- Eric Snodgrass, NutrienAgSolutions.com
From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois, this is the closing market report. It is the October 2025. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Mike Zuzlow at globalcomresearch.com, and Eric Stodgrass will join us to take a look at the weather forecast. If you can stay with us for the whole of the hour, you will hear all of our commodity week program recorded yesterday afternoon. Dave Chatterton, Kurt Kimmel, and Matt Bennett.
Todd Gleason: 00:26Otherwise, it's up online at willag.org, and many of these radio stations will carry it over the weekend. December corn for the day at $4.31 and a half a penny and a quarter higher. The March at $4.44, a quarter higher, and the May futures unchanged today at $4.52 and a quarter. November soybeans, $10.99 and 3 quarters, up 8 and a half cents. The January 11 15 and a quarter, 7 and a half higher, and the March contract at $11.23 and 3 quarters, up 8.
Todd Gleason: 00:54December bean meal, $3.21 60, up $6 for the day, and the bean oil at $48.68, down 97¢. Soft red winter wheat at $5.24 and a half, 11 and a half higher. The hard red winter in the December at $5.61, down 4 and a half cents for the day. Live cattle futures in Chicago finished the nearby a buck 42 and a half lower. Feeders were down $2.32 and a half, and lean hogs up 45¢.
Todd Gleason: 01:21Mike Zuzolo, globalcommercesearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. Hello, Mike. Thanks for being with us again.
Mike Zuzolo: 01:28Great to be with you, Todd. Happy Friday. Happy Halloween, I guess, and happy everything else. Right?
Todd Gleason: 01:34Well, happy everything else. Happy trade deal, I suppose. So let's start let's start there. On soybeans for the week. What was the action like? And we'll get to the deal itself, but what was the action like? How did the market react, and how did you see that unfold?
Mike Zuzolo: 01:52You know, I have to say I was caught way off guard when I did my monthly updates for prices as we closed out the month of October and I updated my charts and my spreadsheets and I looked and I saw a soy meal up 21, 22%. And so price action heavily surrounded and revolved around the meal price action strength against the bean oil weakness. And then also, I would argue, again, based upon how we did over the week with corn and wheat both up about what, 3%, three and a half percent, beans going to be up about 9%. We had the support of the wheat and the corn, especially the wheat as we got on the second part of the week. In fact, the meal and the wheat were the two that made the new highs first on Friday.
Mike Zuzolo: 02:40Corn and beans then joined them. So I would say price action was what we've been used to, except I did not see that meal market rallying. I mean, I think we went from $2.60 something to $3.27, $3.25. It was a very strong monthly move in meal. And I'm guessing part of it was the Asian trade deals that we got from other countries other than just China.
Mike Zuzolo: 03:07I gotta think that maybe we did some good with Argentina and and their currency strengthening as well. Because whenever we see meal rally like this, typically, Argentina is one of some factors in that, Todd.
Todd Gleason: 03:19Alright. So now let's talk a little bit about the trade deal that was struck between president Xi and Trump. 12,000,000 metric tons between now and January. I suppose that's it for the year, for this marketing year, I think. And then 25,000,000 metric tons in for the following three marketing years, 2627, '28 crops.
Todd Gleason: 03:45What'd you think of that, and what are you telling your producers?
Mike Zuzolo: 03:48Yeah. I I I will say, first of all, I had low expectations of any kind of a specific deal. So in that respect, it was very welcome news. And I think it took the eyes of the trade off of demand concerns, and we can return once again to supply concerns. So that's kind of where what happened and what I'm telling clients kind of begins, Todd.
Mike Zuzolo: 04:08What I mean by that is the 12,000,000 metric tons is all I'm going to focus on right now with ten months left in the twenty five-twenty six marketing year. USDA of the total exports, I'm and gonna go to million metric tons here because we're talking million metric tons. Of the total exports, last year's marketing year, China took about 26,800,000 tons. This year, USDA, as of the last report before the shutdown, China was gonna take about 23 and a half million metric tons using 51% of the total. And so you're talking about 3.3 roughly million metric tons different.
Mike Zuzolo: 04:47And so what that says to me is the USDA was not clobbering demand, export demand. They were taking it step by step by step by step. So that means we don't have to push a lot of demand back into the supply demand balance sheets because USDA didn't take it out. That I think goes to the point about the supply side versus demand side. I think maybe if this market continues higher, it's going to be because we have the support of the crude and the wheat.
Mike Zuzolo: 05:14And also I think because the market's going to go back to what's our yield? And if we lose a bushel and a half on yield, we could be at a one seventy five carryover. And I think that maybe is what started to develop after we got all the news, coming out of China and South Korea.
Todd Gleason: 05:29So what are your expectations if the supply and demand budgets, Wazi figures are correct, are pretty close at this point? What has the what had the trade been figuring that at as opposed to what USDA had? And have we built now, after a few days of trade, built everything back into the marketplace that might be what little changes?
Mike Zuzolo: 05:55I think we're on our way to cutting the carryover at this point because I don't think we need to change much on the demand, as I said. And and I think these other Asian trade deals also help the product markets, both meal and biofuel. And so all of a sudden we've got demand supportive instead of demand fear. And so if that's the case and we take a bushel and a half off of the yield and we get to a 175 carryover, my model would suggest that gets you about eleven sixty five, eleven seventy five in front end beans this time of year because we're in between weather markets. We don't have a weather market now in The United States.
Mike Zuzolo: 06:31We're not quite ripe for a weather market in South America, but I do think that the South American weather market is way back in play again because of this week's price action and also what we got out of Asia, not just China, but especially Vietnam and Malaysia and some of these big poultry and livestock countries that will probably be taking fuel and processed grains from us for feed.
Todd Gleason: 06:55Wheat and corn followers in this case?
Mike Zuzolo: 06:58Yeah. I think so. And that's probably the most disappointing thing when it comes to the corn market this week. I'm gonna lay that once again at the feet of the wheat because it wasn't until Friday that wheat was actually able to do much. It was pretty much steady on the week going into Friday morning's trade.
Mike Zuzolo: 07:14So my mindset is is that if we could get a solid foundation under wheat, we see the cash basis in corn start to improve now after this past week. And with harvest starting to wrap up, then maybe the corn fundamentals can play a little bit more friendly role. The bull spread was all over the place as far as old crop, new crop, down one day, up another. So it kinda signaled that trade wasn't really sure where it wanted to go on the corn.
Todd Gleason: 07:37Crop insurance, a done deal now. October is over. Anything that producers need to think about now that they're uncovered, roughly speaking?
Mike Zuzolo: 07:46Yeah. Good question. Because I think this is a market as if we laid it out here today and it plays out mostly that way, it would be a cash led market if we're losing yield, losing supply. And so I'm trying to stay mostly with paper floors underneath me, especially as we get above $11 in Nov twenty six beans, do some cash sales, but I'd still stick with the front end on paper sales for this point for corn and beans, because if we really are tightening up this crop, we should, I think, see quite a bit more cash increases as opposed to what the futures does based upon what the outside markets do. And that's where the rub has been for many, many months is if crude oil goes lower, wheat goes lower, and the dollar goes higher, do the funds sell the futures, but the cash market goes the opposite direction.
Mike Zuzolo: 08:31And last thing I'll say on that note, Todd, is we've got a potential strike by The United States on Venezuela. Also hearing that the Trump administration has ok'd tomahawks for Ukraine now, so let's watch that crude oil closely. It could actually be a mover and a shaker and support these markets for a change.
Todd Gleason: 08:48We'll let you do that, and we'll talk with you again next week, Mike.
Mike Zuzolo: 08:51Thank you, sir.
Todd Gleason: 08:51That's Mike Zuzolo. He's at globalcommresearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas. Let's check-in on the global growing regions and weather patterns there and how they're impacting agriculture. Eric Snodgrass is here from Nutrien Ag Solutions and Agribal. Hi, Eric.
Todd Gleason: 09:12Thanks for being with us. A lot of things to discuss today, but I do wanna go back to earlier in the week and hurricane Melissa. I am sure you watched this with interest. I'm wondering what your assessment of that hurricane might be.
Eric Snodgrass: 09:28Well, there's a famous meteorologist and atmospheric scientist named doctor Kerry Emanuel. He sat at, MIT. And a number of years ago, I mean, this guy's had a very long career, he developed a metric to gauge what the possible maximum strength of a tropical cyclone can be given all the conditions surrounding it. And Melissa reached the peak of that. So at one point, Melissa had 185 mile an hour winds that ranked second in the Atlantic behind hurricane Allen from 1980.
Eric Snodgrass: 09:59So that was the sustained winds. We I believe there were gusts at over 215. And then its central pressure dropped down to eight ninety two millibars. And so for perspective, that's the same atmospheric pressure you'd feel if you climbed up. My goodness.
Eric Snodgrass: 10:16Wow. I mean, getting on almost a mile, six tenths of a mile maybe. It's just incredible to think about how low the central pressure was. So then the thing hits Jamaica. And what's what's really interesting about this meteorologically because the human aspect of this is terrifying and tragic and catastrophic.
Eric Snodgrass: 10:37There's no denying that. But this is the only system that was able to both develop and then reach hurricane strength in both The Caribbean and The Gulf this year. Right? Everything else was out to open ocean. We didn't have a single system get in there because the time the primary hurricane season started, which was really on August 1, the Bermuda high slid over toward Africa, kept every system out to open ocean.
Eric Snodgrass: 11:03And it's gonna be a year that goes down to only having Chantel and Barrie, both weak tropical systems that even got close to coming into The Gulf. The Gulf had too high a wind shear, very unfavorable conditions. And then later in the season, nothing to steer it in there. But that's the reason why we got so dry in the Midwest starting in August. There was nothing to pump the moisture north.
Eric Snodgrass: 11:25And what did we see Melissa do? It went through Jamaica, into Cuba, over The Bahamas, and went right on toward Bermuda, it's now on its way over to a merry old England. So it's not you just couldn't get the moisture to this area. So I think it's kind of an interesting story is how it ties into Midwestern dryness, which has given us these massively wide open harvest windows, even though we did get a little bit of rain recently. Right?
Eric Snodgrass: 11:49I mean, we had that rain over the weekend, which was just incredible, and it was nice to get some moisture back into the soil, but didn't break a drop by any stretch.
Todd Gleason: 11:58We are the center of the driest areas or one of the driest areas in the nation here. What do we look like for the next week?
Eric Snodgrass: 12:06Dry. Sorry. But, I mean, I don't have any major thing coming in. So the problem is that the jet streams dip in these huge troughs into the Gulf Of Alaska. So the actions in Washington, Oregon, or British Columbia, then a ridge builds from California all the way to the Great Lakes, which means these systems go over the top of that ridge.
Eric Snodgrass: 12:24They dive into the Eastern Great Lakes and exit the Northeast. So other than a little weak weak little low that's gonna try to go through Kentucky this weekend, There's just there's just no moisture to be had in a big chunk of the Central United States. So, yes, we're drier, and we're even still drier going into week two, although rainfall chances begin to improve once you get out there farther into the next week.
Todd Gleason: 12:49Anything on the rest of November?
Eric Snodgrass: 12:52Well, November I think is gonna come in mild. Now remember, it's still November, so seasonally, we're getting colder. But overall, I think we're gonna be mild compared to historical averages. I think that should be good for a lot of growers that still need to do their fall tillage or fall application. I think we'll have plenty of opportunity to get that done even with the dryness of the mild weather, you know, keeping those soil temperatures at or below 50 is pretty good versus, you know, sometimes you can worry in late November about freezing up the top inch or two, and I don't think I see that happening.
Eric Snodgrass: 13:23But I mean, the question will be at what point do we turn the water back on and bring the moisture back in place? Because our top 16 inches of, soil moisture currently ranks at or very near the bottom of the distribution. That goes back fifty years of data there. So I need to get the moisture in place before we get locked into winter.
Todd Gleason: 13:44I hope that doesn't come as snow. I'd like to hold that off to January. Can we have a mild December too?
Eric Snodgrass: 13:49I don't think so.
Todd Gleason: 13:50Maybe I have. Oh, no.
Eric Snodgrass: 13:52I think the problem is gonna be that there are a couple of things working against a mild December right now. And based off of some early kinda wobbles in the polar vortex, based off of some of the winds that are across the Equatorial Pacific and Indian Ocean. I looked at all the times in the past when that happens, and we tend to store up some pretty cold air in the Canadian Prairie in November, late November. That tends to come out in December. So whatever we think we might get for November, the chances of it carrying in December are pretty limited.
Eric Snodgrass: 14:22So I would say colder risks and possibly for once in a while, you know, we might finally get some snow before Christmas. So that'll be interesting to see.
Todd Gleason: 14:31It would be interesting and great for the kids too. I hope that does happen. South America, a quick word there.
Eric Snodgrass: 14:38Yeah. So we're finally starting to see in the model something we've worried about, which is that parts of Southern Brazil, think Rio Grande do Sul, then Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina have some drier risks. So that lines up well with historical analogs with the La Nina and now with the new forecast. But the Serrado in the North, they're expected to see not just near normal rains, but even above normal rains, which with the speed at which they've kind of established this crop, which has been pretty good, I think it's gonna be overall a wet start to their growing season down there.
Todd Gleason: 15:08Thanks much. We'll talk with you again next week.
Eric Snodgrass: 15:10Alright. Sounds good. Thanks, Todd.
Todd Gleason: 15:11Eric Snodgrass is with Nutrien Ag Solutions and Agrabol joined us on this edition of the closing market report that came to you from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online on demand at wilag.org that's willag.org