Sep 02 | Closing Market Report

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The September 2, 2026 edition of Illinois Public Media's Closing Market Report, hosted by Todd Gleason, examines commodity market trends, local environmental policy, and global agricultural weather patterns. Following the opening commodity market settlements, Greg Johnson of Total Grain Marketing analyzes multi-year highs in corn and soybean futures, the psychological dynamics of farmer selling, early harvest expectations driven by late-summer heat, and updated crop budget estimates from the University of Illinois farmdoc team. The broadcast then highlights civic discourse in Champaign County, featuring University of Illinois environmental science student Bruce Beem, who details public testimony regarding proposed hyperscale data centers—specifically emphasizing concerns over long-term site remediation, and inadequate human-centric noise metrics and artificial light disruption along avian migratory corridors. Finally, meteorologist Drew Lerner of World Weather Incorporated delivers a regional and global forecast, evaluating persistent drought conditions across the U.S. hard red winter wheat belt, planting moisture outlooks in central Brazil, and international El Niño impacts spanning Indonesian wildfires and drenching rainfall in the Philippines.

01:21 Ag Markets with Greg Johnson, TGM
08:28 Data Centers, Civic Engagement, and University Educations
14:38 Ag Weather with Drew Lerner, World Weather Inc

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Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant University in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report. It is the second day of September 2026. I’m Todd Gleason. Coming up, we’ll talk about the commodity markets with Greg Johnson at TGM. We’ll hear from Monday night’s County Board task force meeting about data centers and how that intersects with education at the University of Illinois. And then we’ll turn our attention to the weather forecast. We’ll do that with Drew Lerner as we wrap up our time together. He’s with World Weather Incorporated, all right here on this Wednesday edition of the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media.

announce: Todd Gleason’s services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.

Todd Gleason: December corn for the day finished at $5.43 and a half, two and a half lower. The March, $5.58 and a quarter, down two. And May futures, $5.65 and a quarter, down one and a half cents. November beans, $13.10 and a quarter, seven and a half lower. January, down seven and three quarters at $13.25. And the March soybeans, $13.30 and a half, six and three quarters lower. Bean meal, down $2.80. The bean oil, off $1.81. Wheat futures, soft red in the December, down eight and a half at $7.74. The hard red December at $8.34 and a quarter, down 11 cents on the day.

01:21 Ag Markets with Greg Johnson, TGM

Todd Gleason: Greg Johnson from TGM Total Grain Marketing is at the elevator here in Champaign County and now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. Hi, Greg, thanks much. Last week was a really good week for corn and soybeans, and frankly, I thought it might turn around at some point this week, but they have managed to stay put. Were you surprised by that, and tell me what you’re watching in the marketplace.

Greg Johnson: I guess I’m not really surprised once we made new contract highs. We’re at three-year highs in corn and almost three-year highs in soybeans. And so I think now, even though you would think that this would trigger farmer selling, the reality is I think farmers realize now that the prices are much higher than what they thought they were going to be able to sell for. So now they feel like they have a cushion. We’ve kind of gone from “where do I want to get this stuff sold at” to “how much higher can it go.” And even if I hold on a little too long, I’ve got a cushion, because if it goes down 25 cents in corn and 50 cents in beans, those prices are still much, much higher than what if you would have pinned farmers down a month or two ago and said, “Would you sell for these prices?” They would have said yes, and now we’re way past those prices. So, it’s the old fear and greed phase of the market. How high is up? There are a lot of private analysts that are saying, because of the demand that we’re seeing in corn and because of the smaller corn crop, and with China being a wild card, we could go higher. I think the demand side, once you start building up demand, it’s tough to throttle demand. So I think we’re trying to find that price where we ratchet down the demand, and we haven’t done that yet. So we’re kind of in some rare air here, and we’re going to see probably more days like this. We’ve had big swings in the market, but so far we’re unchanged for the day, but that kind of belies the fact that corn has been down as much as 10 cents today; it’s been up as much as four. So that’s a 14-cent swing in corn prices today, which is pretty big. And beans, anywhere from 18 lower to six higher. So we’ve had almost a 25-cent swing in the bean markets. We’re starting to see some wide ranges and lighter volume, because the farmers just aren’t participating. And I understand why—they want to see how high is up before they make the next sale. They’ve already sold some, and they’re kind of kicking themselves in hindsight having sold too soon. But I think they still sold at profitable levels, it’s just even more profitable now. So yeah, we’re seeing a little bit light volume and the same old stories that we’ve talked about for a couple of weeks now continue to drive the market higher.

Todd Gleason: Have you heard about anybody running yet? I mean, and probably not in our area, but to the south I have heard some rumblings that there might be by the end of the week or even tomorrow folks beginning to go.

Greg Johnson: Oh yeah, yeah, I think so. I think this heat is really drying the corn down fast. The soybeans, we’re starting to see them turn. I think we’re still a couple of weeks away from seeing a lot of beans, but the corn, especially where we had some down corn, I know farmers are concerned about the quality of that and they would like to get that out of the field. So with corn drying down relatively fast with these high temperatures, I think farmers are going to be very anxious and eager to get that down corn out first. And then in a couple of weeks, we’ll start to see soybeans coming in as well as corn. If it keeps drying, I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re drying corn a point a day with these kind of temperatures. So even though corn might be 29, 30, 31% moisture today, in ten days’ time we could have that down into the low 20s. So harvest is going to sneak up on us. It’s going to be here faster before we know it. And some of the larger farmers that need to get started a little bit sooner, yeah, they could be starting probably later this week, I would guess.

Todd Gleason: Okay, get your pen out because you’re going to want to remember these numbers. The farm doc team released their crop budgets today, updated 2026 and looked at 2027. Actually, those who are interested, a webinar on Thursday morning from the farm doc team takes an hour. I’ll be there to host it. You can find it at farmdocdaily.illinois.edu so that you can sign up and watch that easily enough. It’s under events and webinars or at willag.org under the calendar of events. For a central Illinois highly productive farm, they have a yield still for corn at 240 bushels to the acre and a $4.95 price for this crop year. And for soybeans, 76 and $12.20. What do you think this crop actually looks like and what USDA will give us next week once we get to that report?

Greg Johnson: Most of the people that I’ve talked to seem to be very optimistic about their soybean yield potential. All the rain that we had in August has added to the pod, the bean potential. If they didn’t get drowned out earlier, if they survived all the heavy rains, I think the rains here in August have really helped the bean potential. I think that’s the general perception. Corn, on the other hand, I think we did some damage. It is so variable, but I think the heavy rains in June hurt us, and then the heavy rains in August probably hurt us a little bit too. So I’m not as optimistic on the corn yields. I don’t by no stretch is it a disaster, but I think it could be, you know, four or five bushels less than what we were last year. So if the government was 186 last year, we could be looking at 179, 180 this year. And maybe they come down on that 186 number eventually from last year, and so then you still come down three or four bushels off of that lower number and might actually get it below 180 at some point. Again, not a disaster, it just tightens up that balance sheet, especially with the demand being as strong as it’s been. We still have to find that price where we start to ration demand, and we haven’t done that yet. Lots of friendly things out there, and really about the only negative things out there right now in the corn and bean market is that the farmers are a little bit undersold, and the funds are approaching record long positions. So those are two things that we have to, you know, keep an eye on, but all the other demand-related factors are pretty friendly for both corn and soybeans at this point.

Todd Gleason: Hey, thanks much, I appreciate it.

Greg Johnson: Hey, thanks, Todd.

Todd Gleason: That’s Greg Johnson, he is with TGM. You’re listening to the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media on a Wednesday afternoon. Our theme music is written, performed, produced, and courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer Tim Gleason. Now up next: County Board meetings, data centers, civic engagement, and university educations.

08:28 Data Centers, Civic Engagement, and University Educations

Todd Gleason: For environmental science students at the University of Illinois, crucial lessons on ecology are currently unfolding at local county board meetings. For instance, as Champaign County considers an ordinance to regulate new hyperscale data centers, students are stepping up to the microphone to translate academic research into civic discourse. Bruce Beem is a junior studying natural resources and environmental sciences in the College of ACES. He’s from Springfield and recently joined a grassroots coalition to urge county officials to address the long-term remediation and wildlife impacts of these facilities. I spoke with him just after Monday evening’s task force meeting to take public comments. As you’ll hear, Bruce discusses how advocating for stricter local safeguards bridges the gap between his classroom training and real-world policy.

Bruce Beem: The biggest one in there that’s being discussed frequently is the remediation. So what happens to the data center when it inevitably is no longer in use at some point in time? Whether that be near or far down the line, there’s currently nothing in the ordinance that dictates who is responsible for the cleanup and how extensive it is. My particular area of focus as an environmental scientist was the wildlife impacts—primarily noise pollution, which is one of the biggest and most overlooked ways that humans impact the environment, as well as light pollution.

Todd Gleason: You talked about both extensively. The light pollution, I’m wondering in these areas what that might mean for birds and flyways.

Bruce Beem: The zoning that’s proposed is going to put the data center not quite in the rural but on the outskirts of the city. So in the city, there’s lots of light pollution, which is visible for many miles upwards. It’s somewhat unavoidable. The issue with this is that we’re going to expand the light pollution with the data center. And the Champaign-Urbana area especially is a big crossover hotspot for migrating birds from Canada that fly down to Mexico. So I have a professor that’s doing research on whippoorwills. They come down at the end of August, and this is crucial foraging land for them. What the light pollution will do is it will carry miles and miles further than what we can see because the birds have different sort of optical receptors. And they might change their course and start to avoid these crucial foraging habitats and not make it down south for the winter where they need for their migration.

Todd Gleason: And what impact does sound have on all of this?

Bruce Beem: So sound is another huge factor when it comes to wildlife. Currently, they’re just talking about monitoring DBA, which is decibels with an A-weighting. So that’s a frequency filter designed for humans. So that’s great for loud stuff, for car horns or airplane engines. But wildlife, especially when we’re talking about birds and prey animals, have vastly different audio receptors than we do. And this is largely unstudied because this is a new field. Especially the constant hum. So most of the research, at least that I’ve read about noise pollution, is focusing on traffic, which usually dies down in the nighttime and allows animals a quiet chance to go out and forage and mate and do all their normal things. This is largely unstudied how a continuous permanent change of the ambiance might affect certain animals and their behavior.

Todd Gleason: Anything that you all hope that might come from attending this event and speaking out?

Bruce Beem: The moratorium ends in April. We are trying to bring up enough points of areas where they need to be further researched to extend the moratorium so that we can spend more time researching and potentially put in some more safeguards to protect humans, protect the environment. We’re also here to coalition with the community and help spread awareness that this is happening. It’s not just on TV, it’s coming near you, so we’re trying to help spread awareness so that we can hopefully get more people involved and more people informed.

Todd Gleason: How do you suppose this bolsters your educational experience at the University of Illinois and the College of ACES?

Bruce Beem: Being somewhere like Champaign-Urbana that has such an active political community and environmental community, being a part of this community is inspiring. But it’s also educational. Like, we just heard from Stuart in there, the president of the Sierra Club. He’s been doing this for 40 years. He’s got a lot of great knowledge. He’s got a lot of different knowledge that is different from the world of academics, where, like, the professors will have the knowledge about the ecology, but the how we translate the ecology into action is, I think, best taught through our community members that have been doing it for decades.

Todd Gleason: That was Bruce Beem from Monday night’s Champaign County Board event taking comments on hyperscale data centers. He is a natural resources and environmental sciences undergrad student in the University of Illinois College of ACES. I’m Extension’s Todd Gleason.

14:38 Ag Weather with Drew Lerner, World Weather Inc

Todd Gleason: Let’s turn our attention now to the growing regions across the planet. Drew Lerner is here, he’s with World Weather Incorporated in Kansas City, and like those of us in the Eastern Corn Belt, he too is suffering from the hot weather. Hi, Drew, thank you for being with us. Speaking of that hot weather, in the western side of the Corn Belt, and more importantly to the southwest where you are in Kansas and going into Oklahoma, Texas, some of those places all the way up to Montana, I suppose, where the hard red winter wheat crop would need to be seeded this fall, are you worried very much about those areas?

Drew Lerner: Well, certainly when we look at the state of the fields right now, we would say yes. But do you think that September will be a nice month of transition for parts of the region? I believe Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, yesterday hit 100 for the 31st time this summer. There’s a lot of folks talking about how that compares to 2011, but it still pales rather greatly. I think there was 72 days of 100-degree readings in that summer. I may have that wrong, but I think that’s right. But anyway, the heat and dryness have been quite prevalent, as you know, from Kansas to Texas in the most recent few weeks. And you’re correct, it was pretty hot earlier in the summer all the way up into Montana and the northern half of the Rocky Mountains and parts of even the Northern Plains. We had some crazy heat. So there is a broad-based area of moisture deficits in hard red winter wheat production areas, and this is going to have to be addressed pretty quickly. Some of the early season planting actually occurs in the first week or two of September; that’s usually a crop that is grazed, and certainly the livestock areas in the southwestern Plains are hurting big time for moisture and for grazing grass. It’s been just a terrible burn-up environment here recently. The livestock weight gains have been terrible with all the heat, as you can imagine. Anyway, get sidetracked there a little bit. The bottom line is we need rain out that way. We have seven days left in this particular round of heat and dryness, so a week from today will be the last of the hottest weather. We should see the jet stream come southward a little bit, should bring some cooling. Now, I’m not totally convinced it’ll rain well, but there should be some scattered showers when that cooler air arrives. And some of the models out there suggest a tropical system may come into Mexico about that time, and if that’s the case, that moisture could be pulled up into hard red winter wheat areas and we might get a nice little rain. But I’m not putting my money on the table quite yet for that.

Todd Gleason: Now when I looked into the weather forecast yesterday, there was a lot of rain in my area all the way across the state of Illinois through the central part of Illinois. That all disappeared. Tell me about what you see for the Corn Belt.

Drew Lerner: Yeah, and that’s part of this high-pressure ridge that’s off to the west. Because it’s not breaking down right away, it is blocking moisture from getting into the central or even portions of the eastern Midwest. I think the Great Lakes region and the upper Midwest will get rain periodically over this coming week, but everybody else is going to continue to dry down. Now, when that jet stream comes sagging southward, we will drag a couple of frontal systems through the Midwest and we should get a little bit of rain to occur. That’ll slow down some of that drying rate for that early corn, but might help to put a little bit of moisture back in the ground for a few of the late bean areas. I do not expect to go back into such a prolonged period of hot, dry weather in the second half of September. However, it does look to me like we’ll still see below normal precipitation in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, and parts of Illinois. Areas farther to the north will probably see a little bit more normal rainfall, and maybe even Ohio, Indiana, Michigan will probably do so as well. And the temperatures will be more seasonable in those more northern locations, and in the far eastern Midwest, but we’ll still keep a warmer than usual bias in the central and southwestern part of the Midwest.

Todd Gleason: What do you think about the first part of October? Do things change at that point?

Drew Lerner: Yeah, October is going to be a month of transition, I believe. By the time we get to the middle of the month, we should be seeing greater potential for rain across the Midwest. It may favor the really Illinois eastward: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, I think could have a wetter month of October. It’ll start out okay, but I think it’ll be fairly wet after that, so if it’s possible to get in those fields early, it’d probably be a good thing to do. Farther to the west, I think that we’ll see a mix of weather. We will have more moisture in the western Corn Belt in October than what we will see in September, but I don’t think it’s going to be quite persistent enough to really cause huge problems out that way. We will have to watch. October is the transition month, and in November, we’ll start seeing the El Niño traditional pattern starting to build up, and that should bring back some drier weather. So if we get behind in the harvest, we should be able to get caught up maybe in November.

Todd Gleason: Farmers in the center west of Brazil need to wait for rainfall now the calendars pass so they can plant, but they won’t until they have moisture. Has there been any?

Drew Lerner: Yeah, just last night we saw some rain in central parts of Mato Grosso, and neighboring areas of Mato Grosso do Sul and Goiás. It was the first organized rain that we’ve seen this season. Not enough to seriously change the moisture profile so that farmers start planting, but some of the computer forecast models have suggested that there will be a couple of other opportunities for rain in the next ten days, with next week being the most favored period. And as we get closer to mid-September, that becomes the more favored time period for fieldwork to start moving along. So anything that occurs around mid-month would likely spur on some more aggressive early-season planting as we move into the second half of September. Now, a little word of caution: if anybody knows someone down in Brazil, they probably need to know that that second half of September will probably have a lot of erratic rain. So there’ll be pockets that will do better than others; it won’t be ideal, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a big, bad drought or anything like that that’s going to seriously delay the initial planting of those early soybeans.

Todd Gleason: Any place across the planet that Super El Niño is causing a serious problem?

Drew Lerner: You know, right now it still is all about Indonesia. The fires there are increasing almost daily. Very, very dry situation there in Java and parts of southern Kalimantan and Sulawesi and some of the neighboring areas. You get up into Malaysia, though, it’s not too bad, and the mainland areas of Southeast Asia are doing really well. It’s kind of funny, I say that kind of sarcastically, but the Philippines would normally be involved with dryness during an El Niño year, but they’ve had some incredible amounts of rainfall in Luzon Island in the month of August. There was a number of locations that had just impressive rains; one location in Baguio City reported 92 inches of rain for the month of August. Believe it or not, it missed the record by two and a half inches. So anyway, but you don’t usually see that kind of rainfall without a tropical cyclone, and certainly not in the middle of an El Niño. To answer your question, though, most of the places around the world are not being seriously hurt by El Niño. We do have dryness in southern parts of India, a few pockets in Vietnam, a few pockets in southern Thailand, but nothing like what we’ve seen in past El Niño events. A little dryness now showing up in Ivory Coast in Ghana, but again, not a crisis. So the answer is really don’t have too many areas. Keep an eye on eastern Australia, though, because it does look like they’ll be hot and dry through the month of September.

Todd Gleason: We’ll have you do that and talk to you again next week. Thanks much.

Drew Lerner: You bet, have a good week.

Todd Gleason: You too. Drew Lerner is with World Weather Incorporated in Kansas City and helped us to wrap up this Wednesday edition of the Closing Market Report that came to you from Illinois Public Media. I’m Extension’s Todd Gleason.