- Maria Kalaitzandonakes, University of Illinois
- Trent Ford, Illinois State Climatologist
- Ben Brown, University of Missouri
From the land to Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market report for the October 2025. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Kurt Kimmel of agmarket.net. We'll hear from Ben Brown, agricultural economist at the University of Missouri and with Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute.
Todd Gleason: 00:22We'll talk about tomorrow's webinar hosted by the Illinois Soybean looking at MAHA or the Make America Healthy Again movement and speaking to the Trump administration or related issues. We'll hear NCBA's reaction to the weekend news that the president is hoping to import Argentine beef in order to lower the price of beef for consumers here in The United States, and we'll do all of that 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 willag.0rg. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. December corn for the day settled at $4.23 and a quarter.
Todd Gleason: 01:11It was 3 quarters of a cent higher. The March contract at $4.37, up a half. The May quarter higher at $4.45 at a quarter. November Baines at $10.31 and 3 quarters, 12 and a quarter cents higher. January 1050, up 13 and quarter, a and the March up 13 and a quarter at $10.64.
Todd Gleason: 01:29Bean meal, $4 higher. The bean oil up 18¢, and hard red winter wheat in the December contract, a penny and a half lower at $4.90. The soft red at $5.00 4 and three quarters a penny higher. Live cattle futures in Chicago finished the nearby contract at $2.43 65, up a buck 82 and a half. Feeders were 97 and a half cents higher, and lean hogs were down 30¢.
Todd Gleason: 01:53They settled at $80.82 dollars and 7 and a half cents. Here to make sense of some of these numbers is Kurt Kimmel. He's with agmarket.net. Hello, Kurt. Thanks for being with us today.
Todd Gleason: 02:05I'd like to start with the soybeans because there was a nice little rally there, and it managed to blow through the 50 and the hundred day in the Novembers, but did not manage to settle above the two hundred day, just below it, in fact. What do we make of this market
Curt Kimmel: 02:21Well, the social media or or rhetoric over the weekend gave the complex some hope. There's some confidence that we're getting a trade deal or working on a trade deal with China for US, soybeans. It's just, you know, gonna take some quite some time to get that accomplished, when, where and so forth, but also too there was talk that we'd like to see China get back to buy as many beans from The US as they did previously before all this kind of broke loose. So that gave the market hope. The market's been giving everybody hope and taking it away so hopefully hope will continue to be there as we continue to climb the wall of worry.
Curt Kimmel: 03:05Also too on the commercial side of the picture we've seen some grain agencies, buying agencies out of Asia start to probe around. I'm not quite for sure that there's been some business take place here. Particularly when you look at the cash bids. We've seen basis improve quite a bit through here. The fear has been that we've had this on collect wall of grain coming at us, but with all the free DP offers grain moving into commercial hands, the market is holding in there.
Curt Kimmel: 03:40Plus two, we've seen some situations where there is some free DP to try to get some more grain to move. That being all said, with the firm basis and everything, some of these places that are buying grain, pushing to get grain, but yet they're shutting down early because they've got a lot of grain. There's a lot of things going on in the countryside but kinda feels like, we're seeing harvest wrapped up and the soybean market caught just a little bit of a vacuum here for a while, Todd.
Todd Gleason: 04:10Over the weekend, I made a couple of trips. Went to Cleveland via Columbus through Dayton and then came back, through Cincinnati and Indianapolis. I also made a trip straight south on 57, to Farina, and that's South Of Effingham. I would say that, you know, a 100% of what has been out there in our area and that part of the world from here going south is mostly gone or near a 100%. However, once you get into Eastern Indiana and Ohio, there's a lot of corn left, not much soybeans.
Todd Gleason: 04:52I in fact, I would think they're just getting a good start on the corn there. So still corn coming in. I don't know what you're hearing from Iowa and Minnesota and how far along they might be. Do you have any contacts that are there that are giving you some indications?
Curt Kimmel: 05:06Yeah. It varies widely region to region. You know, some areas just like get the beans out, the beans are out. There's other areas like to get the corn out and get the beans out later. But for the most part, to dial that in, it's still a work in progress due to the government shutdown.
Curt Kimmel: 05:24But most of the trade kind of fields, the trade estimates, the average trade guess for corn harvest is about 59% complete. Average trade guess for the bean harvest is about 74% complete. That's a little bit behind the five year average. I think we're a little closer to the five year average which is 65% complete on corn and 81% complete on beans. Both the favorable weather forecast we're seeing in through here is not going to be a big issue.
Curt Kimmel: 05:55Guys really not been in a big hurry here to, well, some guys have been in a hurry to get it out, but for the most part, the way this weather forecast isn't fully, it appears, you know, there's still plenty of time and good standability to get the crop out. For the most part, most of the crop's been finding a home in through here, whether it's a creative storage ideas or just playing, moving across the scale. So, so far it's been so good and that kind of spells with the technical picture turning positive and with the seasonal picture turning a little positive here, maybe we can try to recoup a little bit of our end charge there, Todd.
Todd Gleason: 06:32How much of it do you think you might be able to get back?
Curt Kimmel: 06:35I think we can get a good chunk of it. Of all the forty three years I've been doing this, once a guy pays minimum storage or puts into DP, it's hard to get that grain shook loose, especially if you fill a bin. I've only seen maybe once or twice a guy's gone out and emptied that bin. So I don't think we're going to see a whole lot of movement once it's stuck away until about Thanksgiving. After the first year, the commercial grain trade is trying to still spin the idea we've got a wall of grain coming at us after the first year, but between now and Thanksgiving, I think there's a sporting chance we can see some, price stability going into that time window.
Todd Gleason: 07:17And thank you so much. I appreciate you taking time with us on this Monday.
Curt Kimmel: 07:20Very good. Take care.
Todd Gleason: 07:21You too. That's Kurt Kimmel. He is with agmarket.net. Joined us here on the closing market report from Illinois Public Media online at willag.0rg. In today's agricultural news, president Trump's foreign policy moves with Argentina continue to irk US farmers.
Todd Gleason: 07:46First came the news. The Trump administration was attempting to support the Argentine peso that happened to coincide too with the sale of soybeans from the South American nation. And then over the weekend, mister Trump told reporters traveling with him on air force one that he intended to have The United States purchase Argentine beef to lower prices in this nation. Well, that did not settle well with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. It is concerned rewarding Argentina with expanded access to The US market will harm America's farmers and ranchers while also interfering with the free market.
Todd Gleason: 08:21Colin Woodall is the CEO at NCBA. He says family farmers and ranchers have numerous concerns with importing more Argentinian beef to lower prices for consumers, noting the plan only creates chaos at a critical time of the year for American cattle producers while doing nothing to lower grocery store prices. NCPA reports Argentina has had an unbalanced trade relationship with The United States in the past five years. Argentina has sold more than $8.00 $1,000,000 of beef into The US. By comparison The US has sold just over 7,000,000 worth of American beef to Argentina.
Todd Gleason: 09:02Argentina also has a history of foot and mouth disease, which if brought to The United States, could decimate domestic livestock production. NCBA is calling on president Trump and members of congress to let the market work rather than intervening in ways they say does nothing but harm rural America. In related news, the Illinois Soybean Association is hosting a webinar tackling the Trump administration's MAHA or Make America Healthy Again agenda tomorrow. It includes ag policy experts from the University of Illinois and Washington DC. Maria Kalatson to Nike says they'll explore MAHA and how it directly impacts farmers.
Maria Kalaitzandonakes: 09:43We're gonna think about, what farmers can expect, consumer responses to MAHA, sort of the political power of MAHA, what we expect moving forward, what changes we're seeing in the movement. So I think it'll be both sort of trying to understand where we are now and what folks can expect moving forward.
Todd Gleason: 10:06The webinar starts at ten a. M. And is expected to run for an hour. The panelists will include the U of I Ag Economist, an industry representative, and a Washington DC based ag policy expert. Details are available from the Illinois Soybean Association.
Todd Gleason: 10:22And that's a look at today's agricultural news. Just a quick reminder to visit our website at willag.org, willag.0rg, where today you can sign up for the Farm Assets Conference and the Illinois Farm Economic Summits. Have you ever wished that there was a podcast about the weather in your area right here in East Central Illinois? Guess what? There is.
Todd Gleason: 10:53And Trent Ford, state climatologist at the University of Illinois is a cohost. The podcast is called weather realness, and if you stay with us on our home station today at WILL AM five eighty, you'll hear it at 02:30. Hey. Thanks, Trent, for being with us. This podcast will come up, momentarily or soon enough here on our home station.
Todd Gleason: 11:19Thanks for being with us today. Can you tell me about weather realness and your hopes for this program?
Trent Ford: 11:26Yeah, yeah. Thanks Todd for having me on. Yeah, this is a it's a neat opportunity, you know, this was kind of the brainchild of WILL and they pulled in a few folks, myself included, and a few folks from the atmospheric sciences department or the climates department here on campus at the U of I. And the goal was to just talk about, have you know, talk about different topics related to weather and climate and to bring in, you know, experts on these various topics. So, I mean, you know and your listeners know weather touches pretty much everything and so, you know, flush with different, you know, topics and options to talk about.
Trent Ford: 12:12So we've covered things like, you know, fall recently and of course, there's ongoing drought in Illinois, so we talked about drought and what that means. We've talked about impacts of weather cropland agriculture and even brought in folks like Jonathan Koppis to talk about the policy implications of it. So, you know, it's neat because we can talk about these issues that are very near and dear to folks around Central Illinois, but then also leveraging these kind of world renowned experts that we have right in our backyard here at the U of I to talk about sort of the broader implications of these sorts of issues.
Todd Gleason: 12:46How often are you doing the program?
Trent Ford: 12:48Right now it's coming out weekly, and it's an hour long program at the moment coming out weekly and so we've had I don't even know, it's something like seven or eight productions already and it's funny, we meet once a week and, we talk about, Okay, what are
Curt Kimmel: 13:06we going to do this week?
Trent Ford: 13:07But then also like, Oh, we have these kinds of ideas for what we want to do. So, we want to do one about fire for example or as we get closer to the winter, forecasted winter weather which of course is big deal. We always like to talk about. Taylor Swift just released a new album. We want to talk about weather and how Taylor Swift has used that in her lyrics before.
Trent Ford: 13:31So all of these very different ideas, I even try to plug extreme football weather, one where we could talk about things like the ice bowl or fog bowl, you know, what was the warmest, what was the coldest kickoff ever at Memorial Stadium here, those kind of things. And so, some of these are very serious, you know, we did one related to flooding once, when we had that flooding event in the Texas Hill Country. And some are a little bit more light hearted, like for example, talking about frost or the Taylor Swift topic for example. So, and but all are relevant to again what's going on in Central Illinois and hopefully make a good listen.
Todd Gleason: 14:13Indeed, that's Trent Ford. He is State Climatologist at the Illinois State Water Survey Prairie Research Institute located right here on the Urbana Champaign campus of the University of Illinois and the cohost of the Weather Realness podcast. You can search it out in your favorite podcast applications or just look for it in Google. If you can stay with us for our second half hour on our home station today, you'll hear an episode of the weather realness podcast. This one focused on drought in Central Illinois.
Todd Gleason: 14:55Ben Brown, agricultural economist at the University of Missouri with FAPRI and Extension, that's the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute there, now joins us to talk about soybeans. Let's really focus on soybeans today. You and I had a little discussion, and you'd like to start with NOPA. This is the National Oilseed Processors Association, which releases regular reports tracking soybean crush. Can you tell me what you've been watching?
Ben Brown: 15:24Yeah. So they always release the month after. So here just in October, we got the month for September, which is nice because it it gives them time to get the reporting and make sure that everything's accurate. And the association crushed just under a 198,000,000 bushels, which we assume, at least through reports that the association represents somewhere around 95% of all soybeans crushed here in The United States. So just under 200,000,000 bushels in total.
Ben Brown: 15:50That was 11,600,000 bushels above the average pre report estimate and above all all estimates. So so pretty bullish number from a soybean crush standpoint, and and this has been a trend. Like, I I feel like the last couple years, we just keep talking about new monthly record totals, and and certainly that was true again this year. I think to me what was even more of a bullish support system to the to the soybean complex was that even when you take into account the the extra bushels, so 11 a little over eleven and five million more bushels crushed, the stocks number was just slightly higher for soybean oil stocks. So that signals that we saw fairly good soybean oil consumption during the month of September.
Ben Brown: 16:38It did come down from August, which is typical. That's a typical thing, but certainly it represented a substantial year over year increase in soybean oil consumption in the month of September.
Todd Gleason: 16:50What happened to the bean meal supplies in the same period?
Ben Brown: 16:54NOPA stopped reporting soybean meal stocks. They used to report exports, we have to apply, you know, do an implied calculation. They're up and and that's been a trend. We've seen exports of soybean meal, increase from The United States as we have more soybean meal to consume, and it's become a little bit cheaper relative speaking than than some of the other, feed grain products. But but certainly, you know, we with these added crush, we've seen higher volumes of soybean meal.
Todd Gleason: 17:24Is the added crush just because of added capacity and what's driving it?
Ben Brown: 17:31Yeah. So we have seen additional capacity come online. That's, you know, a lot of these companies have been building building crushed capacity and that's been coming on. I think more so we just we've seen what we have being utilized at strong rates. Typically August and September are months where we see facilities shut down for maintenance cleaning because they're waiting for the new crop soybeans, US soybeans to come online.
Ben Brown: 17:58Some of them took maintenance earlier in the year, just kind of due to timing and when product was flowing. We didn't have some policies, you know, kind of figured out early in the year and you know, crush facilities were running it at partial, capacity that allowed some of them to take maintenance, then and didn't have to take it in August and September. So that's, I think, part of this as well is not only additional facilities, and and expanded crush capacity, but also just not taking as much maintenance during the the August and September period as what we normally see.
Todd Gleason: 18:33Is it similar to the ethanol or biofuels boom that took place as we ramped up ethanol, or is it something different for these renewable diesel and biofuels areas altogether not including them or just vegetable oil usage in general?
Ben Brown: 18:50Well, there's kind of separate there's a separate conversation for the the uses of soybean oil, and and that's where, you know, they're taking the soybean oil and and turning it into, you know, renewable diesel in some in ways. Right? And we've also exported a lot of soybean oil outside The US as well or at least higher than where we had been the last previous years and that number keeps moving up as the pace of exports of soybean oil continue to grow. It's not, you know, we don't think that we're at capacity in terms of soybean or renewable diesel and biodiesel production. Those facilities could continue to expand and use more vegetable oil product including soybean oil.
Ben Brown: 19:28But from a soybean crush facility standpoint in terms of crushing, we have seen this growth in crushing to produce more soybean oil and soybean meal. Part of that's driven by just the large quantities of soybeans we have available for domestic use.
Todd Gleason: 19:43Turn your attention to the export market or maybe better said, the import market, and what we might know about how China has been importing soybeans, clearly not from The United States.
Ben Brown: 19:56Yeah, so official data from the USDA is suspended during the government shutdown. So we're using other sources, other countries' information in terms of what they're importing. China does have numbers from their Chinese customs bureau that historically have been relatively consistent with US numbers. There's always this question of, you know, do we see a disconnect or, you know, would China start reporting different numbers relative to The United States? So we just got the the September import estimates, from the Chinese customs bureau.
Ben Brown: 20:32It shows that China imported a September record 700 or excuse me, 473,000,000 bushels. They report on kilograms. I I convert that to million bushels. So 473,000,000 bushels, that's up from last September's total of 418,000,000 bushels. So I So what is that, a 54,000,000 bushel increase year over year in terms of what they import.
Ben Brown: 20:58Of that total, 85% of that total came from Brazil, 0% came from The United States, and 15% from the rest of the world. The rest of you know, that 15% was heavily dominated by Argentina. To give you a comparison, that compares, from last year's distribution of 74% from Brazil, 15% from The United States, and 11% from the rest of the world respectively. So, you know, we we haven't been selling product to China, so as a result, it it makes sense that they're not importing our product. If you don't have the sales, you can't have the imports, and that is certainly what is starting to play out here.
Ben Brown: 21:36It should be noted that this is the first month where they have imported zero US soybeans since all the way back in twenty eighteen-twenty nineteen. Throughout all the uncertainties over the last couple of years, have still been importing US soybeans, but no US soybean imports during the month of September.
Todd Gleason: 21:52What are US exports like at this time?
Ben Brown: 21:55So total US exports, and we just got, you know, an updated export ship shipments. So these are beans that have gotten on a boat and and left the country. I estimate that total soybean shipments for the current marketing year we in right now are roughly two zero three million bushels. If we look at what we need to have to be able to hit USDA's export total of just under 1,700,000,000 bushels, you know, we're about 56,000,000 bushels below that target. And so and I expect that that to continue, as as we move our way deeper into the fall, that that deficit to continue to grow.
Ben Brown: 22:32And we did see, you know, quite a few shipments to non Chinese countries or, you know, non China countries, which is expected. Right? Like, we'd expect to pick up some some business in other places, but it's been kind of the same three or four players. Mexico, Egypt, Bangladesh, and Indonesia continue to show up as as the top four or five destinations for US, soybeans, as it relates to physical shipment.
Todd Gleason: 22:58Ben Brown is an agricultural economist at the University of Missouri, helped us to wrap up this Monday edition of the closing market report that came to you from Illinois Public Media. I'm Todd Gleeson.