Closing Market Report

The July 30, 2026, episode of the Closing Market Report covers recent developments in agricultural commodity markets, industry news, consumer trends, and regional weather forecasts. Market analyst Matt Bennett discusses the recent downturn in soybean and corn futures, attributing the market's sell-off to anticipated weekend rainfall across the dry Corn Belt. The agricultural news segment briefly highlights upcoming Farm Bill markup negotiations, updated USDA wetland determinations, and an expected increase in farmland supply entering the fall sales season. Next, CoBank livestock economist Abby Groves explains the rapid expansion of the $4.4 billion meat snack industry, noting that the 45% category growth is largely driven by consumers seeking convenient, high-protein options and the rising use of GLP-1 weight-loss medications. Concluding the broadcast, meteorologist Mike Tannura reviews the exceptionally warm and dry conditions of the past 15 days that have negatively impacted crop ratings, while forecasting a strong incoming weather system expected to bring one to three inches of stabilizing rain across the Midwest.

01:22 Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, AgMarket.net
07:38 WILLAg News Update
10:15 Meat Snacks: Market Growth, GLP-1s, & Innovation
17:28 Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, Tstorm.net

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Creators and Guests

Host

Todd E. Gleason🎙🇺🇸

University of Illinois

What is Closing Market Report?

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

cmr260730

01:22 Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, AgMarket.net
07:38 WILLAg News Update
10:15 Meat Snacks: Market Growth, GLP-1s, & Innovation
17:28 Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, Tstorm.net

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Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant university in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report. It is the 30th day of July 2026. I’m Extension’s Todd Gleason. Coming up, we’ll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett from AgMarket.net. I’ll update you on some of the news for the day, and then we’ll turn our attention to meat snacks and how they’re really having a moment. And it may be more than that over time, as GLP–1 drugs have been driving some of the demand for those products in the grocery store. Then we’ll turn our attention to the weather forecast as we wrap up our time together. We’ll talk with Mike Tannura. He’s at Tstorm Weather in Chicago, right here on this Thursday 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: Todd Gleason’s services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.

Todd Gleason: December and March corn finished lower today, down three and a quarter in the December at $4.68 and a half. The March at $4.84 and a half, two and three-quarters lower. November beans, $11.88 and three-quarters. The settlement price down four. And December wheat, soft red, up three and three-quarters of a cent at $6.81 and a half.

01:22 Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, AgMarket.net

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

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

Todd Gleason: Tell me about conditions on the ground on your farm there, about an hour to the south of us here in Champaign-Urbana.

Matt Bennett: Yeah, I mean, in all honesty, everything’s hanging in there fairly well. We haven’t caught a whole lot of rain, we’re on the dry side. You know, our yards aren’t hurting too bad yet, which tells me my corn’s probably not hurting too bad. The corn in the field, you can tell where there was some stress from water and whatnot. Otherwise, pretty good color. I’ve got to think that we’ll be in good shape if we go ahead and catch this rain they’re talking about for the weekend. You know, I don’t know that it’s going to be a record crop by any means for most people, but I do think that there’ll be some awfully good corn around. Now beans, on the other hand, you know, a lot of these beans went in the ground in early April. Yes, in some places they were stressed by water, but a lot of these beans were flowering by summer solstice, and the beans I’ve been in are podded pretty good. I feel really good about them, but yeah, we have to get some moisture because, as we all know, the next couple, three weeks are super important. But I feel good about everything. But I’ll tell you what, if we would miss all the rains this weekend, it would be a kick in the gut for sure. So we’ve got to hope that we can finally break through there.

Todd Gleason: Those rains are expected to be one to two inches, pretty widespread across the whole of the Corn Belt. Has anybody been calling in saying, “Hey, my corn just doesn’t—it’s just not there, it’s just not looking that good”?

Matt Bennett: Yeah. Northwestern Iowa, there’s a lot of growers in the northwestern quadrant of Iowa, which is very interesting. If you look at the map on distribution for rainfall, you get into southeastern South Dakota, and some of those guys have had plenty, and it’s almost like when you cross the state line, it just gets pretty rough. In that part of the world, they’re screaming for moisture. You get into a lot of North and South Dakota both, of course outside of that eastern part of South Dakota, you know, and it’s problematic because not only have they been dry, you know, they’ve been excessively hot. I mean, every day the last several days, they’ve been hotter than we’ve been in central Illinois. So it’s really been an interesting weather pattern that we’ve been looking at. And the tough thing for a lot of those folks, especially in North Dakota, is that they’ve not only had 100-degree heat, probably for highs a lot of areas, I’d say eight out of the last 15 days, they’ve also had 30-mile-an-hour winds on several of those days. So we’ve talked to a fair amount of growers in that part of the world that don’t feel like too much hope as far as their corn crop is concerned. So there’s definitely some areas that have massive issues, and those would be a couple of the three areas that I think are most important right now, at least in my book.

Todd Gleason: As it happens, Jason Winter from Columbia Grain International, an elevator system that services the West Coast, he’s located between Jamestown and Fargo in North Dakota, will join you and Chip Nellinger for the Commodity Week program later this afternoon. I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say. Tell me about the marketplace today and the calm that we’ve had after a fairly vicious move to the downside, particularly for soybeans.

Matt Bennett: Yeah, I mean, you look at Monday’s trade was rough, Tuesday we kind of rebounded, Wednesday’s trade was rough, beans have definitely taken it on the chin here this week. We came in here today and we actually traded higher at one point, but unfortunately, November beans closed around a dime off the highs. And so, you just go back to Friday, and good lord, on Friday we made a high of $12.56 and a half on November beans, and it looks like we’re going to close here today about $11.88 and a half. So, you’re looking at a solid almost 70-cent drop there in the course of four trading sessions. So, it’s been rough to say the least, and there’s no question in my mind that the massive culprit, if you will, is of course weather. Obviously, we came into July, all kinds of moisture in July, certainly on the drier bias. Topsoil moisture indicators looked pretty ugly, you know, whenever you look at them, moisture over the last 14 days, those maps have looked very ugly as well. You know, but it certainly looks like this bean crop has a chance to catch a lifeline here, and the market’s paid close attention to that, and that’s the biggest reason for the sell-off here.

Todd Gleason: What are you going to be watching as we move from the end of the month of July into August?

Matt Bennett: Yeah, I mean, you know, whenever you look, for instance, over on the corn side of things, I mean obviously the month of June was very kind to the corn market. After that NASS report at the end of June, we’ve done nothing but have a really nice uptrend here. Now today, you kind of closed on that 200-day moving average. Closed at the low of the day and really about seven cents off the high. And so, it’ll be interesting to see, do some of these people take a few more of those profits off the table? Because anybody who got long this market, yeah, there was some short covering no doubt, because the funds had built a short. But there was also some people that came in and took long positions. You know, are they going to take off those positions going into the end of the month? And I certainly think that that’s a possibility. But we’re going to be watching closely, just as everyone else is, you know, how well do these models verify this turnaround here? Because GFS has been awfully abundant in rainfall forecasts here over the last couple weeks, and not many of those have verified. But one thing that you can say now is that it seems like the models are in pretty much agreement that we’re going to get a fair amount of moisture. So if we do get that and it verifies, I would assume starting out the month, you know, it’s going to be really tough to resume the kind of rally action we saw there last week anyway.

Todd Gleason: Thanks much, we’ll talk to you for Commodity Week.

Matt Bennett: Absolutely. Thank you, Todd.

Todd Gleason: Mm-hmm. Matt Bennett is with AgMarket.net.

07:38 WILLAg News Update

Todd Gleason: In today’s agricultural news, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman says he hopes to hold a farm bill markup next Thursday, as negotiations continue on key provisions. The Arkansas Republican says discussions are ongoing with Senate Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, including a Democratic proposal to delay a state cost-share requirement for the SNAP or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Meanwhile, USDA is providing farmers with greater certainty when making land management decisions by updating guidance on certified wetland determinations. The NRCS, or the Natural Resources Conservation Service, has issued an interim final rule stating that most wetland determinations made since November 28, 1990, will be considered certified if producers were notified of the decision and given appeal rights. NRCS Chief Terry Cosby says the change gives producers confidence when planning field improvements and other operations. And finally today, farmland sales have been steady in recent years with values holding well, but there are signs that market may be shifting. Mike Davis has more.

Mike Davis: Colton Lacina, vice president of real estate with Farmers National Company, says it’s economically driven.

Colton Lacina: Land values have been holding really resilient. Supply has been down. I would say over the last three years we’ve been holding pretty consistently at 20% off of what we would consider an average supply line. And demand has held right in there and hung strong, which has kept prices very stable.

Mike Davis: Lacina says now there are indicators that the upcoming busy season might bring with it a jump in the amount of land on the market.

Colton Lacina: We’re starting to prepare for what is our sale season, which is, you know, the end of August, September, October, November. And the pipeline is starting to fill up and fill up rather quickly. So I do anticipate we’re going to see probably closer to back to an average supply going into the ’26 sale season.

Mike Davis: He says while localized factors are often the driver, early season sales thus far have been strong. I’m Mike Davis.

Todd Gleason: And I’m Todd Gleason. That’s a look at today’s agricultural news.

10:15 Meat Snacks: Market Growth, GLP–1s, & Innovation

Todd Gleason: If you’ve been to the store, you know that proteins are having a snack moment in the marketplace. Abby Groves is a livestock economist at CoBank, and she sat down with my NAFB colleague, farm broadcaster Kiley Allan, to discuss a new report from CoBank’s Knowledge Exchange. As you’ll hear, the economist says meat snacks are becoming a thing. Here’s Kiley Allan with more.

Kiley Allan: Well, let’s start talking about some of that demand. What’s the demand for meat snacks?

Abby Groves: Well, we’ve really seen it grown over the past four or five years now. Based on Circana sales data, even just on a dollar basis, I mean it’s grown 45% up to it’s a $4.4 billion category now, which is pretty exciting. And we see a lot of growth in demand from younger consumers as well as those that are on GLP–1 weight loss drugs. But just your average consumer in general, that they’re really looking for protein, of course, is the absolute name of the game at this point and has been for the past couple of years. We expect that trend to continue. But also having foods that are clean label, that are healthy, that you recognize what the ingredient label means. And if they’re high in protein and have all of those things, then that is like the gold star related snack. So we’ve seen meat snacks perform really well lately and we expect that trend to continue to grow over time.

Kiley Allan: Well, you alluded to my next question there. Protein, name of the game. And we are seeing more and more people looking for it in the grocery stores. You say we expect that demand to continue?

Abby Groves: Yeah, we absolutely do. I mean, we’ve seen immense growth, not even just in meat snacks, we’ve seen it in dairy, we’ve seen it across all of the animal protein. So beef, pork, poultry. Even lamb and some exotic meats are doing well at the grocery store that we’re seeing year-over-year sales growth. So that’s always really encouraging that you have consumers that are really seeking out protein but also from its true original source. And so being able to see consumers kind of gravitate towards protein but from the natural source is always nice to see. But it’s a long-term trend rather than just a short-term fad.

Kiley Allan: Bouncing off of that, Abby, are there any implications for meat snacks?

Abby Groves: Right now at this time, it is more so of like what’s going on in the cattle space, that there is competition amongst all of the beef processors and manufacturers to be able to find cattle. And so that could potentially cause supply restrictions down the line with regards to beef-related meat snacks. But again, this offers the opportunity for the other livestock species. And one of the other things that I that we haven’t talked about yet that we did mention in our report was the amount of investment that’s going into meat snack processing. So across the entire animal protein portfolio, we have over $8 billion in the past five or six years that’s being invested into making or building new processing plants. And approximately $1 billion of that is solely related to meat snacks. And so again, this is something super positive that if there is investment going into processing, that that means that we’ll have more meat snack products available in the near future. And this will be great to be able to grow demand and get consumers eating more protein coming directly from a meat source.

Kiley Allan: Abby Groves joins us, a livestock economist from CoBank. More details and the report itself can be found at cobank.com. I’m Kiley Allan.

Todd Gleason: Our thanks go again to Kiley Allan. She’s at the Midwest Farm Report Radio Network. That’s out of Madison, Wisconsin. She was speaking with Abby Groves. She’s a livestock economist at CoBank. If you’d like to see the report, it’s titled “Proteins Promise for Meat Snack Growth,” go to cobank.com, look under research, and you should find it under animal proteins.

17:28 Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, Tstorm.net

Todd Gleason: Let’s turn our attention now to the growing regions across the planet. The CEO and president of Tstorm Weather at Tstorm.net online now joins us. Hi, Mike, thanks for being with us.

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

Todd Gleason: Hey, tell me about this last couple of weeks in the weather and how you assess its impact or what’s been happening across the Corn Belt.

Mike Tannura: Well, it’s rather fascinating to watch because the last 15 days have really turned dry and pretty warm. If you look at rainfall over the last 15 days and compare it to the last 48 years of record, about 80% of the US corn and soybean crops were drier than normal. That’s exceptionally high. We can look back in time and the only real years that stick out and join with it are some of the bad years, like 1983, 1991, things like that. But here’s the thing, that’s only looking at it over the last 15 days. If we broaden it out a little bit and look at it over the last 30 days, it’s not quite as alarming, but it’s still a concern. About 55% of US corn and soybeans were drier than normal over that period, and that ranks around number five to number eight driest over the last 30 days, again going back to 1979. So this just shows you that what we’re going through now is a little bit unusual. And of course, you may have noticed that when you saw the condition ratings this week, they dropped four points for corn and three points for soybeans. That’s the proportions that were rated good and excellent, and that’s just all related to this. This lack of rain is starting to affect the crops. And on top of that, temperatures have been very warm over the last 30 days as well, also ranking around number five warmest going back 48 years.

Todd Gleason: When you look forward, do things change?

Mike Tannura: Well, this is where everything is turning even more interesting. There’s an unusual system that’s forming today in South Dakota and that’s going to move across the Corn Belt over the next three days. Now normally at this time of the year, you just see a wave of energy or some kind of small system pass that’ll generate a big thunderstorm cluster here and there, kind of what we were seeing earlier in the summer. But what’s going to happen with this system is that it turns pretty strong for late July and early August standards, and that will generate a pretty big shield of rain, starting later today in South Dakota and then moving directly across the Corn Belt all the way into Saturday. Now, it’s a little bit tricky to figure out how much rain is going to happen, but the one thing we must note is that most of these computer models are bringing out some pretty big totals. Widespread rainfall of one to two inches is indicated for most of the Corn Belt crop from this event, and several models bring down more than three inches in different parts of Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and South Dakota. So this just gives you some idea of what we’re looking at. Now, if this happens, which we think it probably will in some fashion—it’s always hard to say you’re going to see a widespread one-inch rain or a two-inch rain, which would be a pretty big anomaly to the wet side. But either way, we do think that we’re going to see a fairly robust system move through. It’s going to take down all these dryness numbers and it should stabilize things. So by the time we get into the weekend, things should be looking quite a bit better for corn and soybeans with some better soil moisture in place than we have today.

Todd Gleason: That’ll put us into the month of August. Have you been thinking about what that looks like?

Mike Tannura: Well, we can see that the first five days or so are going to be pretty much close to normal. Temperatures will be in the 70s and 80s for highs with lows in the 60s and 70s. So kind of tapping or kind of just staying pretty close to normal, maybe a little bit on the cool side. After that, this is where we have to watch the next set of events. The big upper-level high that produced a pretty severe heat wave over the last few weeks out in the Plains and western Corn Belt, that is going to re-emerge in the southern US. Now, whether or not it builds northward and envelops a lot of corn and soybeans or just kind of stays to the south remains to be seen. The most likely scenario is for some of the southern and western corn and soybean crops to tap into some heat one to two weeks out, while northern or eastern crops end up being closer to normal. But either way, we don’t think we’re going to see the ideal scenario of widespread coolness. There should be a little bit of heat once again in August and that would again be kind of a limiting factor for yield potential for corn and soybeans. Some storms should be around with this setup, especially sometime around a week from now, around Thursday, where we see some type of system move through that should cause warmer air to shift northward. And as long as that happens, we’ll see some more storms. But overall, Todd, it’s still a little bit difficult to pinpoint how it’s going to look over the month of August, except that at least initially, it looks a little bit cool and a little bit dry, then a little bit warmer and wetter. But we still have a long ways to go before the crop’s in the bin.

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

Mike Tannura: That sounds great.

Todd Gleason: That’s Mike Tannura. He is with Tstorm Weather at Tstorm.net online and serves as the CEO, president, and primary meteorologist. You can catch him each and every Thursday right here on the Closing Market Report. It does come to you from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world, online, on demand at WILLAg.org. Make sure you check out our calendar of events while you’re on that home page. You can also listen to the podcast directly from there or just search out the Closing Market Report by name in your favorite podcast application. Those include Spotify and Apple, as well as YouTube. I’m University of Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason. You have a great afternoon.

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