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- Matt Bennett, AgMarket.net
- Importing Argentine Beef
- Machinery Costs Rethink
- Mike Tannura, Tstorm.net
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- Importing Argentine Beef
- Machinery Costs Rethink
- Mike Tannura, Tstorm.net
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 to Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market report. It is the October 2025. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett of agmarket.net.
Todd Gleason:We'll hear from Gary Schnitke today about power requirements on the farm and really that combine you've been using. How many acres should you be running through it in any given fall? And then we'll turn our attention to the weather forecast too. We'll do that with Mike Tanor. He's a teastorm weather.
Todd Gleason:We'll take a look at the global growing regions, particularly Argentina and Brazil today on this Thursday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Medium. It is public radio for the farming world online on demand anytime you'd like to listen at willag.0rg. That's willag.0rg, where today you can sign up for the farm assets conference or the Illinois farm economic summits. I think you should do both. They're coming up in the month of December.
Todd Gleason:Full details online at willag.org. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. In Chicago, corn futures finished about a nickel higher, the soybeans were up 10 to 12¢ for the day. Matt Bennett from agmarket.net now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. Hi, Matt.
Todd Gleason:Thanks for being with us, on a day where there's a lot of green on the screen. What's happening in Chicago?
Matt Bennett:Yeah. It sure is nice to see. I mean, basically, you come in here. This morning, you know, we heard some rumors that maybe China was in buying a small amount of beans, and then we found out that wasn't actually true. You know, we just couldn't get the indication.
Matt Bennett:Of course, we're not getting any flash sales at this point. We don't know. We do get export inspections there at the start of the week, but we're not getting daily flash sales. We don't know who all is in buying. But bottom line is there were some people buying soybeans, wheat, corn, you name it today.
Matt Bennett:So a lot of green on the screen as you suggested, and it's certainly nice to see here is, you know, harvest is still not quite wrapped up by any means.
Todd Gleason:Can we maintain this through the rest of the week, and is it a start of something new?
Matt Bennett:Oh, that's a big question, Todd. I think, you know, clearly, there's a lot of angst and frustration on, you know, what is a potential trade deal going to look like? Are we gonna get one? You know? Is it gonna be something substantial enough that's gonna, you know, flip the dial, if you will?
Matt Bennett:But, whenever we look at, for instance, inspections this last week, soybeans were actually fantastic. What that tells us is that as we presume that China has not bought any beans yet still, there's other people in the world that are buying and shipping beans. US beans are quite competitive globally. US corn is pretty competitive as well. And so, you know, overall, you've got to assume that you're in a pretty good spot, you know, to see at least some support here as you get harvest wind down.
Matt Bennett:At basis levels, they've strengthened locally a little bit, but you would expect that, you know, as you see harvest get closer to an end. Because if they have not originated all the vegetables they thought that they would, you know, some of your end users are gonna push to try to get some of those. So other parts of the country is totally different, you know, especially where they've got, for instance, storage getting full in some places. So it's kind of a mixed bag, but I guess from my vantage point, it's tough to expect this thing to really take off and rally just yet, not without confirmation of, for instance, lower yields or some sort of trade deal.
Todd Gleason:How much has basis, changed across the country? I'm looking at a bar chart number. They track cash, bids, and they're off sixteen and three quarters of a cent from yesterday. That's kind of a big move. There must be some places in the country, a lot of them that are having some difficulties.
Matt Bennett:Yeah. I mean, you know, what we've seen, for instance, I talked to a grower in Nebraska earlier this morning, and, you know, his bid, I believe, was 70 below. So it's totally different than what we're looking at here for soybeans. You know? And they were talking that they thought they would move to 85 to 90, by the end of the month.
Matt Bennett:You know? And so it's a little different than what it is here, whereas around here, you know, we've actually seen a push for some of these beans. And so, yeah, I think what's going on here are a couple different things. You know, most growers look at the carry in the market and are saying, hey. Why wouldn't I go ahead and try to maintain ownership of these beans a little bit longer?
Matt Bennett:At least, put a floor under these things and, you know, maybe kind of wait until basis gets better because while we're not at full carry by any means, when you look at November beans at $10.44 and then you go out to the July, you're 52¢ better, I mean, clearly, that's a big difference, especially whenever some of these basis levels during harvest were pretty wide. And so, you know, growers are thinking, why don't I go ahead and find a place to put these beans? Even beans are going in bags this year. You know, a lot of times people will bag corn, but there's just a lot of of crops that have been put stowed away somewhere, waiting on a better day. And I think that the grower is gonna do their best to be tight fishes.
Matt Bennett:It's tough, you know, when we're all a little bit strapped financially, due to the last couple years due to these high input costs. But at the same time, I think people see the carry of the market, and they're trying to take advantage of it.
Todd Gleason:And to clarify, I was talking about basis for corn, 16, three quarters of a cent, lower today than yesterday on the bar chart number. Their bean basis actually improved by 4¢ from day to day. What are you thinking about the corn market?
Matt Bennett:You know, when you look at the corn market, I mean, there's a there's part of the reason why basis has gotten a little wider. In some areas, like, for instance, in Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska, some of these areas have have gotten full. You know? And, unfortunately, if you're in that position, you know base is gonna widen out because it's tough if you're gonna start going to the ground. We know that's a little tougher, to handle.
Matt Bennett:And, typically, you're gonna kind of back off, you know, as far as how bad you want that, to get your hands on that crop. So, what do I think about the corn market as a whole? I mean, I still kinda feel like we're looking at a lower yield whenever it gets right down to it. I mean, we've seen some really low numbers this week. I know there was, I believe, a Farm Journal poll, you know, that was showing, somewhere, you know, below trend line.
Matt Bennett:I don't know that I can get my head there quite yet, Todd. In fact, I've heard a lot of growers, for instance, right here in Illinois, that have been talking about, pushing records or even making a few records. So I do think that some of these tougher yields where you've had issues with rust, for instance, really chop the top off of off of yields. I think you're gonna offset that with some of the other good yields. I'm probably in the low one eighties right now, but I don't think I can get below one eighty just personally.
Matt Bennett:It's tough to do that. But I tell you what, a lot of people wanna wait around and see, hey. What does the USDA think here? You know, what what does the, you know, wide span of of their poll and survey and getting out in the field and talking to growers. What does that show?
Matt Bennett:And that's something that we certainly at least hope we can see here in November, but, no. Verdict's still out on that.
Todd Gleason:Turn your attention to the livestock market. I don't wanna go political with this. Of course, the president has been dealing with Argentina over the last several weeks. We can talk a little bit about, or have talked some about, supporting the peso, about $40,000,000,000 worth. The soybean sales, maybe as many as 40 cargoes in that same time frame.
Todd Gleason:And now there's the livestock side where he's hoping to lower the price of beef in The United States by importing Argentine beef, quadrupling the quota coming into The United States. What impact does that have on the marketplace, and how's the livestock sector been? Not reacting because it's not good, but in C in the CME group rather than politically.
Matt Bennett:Yeah. I mean, in the CME group, of course, today, you know, you dropped $4 on feeders. Yesterday, you dropped the limit of 9 and a quarter. Certainly didn't handle that news very well whatsoever. If we wanna look at it from an actual statistics standpoint, Argentina, their imp our imports of Argentine beef last year was about 2.2%.
Matt Bennett:And so that amounted to if if we go ahead and increase to 80,000, you're probably only gonna raise, you know, our imports from them. You know, it's only gonna raise our our, in total, about one to 2%. So it's a small amount if we really get with it as far as importing their beef. The problem I had, Todd, and I will go political to a degree, is just just the nature of his of his true social post really frustrated the cattle rancher, if you will, because he's taking taking credit for, you know, a really strong cattle market. And, unfortunately, the strong cattle market has been due to the carnage, you know, for these ranchers over the course of time.
Matt Bennett:We've lost a lot of ranchers. The profitability hasn't been worth a darn, you know, and so numbers are a seventy year low for the beef herd. That's why the market's up. It's got nothing to do with tariffs. So, that was a very frustrating thing for this cattle, you know, rancher, if you will.
Matt Bennett:As far as the market's concerned, it it I think more than anything, what it did was it spooked your fund money because funds understand that one tweet or true social post can certainly change the dynamics of the market. And that's been a market they've been extremely long for quite some time. And so I think that what it does is it kinda spooks those guys, and I'm not so sure that they're gonna wanna stay long when one tweet can wreck the whole thing.
Todd Gleason:Thank you much. I appreciate it. Absolutely. Matt Bennett is with agmarket.net. By the way, he'll be on Market to Market this weekend.
Todd Gleason:You can catch that on many public television stations, including our own channel twelve, WILL. That'll air at 11:30 a. M. Sunday morning. We're now joined by Gary Schnicki, agricultural economist here on the Urbana Champaign campus of the University of Illinois.
Todd Gleason:He and I and a series of other folks this morning hosted a webinar I think that you should take a look at. It's online in the PharmDoc Daily website under webinars and events, or you can just go to youtube.com/@pharmdoc. This morning, we talked about the government shutdown and its impact on agriculture. Thank you for joining us. I thought that that hour was probably really worth watching, and that it had a lot of really good information in it today.
Gary Schnitkey:No. It did. You you, sometimes forget what happens when the government shuts down from everything from data not being collected to, payments being delayed to rural development, payment or loans not being paid to SNAP and everything. So it's it's worth the list.
Todd Gleason:And the fact that these USDA employees are not being paid. And, honestly, they're told to shut everything down. So if you're trying to get a service or trying to get an answer from them, they've been told no email, no phones, don't bother. And so all of that has to be fixed coming back. So if you want to learn more about that, you can check out the webinar at youtube.com/@pharmdoc or go to pharmdocdaily.illinois.edu and look in the webinars and defense section.
Todd Gleason:While you're there, you can also sign up for the Illinois Pharm Economic Summits. Gary will be on the road with those. Or the Farm Assets Conference. You can find both of those on our website as well at willag.0rg. Gary, you have joined me to talk about machinery costs.
Todd Gleason:Input prices have been really difficult for producers. We understand chemical seeds, fertilizer. Machinery cost, and fuel are also one of the largest inputs, I believe, in the annual crop budgets. Tell me where they play out and what kinds of things, you have written about for the PharmDoc website.
Gary Schnitkey:No. Power cost, we call them power cost, but and they're all machinery related, which would be include repairs, fuel and oil, machine hire, and a couple other things go into the those things. But one of the things that we saw was those machinery costs really went up between 21 and '23. During a three year period, machinery costs or new investment on tractors or the tractor purchase price went up 21%. So in the three year period, which is quite large particularly when you compare it to a 14% for the for the nine years prior to that.
Gary Schnitkey:So we saw those things go up tremendously and we have no expectation that they will come down. So we're looking at higher prices for machinery. Our machinery, we're looking at higher repair cost and fuel and oil just keeps hanging in there at a relatively higher level than we were in 2015 to 2019. So we're looking at higher cost.
Todd Gleason:I know from having this discussion with you over the last several decades that the combine is one of the largest costs on the farm. I saw somebody posting that that a 12 row eating about 6,500 bushel an hour. This is a big machine. And I know you've got some thoughts on how many acres that ought to run over. Yep.
Todd Gleason:And I'm wondering what it is, as it's related to the combine you talked about in your article.
Gary Schnitkey:Yeah. So we calculate the cost of machinery operation and particularly combine operation, and we've been doing that. Every other year, we did in '25, '23, and going back. Well, the last time we did it for a it was for a if you operated the combine over 3,600 acres, it was $40 per acre. So machinery cost, 3,600 acres, 60% corn, 40% soybeans, it was $40 per acre.
Gary Schnitkey:Just to give you a feel, if you went back to 2017, which isn't all that long ago, but $40 would be at the same level as a 1,600 acre operation. So we've upped the level considerably since since since 2017. We've we've upped it considerably. That $40 for 3,600 acres really goes up when you reduce the number of acres that you run the machine over. So, you know, those large cost increases in 2021 to 2023, it just has made, operating the machine over the most acres that can more important, not less important.
Todd Gleason:Okay. So I'm gonna have you delve your mind just a little bit for a fact. I think I remember as it's related to things we have talked about. And this is the number of days that are available for a producer to actually work in the field. They differ from the spring to the fall.
Todd Gleason:Springtime, much tighter timelines. And what I'm trying to get at is that there are farmers right now that are saying, no way. I'm not putting 3,600 acres through one combine. I'm not gonna do it, or I or I need at least two for that. And I think they need some convincing, and I'm wondering whether there's enough time in the fall to make it all work.
Gary Schnitkey:Yeah. We see, we we see 3,600 acres, and, obviously, you're gonna put to get through a one combine through 3,600 acres, you're gonna put a green card on it and keep it rolling and and having the semis there as well, or the the the means to get it away. But yes, you can. You're gonna we and we actually do see farmers do that and put many more acres than 3,600 on one combine. Again, when you look at the curves associated with the cost, they just go up and up and up when you have run fewer and fewer acres and, you know, that that's a that in in our low low price, high cost environment, this is one area that you can get savings if you run that machine over more acres.
Gary Schnitkey:And that doesn't mean I mean, that that could be sharing a combine over multiple farmers, which I know everybody doesn't like to like to do. But, you know, we're we might be at that point where we have to think about those things again, particularly for a younger producer and already are cash strapped on other other ends of things.
Todd Gleason:What's the average size of a grain farm in Illinois in the FBFM record keeping system at this point?
Gary Schnitkey:1,500 acres would be about the average farm size in our, grain farm sort in FBFM. So that would say, you know, two average sized farms should probably get together and operate one combine.
Todd Gleason:Thank you much. I appreciate it. You're welcome, Todd. Gary Schnick. He is an agricultural economist here on the Urbana Champaign campus of the University of Illinois.
Todd Gleason:Let's check-in on the growing regions across the planet. We're now joined by Mike Tenure. He's at tstormweather, tstorm.net online, where he serves as the CEO and president. Thank you, Mike, for being with us. Let's begin in South America.
Todd Gleason:We may just stay in South America because that's the crop that is now going in the ground, corn and soybeans that we really want to talk about, wheat to some extent as well. Start with Brazil for me, please, and tell me about planting progress there and weather conditions.
Mike Tannura:Well, planting has been taking place at a normal to above normal pace based on all the reports that we're seeing. The thing that's a little odd about their weather, though, is that the central and northern areas are actually pretty dry. They did see a nice rain back in September, which signified an end to the dry season. And, typically, once that setup starts, it continues. But it didn't continue because most of the month of October has been pretty dry.
Mike Tannura:And because of that, it's going to end up being one of the drier October's on record in the central region, which includes about 40% of Brazil soybean production. And even in the northern areas are going to be pretty dry as well, and that's another 15%. Now we looked at all the data to try and figure out if this means anything for the future. And it is a tiny bit tricky because unlike The US, as you move back in time looking at yields in Brazil, you start to run into some major differences once you get fifteen to twenty and even twenty five years back. And that's because the central and northern areas weren't producing very many soybeans back then.
Mike Tannura:It's kind of a newer thing, and now they've taken over as one of the main or if not the main producing area of the world. But all that being said, we looked at it, and we tried to figure out what would happen if you had a dry October. Does it tell you anything about the future? And there's really no correlation between rainfall in the month of October and then rainfall in the key periods of head in December, January, and February. So we don't think this is anything to be too concerned about.
Mike Tannura:Probably the biggest thing is that it might limit some of the planting going forward over the next week or ten days just because it's going to stay kind of dry. This one might push the harvest a little bit later. But other than that, it doesn't really mean a whole lot. Even if you look at the soybean yields for the country as a whole, there's just not a real connection between what's happening now in these areas and then the final yields later because we've had dry October's and wet October's. We've had great yields and poor yields in all kinds of different scenarios.
Todd Gleason:A little, later for the soybean harvest, does that offer any concern at all for the planting season for the second crop or safrinha corn, or it's just just a bit of a delay and doesn't matter much?
Mike Tannura:Well, it always raises that risk, but the thing is that to this point in time, the planting pace has actually been, you know, pretty much on the money or even ahead of schedule, and that's because of that dry weather. Now things might slow down just a little bit because of the dry weather over the next seven to ten days. But even in that scenario, Todd, this is not going to be a season in which the crop is planted unusually late. It'll it'll either be normal or ahead of normal for the planting pace as we get into the next few weeks. So in the end, that doesn't really give us much of a hint of what's going to happen with the planting of that corn crop come February and March.
Mike Tannura:And even once we get there, it's kinda like in The US where you never know exactly what it's going to look like on any particular week in the future that far out. But if it ends up being dry, you know, that'll help with their planting. And if it's really wet, then that'll slow them down. But that's just something we can't really think about yet.
Todd Gleason:What's your early season assessment of growing conditions in Argentina?
Mike Tannura:Well, Argentina has been very cool for the last several weeks, and it's going to get really cool as we move forward with temperatures way below normal by ten, fifteen, even 20 degrees at times over the next five to seven days. So, they might even see some frost in parts of Buenos Aires once we get into Monday and Tuesday morning. And they are planting corn, and wheat is sensitive. So not an ideal setup for them, but as we've seen many times in the past, even in The US, you can still get out of that situation with some warmer weather that might follow. So, but the weather has not been, normal by any means there.
Mike Tannura:They've been very wet in the months of August and September. It's dried out a little bit in October, but now a pretty major rain event is starting, and that's going to last through Friday or Saturday, and that'll turn those crop areas wetter again. So kind of a wet and very cool start to the growing season in Argentina, But, similarly, it doesn't really mean a whole lot for the future. We can still have a dryer set up later on into next year, or we could end up turning wet. Just not a real strong correlation between what's happening at this time of the year and then what happens in the key periods months out.
Todd Gleason:We'll look forward to talking with you again next week. Thank you.
Mike Tannura:Sounds great, Todd. Thanks a lot.
Todd Gleason:That's Mike Tanuri. He is with t storm weather. That's tstorm.net online. You've been listening to the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. It's public radio for the farming world online on demand at willag.0rg.
Todd Gleason:I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleeson.