Sep 08 | Closing Market Report

Todd Gleason: 00:00

From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market reported as the September 2025. I'm extension's Todd Gleeson. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Kurt Kimmel. He's at agmarket.net out of Normal, Illinois.

Todd Gleason: 00:15

We'll hear from Mark Russo too from Everstream Analytics about the weather forecast. He's in Chicago, and then we'll turn our attention to what's happening in Edwardsville at the SIU based National Corn to Ethanol Research Center. Yin Yang is the interim director there. I spoke with her during the farm progress show at the end of the month of August, 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.org.

announce: 00:51

Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.

Todd Gleason: 00:57

December corn for the day at $4 and 21 and 3 quarters of a cent, up three and three quarters. March 3 higher at $4.39 and a half, and the May corn at $4.49 and 3 quarters up 2 and a half cents. November soybeans, $10.33 and 3 quarters, six and three quarters higher. January at $10.52 and 3 quarters, up seven at a quarter, and March, seven at a quarter higher at $10.68. Bean meal futures up a dollar 40.

Todd Gleason: 01:22

The bean oil, 17¢ higher. Wheat futures in the December, four and a half higher for the soft red at five twenty three and three quarters. The hard red at $5.17 and a quarter at finished 12¢ higher for the day. The live cattle futures at $2.35 80, down 17 and a half cents. Feeders at $3.59 17 and a half, a dollar 27 and a half higher, and lean hogs at 90 die $95.15, 87 and a half higher.

Todd Gleason: 01:48

Crude oil for the day at $62.32, up 45¢ a barrel. Diesel fuel about two and three tenths of a cent higher. Gasoline on the r bob, down, well, just about even for the day here. A dollar 95 and 9 tenths of a cent per gallon. We're now joined by Kurt Kimmel of agmarket.net to take a look at the marketplace on a Monday afternoon.

Todd Gleason: 02:10

Hi, Kurt. Thanks for being with us.

Curt Kimmel: 02:11

Well, glad to be here, Todd. Thank you.

Todd Gleason: 02:14

It's an update. Tell me about it.

Curt Kimmel: 02:16

Oh, look at the corn chart on the daily chart. Down, up, down, up, down, we had a reversal down, reversal up, it's every other day is different and beans, they kind of reverse back up after seeing some reversals back and forth in through here, but no, to answer your question, we're climbing the wall of worry here, for the most part. I think the market's hanging in there quite well. There's decent demand underneath the marketplace and, no big sales, nothing from China of course. But overall, the shipments and the weekly export sales report are running fair fairly decent.

Curt Kimmel: 03:00

Over the weekend, we did have an actual patchy frost freeze up in the Northwest, still trying to get an assessment on it. Their crop was kind of variable where it was when this occurred, but for the most part, the GS18 Panfields maybe 5% out of that, North Dakota region in through there, but the market's not real concerned about it just at the moment. The overall weather pattern is of course gonna be warmer and drier, and that's the main concern here as we start to move forward here to the last thirty days. If you look at the thirty day precept for what we've had, what we have in the future is just bone dry for the most part. We'll see how the market moves forward here and digest this news as we move forward.

Curt Kimmel: 03:52

But kind of step one is the conditions report this afternoon. Not expecting a big drop, corn, good to excellent category expected to be 68% versus 69% last week. Soybeans 64% good to excellent versus 65% last week. As a nation, we'll have our first real corn harvest progress expect to be about 5% complete as a nation, versus 5% a year ago there, Todd.

Todd Gleason: 04:22

On Friday this week at 11AM central time, USDA will release its next crop production report. What are your expectations?

Curt Kimmel: 04:32

Well the Bloomberg estimates did see that here just a little while ago. Corn yields expect to be down 2.8 bushels, a 186 bushels of the acre. Bean yield down 0.4 down to 53.2. As an ag market team we're a little lower than that, we kind of feel the corn could be yield down to 184.8 and the bean yield down to 52.5. Just judging by early harvest activity, there's some decent crops out there but it's no record breakers that we're seeing for what little has taken place thus far, guys.

Curt Kimmel: 05:13

They're just kind of nosing in into it through here. So we'll have some more actual physical, data here as we, move on forward. But that's kind of gonna be the market maker here at the end of the week, just a little tighter fundamental situation. Now the big thing is a lot of the animals are still looking at if we lower the production, we'll go lower demand. Well, might be able to do that on the beans, but this corn demand just remains huge.

Curt Kimmel: 05:40

And I think you can back corn demand off on the supply demand balance sheet for a month or two, but you just can't back it off a whole lot time.

Todd Gleason: 05:48

As you know well, farmers are behind in their marketing for both corn and soybeans. Soybeans are an issue because of China not being in the marketplace. However, the Mississippi River, is a problem at this point, and meteorologists are beginning to throw up caution flags, particularly as it's related to the next couple of weeks with hot, dry weather coming and conditions could worsen already right at low stage for the river in some places. I'm wondering if you're concerned about basis deterioration from the low water levels and freight rates and whether they have begun to creep up or not?

Curt Kimmel: 06:31

Yeah, we'll start to see that and that'll be a concern if this trend continues because basically the transportation along that region is going to be pretty much a concern. It's going to affect the bottom line. The other part is, of course, the export news out of The Gulf. We'll see how that unfolds too. But there's been plenty of moisture out of the South, trail of south feed the river starting to dry up too.

Curt Kimmel: 06:56

Basis wise, you really got to push the pencil in through here. If you take, the fall bid in the heat of fall in October, it's pretty wide and it's pretty low price, But if you start to get elevator bids or on out to further months in here, there's some economic advantage maybe storing this crop and not selling at the fall low end through here. So you gotta push the pencil, see what your storage options are and see what your merchandisers are gonna do working with you. Cause there's cases you can pick up 40 some cents in beans as much as 30¢ in corn by storing it. That's the price difference between the two.

Curt Kimmel: 07:36

Now that's not standard from elevator to elevator, but if you look at Decatur bids, you can pull that up and look at the low bid in October versus the bid further out. If you have to pay commercial storage, it could pay in some cases. Now that's not true everywhere across the Midwest, but each individual needs to kind of push the pencil here and see what opportunities are out there.

Todd Gleason: 08:03

Hey. Thanks much. I appreciate it.

Curt Kimmel: 08:04

Very good. Take care.

Todd Gleason: 08:05

You too. Kurt Kimmel is with agmarket.net. In today's agricultural news, we'll start with California and e 15. The California general assembly's approval of e 15 sales last week, and the governor's expected okay is expected to boost corn demand at a time corn growers are about to harvest a record crop. The Renewable Fuels Association, Troy Bradencamp, says once governor Newsom signs the e 15 bill, California will become the largest e 15 consumer state in the nation.

Troy Bredencamp: 08:38

That adds another 500, almost 600,000,000 gallons of new demand for American ethanol when California adopts e 15.

Todd Gleason: 08:49

Bradenkamp says this comes at a time when US corn growers are expected to harvest a record 17,000,000,000 bushels of corn.

Troy Bredencamp: 08:56

It's 200,000,000 bushel new demand for new corn grinds. So that is significant when you're looking at one of the biggest crops, maybe the biggest crop in history coming in this fall.

Todd Gleason: 09:08

Breidencamp says it's also a political boost for year round e 15 sales.

Troy Bredencamp: 09:11

Now we have to use that momentum and convince congress that they need to resolve this legislatively to allow for e 15 to be sold nationwide year round and get rid of that summer driving season restriction for e 15. That would be the cherry on top of the cupcake.

Todd Gleason: 09:31

He adds it helps to win e 15 approval by California, a blue state that has not been ethanol friendly until now. In other agricultural news, president Trump Thursday signed an order to implement a trade deal with Japan that is expected to increase US agricultural sales by $8,000,000,000 a year. Over the past five years, Japan has bought on average just under $12,900,000,000 in annual farm goods from The United States. Spelling out agricultural trade, the order stated specifically the government of Japan is working toward an expedited implementation of a 75% increase of U. S.

Todd Gleason: 10:10

Rice procurements within the Minimum Access Rice Scheme and purchases of U. S. Agricultural goods including corn, soybeans, fertilizer, bioethanol, as well as other US products in amounts totaling $8,000,000,000 a year. And that's a look at today's Agricultural News. Today, we'll hear another in the series of interviews I did from the University of Illinois tint at the Farm Progress Show in late August.

Todd Gleason: 10:48

We were joined on stage by Yin Zhang. She is the director of the Corn to Ethanol Research Center. I asked her to tell me about it and its mission.

CERC: 11:00

Yes. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. It's a great honor to be able to come over to this tent. Actually, I'm from I'm the interim center director, from the National Quanto Ethanol Research Center on the campus of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

CERC: 11:17

So this center was created as a r and d, facility scale up facility to, help the coin to ethanol industry. We opened the door in 02/2003. So if you get a chance, visit us. We are about thirty minutes from Downtown Saint Louis. What you're gonna see is a a mini dry grind ethanol plant.

CERC: 11:43

That's pretty much what we are. A a small dry grind ethanol plant with lab service. The first ten years when we opened the door, we did a lot of just taking new technologies to test and validate them before sending them back to the coin to ethanol industry. So in the past decade or so, my colleagues and I, we were able to expand our horizon to retrofit, coin to ethanol production system to make other biofuels, also make a bioproducts. So that's a way to summarize, insert.

Todd Gleason: 12:27

The these are bolt on kind of functions to existing, biofuel or ethanol plants. What kind of other biofuels are are you able to produce from them in that case?

CERC: 12:41

Great question, Todd. So, in the past decade or so, we also scale up biobutanol production. And in addition to that, we worked with DOE lab from UC Berkeley campus. We worked on isopreno. As a matter of fact, their group are still working on to use isopreno as, one of the feedstock to make jet fuel.

Todd Gleason: 13:10

So if you're able to do that, how many places have you been working with in the state of Illinois, or are they mostly outside of the state of Illinois?

CERC: 13:18

Great question. So our facility, we, it's a we designed mostly work for as a contractual research organization. Very different from a lot of other organic growth research facility. So because of that, our main income actually comes from doing what we call contractual research service. To answer Todd's question, we actually, in reality, we actually probably worked, with more companies outside the Illinois state.

CERC: 13:55

So just because of the nature, then it's all based on the needs, utilize the pilot facility.

Todd Gleason: 14:02

How hard is it to take on an existing plant the ethanol production and convert it to SAF or sustainable aviation fuel?

CERC: 14:12

It's it's actually a great question. So I don't wanna do this very, very technically. But, from over a thousand feet overview, the the coin to ethanol industry is able to make ethanol as a feedstock to support the production of sustainable aviation fuel. So our current facility is not good to be used to make jet fuel. But it's extremely good to make qualified ethanol as a feedstock to make the production of sand.

Todd Gleason: 14:56

I did not understand that. What qualifies it then to be moved and used in other places to create SAF? What's the qualification?

CERC: 15:06

Beautiful. Beautiful question. So I can tell you right now, there is a company who's doing almost a commercial size, jet fuel production, which is called Lanza Jet. Their headquarter is actually in Chicago, Illinois. They utilize a pathway called alcohol to jet.

CERC: 15:30

So, their production for for the moment, the majority, I believe, the ethanol they use is actually from Brazil. It's called, from the sucrose, based ethanol. The main reason we cannot immediately use most of the cornstarch ethanol to make jet fuel is something we call the carbon intensity score. So, one of the challenges to utilize 70,000,000,000 gallon of corn starch ethanol to support a jet product jet fuel production will be lower the carbon intensity score of what we do. So it's quite challenging.

CERC: 16:12

However, actually, I mentioned that yesterday at another meeting. To me, as a technical people who's done ethanol about twenty years, so I think it's not as challenging as we think. As a matter of fact, my center are in the middle of signing a contract with an international company by taking carbon dioxide from cornstarch fermentation to make industrial chemical. By doing that, we can immediately knock down the carbon intensity score to a high level. By doing that, if the results come from NSERC will look promising, we will help to, for our industry to adapt that technology.

CERC: 17:00

Immediately, you're going to make 16,000,000,000 gallon of ethanol, cornstarch ethanol from this country qualified to make a jet fuel.

Todd Gleason: 17:10

That's all of the ethanol in this country. Yeah. That is a fantastic story to tell. LanzaJet, of course, has their pilot plant, if I remember correctly, in Georgia, but it's along the port. And now we know why because they're using ethanol, of course, imported from Brazil made from sugarcane rather than from corn, but they are working very hard with you, I suppose, to make sure that they can manage to make that from the crop grown right here in The United States.

CERC: 17:38

Yes.

Todd Gleason: 17:39

Thank you much. I appreciate you taking the time with me today.

CERC: 17:42

Thank you.

Curt Kimmel: 17:42

Thank you

CERC: 17:43

for all the questions.

Todd Gleason: 17:44

Yan Zhang is the interim director of the National Corn to Ethanol Research Center with SIU.

CERC: 17:51

Thank you.

Todd Gleason: 17:52

You're listening to the closing market report on this Monday afternoon. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Our theme music is written, performed, and produced by my brother, Tim Gleason. He's a farmer in Elkhart, Illinois. That's Logan County.

Todd Gleason: 18:05

Don't forget to visit our website at willag.org, willag.0rg. Mark Russo from Everstream Analytics now joins us to take a look at the forecast for the growing regions across the planet. Hi, Mark. Thanks for being with us. I'd like you to start by taking a look backwards first over the weekend.

Todd Gleason: 18:25

I know there were some cold temperatures, particularly in the Northwestern part of the Corn Belt, enough to do any or a little damage at all?

Mark Russo: 18:34

Hey, Todd. Yeah. We don't think that there was any issues with the colder temperatures here over the weekend. Can't rule out a few pockets of frost in the Northwest Midwest, but based on the stage of the crop, even those types of temperatures should not have caused a problem. At this stage of the season, you really need a hard freeze with temperatures in the twenties for numerous hours to even begin to cause some issues.

Mark Russo: 19:01

So, you know, maybe a few kind of burned back leaves or, some patchy frost, but we don't see this as being a problem.

Todd Gleason: 19:08

I've been doing a lot of manual labor over the last week because the weather has been fantastic. I'd like to get another week's worth in. And under these kinds of conditions, I take it that's probably not gonna be possible.

Mark Russo: 19:21

Yeah. Well, overall here, this drier than normal pattern, it looks to continue not only across Illinois, but across much of the Corn Belt over the next two weeks. And along with that, we're seeing temperatures now return to warmer than normal levels after this, you know, unseasonably cool spell here in recent weeks. That's, you know, dramatically coming to an end over the next few days, and warmer than normal temperatures look to then be in place basically second half of this week all the way, you know, through next week and the start of the following week.

Todd Gleason: 19:55

Hey. I do have one question about that. I think that these cool temperatures, which have been persistent about every forty five days or so this growing season, did does that look to you like mid October will be back into something that's colder than average?

Mark Russo: 20:11

That's certainly a possibility, but not seeing any real strong signals there or any, you know, kind of tie into the cycle of what we've seen with these periods of cooler weather. Certainly, this last one was the most significant here of the past several months, but doesn't necessarily mean that it has to come back the October. Sometimes those cycles can be tied to tropical convective patterns across the Equatorial areas, and that might be one of the reasons here for it lately. But again, as we get into this time of year, you tend to have different drivers of the pattern compared to what was the case, you know, the heart of summer.

Todd Gleason: 20:55

Yeah. Speaking of drivers of the pattern, you told me that it's going to be warmer than average. It's also going to be dry. I'm wondering what that means for the river system in the Midwest.

Mark Russo: 21:05

Yeah. With the pattern here coming up, the river levels, especially the Mid To Lower Mississippi Basin, are heading toward a period of restrictions. Already, we're seeing in places such as Cairo and Memphis water levels that are below the ten year average. And with this drier and warmer pattern, that'll quickly lower even further towards or even getting to threshold levels of restrictions here, probably, you know, next week or within the next few weeks.

Todd Gleason: 21:37

That won't be good news for producers who are bringing crop off the field and depending on the river system to move that into the export, ports at New Orleans, which reminds me going further to the south, we probably should check-in with Mato Grosso, in particular, in Brazil to see if the beginning of their planting season can start. That usually depends on whether they get rainfall and the end of the dry season there.

Mark Russo: 22:03

Yeah. We're closely watching and forecasting the weather for Mato Grosso, and we are expecting a timely onset of the rainy season across Mato Grosso and Center West Brazil over the next few weeks. Now this week is on the drier side, and next week there is some debate in computer model guidance how much rainfall will Mato Grosso receive. But to us, there's an overwhelming majority of signals that point towards the pattern just becoming more conducive for rain development as we go from now through the end of the month. And again, you said, Todd, once the rains kick in, that initiates planting.

Mark Russo: 22:43

And so we are expecting a timely, you know, or normal window of planting here coming up.

Todd Gleason: 22:49

Thank you much. We'll talk with you again next week. You're welcome, Todd. Mark Russo is with Aberstream Analytics joined us on this Monday 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 willag.org.

Todd Gleason: 23:07

I'm Extensions, Todd Gleason.