It's just kind of a popular thing in the Western Belt just to store the beans. Beans have taken up some storage with the wide basis, just trying to hang on with the idea that we can see some improvement in basis, even going the DP route. I don't like that, but it's giving guys and gals an opportunity here to capture something back to improving basis levels here.
Curt Kimmel: 05:26The big picture though is for inventory that's been priced, we've done some replacement strategies with the idea that a couple of things, but it's the Southern Hemisphere run into a weather situation and that they would be a little bit short on their crop. We could see some recovery in the next year if we could reown and capture a piece of that to the upside, add to our bottom line, that's kind of the strategy. As far as, on farm storage and so forth, it's gonna pay to kinda, sit and hold, hold tight here for a little while as I think the end user was just looking at their chops, looking at very, very wide bases, which they did see in the Western Belt, but here in the Eastern Belt with harvest wrapped up and the opportunity to buy has pretty well gone out the window and through here on beets particularly.
Todd Gleason: 06:21On the reownership strategy, is that for corn or soybeans, or both? And I assume it has differing months if it's both.
Curt Kimmel: 06:29Yeah. Both. Both. We hate to give up ownership here at these lower levels. If you're moving it and saving on storage costs and some interest costs, we're calculating that number and, just basically reinvesting that into a re ownership type of strategy here.
Curt Kimmel: 06:50And we want to be in a situation to work something out with you that you're comfortable with. Some guys are comfortable just re own it on futures, move penny for penny. Others just want to risk so much and they're doing the option route. Option volatility is at relatively low levels in through here. I'm not a real big option seller at this point unless it's on a bull call spread, but option purchases up front here, need to probably take a look at that.
Todd Gleason: 07:20Alright. Hey. Thank you much. I appreciate it. We'll talk with you again next Monday.
Curt Kimmel: 07:24You bet. Take care, Todd.
Todd Gleason: 07:25Mhmm. Kurt Kimmel is with agmarket.net. Freyne Olsen now joins us. He is with North Dakota State University and extension agricultural economist. Hi, Freyne.
Todd Gleason: 07:43Thank you for being with us. Your state has steadily moved upwards in the rankings as it's related to soybeans. When I first started talking to you somewhere in 2015, about ten years ago, you didn't rank really high and then seventh, and now you're number four. We talk about, North Dakota quite a bit because, you ship most of the soybeans out the P and w going to the Northwest across to China. Not this year, of course, because there's still zero on the books.
Todd Gleason: 08:17Can you tell me what that's done to basis, in your area?
Frayne Olson: 08:21Yeah. It it it really has shift shifted our our basis levels, in particular, this year. So typically when we start harvest up here, of course start on soybeans, eventually drift into corn, and typically the market is saying ship the beans, make sure we get them through the system because we have some pre sales in line and there's usually a lot additional buying going on during the harvest season, and then store the corn. And we'll worry about the corn and corn shipments later on. Well, this year the exact opposite has happened.
Frayne Olson: 08:53The market started signaling as we got into even early July and in particular now into August and then in September, the market was realizing, you know what, we're not going to have any huge export sales into the Chinese market. As you noted earlier, most of our soybeans go west. We do have some crushing capacity now in the last couple years that's been added, but still the lion's share of our soybeans still go into the export market. And so the the local basis levels have been signaling for several months, guys, store your soybeans at harvest and ship the corn because there's an incentive, a pretty good corn program going out to the West Coast. We've got really good rail service.
Frayne Olson: 09:33I know I'm talking to a lot of the elevator managers, they too are trying to rearrange some of their internal working room. Those bins they normally reserve for corn, now they're reserving for soybeans and vice versa. So it's taken a while for farmers as well as our marketing system to adjust to this flip or opposite throughput we've seen. So we started seeing basis levels that were normally our basis levels at harvest for soybeans are minus 80 to minus a dollar. We're now at about a dollar 50 to a dollar 70 negative, so there's definitely a strong incentive for farmers to store their beans.
Frayne Olson: 10:15We are going to have some challenges with storage capacity both on farm as well as commercial storage. Again, we're not used to to storing our soybeans and and moving the corn. So it's it's a the the logistics of getting that done, especially at the peak of harvest is gonna be a bit challenging.
Todd Gleason: 10:34Tell me about the demand for corn and why that has taken place.
Frayne Olson: 10:39So so the demand for corn, a couple things. We do have a pretty robust ethanol sector. That's one of those things that doesn't get a lot of press. We also have a corn wet milling plant for a corn sweetener that's been operating a facility that's been operating South Of Fargo here for many years. So we do have a pretty good local demand base for corn, and when you look at our corn export sales, yes, a lot of them had been going into, for corn specifically, going into Mexico, but there's been a pretty good demand base also from Southeast Asia.
Frayne Olson: 11:17And of course, the Asian markets are a little bit easier to supply from the West Coast versus, let's say, the Gulf Of Mexico. So right now, again, what we call a corn program, meaning that the exporters and the rail companies have have some incentives in place to be able to ship corn at harvest. So, because of that, that's a good export sales that we've had so far in The US, and again, they're presales. They're a little bit early. We're not we're not a long ways into our marketing year yet, but the presales have been very good this year, and and that is helping relieve some of the pressure.
Frayne Olson: 11:52The other thing I wanna just comment is, you know, the the yields we're gonna have in North Dakota are going to be good, but they're not great. We're not going to have the huge corn and huge soybean yields that you're seeing in core portion of the Corn Belt. We're going to have a good year, but not a great year. Our volumes will be, I guess I would consider, pretty normal. So as long as we can get enough corn pushed through the system, as long as the corn comes out of the fields relatively dry, we don't have to slow down the throughput for for drying conditions, and so far we've been been pretty lucky that way.
Frayne Olson: 12:29We should be able to find a home for everything. It's just gonna take a little bit extra work and some some additional planning.
Todd Gleason: 12:36Because farmers are being incentivized to store soybeans, are they actually doing it?
Frayne Olson: 12:42Yes, they are. From what I can see and and I guess in my discussions with the with the elevators, they have they've adjusted some of their not only basis and pricing programs. A lot of the elevators are not offering delayed pricing contracts at harvest. Their methodology is well if you bring the soybeans in at harvest, that's fine, we'll buy them from you, but they're going to be sold across the scale. We're not going to offer any delayed pricing contracts or anything like that.
Frayne Olson: 13:12Now if you pre sold them, if you've got a contract for harvest delivery, we'll definitely honor those contracts. But as far as any additional sales that come in or additional deliveries at Harvest in particular, those are gonna be sold right as they go across the scale. There's not gonna be any incentives for the local elevators to take the take delivery to it and then store it later on.
Todd Gleason: 13:36You and one of your colleagues follow SAF, renewable diesel, biofuels very, very closely. What things do you see that are good on the horizon, and what things are troublesome?
Frayne Olson: 13:50Oh boy. How much time do I have? So right now, the the there's there's significant overcapacity in the renewable diesel market. The biodiesel market is a little bit different, but renewable diesel is because of the change in the tax incentives. It's not as robust a market as it was in the past.
Frayne Olson: 14:15We still have processing going on. There's still a robust crushing sector that's supplying the vegetable oil into that market. The fact that the under the the one big beautiful bill recommendations, there was a change where the imported used cooking oil would not qualify for 45Z and would not qualify for the RINs, the Renewable Identification Numbers. And so that's really slowed the importation of vegetable oil. We're now relying more on our domestic supplies of both used cooking oil as well as virgin soybean oil or canola oil.
Frayne Olson: 14:59There's some opportunities. Think longer term there's still some opportunities. I think that's something that agriculture is going to be talking about for a long time, but right now short term as far as a, like a short term outlet for additional soybeans, think it's going be pretty tough. We're gonna, the the profit margins in crushing and crushing isn't so bad, but in the refining and the distribution part aren't as strong as they were just, about a year or so ago.
Todd Gleason: 15:27And broad overview, very quickly, good or bad for the agricultural economy going over the finish of this marketing year?
Frayne Olson: 15:36I I tend to be a little bit more on the optimistic side. I do think there's gonna be enough pressures and incentives for not only United States, but a lot of the other countries that we deal with to try and get trade agreements that are put in place, that are stabilized. Everybody wants to have some of that stability and known market outlet. It's going to take us some time in my opinion, but I do think we'll get an agreement with China. So I think there'll be some opportunities later on in the season.
Frayne Olson: 16:06The challenge for soybeans in particular is once the Brazilians start harvesting their soybean crop, to be price competitive with them soybeans coming right out of the field is going to be pretty tough. I do think there'll be some opportunities for corn. Just try and be patient. For soybeans, it's going to be a bit more of a challenge. We might be looking at that as a more of a longer term play depending upon how our trade negotiations go and what kind of requirements we put in it.
Todd Gleason: 16:34Thank you much, Freyne.
Frayne Olson: 16:35I appreciate it. Thank you, Todd. I appreciate visiting. It's always a always a good time.
Todd Gleason: 16:40Indeed. Freyne Olsen is an agricultural economist with extension at North Dakota State University in Fargo. You're listening to the closing market report from Illinois Public Media on this Monday afternoon. Do visit our website at willag.orgwillag.0rg. There you'll find a way to register for the Farm Assets Conference.
Todd Gleason: 17:13It's not until the December, but you'll be long done by then, so you may as well get yourself registered while you're thinking about it. This does have a limited number of seats available because the Agri Center is smaller than some of the other venues we have been at. You'll want to register today. The cost is $80. You can do that online at willag.org.
Todd Gleason: 17:35The Ag Economist will be there to take a look at what the market place might hold at that time. Joe Jansen will have an outlook for the crops, and Britney Goodrich will have a price outlook for livestock. We'll talk about farm management and budgets, trade, transportation, the global marketplace. Scott Irwin will discuss some bullish signs that he sees in biofuels policy at least at this point particularly as it's related to soybeans and even ethanol and will take up biomanufacturing as a future ag demand area as well. Ag policy, of course, will be on the list, and we'll talk about some muddy boots things related to the crop scientist and weed science as well as in rates and all kinds of things that you'll need for next season.
Todd Gleason: 18:26Oh, and finally we'll end up by discussing what the ag leadership in the state for the associations and the university are thinking as it's related to research needs and the future of agriculture in Illinois. You can find all these things about the farm assets conference on our site at willag.org sign up too. The cost is $80 don't wait Do it today. Mark Russo is now here. He's with Everstream Analytics and will help us explore some of the growing regions across the planet.
Todd Gleason: 18:59Hello, Mark. Thanks for being with us.
Mark Russo: 19:01Hi there, Todd. Thanks for having me.
Todd Gleason: 19:03Let's start in the winter wheat growing regions of The United States. Hard red winter that is. Kansas, Oklahoma, parts of Texas. What are conditions like as they move through the end of the sowing season there?
Mark Russo: 19:17Yeah. Conditions are in really good shape. Again, over the past month or two, there's been adequate rainfall resulting in improvement in soil moisture. And soil moisture right now is in, you know, very good shape here for newly sown winter wheat across much of the Central And Southern Plains and even far up north too with recent rains that has helped up there as well. So it continues to be a a really good, if not almost a a perfect start to the growing season.
Todd Gleason: 19:46And then move northward through Nebraska and the Dakotas. Talk about there and the Western Part Of Iowa for the harvest season for corn and soybeans.
Mark Russo: 19:57Yeah, conditions or soil moisture conditions also quite well across the Northern Plains and Central Plains as well. No immediate concern from a dryness standpoint, again some of the more recent dryness has been focused in the Midwest. So the soft red winter wheat belt can actually stand to use more rain, which we'll talk about here in in a bit. But, yeah, for Northern Plains down to the Southern Plains, this is an extremely good start to the season.
Todd Gleason: 20:25This is the time of year where we talk about hard freezes coming into that part of the world, but I don't think really there's anything on the offing, at least not at the moment.
Mark Russo: 20:34No. Not at all. This generally warmer temperature bias looks to continue. A little bit of variability, especially in areas of, like, Montana up into the Western Canadian Perries. But for the Midwest, for the Plains region, Delta, and Southeast, It's a continued warmer bias pattern looking out from now all the way through the end of the month.
Todd Gleason: 20:56In the Eastern Corn Belt, will there be a change anytime soon, and will the rainfalls begin to come?
Mark Russo: 21:03We do see opportunities for rain next week, when, there will be some opportunities as systems begin to cross into the Midwest. Right now, it doesn't look like any turn to any exceptionally wet conditions, but rain activity coming up over the next few weeks will be more compared to recently.
Todd Gleason: 21:23Tell me about the corn and soybean growing regions, including the wheat, I suppose, in South America.
Mark Russo: 21:29Yeah. Overall, soil moisture conditions are in very good shape across much of South America, especially Argentina and Southern Brazil. Center West Brazil, topsoil moisture has lowered recently due to heat and dryness. However, that is now starting to change. In fact, this past weekend rain activity returned to Center West Brazil, and the pattern across much of Brazil, not only Center West, but all of the main soybean and first crop corn areas are forecast to receive near normal rainfall over the next two weeks.
Mark Russo: 22:02So that will boost soil moisture again and initiate even more planting over the next several weeks.
Todd Gleason: 22:08Is there anything in the weather that you suspect will become a problem for them over time?
Frayne Olson: 22:14At least in
Mark Russo: 22:14the short term, no. But we are watching a bit longer term with the Sala Nina event across the Equatorial Pacific. Again, historically, that has resulted at times with dryness and heat impacting crop production in Argentina and Southern Brazil. So with the La Nina in place this year, this is something to watch for down the road. But like I mentioned earlier, right now soil moisture conditions are in very good shape.
Mark Russo: 22:40So if there were to be a transition to something a bit more detrimental, that could happen a few months down the road. But just, you know, something to watch right now.
Todd Gleason: 22:51Thank you much. I appreciate it.
Mark Russo: 22:52You're welcome, Doug.
Todd Gleason: 22:53Mark Russo is with Aberstream Analytics joined us on this Monday edition of the closing market report that came to you from Illinois. Public media is public radio for the farming world online on demand at willag.org or in your favorite podcast application. Search out to closing market report.