Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
- Matt Bennett, AgMarket.net
- New Worm Screw Worm News
- Schnitkey on Fall Fertilizer Prices
★ Support this podcast ★
- New Worm Screw Worm News
- Schnitkey on Fall Fertilizer Prices
Creators and Guests
What is Closing Market Report?
Celebrating 40 Years | 10,000 Episodes
Established 1985
The Closing Market Report airs weekdays at 2:06pm central on WILL AM580, Urbana. University of Illinois Extension Farm Broadcaster Todd Gleason hosts the program. Each day he asks commodity analysts about the trade in Chicago, delves deep into the global growing regions weather, and talks with ag economists, entomologists, agronomists, and others involved in agriculture at the farm and industry level.
website: willag.org
twitter: @commodityweek
From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market report. It is the September 2025. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett.
Todd Gleason:He's at agmarket.net. We'll look forward to next Tuesday's grain stocks report and what he thinks it might mean for the marketplace and the beginning stocks for the 2025, '26 or marketing year that you're harvesting for right now. And then we'll turn our attention to next year's fertilizer prices or the prices of fertilizer that you'll be paying for this fall and next spring as it's related to corn. We do that for nitrogen, potash, and potassium with Gary Snooki, agricultural economist here on the Urbana Champaign campus the U of I. Gary, along with Nick Paulson and Henriqui, Monaco hosted a webinar this morning on that same topic.
Todd Gleason:I was there, so we'll go through some of the things that they covered. And, of course, you can always find more about it online in the PharmDoc website at pharmdocdaily.illinois.edu. But no worries. We'll cover a lot of it for you this afternoon during this Thursday edition of the closing market report that comes to you from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online on demand at willag.org.
Todd Gleason:That's willag.0rg.toddgleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. December corn for the day at 4 twenty five and three quarters, a penny and a half higher. The March at $4.42 and a quarter, up one and a quarter, and May futures up a penny at four fifty one and a quarter. November beans, ten twelve and a quarter, up three and a quarter. January up two and three quarters at ten thirty one and a quarter.
Todd Gleason:Matt Bennett from agmarket.net now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. Hi, Matt. Thanks for being with us. How's your week been in the field, and how much have you gotten done?
Matt Bennett:You know, it's it's been one of those deals where we had some beans we could cut, we had some corn that we could get into, but then the corn ended up being a little wetter than what we wanted to do. So we've hopped around. I mean, we haven't done a ton of acres this week, to be honest. Mean, we did finally found out we can still get rain around our farm. You know, we had old three tenths on Sunday night, and then there are two nights ago.
Matt Bennett:On Tuesday night, we had another half inch to seven tenths. So that kinda slowed things down a little bit as well. But we're actually harvesting some, pickings of corn here this afternoon, and, I assume we'll be back in beans tomorrow.
Todd Gleason:When was the corn planted, and how's it yielding?
Matt Bennett:You know, the corn that I'm in today was actually planted in mid May. This particular farm, the landlord did not, want to apply fungicide, so it's pretty dry. I mean, it's running 16 to 18.5%. Yields hanging in there pretty good for no fungicide, but again, you know, with no rain, I guess you gotta be fairly impressed with it doing what it's doing. So it's probably just a little under APH, but, you know, it's it's a pretty darn good deal.
Todd Gleason:Tell me about the marketplace as you see it this week.
Matt Bennett:Well, you know, there's no doubt that last week whenever we had, you know, president Trump was gonna talk with Xi about, hopefully, soybeans. They didn't talk about soybeans, talked about TikTok. It was disappointing to the trade. Sunday night, we find out Argentina's dropping their export tax, you know, and so quite frankly, we just didn't have anything in the way of good news over the last few days until this morning. You know, we find that they're gonna drop that export tax.
Matt Bennett:Well, there's been a lot of cargoes of being sold since then. I think very interesting out of Argentina considering that typically their calling card has got a lot more to do with soybean meal than what it does soybeans just shipping them direct. So you know the marketplace has just kind of been in the doldrums. You got harvest going on. Clearly, there's gonna be some harvest pressure with with harvest underway, but, you know, we're not seeing a lot of downside pressure on corn.
Matt Bennett:It's still kinda hanging in there, whereas soybeans over the last ten days really haven't done too good.
Todd Gleason:Yeah. Argentina taking the export tax off and then putting it back on. And in between those two things, China buying, I think, 20 cargoes Yeah. If I remember correctly. Yeah.
Todd Gleason:So a a fairly large number. I suppose that gets them deeper into the export season. Will there be any US soybean shipped this fall, do you suppose, to China?
Matt Bennett:Well, that's the million dollar question, Todd. I mean, you know, we're all certainly hoping that something happens. I mean, clearly, they're talking that, you know, President Trump's gonna meet again with Xi at the October, early November. But, I mean, this is this is our prime time for shipping soybeans. This is when we usually really make hay in the soybean market or soybean export program.
Matt Bennett:And, you know, obviously, a lot of these days are experiencing
Todd Gleason:Oh, you rolled out of my hearing just for a moment. I'll remind folks while I'm waiting for you to come back that they can visit our website at willag.org, willag.0rg. I think you're back now. So pick pick up where you were with your thought there as it's related to soybeans, particularly, in the Dakotas.
Matt Bennett:Yeah. I mean, some of those areas, those guys are having a hard time even catching a bit. And so, you know, there's just no market off the PNW right now. Clearly, we don't have much market down the river here on the Mississippi, and it's pretty frustrating. River levels are low, not to mention we don't have an export program.
Matt Bennett:So it's just been a real challenge. And you've got to think, with these interior folks not having to bid against the river like they usually do, that you're going to see basis levels continue to stay pretty poor, quite frankly. And so, yeah, if you hold on to these beans, you throw them in the bin, I think there's better days ahead. Certainly, cash beds on farther out look a lot better than they do today. But at the same time, if you are gonna throw them in the bin, doing so without any sort of risk protection, I'm not sure I would recommend that.
Todd Gleason:And for corn?
Matt Bennett:Yeah. I mean, as far as corn goes, I kinda like corn ownership, in all honesty, out farther. You know, if a person has to go to the elevator, we're indicating maybe the better way to go about it is just go ahead and sell it, keep some ownership through a call spread situation or just simply a call. We know whether you're talking corn or beans that commercial storage is awfully expensive given the fact we don't have any meat on the bone to begin with. You know, if you can put it in the bin at home, I do think there will be some better days.
Matt Bennett:I'm probably gonna handle it kinda like the elevator, at least on some of those bushels, and lock in some of the carry that we see. Now the last thing I'll say on corn, Todd, is that I would expect carry would be a lot better if this really is a 185 plus crop. Carry has been decent, but it certainly isn't anything close to full carry. And you would expect that if we really had a 186, 187 crop.
Todd Gleason:A quick word on the grain stocks next week. Anything we should be watching for?
Matt Bennett:A little uncomfortable with that report, to be honest with you, Todd. I mean, when you look at Minnesota, the Dakotas, you know, there's a lot of corn. It felt like that cash market was pretty heavy. I'm not totally sure that, we won't find a few extra bushels there. And when I say a few, it wouldn't shock me at all if we don't end up somewhere between one four and one four five.
Matt Bennett:So, you know, maybe you could even add a 100,000,000 bushels to corn. If that's the case, certainly won't be friendly, but I do think that, a lower yield there in October, is getting more likely all the time.
Todd Gleason:Stay safe in the combine cab, and thank you.
Matt Bennett:Oh, absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Todd Gleason:That's Matt Bennett. He is with agmarket.net. Just one agricultural news item for the day. This one related to the livestock sector. Comments from ag secretary Brooke Rollins caught the attention of cattle producers around the country.
Todd Gleason:Arlen Suderen, chief commodities analyst for Stonix, said it seemed to imply there was some financial assistance coming for them.
Arlan Suderman:Well and it came out in a statement from the USDA about the new world screwworm in Mexico. But within that, secretary of agriculture made a statement that we can expect this week a statement from the Trump administration on how to rebuild the American cattle supply. Now it didn't specify what that is. Everybody is speculating about what it means. It doesn't mean that president Trump is gonna open up federal grasslands for grazing.
Arlan Suderman:Does he provide direct payments to cow calf producers like what he has done, has a history of doing with crop producers? Does he plan some type of tax incentive program to hold back heifers rather than take the high prices they can get now?
Todd Gleason:Suderman offers this advice for cattle producers.
Arlan Suderman:Prepare for the unexpected just like we're talking about in the soybean market. We know that the supply of protein in this country is going to remain tight because any incentive program in order to get producers to hold back heifers to rebuild the breeding herd further tightens the supply. There was some speculation that it might be a removal of the 50% tariff on Brazil beef, and that is possible. That could actually increase the supply of beef available. The odds of that happening aren't great.
Arlan Suderman:I should say that relations between The US and Brazil have actually become more tense here over the last twenty four hours. So I think the odds of that may be going down right now. But, of course, with this administration, which likes to keep people guessing, anything is possible. Again, that
Todd Gleason:was Arlen Suderman with Stonex. You can hear more from Arlen in our commodity week program. We'll talk with him later today along with Naomi Bloom from totalfarmmarketing.com and Brian Stark of The Andersons for our commodity week program. It'll be posted to our website at willag.org, willag.0rg, by about 06:00 this evening, maybe before that. If you listen to our home station, you can hear the whole of the program tomorrow during this time slot.
Todd Gleason:And if not, on many of these radio stations, you'll hear it over the weekend. You can always find commodity week too up online at willag.0rg, along with information from the agricultural economist, the crop scientist, and the animal scientist from the University of Illinois. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason. We're now joined by Gary Schniedke, agroecultural economist at the U of I. Hi, Gary.
Todd Gleason:It's been a while. Thanks for being with me today.
Gary Schnitkey:Thanks for having me, Todd. Yes. It has been.
Todd Gleason:I wanna talk a little bit about fertilizer prices as we go into the fall and the kinds of things that producers should be considering going forward. This is part and parcel of a webinar that, you, Nick Paulson, and Enrique Monaco had put together and is available now on the PharmDoc Daily website. Folks can find it at pharmdocdaily.illinois.edu under the webinars tab, under the archives if they want to see the whole thing. But, really, as we move into the fall, we need to start with the budgets and what next year looks like for crop budgets and how fertilizer plays into that. You might have thought that that price would be going down, and I guess depending on the crop, it might be.
Gary Schnitkey:Yeah. No. Looking at crop budgets for 2026 is where where we're at. We're we're building in higher fertilizer cost for corn, and that's being led by both both, anhydrous ammonia or nitrogen and DAP that, if we're looking at prices right now, are higher for those than they were at this year last time. So we built in a projection that is higher.
Gary Schnitkey:Soybean costs are a little bit lower primarily because of surprisingly potash isn't higher. And tariff situation, even though we rely heavily on Canada, we've seemed to have an exemption now, so that's gonna flow okay, I suppose. Any case, you know, higher cost for corn is going to make corn relatively less profitable than soybeans or impact that relationship. So, we'll see where farmers make their decisions as far as profitability, but right now, we're predicting corn or, excuse me, soybeans to be more profitable than corn. So, again, that's been the case for a while, and you're beginning to think, you know, we we do a lot of fifty fifty corn soybeans in the state.
Gary Schnitkey:Maybe we're gonna have to shade more to soybeans, but that doesn't look the best either if we consider that China hasn't bought any of our soybeans. So we'll see how where all that goes.
Todd Gleason:I do have a quick question relatively related to what we talked about at the webinar this morning, but it is on crop rotation. For some time, particularly in Southern Illinois, you have said the most profitable crop rotation is corn, wheat, soybeans. Is that still the case?
Gary Schnitkey:Yeah. Yes. It is. That's with the double crop. Yeah.
Gary Schnitkey:To make the caveat caveat there that double crop soybeans is associated with wheat. We see more soybeans in Southern Illinois and that just given the yields where we're at does make, soybeans are more profitable than corn in in Southern Illinois. And actually, soybeans are more profitable than corn in Central Illinois. And again, we see a lot of fifty fifty here. We'll see where that goes and it's even in Northern Illinois where we see more heavily corn rotations, it's still soybeans is the one.
Gary Schnitkey:Again, you're sort of concerned about making that shift now because of the soybean, the tariff situation with China, but even given that, the prices now favor soybeans over corn from a profitability standpoint.
Todd Gleason:When Enrique Monaco was up today, he was talking about some of the work he had done for you and Nick as it was related to where products were produced. I was surprised, frankly, that 96% nitrogen that farmers use in The United States actually is produced also in The United States. However, it's the 4% that comes in from other places, I suppose, on the margin that really makes the difference.
Gary Schnitkey:Yeah. And we're we're it's 96% as you mentioned that is produced here in The United States that's used here. That has increased over time primarily, I would attribute to that to the fracking revolution for natural gas, which gave US a natural gas advantage over many other places. We we we do produce most of our nitrogen here and that's concentrated in four companies with CF being the largest.
Todd Gleason:I think if I recall the slide correctly, 21% of the nitrogen was produced in The United States in February. Don't quote me on that one, but I kinda think that's that's the right number. Was it potassium that was the the the flip side that only 4% came comes from The US?
Gary Schnitkey:Yeah. Potash or potassium, most of our we only produce 4% here. Most of our potash or potassium comes from Canada. And again, the so if we're getting it from Canada, the tariff situation plays a role. So far, I think that potash is exempt from tariffs.
Gary Schnitkey:Those things can change on a daily basis. So so right now, we think we're sitting pretty good on potash and should be proceed normally, but we'll see. The price
Todd Gleason:of corn has rallied from its bottom $45 to $0.50 over the last couple of months, last month. And the price consequently of anhydrous ammonia has gone back up as well, though I think the input price really was reflecting some things that maybe have been coming out of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act earlier, passed in earlier in the summer, and the idea that, farmers were going to apply, and they were going that they would have money to spend on nitrogen. The question is how do they calculate the economics of that to make it really work?
Gary Schnitkey:Yeah. So as we're looking at corn, again, we're probably gonna see soybeans being more profitable in corn. If you're gonna plant corn, the the best recommendation an economist can can give is stay within the MRTN. And then with that, you might want to think about some risk management there, but I'm I'm not sure we're we're all that concerned about price increases going into the spring, but those things could happen. So we're looking at $790 according to the Illinois production cost report for average price of anhydrous ammonia in Illinois, and that's that's up there.
Gary Schnitkey:So we've hear some some farmers getting it for $7.37 40 for fall fall application. Any case that those those are high numbers given a $4.04 20 projected corn price. How does
Todd Gleason:profitability on the farm look this year compared to last year and looking forward to next year?
Gary Schnitkey:So we are projecting about the same amount of profitability this year as we did for 2024. 2024 profitability, we included e cap payments on 2024 property profitability. ECAP was based on what was produced in 2024 or what your decisions were in 2024, so we attributed that to 2024 even though you've gotten the payment in 2025.
Todd Gleason:And that's a big payment probably for for many producers, and that that I assume made a big difference in what that crop budget looked like and what the profitability finished up looking like.
Gary Schnitkey:So it was 35 per per per acre averaged over 42 for corn and 33, I think, for soybeans, roughly in that ballpark. But, you know, $35 on is a big big number. So you and and our return for, fifty fifty corn soybean rotation in Central Illinois, high productivity land given the average cash rent is minus $33 for last year or '20, 2024. And we're projecting roughly the same thing for 2025, but we're putting in $60 of, ARC PLC payments, which won't be received until next year. So if you look at the ARC PLC program that's associated with the 2025 crop, It was made better or had larger payments with the, passage of the one big beautiful bill.
Gary Schnitkey:That one big beautiful bill in in our projections increased payments from roughly $30 to $60. So, so those $60, won't be received till next year. So but that that kept that return for cash rent farmland sort of in the same ballpark as 2024. And if we look at our projections for 2026, it's the same number, minus minus 30 ish dollars on cash rent farmland.
Todd Gleason:And how much do you put in for government subsidies for that year?
Gary Schnitkey:So we're putting a slightly less than the $60 for 2025. We're putting in $50 for 2026. So and again, that would be received in October 2027. We were using, corn prices of $4.20 for corn and $10.20 for soybeans. So, yeah, those I mean, the breakevens right now are mid fours for for for for corn and 11 mid elevens for soybeans.
Gary Schnitkey:So and given normal yields. Yeah. So that that's the situation we're at. If we don't get government programs, we don't have a breakeven on cash rent farmland. Thank you very much.
Gary Schnitkey:You're welcome, Todd.
Todd Gleason:Gary Schnicki is an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois. If you'd like to watch the webinar that he, Nick Paulson, and Enrique Monaco, held on Thursday, you can do that on the website at willag.org. You can do that on the website at farmdocdaily.illinois.edu, or it might be easier just to go to YouTube, youtube.com/pharmdoc. You've been listening to the closing market report on this Thursday afternoon. We'll record our commodity week program in just a few minutes and put it up on our website at willag.org, willag.0rg, by about 06:00 this evening.
Todd Gleason:Our panelists this week will include Naomi Blohm of totalfarmmarketing.com from Stonex, Arlen Suderman, and we should be joined by Brian Stark at the Andersons as well. It's all our commodity week program. You can hear it in its entirety tomorrow here on our home station over the weekend on many of these radio stations and up online after 06:00 this evening at willag.0r Have a great, safe harvest afternoon. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.