Sep 03 | Closing Market Report

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The September 3, 2026, broadcast of the *Closing Market Report*, hosted by Todd Gleason, covers commodity price movements, farm financial projections, federal data initiatives, and severe weather patterns affecting agriculture. Matt Bennett of AgMarket.net analyzes the day's market dynamics, highlighting how grain futures rebounded from early-session lows as speculative buying met profit-taking ahead of the three-day holiday weekend, while noting that late-season heat is rapidly advancing crop drydown without heavily damaging early-planted corn. Looking ahead to 2026 and 2027 budgets, University of Illinois agricultural economist Nick Paulson reports that while higher corn and soybean prices are driving positive projected net returns in Central and Northern Illinois, rising input costs—especially for fertilizer and fuel tied to Middle Eastern geopolitical conflict—continue to keep overall margins below long-term historical averages of $100 per acre. From the Farm Progress Show in Boone, Iowa, USDA Under Secretary Scott Hutchins details the agency's four-pillar data modernization initiative aimed at reducing survey burdens on farmers, utilizing satellite and NASA geospatial imagery for yield forecasts, eliminating cross-agency redundancy through AI and advanced analytics, and improving reporting transparency. Concluding the report, meteorologist Mike Tannura of Tstorm Weather warns of historic late-season heat running 8 to 10 degrees above normal across the U.S. Corn Belt, while pointing to an exceptionally strong El Niño pattern that is bringing unseasonable early rains to central Brazil and heavy precipitation to southern South American grain belts.

01:50 Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, AgMarket.net
07:12 farmodc 2027 Corn and Soybean Returns
13:48 USDA Announces Data Modernization Plan
16:22 Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, Tstorm Weather

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Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant University in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report for the third day of September 2026. I’m Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason.

Coming up, we’ll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett of AgMarket.net. We’ll hear about USDA’s modernization plan for NASS and the collection of data. And then we’ll turn our attention, speaking of data, to the crop budgets from the farmdoc team, the agricultural economists here on the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. They held a webinar earlier today, which you can find online—more on that a bit later. And I was there in studio with them; we’ll talk with Nick Paulson in just a few moments.

Then, as we wrap up our time together, we’ll turn our attention to the weather forecast. Mike Tannura will join us from Tstorm Weather here on the Thursday 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 settled at $5.40 and 3/4, 2 and 3/4 lower. March contract down 2 and 1/4 at $5.56, and May futures at $5.63 and 1/4, two lower.

November beans up 6, finished $13.16 and 1/4. January at $13.31 and 1/2, 6 and 1/2 higher. Bean meal futures up $5.70. Since the bean oil down a dollar and a penny.

Wheat futures were off 19 and 3/4 in the December soft red at $7.54 and 1/4. The hard red December at $8.15 and 1/2, down 18 and 3/4.

Live cattle futures up $4.12 and 1/2. Feeders $6.72 and 1/2 higher. Lean hogs down 32 and 1/2 cents.

Crude oil: $91.26 a barrel, up 26 cents. And the wholesale price of gasoline: $3.13 and 1/2 cents, up 3 and 1/2 cents.

01:50 Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, AgMarket.net

Todd Gleason: Matt Bennett from AgMarket.net now joins us to take a look at the marketplace for the day. Hi, Matt, thanks for being with us again.

Matt Bennett: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Todd Gleason: Tell me what you saw in the commodity markets for the day.

Matt Bennett: You know, I want to talk a little bit about yesterday and today. Yesterday, the corn market was getting worked over at the start of the session. And then you turned around, and next thing you knew, Dec corn was 13 off the lows. We weren’t able to get to that 5.50 level, but long story short, we made a run at it on December corn.

And then you come in here today, and we were getting worked over once again. The market was down 17 cents at one time, turned around, and not long after that, you’re 13, 15 cents off the lows.

So, I think one thing that we’ve seen is certainly some profit-taking. You’re going into a three-day weekend. A lot of these longs have made a ton of money. But I still think there’s other people that are in this market that see the opportunity to buy a dip, and they’re doing it.

Todd Gleason: They’re doing the same thing in soybeans, it appears.

Matt Bennett: Yeah, absolutely. With soybeans, of course, whenever we got the news about the RINs, no doubt that news was mixed. The initial reaction, of course, wasn’t that great—we’re going to provide some exemptions. But turning around, we’re going to reallocate all of those gallons in ’26/’27. I think the trade felt like that might take the wind out of the bean market sails a little bit, but anything but that has happened.

You continue to see the funds want to be—I’m just going to assume, where we sit right here today, that they very well could be a record long for both corn and soybeans. I know people say, “Well, if that’s the case, it’s time to sell.” There’s nothing wrong with making a sale here. I’d just be very cautious as to assume they can’t take those positions a lot farther than they have in the past, just because of more money being available. But by all means, we’re fans of rewarding this market on these rallies.

Todd Gleason: Put your farmer hat on, maybe more importantly, your connected-to-the-seed-industry hat, and agronomy, and tell me what you’ve been learning about heat late in the season. I assume that varies for both crops. Corn, I guess grain fill probably has gone fairly well, but drydown is going fairly quickly. What do we know about the impact, if at all, of this kind of heat this late in the season for corn?

Matt Bennett: I think for the most part—I’m going to say for the most part, I’m talking most of your April up through maybe mid-May planted corn—what this is essentially going to do is give you a heck of a lot quicker drydown than what you thought. I don’t believe we’ll lose a lot in the way of bushels. I think some of that later corn, you certainly could have some issues with holding on to some kernels as far as kernel depth is concerned.

But for the corn market anyway, or for the corn crop, I don’t think this intense heat is probably going to damage as much as potentially, especially on some later beans. There’s no doubt this heat can be oppressive, and it could certainly impact yields to a degree. So, I think overall this corn crop is close enough to the finish line that this heat’s probably doing more for producers that they like than what they don’t like.

Todd Gleason: Yeah, it might be good for fuel supply as it’s related to natural gas and propane and those sorts of things that would be used to dry it down, particularly in some of the more northern areas. What should we watch tomorrow and then through the weekend before we open again on Monday night into Tuesday after Labor Day?

Matt Bennett: It’s a three-day weekend; we can’t lose sight of that. Everyone’s all bulled up. We’ve really ran this thing to levels that most people didn’t assume that we would see. And so, I think as a producer, for those that feel like it wouldn’t hurt to maybe extend a sale here and there, by all means, run your math. If you’re wildly profitable, that’s something we should consider.

I’m not saying something negative will come out of the weekend. Obviously, Putin’s talking about maybe a peace deal; that certainly got into the wheat market here today. Any sort of movement in that direction over the weekend would be hard on wheat prices, which would make it a little bit of a headwind for the corn market as well. So, just be cognizant of the fact of what prices are today. We don’t have to predict what’s going to happen next week; we just want to know what we can do with today’s price.

Todd Gleason: You said wildly profitable, but I’m going to guess you mean mildly, mildly or possibly moderately profitable, given—

Matt Bennett: Let’s say in comparison to what we’ve seen the last few years. A lot of growers, I’d say, Todd, were rewarding the market at like a 4.50 fall delivery type price, knew they could make money at normal yields. And I think a lot of people that are listening to this have normal to above normal yields. So when you factor both that in, plus the increase in cash prices of probably 75 cents, I would definitely say most people are going to be pretty happy with that.

Todd Gleason: Hey, thank you much, I appreciate it. We’ll talk with you during Commodity Week.

Matt Bennett: Absolutely, thank you.

Todd Gleason: Matt Bennett is with AgMarket.net.

07:12 farmdoc 2027 Corn and Soybean Returns

Todd Gleason: I’m University of Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason. We’re now joined by Nick Paulson, agricultural economist here on the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. Just finished up a crop budgets webinar; it took a look at the 2026 numbers, updating crop budgets for then, and then into 2027. What are the primary takeaways?

Nick Paulson: Well, the big positive—maybe good news takeaway—is on the revenue side. We’re seeing pricing opportunities now for the 2026 crop, and looking ahead to 2027, that are higher than what we were looking at in our May release, and higher than what we’ve seen since the 2023 crop year. Looking at close to a $5 price for 2026 crop and a $5 price on corn for 2027. Beans at or above $12 per bushel for both ’26 and ’27. Again, considerably higher than what we’ve had in the last three crop years.

Kind of the negative change is on the production cost side. Higher production costs in 2027, a continued increase in those, with the big changes on the increase in cost being in the fertilizer and fuel categories, just based on the higher prices we’ve seen for those, which are attributed mainly to impacts of the Iran conflict that started at the end of February.

Todd Gleason: So for both crop years, ’26 and ’27, we do show positives, with the exception of Southern Illinois for corn production?

Nick Paulson: Yeah. So the net impact, if you want to focus on returns: we are, again, for the first time since before 2023, seeing some positive return projections—revenues minus non-land and using cash rent as our land cost. Seeing some moderate positive returns for both corn and soybeans in Northern and Central Illinois, positive returns for beans in Southern Illinois, still looking at negative return projections on corn in Southern Illinois. But overall, improvements from the last three crop seasons, but also still below some longer-term averages that we track on those net returns per acre.

Todd Gleason: And then broadly, on those longer-term averages, since 2000, farms in Illinois have made about $100 an acre. And this would—and to be clear, the numbers that we’re talking about are on cash-rented properties, not owned properties. And we’re still below that $100 per acre despite the positives that are coming up for both ’26 and ’27.

Nick Paulson: Yeah, all that is accurate. Positive returns looking ahead to the current and next crop year, but below that longer-term average of $100 per acre. And I think the fact that we’ve been at a fairly constant average for the last 25 years is also something to think about. We’ve seen considerable increases in costs and the investment required to produce corn and soybeans, yet that average return there has obviously varied around that $100-per-acre mark, but there’s no indication that that average is increasing through time.

So in relative terms, comparing that to the cost of production requirements that we have, even that $100-per-acre number is something that I think we would like to see moving up through time as well.

Todd Gleason: Last winter, during the winter meeting season, you were talking about things that producers could do to lower cost. Can you remind us of what those were and how they might be used in the coming growing season?

Nick Paulson: The first one is just making sure that you’re making management decisions that are going to try to maximize your profitability rather than maximizing yields. The big one on that is on the fertility side of things, particularly with the high fertilizer prices that we have right now. As we look at individual farms and what they do in terms of nitrogen applications, phosphate fertilizer applications, there’s typically some room there to lower those application rates.

Take a look at the MRTN university rate recommendations for nitrogen, take a look at what the recommended replacement rates should be at or maintenance level should be for P and K. The data suggests most farms can probably back off a little bit on that to save some money.

The other thing that we’ve kind of consistently been saying is just make sure that those capital purchases that you make, whether that’s machinery or land, are evaluated correctly. We’ve seen a significant increase in machinery costs in the last three to four years. And so, carefully making those reinvestment decisions and doing that when it’s needed is another thing that we think can save a few dollars per acre.

Todd Gleason: The next step in this process coming up will be another webinar, this time around on cash rents. That’s later this month. You can find all those details on when on our website at farmdocdaily.illinois.edu or at willag.org under events and webinars on farmdoc daily and in the calendar at willag.org. And then, of course, they can always go online because there will be an article related to cash rent coming up on a Tuesday sometime in the month of September as well.

Nick Paulson: Yeah, we’ll put something out as soon as we get—we like to wait till we get those county cash rent numbers from USDA; it just gives us another source of information in addition to FBFM and the Illinois Society of Professional Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers. And like Todd said, we’ll have a webinar coming up talking about land and cash rent decisions as we head into 2027.

Todd Gleason: Thank you much, Nick. Nick Paulson, of course, is an agricultural economist, a member of the farmdoc team at the University of Illinois.

13:48 USDA Announces Data Modernization Plan

Todd Gleason: During the Farm Progress Show in Boone, Iowa, this week, Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins announced USDA’s new data modernization plan. The plan contains four central pillars. Scott Hutchins, USDA Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics, was at the show in Iowa and talked about that first pillar: modernizing the data reporting experience.

Scott Hutchins: We also are looking to review and redesign surveys to reduce burden on farmers so we can have pre-filled in data. We hear often that you get an eight-page survey and the first seven pages include requests for information that’s already been provided one way or the other. So those are some things that I think we can address relatively quickly and smoothly.

Todd Gleason: Hutchins says pillar number two involves acreage and yield estimates.

Scott Hutchins: When I was here in 2020, we were just really starting to move down the path of utilizing data from NASA. The accuracy of that data, the ability to use it to make predictions and estimates, has been increasing exponentially. And so we’re working very closely with NASA right now, as well as other companies, in order to make sure we have the most current, effective way to estimate things through geospatial estimations or passive evaluation.

Todd Gleason: And the third goal is to integrate technology and data platforms.

Scott Hutchins: This gives us the opportunity to incorporate AI and advanced analytics to improve the efficiency of everything that we do in this space, whether it’s for one particular agency or combined agencies; to utilize shared analytical and processing across USDA to reduce cross-agency redundancy—we do have a lot of redundancy in many places, we’re looking to eliminate that; and to evaluate secure ways to utilize voluntary access to precision agriculture. The tools that you see over here are things that we want to be able to utilize to maybe help calibrate some of the geospatial imagery or to do other things that we haven’t previously been able to do.

Todd Gleason: Finally, the Under Secretary says the fourth goal is to expand transparency and trust with producers.

Scott Hutchins: When we make revisions because we have new data or different data that’s significant, it creates a situation where we have to wonder, which one of these is accurate, or do we have trust in this process? And we know we have to earn that trust. We have to do it continuously, we have to do it with good science and good analytics. And we also need to be much more transparent and talk about not just what we think the answer is in a particular statistic, but how we got there and why we think it’s the right answer, at least under the circumstances that we have now.

Todd Gleason: Scott Hutchins is USDA Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics, and made his comments during the Farm Progress Show in Boone, Iowa, this week. For more information on the plan, go to usda.gov.

16:22 Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, Tstorm Weather

Todd Gleason: Let’s turn our attention to the growing regions across the planet and how conditions are faring in each of them. Today, we’re going to focus just on the Western Hemisphere: North and South America. Mike Tannura is here. He’s the president and CEO at Tstorm Weather, that’s tstorm.net online out of Naperville, Illinois. Hi, Mike, thanks for being with us again.

Mike Tannura: Hey, Todd, thanks a lot for having me.

Todd Gleason: Let’s begin in North America. Start with the Corn Belt. It’s been warm, hot even. Tell me about what you see for the weather today.

Mike Tannura: Well, we’re in a very unusual situation. The next 14 days for U.S. corn and soybeans will be the warmest for that period in more than 48 years of record. And it won’t just be a little bit warmer, it will be a lot warmer. These temperatures that we’re seeing now are more similar of mid-July and even warmer than normal for that period. And the temperature departure that we’re expecting for U.S. corn and soybeans over the next 14 days will be somewhere around 8 to 10 degrees above normal.

And that’s a really huge number, Todd, because this is not just for one location. So we’re not just talking about Peoria, Illinois, being that warm; we’re talking about the entire U.S. corn and soybean crops. And to get a departure that big is just incredible, and this will go down as one of the more unusual features of U.S. weather in quite a long time.

Todd Gleason: It is late in season, and I have not talked to the agronomists, but I would suppose there would need to be some rainfall even still today in order to ameliorate any problems that this much heat might cause.

Mike Tannura: Well, that’s a great question. I mean, it is a difficult one to figure out because typically weather that really matters for corn and soybeans is what happens from right after it’s planted until basically the end of August or maybe the start of September, which is where we are today.

Once you get beyond that, that gets into a tricky agronomic question because the crop is going to eventually die and be harvested, and this does accelerate that process, but does it lower yields and take them down with it? We know that the answer to that question will be yes if it’s in August, but now we’re moving into September, and so it becomes a little bit more difficult to figure out because a big heat wave at the end of September probably means nothing, and we’re kind of in that transition period from one to the other.

So, it’s a tricky one to answer, but as far as the rainfall question, we can see that there will be storms with this setup in northern growing areas. So, we’ll start to turn stormier from North Dakota through Minnesota, Wisconsin, into Michigan, and then affecting northern areas of Illinois and Iowa. So, there is some rain ahead, but as you head south from there, especially once you get south of Interstate 80, there are just not very good rain chances for a while because the heat is so strong.

Eventually, this all will start to break down a little bit once we get into next week. A couple of cool fronts will move through, and that should help to produce at least some thunderstorms in some different areas. But keep in mind, these cool fronts are not the kind that are going to change this entire setup. We already talked about how unusual the next 14 days are going to be, and that’s accounting for those cool fronts.

Todd Gleason: Let’s turn your attention to South America, particularly the center-west part of Brazil to begin with, where soybean planting may even be underway at this point.

Mike Tannura: Well, yeah, and that’s very unusual, too, Todd, because usually you don’t really start to see great rains in Central and Northern Brazil until you get into October and even November. Now, we’re not seeing great rains, so we don’t want to overstate what’s actually happening there, but we are seeing showers and thunderstorms in Mato Grosso, in Goiás, and in Minas Gerais. This is the key area for soybeans once you get into late September and October, because that’s when they’re all being planted.

Typically, you wouldn’t start even thinking too much about this for a few more weeks, but they’ve had enough rain over the last couple of days, and there’s enough rain coming up, that we have to guess that some producers there are going to take advantage of this and start to plant soybeans weeks ahead of normal.

Now, even if a lot of them decide to do that, typically you only see 1, 2, 3% of the crop planted toward the end of September, but those numbers could be a little bit higher. But even with all of that, Todd, you need to remember this: If you do decide to plant at this time of the year, you’re taking some real risks, because rains are typically very irregular until you get about six weeks from now. And that’s because we’re in the dry season today, but we’ll be in the wet season a few months from now. And so as we ramp up these rain numbers over the course of time, the rains become more frequent.

So if you plant right now because of the rain, it wouldn’t be all that unheard of to suddenly turn dry for two, maybe even three weeks in a row later in September and into early October. So, that’s something those producers will need to think about. But the possibility is there for them to plant now because they’ve had enough rain.

Todd Gleason: What do you see for the first-crop corn-growing and wheat-growing regions actually in the southern part of Brazil and other parts of South America?

Mike Tannura: Well, part of the reason that we’re seeing the rains that we already talked about is because of very cool air in Argentina and extending into Southern Brazil. That’s keeping the main storm track stuck over Southern Brazil, and they’re going to see some very heavy rain. They’ve already seen 3 to 6 inches over the last week in parts of Rio Grande do Sul, into Santa Catarina and Southern Paraná, and these same areas are going to receive more rain over the next 5 to 10 days.

So, very wet conditions for first corn, very wet conditions for wheat, and that first corn crop is being planted now, so this is not an ideal start for them. Now, they do have these crazy wet periods once in a while there, and this might be one of those.

And the one thing we haven’t even mentioned, Todd, is, you know, why is this happening? Well, that’s always a tricky one to answer, but I just want to point out that we’re moving into this strong El Niño, and not only a strong El Niño, probably the strongest one on record. And our records are solid back to 50 years, but if you just look at the scope of how much stronger it’s going to be than the past ones, you have to think it’s going to be one of the strongest one in hundreds of years. And we might be seeing some of the effects of that now with just some odd weather taking place in different areas of the world.

Todd Gleason: Hey, thanks much. We’ll talk with you again next week.

Mike Tannura: That sounds great.

Todd Gleason: That’s Mike Tannura. He is with Tstorm Weather at tstorm.net online and joined us here on the Closing Market Report for this Thursday afternoon. I’m Extension’s Todd Gleason.