Episode Number
10446
Episode Show Notes / Description
The September 28, 2026, broadcast of the Closing Market Report, hosted by Todd Gleason, covers commodity futures and features analysis from three agricultural experts. University of Illinois agricultural economist Joe Janzen discusses the commodity market's negative reaction to the recent Trump-Xi summit, specifically noting the exclusion of soybeans from reciprocal tariff reductions. Janzen also analyzes a typical 15-cent drop in corn basis during the five-week peak harvest window due to supply pressure. University of Missouri agricultural economist Jason Franken reviews the USDA Hogs and Pigs and cold storage reports, concluding that lowered domestic pork consumption and reduced export projections will likely squeeze hog producers' profitability. Finally, Mark Russo of EverStream Analytics provides a weather update, contrasting harvest-delaying rains in the western Corn Belt with dry conditions in the eastern states, while also noting favorable planting moisture in center-west Brazil.
01:59 Ag Markets with Joe Janzen, University of Illinois
15:48 USDA Hogs and Pigs Report
17:49 Ag Weather with Mark Russo, EverStream Analytics
01:59 Ag Markets with Joe Janzen, University of Illinois
15:48 USDA Hogs and Pigs Report
17:49 Ag Weather with Mark Russo, EverStream Analytics
Transcript
cmr260928
The September 28, 2026, broadcast of the Closing Market Report, hosted by Todd Gleason, covers commodity futures and features analysis from three agricultural experts. University of Illinois agricultural economist Joe Janzen discusses the commodity market's negative reaction to the recent Trump-Xi summit, specifically noting the exclusion of soybeans from reciprocal tariff reductions. Janzen also analyzes a typical 15-cent drop in corn basis during the five-week peak harvest window due to supply pressure. University of Missouri agricultural economist Jason Franken reviews the USDA Hogs and Pigs and cold storage reports, concluding that lowered domestic pork consumption and reduced export projections will likely squeeze hog producers' profitability. Finally, Mark Russo of EverStream Analytics provides a weather update, contrasting harvest-delaying rains in the western Corn Belt with dry conditions in the eastern states, while also noting favorable planting moisture in center-west Brazil.
01:59 Ag Markets with Joe Janzen, University of Illinois
15:48 USDA Hogs and Pigs Report
17:49 Ag Weather with Mark Russo, EverStream Analytics
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Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant University in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report as of the 28th day of September 2026.
Todd Gleason: I’m Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason. Coming up, we’ll talk about the commodity markets with University of Illinois agricultural economist Joe Janzen. I’ll bring you up to speed on last week’s hogs and pigs report with Jason Franken from the University of Missouri, and we’ll close out our time together by taking a look at the weather forecast. We’ll do that with Mark Russo. He is at EverStream Analytics, and it all comes to you from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world, online, on demand at willag.org. That’s w-i-l-l-a-g.org.
announce: Todd Gleason’s services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.
Todd Gleason: December corn in Chicago finished at 5.23 today, down 5 and 1/4 cents. The March at 5.36 and 1/2, 5 and 1/2 lower, and the May futures at 5.43 and 1/2, down 5 and 1/4. November beans down 30 and 3/4 of a cent at 12.88 and 1/4, January 13.03, down 29 and 1/2, and the March soybeans at 13.12, 27 and 1/2 lower. Bean meal down $12.20 today, the bean oil 15 cents lower. Wheat futures: soft red December at 6.88 and 3/4, down 14 and 1/2 cents. The hard red December at 7.45 and 3/4, down 16 and 1/4 cents. Live cattle futures in Chicago at $220.80, down $1.35. Feeders at 329.27 and 1/2, down $2.75, and lean hogs at $68.40, down 62 and 1/2 cents. Crude oil at $92.55 a barrel, up 14 cents at this hour, and gas at 3.15 and 9/10, 2 and 7/10 lower.
01:59 Ag Markets with Joe Janzen, University of Illinois
Todd Gleason: Joe Janzen, agricultural economist from the University of Illinois, now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. Hi Joe, thank you for being with us. Let’s start with the talk of the weekend, or the whole week last week for that matter. There were expectations by the agricultural industry that something might come from the meeting between President Xi and President Trump related to agricultural exports. The corn industry was hopeful, ethanol as well. Soybean folks were thinking there might be at least confirmation of the 25 million metric tons on the calendar year of sales that could be put into place. What actually did we see, at least to this point in time when you and I are talking, as it relates to the facts on the ground after the fact?
Joe Janzen: Yeah, obviously a lot of anticipation going into this and then not really knowing. I think the market is processing what has happened, which was not a lot of direct talk from the principal players about what might happen with agricultural trade. And then this list of tariff reductions, reciprocal tariff reductions that came out of the meeting that included corn, other grains, and did not include soybeans. And so the market has reacted pretty strongly to that. Soybeans were down almost as much as 40 cents this morning on that news. So the market is not getting what it wanted or what it anticipated coming out of this Trump-Xi summit. The thing to maybe keep in the back of our minds is that the bigger story that came out of this was this two-month truce, sort of a four-month truce that would get us a little bit further down the road to kind of pump the brakes on the most tense parts of this conflict. And I think that means that China wants to keep that soybean import chip in its toolbox of trade policy going forward. And so still a lot to process as we go through this, but the market didn’t like what it saw coming out of the meeting and the reports that came after.
Todd Gleason: I’ll come back to that, but I do want to stay with the pushing the can down the road just a bit. This is where the president says he would impose greater, stiffer tariffs on China, and that the trade war would actually resume. President Xi and President Trump are expecting to meet two more times, I think before January, and they’re hopeful that they might be able to come to some types of agreement. Is this enough time, in your opinion, to actually hammer out something that would be worthwhile?
Joe Janzen: Potentially. I think there are obviously a lot of much bigger issues at play here beyond agricultural trade. I think the hope is that in getting to a place where there is a bigger détente on some of these big picture issues vis-à-vis the competition between China and the United States on technology, on AI, and other things, we would get somewhere positive with respect to agricultural trade. That’s kind of what we’re looking for, and I think there’s certainly enough time. What that means for commodity prices in the here and now for this year, I think the market’s best guess is that we would get to something like a normal-ish level of China soybean imports from the United States, which is that 25 million metric ton target. That’s in the long run a level that they have been very comfortable with in terms of purchasing soybeans from the United States.
Todd Gleason: Let’s take up an article before we get to actual marketing that you have written for the farmdoc website. I have talked about this a couple of times on the air, but not had the chance to talk with the author, you, about the basis article that you’ve written. You took a look over time at what happens to corn and soybean basis, particularly corn basis, during the fall harvest period in the United States. And not surprisingly, you have confirmed of course that after we get to about 50% harvested for corn, it starts to trend back up, but there is apparently this five-week sort of trough that takes place annually. Can you tell me about the article itself?
Joe Janzen: Yeah, I think people have long recognized that if something is abundant, the price of it tends to fall, and that tends to be what happens at harvest, right? We get a lot of people very willing to bring corn and beans to the market. The local price dips, and so we looked at that local price, what happens to basis in specific states around the time when harvest pressure, that flood of new crop to the market, happens. We find that before the most intense harvest period, basis is a little bit better. It dips, it kind of stays low during the harvest period, which is roughly five weeks in any given location, and then it starts to come back as that harvest pressure recedes. The overall dip is about 15 cents. And so that kind of creates a thinking in the farmer’s mind, which is, can I avoid that 15-cent dip? What do you have to do to kind of get away from that? One of those things is maybe you have to be harvesting in a place where you’ve got something to bring to market that other people don’t, and that’s something that seems to be kind of the case this year. We’ve seen that with really strong basis in particular parts of the Corn Belt where harvest has been slow to get started this year. They’re kind of avoiding a little bit of this harvest dip. And so the thinking has to be, well, if I’m in that period where I’m harvesting corn in the midst of that most intense glut of harvest where the harvest pressure is the strongest, is it worth trying to store or hold grain to kind of avoid that little bit of a discount that you have to take if you want to make delivery at that point in time?
Todd Gleason: What are the things that producers ought to think as they look at what to do? Because they’ll need to consider the in-charge, what the interest rates are, all those sorts of things.
Joe Janzen: Yeah, I think there’s a whole bunch of reasons why that basis dips. It’s because people have said it’s not really worth it for me to avoid delivering right now. And so what are all the things that go into that? Some of that is just harvest logistics, like it’s easier for me to get that grain to the elevator today than it is to take it to my own bins and store it there. There’s that additional handling cost that comes from putting grain in storage on-farm and then having to move it later. All of those logistics costs are hard to put a number on, but when you add them all up, they probably start to add up to something that’s at or maybe even above that 15 cents per bushel that we find is the normal harvest-time basis dip.
Todd Gleason: Because you looked at different states, were there differences between Illinois and the Dakotas, Iowa, and Indiana? What was most noticeable?
Joe Janzen: Yeah, I think we find that around the periphery of the Corn Belt, that harvest basis low tends to be less, and I think you could sort of say those are areas where a lot of grain tends to go into storage and where the flow of grain through those locations is just less. So we find that the harvest low tends to be concentrated in the center of the Corn Belt. Places like Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, where you’re right in the main flow of grain and it’s really difficult to say, well, grain is everywhere. No one’s going to provide a really strong incentive to deliver in normal circumstances. And then that basis low tends to be a little bit smaller outside in the periphery where people are maybe more willing to sit on and store grain most of the time.
Todd Gleason: That sounds as if maybe it has to do something with the export functions as well down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, along with the Missouri.
Joe Janzen: Yeah, no, I think that’s part of it, is just being in a location where there’s a big flow of grain, where we’re drawing grain down the river system. When you’re in that flow and it’s pretty easy to get your hands on some corn or some beans if you need it, the market isn’t going to pay up, except, like we said, not always; this is sort of what things are like normally. And we do get some situations where the market says, oh, all of a sudden basis is going to do its job, which is pulling grain into the system. I think you’re seeing that with some of the talk that we’ve heard in the western Corn Belt right now about high basis levels.
Todd Gleason: And particularly for soybeans, as they’ve been waiting for soybeans to come in. Part of that is that it’s just taking a while for them to actually dry down. The other part is the rainfall is not allowing producers to get into the field, and they’re 85 cents and a dollar over basis levels that we’ve heard about. Producers would have a difficult time trying to get those simply because they would have to mud out a crop and it might not be ready too. How is it that producers should think about these things?
Joe Janzen: Yeah, I think this isn’t something where the market is missing something or the producer is making a mistake. It’s just sort of being aware of what the situation is right now. Certainly if someone is sitting on old crop soybeans right now and not taking advantage of what the market is saying in terms of bringing those beans to market, that might be considered maybe a marketing mistake. But in general, the market is doing its job, which is balancing supply and demand in specific locations, and that’s the job that basis has, and we show that I think it does that job. When harvest pressure is the strongest, we see basis drop, and that’s the story of that article.
Todd Gleason: Across the larger marketing, did last week change things in your mind for either corn or soybean marketing?
Joe Janzen: I think the reaction that we see right now, maybe with what’s happening in the soybean market, I think we want to sort of process how the market processes these two kind of competing forces. One, the really strong demand that we’ve seen domestically for soybeans with a maybe a little bit murkier international trade picture. So I think the market obviously today and into last week was really focused on that international picture, but we’ve seen really strong domestic demand for soybeans coupled with a reasonably strong push on the export side in the last few weeks that should underpin soybean prices through the remainder of this marketing year. We’re going to get a report on Wednesday, a quarterly stocks report, which kind of will also help level-set thinking for this marketing year.
Todd Gleason: Hey, thanks much. I appreciated it, Joe.
Joe Janzen: Thank you, Todd.
Todd Gleason: Joe Janzen is an agricultural economist right here on the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. You’re listening, of course, to the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world, online, on-demand. Anytime you’d like to listen to us at willag.org, that’s w-i-l-l-a-g.org. I don’t take time off often enough to thank you. Just to thank you for listening to our program. And our programs, including Commodity Week, the Opening Market Report, everything in between. You can also sign up for our weekend newsletter; be sure to do that. It’s a pretty good one. I’ll be posting some more information about that to the willag.org website in the future, but you may have gotten one that was passed around to you at some point. Make sure you get yourself subscribed. That comes out on Sunday morning, which means we have ag programming coming to you not five days a week, not six days a week, but seven days a week from willag.org and University of Illinois Extension. Again, thank you for taking the time to open the emails and the newsletters and listening to our programs, whether that’s online or on air at the radio stations like WILL AM 580, WHOW out of Clinton, WTIM there in Taylorville. And our Commodity Week program also airs on Tri States Public Radio out of Macomb. Our theme music for the Closing Market Report is written, performed, produced, and courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer Tim Gleason.
15:48 USDA Hogs and Pigs Report
Todd Gleason: USDA September Hogs and Pigs report puts the nationwide herd size at 74.3 million head. That’s up from the second quarter; however, year over year, the market supply is down about a percent and a half. This includes the animals to be marketed between now and February. On the other hand, USDA’s cold storage report indicates stocks as of August 31st are up 12% from a year ago. On that note, beef stocks are up 5% from last year, but cold storage stocks of poultry are down 4%. This all suggests consumers are still eating less red meat than prior to COVID. Here’s ag economist Jason Franken.
Jason Franken: The USDA projects US per capita pork consumption to be 49.4 pounds per person in 2026 and to rise to 49.9 pounds in 2027. Notably below the peak exceeding 52 pounds in 2019.
Todd Gleason: The export picture for pork is off from last year too. The July figure was down 5% from the previous year with lower shipments to Mexico, South Korea, China, and Hong Kong. Those are not fully offset by increased pork exports to Japan, Canada, and a few others. USDA recognizes this and the upshot, says the University of Missouri number cruncher, is for lower exports in both the third and fourth quarters of this year.
Jason Franken: Accordingly, USDA projections for pork exports are lowered to 1.64 and 1.88 billion pounds for the third and fourth quarters respectively, dropping annual exports to 7.11 billion pounds or 2% above last year, with forecasts rising another 1% in 2027.
Todd Gleason: With projections for domestic and export demand revised lower, Jason Franken says hog prices will likely fall well short of year-ago levels with producers’ profitability squeezed by prospects of higher feed costs.
17:49 Ag Weather with Mark Russo, EverStream Analytics
Todd Gleason: Let’s check in on the weather forecast for the growing regions across the planet. Mark Russo is here. He’s with EverStream Analytics. What a beautiful day it is today in our part of the world. Mark, is it that way across the whole of the Corn Belt?
Mark Russo: Well, Todd, no, that’s not the case here in other sections of the Corn Belt, especially the western belt which saw the returns of rain here over the weekend, while we here in Illinois and east of here just had a fantastic, amazing weekend with clear skies, dry conditions, and pretty seasonal temperatures. Those rains that did develop across the western belt are going to continue throughout the week. Here in Illinois and the eastern belt, we begin to get back into some of the rains later this week on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Some of those rains will be heavy in nature as they’re going to be a part of the remnants of Hurricane Pola that’s currently in the eastern Pacific and then will be making landfall in northwest Mexico here later today, and then track across northern Mexico into the southwest, into the Plains, and then eventually into the Midwest here. So again, for this week, the western Midwest stays very active. The eastern belt will start to turn active again as we get into the middle to end of this week.
Todd Gleason: How much rainfall did Iowa and other parts of the western Corn Belt get recently? What do you expect out of this for them, for us as well, and how much of a problem will it be in those western states?
Mark Russo: Yeah, for the past seven days, rainfall totals ranged anywhere from around half an inch in far eastern Iowa—that’s the lightest totals across the state—and then west of there, it quickly transitioned to totals above one inch. In general, much of Iowa, southern Minnesota, and eastern Nebraska received that one to four inches with some localized higher amounts. And that is on top of what fell the previous seven-day timeframe, which included some heavier rainfall. So normally at this time of year, farmers are beginning to harvest across those areas, and certainly this wet pattern has kept them out of the fields here during this initial early window.
Todd Gleason: And for the eastern Corn Belt, how much rainfall?
Mark Russo: Over the past seven days, rainfall has been much lighter, ranging anywhere from nothing in much of Michigan, northeast Illinois, and northern Indiana, to then only about half an inch getting towards the Ohio River Valley.
Todd Gleason: You mentioned that the southwest was going to pick up some rainfall; that’ll be good for the hard red winter wheat growing region?
Mark Russo: It will, yeah. Rainfall is needed to boost soil moisture not only for winter wheat planting but also for cattle grazing areas, and they’ve already been active here and are going to stay active this week as showers and thunderstorms continue to develop. And again, some of those remnants of Hurricane Pola will be tracking through as well, especially in eastern Colorado and northern Kansas. That looks to be where the highest totals or heaviest rainfall will be from those remnants.
Todd Gleason: And finally, a quick update from South America?
Mark Russo: Yeah, South America weather continues to be generally favorable for planting of the new soybean crop. That’s especially the case in center-west Brazil, which again had that good shot of moisture to start out September. And while they did go dry and hot the past week, rains are returning to center-west Brazil, and for the next two weeks, rainfall is expected to total near normal. That will maintain or boost soil moisture again and keep center-west in good shape as planting continues. In southern Brazil, the only thing we’re monitoring is that they have been quite wet, and they look to stay wet over the next few weeks. So with the onset of planting in states like Paraná, there could be some slowness in planting here coming up. It’s not a major concern, but certainly the longevity of this wetter pattern and the excessively high soil moisture right now in those areas is the thing to watch.
Todd Gleason: Hey, thank you much. I really do appreciate you taking the time with us today, Mark.
Mark Russo: You’re welcome, Todd, and thanks for having me.
Todd Gleason: Oh, you’re welcome too. That’s Mark Russo. He is with EverStream 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. Don’t forget that Wednesday of this week, the United States Department of Agriculture will release the quarterly grain stocks report. This is the last one for the 25/26 marketing year and those numbers will roll forward right into the 26/27 marketing year numbers as the ending stocks. That’s at 11 o’clock on Wednesday. Look for them on our website at willag.org not long after that. I’m Todd Gleason.
The September 28, 2026, broadcast of the Closing Market Report, hosted by Todd Gleason, covers commodity futures and features analysis from three agricultural experts. University of Illinois agricultural economist Joe Janzen discusses the commodity market's negative reaction to the recent Trump-Xi summit, specifically noting the exclusion of soybeans from reciprocal tariff reductions. Janzen also analyzes a typical 15-cent drop in corn basis during the five-week peak harvest window due to supply pressure. University of Missouri agricultural economist Jason Franken reviews the USDA Hogs and Pigs and cold storage reports, concluding that lowered domestic pork consumption and reduced export projections will likely squeeze hog producers' profitability. Finally, Mark Russo of EverStream Analytics provides a weather update, contrasting harvest-delaying rains in the western Corn Belt with dry conditions in the eastern states, while also noting favorable planting moisture in center-west Brazil.
01:59 Ag Markets with Joe Janzen, University of Illinois
15:48 USDA Hogs and Pigs Report
17:49 Ag Weather with Mark Russo, EverStream Analytics
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Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant University in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report as of the 28th day of September 2026.
Todd Gleason: I’m Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason. Coming up, we’ll talk about the commodity markets with University of Illinois agricultural economist Joe Janzen. I’ll bring you up to speed on last week’s hogs and pigs report with Jason Franken from the University of Missouri, and we’ll close out our time together by taking a look at the weather forecast. We’ll do that with Mark Russo. He is at EverStream Analytics, and it all comes to you from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world, online, on demand at willag.org. That’s w-i-l-l-a-g.org.
announce: Todd Gleason’s services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.
Todd Gleason: December corn in Chicago finished at 5.23 today, down 5 and 1/4 cents. The March at 5.36 and 1/2, 5 and 1/2 lower, and the May futures at 5.43 and 1/2, down 5 and 1/4. November beans down 30 and 3/4 of a cent at 12.88 and 1/4, January 13.03, down 29 and 1/2, and the March soybeans at 13.12, 27 and 1/2 lower. Bean meal down $12.20 today, the bean oil 15 cents lower. Wheat futures: soft red December at 6.88 and 3/4, down 14 and 1/2 cents. The hard red December at 7.45 and 3/4, down 16 and 1/4 cents. Live cattle futures in Chicago at $220.80, down $1.35. Feeders at 329.27 and 1/2, down $2.75, and lean hogs at $68.40, down 62 and 1/2 cents. Crude oil at $92.55 a barrel, up 14 cents at this hour, and gas at 3.15 and 9/10, 2 and 7/10 lower.
01:59 Ag Markets with Joe Janzen, University of Illinois
Todd Gleason: Joe Janzen, agricultural economist from the University of Illinois, now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. Hi Joe, thank you for being with us. Let’s start with the talk of the weekend, or the whole week last week for that matter. There were expectations by the agricultural industry that something might come from the meeting between President Xi and President Trump related to agricultural exports. The corn industry was hopeful, ethanol as well. Soybean folks were thinking there might be at least confirmation of the 25 million metric tons on the calendar year of sales that could be put into place. What actually did we see, at least to this point in time when you and I are talking, as it relates to the facts on the ground after the fact?
Joe Janzen: Yeah, obviously a lot of anticipation going into this and then not really knowing. I think the market is processing what has happened, which was not a lot of direct talk from the principal players about what might happen with agricultural trade. And then this list of tariff reductions, reciprocal tariff reductions that came out of the meeting that included corn, other grains, and did not include soybeans. And so the market has reacted pretty strongly to that. Soybeans were down almost as much as 40 cents this morning on that news. So the market is not getting what it wanted or what it anticipated coming out of this Trump-Xi summit. The thing to maybe keep in the back of our minds is that the bigger story that came out of this was this two-month truce, sort of a four-month truce that would get us a little bit further down the road to kind of pump the brakes on the most tense parts of this conflict. And I think that means that China wants to keep that soybean import chip in its toolbox of trade policy going forward. And so still a lot to process as we go through this, but the market didn’t like what it saw coming out of the meeting and the reports that came after.
Todd Gleason: I’ll come back to that, but I do want to stay with the pushing the can down the road just a bit. This is where the president says he would impose greater, stiffer tariffs on China, and that the trade war would actually resume. President Xi and President Trump are expecting to meet two more times, I think before January, and they’re hopeful that they might be able to come to some types of agreement. Is this enough time, in your opinion, to actually hammer out something that would be worthwhile?
Joe Janzen: Potentially. I think there are obviously a lot of much bigger issues at play here beyond agricultural trade. I think the hope is that in getting to a place where there is a bigger détente on some of these big picture issues vis-à-vis the competition between China and the United States on technology, on AI, and other things, we would get somewhere positive with respect to agricultural trade. That’s kind of what we’re looking for, and I think there’s certainly enough time. What that means for commodity prices in the here and now for this year, I think the market’s best guess is that we would get to something like a normal-ish level of China soybean imports from the United States, which is that 25 million metric ton target. That’s in the long run a level that they have been very comfortable with in terms of purchasing soybeans from the United States.
Todd Gleason: Let’s take up an article before we get to actual marketing that you have written for the farmdoc website. I have talked about this a couple of times on the air, but not had the chance to talk with the author, you, about the basis article that you’ve written. You took a look over time at what happens to corn and soybean basis, particularly corn basis, during the fall harvest period in the United States. And not surprisingly, you have confirmed of course that after we get to about 50% harvested for corn, it starts to trend back up, but there is apparently this five-week sort of trough that takes place annually. Can you tell me about the article itself?
Joe Janzen: Yeah, I think people have long recognized that if something is abundant, the price of it tends to fall, and that tends to be what happens at harvest, right? We get a lot of people very willing to bring corn and beans to the market. The local price dips, and so we looked at that local price, what happens to basis in specific states around the time when harvest pressure, that flood of new crop to the market, happens. We find that before the most intense harvest period, basis is a little bit better. It dips, it kind of stays low during the harvest period, which is roughly five weeks in any given location, and then it starts to come back as that harvest pressure recedes. The overall dip is about 15 cents. And so that kind of creates a thinking in the farmer’s mind, which is, can I avoid that 15-cent dip? What do you have to do to kind of get away from that? One of those things is maybe you have to be harvesting in a place where you’ve got something to bring to market that other people don’t, and that’s something that seems to be kind of the case this year. We’ve seen that with really strong basis in particular parts of the Corn Belt where harvest has been slow to get started this year. They’re kind of avoiding a little bit of this harvest dip. And so the thinking has to be, well, if I’m in that period where I’m harvesting corn in the midst of that most intense glut of harvest where the harvest pressure is the strongest, is it worth trying to store or hold grain to kind of avoid that little bit of a discount that you have to take if you want to make delivery at that point in time?
Todd Gleason: What are the things that producers ought to think as they look at what to do? Because they’ll need to consider the in-charge, what the interest rates are, all those sorts of things.
Joe Janzen: Yeah, I think there’s a whole bunch of reasons why that basis dips. It’s because people have said it’s not really worth it for me to avoid delivering right now. And so what are all the things that go into that? Some of that is just harvest logistics, like it’s easier for me to get that grain to the elevator today than it is to take it to my own bins and store it there. There’s that additional handling cost that comes from putting grain in storage on-farm and then having to move it later. All of those logistics costs are hard to put a number on, but when you add them all up, they probably start to add up to something that’s at or maybe even above that 15 cents per bushel that we find is the normal harvest-time basis dip.
Todd Gleason: Because you looked at different states, were there differences between Illinois and the Dakotas, Iowa, and Indiana? What was most noticeable?
Joe Janzen: Yeah, I think we find that around the periphery of the Corn Belt, that harvest basis low tends to be less, and I think you could sort of say those are areas where a lot of grain tends to go into storage and where the flow of grain through those locations is just less. So we find that the harvest low tends to be concentrated in the center of the Corn Belt. Places like Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, where you’re right in the main flow of grain and it’s really difficult to say, well, grain is everywhere. No one’s going to provide a really strong incentive to deliver in normal circumstances. And then that basis low tends to be a little bit smaller outside in the periphery where people are maybe more willing to sit on and store grain most of the time.
Todd Gleason: That sounds as if maybe it has to do something with the export functions as well down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, along with the Missouri.
Joe Janzen: Yeah, no, I think that’s part of it, is just being in a location where there’s a big flow of grain, where we’re drawing grain down the river system. When you’re in that flow and it’s pretty easy to get your hands on some corn or some beans if you need it, the market isn’t going to pay up, except, like we said, not always; this is sort of what things are like normally. And we do get some situations where the market says, oh, all of a sudden basis is going to do its job, which is pulling grain into the system. I think you’re seeing that with some of the talk that we’ve heard in the western Corn Belt right now about high basis levels.
Todd Gleason: And particularly for soybeans, as they’ve been waiting for soybeans to come in. Part of that is that it’s just taking a while for them to actually dry down. The other part is the rainfall is not allowing producers to get into the field, and they’re 85 cents and a dollar over basis levels that we’ve heard about. Producers would have a difficult time trying to get those simply because they would have to mud out a crop and it might not be ready too. How is it that producers should think about these things?
Joe Janzen: Yeah, I think this isn’t something where the market is missing something or the producer is making a mistake. It’s just sort of being aware of what the situation is right now. Certainly if someone is sitting on old crop soybeans right now and not taking advantage of what the market is saying in terms of bringing those beans to market, that might be considered maybe a marketing mistake. But in general, the market is doing its job, which is balancing supply and demand in specific locations, and that’s the job that basis has, and we show that I think it does that job. When harvest pressure is the strongest, we see basis drop, and that’s the story of that article.
Todd Gleason: Across the larger marketing, did last week change things in your mind for either corn or soybean marketing?
Joe Janzen: I think the reaction that we see right now, maybe with what’s happening in the soybean market, I think we want to sort of process how the market processes these two kind of competing forces. One, the really strong demand that we’ve seen domestically for soybeans with a maybe a little bit murkier international trade picture. So I think the market obviously today and into last week was really focused on that international picture, but we’ve seen really strong domestic demand for soybeans coupled with a reasonably strong push on the export side in the last few weeks that should underpin soybean prices through the remainder of this marketing year. We’re going to get a report on Wednesday, a quarterly stocks report, which kind of will also help level-set thinking for this marketing year.
Todd Gleason: Hey, thanks much. I appreciated it, Joe.
Joe Janzen: Thank you, Todd.
Todd Gleason: Joe Janzen is an agricultural economist right here on the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. You’re listening, of course, to the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world, online, on-demand. Anytime you’d like to listen to us at willag.org, that’s w-i-l-l-a-g.org. I don’t take time off often enough to thank you. Just to thank you for listening to our program. And our programs, including Commodity Week, the Opening Market Report, everything in between. You can also sign up for our weekend newsletter; be sure to do that. It’s a pretty good one. I’ll be posting some more information about that to the willag.org website in the future, but you may have gotten one that was passed around to you at some point. Make sure you get yourself subscribed. That comes out on Sunday morning, which means we have ag programming coming to you not five days a week, not six days a week, but seven days a week from willag.org and University of Illinois Extension. Again, thank you for taking the time to open the emails and the newsletters and listening to our programs, whether that’s online or on air at the radio stations like WILL AM 580, WHOW out of Clinton, WTIM there in Taylorville. And our Commodity Week program also airs on Tri States Public Radio out of Macomb. Our theme music for the Closing Market Report is written, performed, produced, and courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer Tim Gleason.
15:48 USDA Hogs and Pigs Report
Todd Gleason: USDA September Hogs and Pigs report puts the nationwide herd size at 74.3 million head. That’s up from the second quarter; however, year over year, the market supply is down about a percent and a half. This includes the animals to be marketed between now and February. On the other hand, USDA’s cold storage report indicates stocks as of August 31st are up 12% from a year ago. On that note, beef stocks are up 5% from last year, but cold storage stocks of poultry are down 4%. This all suggests consumers are still eating less red meat than prior to COVID. Here’s ag economist Jason Franken.
Jason Franken: The USDA projects US per capita pork consumption to be 49.4 pounds per person in 2026 and to rise to 49.9 pounds in 2027. Notably below the peak exceeding 52 pounds in 2019.
Todd Gleason: The export picture for pork is off from last year too. The July figure was down 5% from the previous year with lower shipments to Mexico, South Korea, China, and Hong Kong. Those are not fully offset by increased pork exports to Japan, Canada, and a few others. USDA recognizes this and the upshot, says the University of Missouri number cruncher, is for lower exports in both the third and fourth quarters of this year.
Jason Franken: Accordingly, USDA projections for pork exports are lowered to 1.64 and 1.88 billion pounds for the third and fourth quarters respectively, dropping annual exports to 7.11 billion pounds or 2% above last year, with forecasts rising another 1% in 2027.
Todd Gleason: With projections for domestic and export demand revised lower, Jason Franken says hog prices will likely fall well short of year-ago levels with producers’ profitability squeezed by prospects of higher feed costs.
17:49 Ag Weather with Mark Russo, EverStream Analytics
Todd Gleason: Let’s check in on the weather forecast for the growing regions across the planet. Mark Russo is here. He’s with EverStream Analytics. What a beautiful day it is today in our part of the world. Mark, is it that way across the whole of the Corn Belt?
Mark Russo: Well, Todd, no, that’s not the case here in other sections of the Corn Belt, especially the western belt which saw the returns of rain here over the weekend, while we here in Illinois and east of here just had a fantastic, amazing weekend with clear skies, dry conditions, and pretty seasonal temperatures. Those rains that did develop across the western belt are going to continue throughout the week. Here in Illinois and the eastern belt, we begin to get back into some of the rains later this week on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Some of those rains will be heavy in nature as they’re going to be a part of the remnants of Hurricane Pola that’s currently in the eastern Pacific and then will be making landfall in northwest Mexico here later today, and then track across northern Mexico into the southwest, into the Plains, and then eventually into the Midwest here. So again, for this week, the western Midwest stays very active. The eastern belt will start to turn active again as we get into the middle to end of this week.
Todd Gleason: How much rainfall did Iowa and other parts of the western Corn Belt get recently? What do you expect out of this for them, for us as well, and how much of a problem will it be in those western states?
Mark Russo: Yeah, for the past seven days, rainfall totals ranged anywhere from around half an inch in far eastern Iowa—that’s the lightest totals across the state—and then west of there, it quickly transitioned to totals above one inch. In general, much of Iowa, southern Minnesota, and eastern Nebraska received that one to four inches with some localized higher amounts. And that is on top of what fell the previous seven-day timeframe, which included some heavier rainfall. So normally at this time of year, farmers are beginning to harvest across those areas, and certainly this wet pattern has kept them out of the fields here during this initial early window.
Todd Gleason: And for the eastern Corn Belt, how much rainfall?
Mark Russo: Over the past seven days, rainfall has been much lighter, ranging anywhere from nothing in much of Michigan, northeast Illinois, and northern Indiana, to then only about half an inch getting towards the Ohio River Valley.
Todd Gleason: You mentioned that the southwest was going to pick up some rainfall; that’ll be good for the hard red winter wheat growing region?
Mark Russo: It will, yeah. Rainfall is needed to boost soil moisture not only for winter wheat planting but also for cattle grazing areas, and they’ve already been active here and are going to stay active this week as showers and thunderstorms continue to develop. And again, some of those remnants of Hurricane Pola will be tracking through as well, especially in eastern Colorado and northern Kansas. That looks to be where the highest totals or heaviest rainfall will be from those remnants.
Todd Gleason: And finally, a quick update from South America?
Mark Russo: Yeah, South America weather continues to be generally favorable for planting of the new soybean crop. That’s especially the case in center-west Brazil, which again had that good shot of moisture to start out September. And while they did go dry and hot the past week, rains are returning to center-west Brazil, and for the next two weeks, rainfall is expected to total near normal. That will maintain or boost soil moisture again and keep center-west in good shape as planting continues. In southern Brazil, the only thing we’re monitoring is that they have been quite wet, and they look to stay wet over the next few weeks. So with the onset of planting in states like Paraná, there could be some slowness in planting here coming up. It’s not a major concern, but certainly the longevity of this wetter pattern and the excessively high soil moisture right now in those areas is the thing to watch.
Todd Gleason: Hey, thank you much. I really do appreciate you taking the time with us today, Mark.
Mark Russo: You’re welcome, Todd, and thanks for having me.
Todd Gleason: Oh, you’re welcome too. That’s Mark Russo. He is with EverStream 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. Don’t forget that Wednesday of this week, the United States Department of Agriculture will release the quarterly grain stocks report. This is the last one for the 25/26 marketing year and those numbers will roll forward right into the 26/27 marketing year numbers as the ending stocks. That’s at 11 o’clock on Wednesday. Look for them on our website at willag.org not long after that. I’m Todd Gleason.