Closing Market Report

The July 21, 2026, edition of the Closing Market Report, hosted by Todd Gleason, provides an overview of agricultural commodity markets, crop conditions, energy prices, and weather forecasts. Naomi Blohm of Total Farm Marketing analyzes recent rallies in wheat and soybean futures, attributing market movements to European droughts and ongoing geopolitical tensions, while cautioning producers about potential price pullbacks. The broadcast details the latest USDA Crop Progress Report, noting that corn and soybean development is ahead of historical averages across much of the Midwest, and provides an update on tar spot tracking from the Crop Protection Network. Dave Chatterton of Strategic Farm Marketing discusses the volatility in agricultural energies, warning that escalating conflicts in the Middle East and the Black Sea, combined with low strategic petroleum reserves, pose upside risks for fall diesel and fertilizer prices. Finally, Don Day of Day Weather outlines a hot and dry forecast for the northern and western Corn Belt, highlighting concerns about potential crop stress during the critical August period.

01:15 Ag Markets with Naomi Blohm, Total Farm Marketing
08:21 USDA Crop Progress Report
10:48 Crop Protection Network Update
12:55 Ag Energies with Dave Chatterton, Strategic Farm Marketing
19:55 Ag Weather with Don Day, Day Weather

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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

cmr260721

01:15 Ag Markets with Naomi Blohm, Total Farm Marketing
08:21 USDA Crop Progress Report
10:48 Crop Protection Network Update
12:55 Ag Energies with Dave Chatterton, Strategic Farm Marketing
19:55 Ag Weather with Don Day, Day Weather

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Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant university in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report. It is the 21st day of July 2026. I’m Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason. Coming up, we’ll talk about the commodity markets with Naomi Blohm. We’ll check yesterday’s weekly crop progress report and the numbers from across the Midwest, and we’ll use the cropprotectionnetwork.org to explore fungal diseases you should be scouting for in your fields this week. We’ll also take a look at the agricultural energies with Dave Chatterton at Strategic Farm Marketing and hear from Don Day too at Day Weather on this Tuesday edition of the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media.

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

Todd Gleason: September corn today settled $4.52 and three-quarters, three and a quarter higher. December at $4.74 and three-quarters, up one and a quarter, and March futures for the corn at $4.91, two and a half higher. August soybeans down six and a half. September, five lower. November at $12.22 and three-quarters, three and a half cents lower. December soft red winter wheat at $6.97, down four and a half. The hard red December at $7.51, finished 10 and a half cents lower.

01:15 Ag Markets with Naomi Blohm, Total Farm Marketing

Todd Gleason: Naomi Blohm now joins us from Total Farm Marketing. Hello, Naomi, thanks for being with us again today.

Naomi Blohm: Thank you for having me.

Todd Gleason: Let’s talk about the marketplace. An interesting one for the last couple of weeks, the rally in wheat and soybeans both. How do you view those?

Naomi Blohm: I feel the rallies we have had so far are mostly justified since the drought in Europe brought down global crop for corn and wheat. I think it helped to justify a rally to where we are right now. The overly bearish sentiment that our US markets have had for a good year has maybe shifted to neutral because global carryout levels are starting to edge lower. The predicament now is where this US crop is going to end up. The crop progress ratings from yesterday has US corn at 67% good to excellent, down just a point from last week, but traders thought it would be lower than that with the heat. The soybeans came in at 66% good to excellent. That was actually up a point from last week, and traders again due to the heat thought it would be lower. Green markets today are still overall trading near some recent resistance levels for the corn and the wheat. Soybeans had pushed higher yesterday on the drier forecast and had turnaround Tuesday today. It feels like the market might just want to sit here and wait a bit to see what further rainfall may materialize this week. Iowa had good rain last night, it went into western Illinois, Indiana looked like it was a little hit or miss, and Ohio had decent rains today. We’re waiting to see with this cooler temperature what is going to happen for Nebraska. They do have forecast for rain the next two days, about a 50% chance in that main corn-growing part of Nebraska, so we’ll be watching for that. It’s interesting some of the private satellite image companies are poking their head out there. They’re thinking they might see some good yields. One company had it at 185 for corn yield, a different company had yield near 188, but with a quick disclaimer that it can change depending on if these rains occur or not.

Todd Gleason: I take it you drove to Des Moines last week, is that correct? Was that for Market to Market first, and then what did the crop look like?

Naomi Blohm: I did drive to Des Moines last week, Thursday afternoon, and came back Friday night. The way I go is from where I live in Fond du Lac, kitty-corner to Madison, Dubuque, Iowa City, and then Des Moines. It was sheer perfection. I thought this has the potential to be an amazing crop. Even though our crop in Wisconsin was planted a little bit late, we are looking real good right now. The Iowa crop was actually really neat to see. On my way to Des Moines, it was lush green fields, and as I drove back, the tasseling had just started, so the lush green had that soft hint of yellow on top with the tasseling occurring. I had never seen that transformation within 24 to 48 hours; it was magnificent. The crop looks great, but I do know that some of the western states are struggling, and the drought is real. It makes me wonder if it’s the battle we’ve had the last few years where the central and eastern part of the country has great crops and it makes up for any drought that the western part might see. It’s a real tug of war. If the United States has a good corn yield 183 or higher, it takes some of the zap out of the lower trending global ending stocks because the Americans come in and save the day. If we come out and we end up having a yield less than 180 on corn, this market would still have every reason to rally higher from here.

Todd Gleason: Do $12 new crop corn futures worry you as it relates to the size of the plantings that the South Americans might do?

Naomi Blohm: With this bean market rally that we’ve had, it seems like we’ve maybe priced ourselves out of the market short term from competition from South America. We are a little bit higher priced than what they are now, and it gives them more incentive to keep planting as many soybeans as possible. There was talk yesterday, one of their private forecasters came out and said they thought it was going to be the potential for another record crop. It has been nice that China has been buying from us, definitely politically motivated, but as soon as South America has bigger crops to come, they’ll buy from there. I get worried that Argentina might do their tax sale, and then that gives their farmers incentive to go ahead and open the floodgates and sell all of their crop. It’s still that touch-and-go window where we trade every single weather forecast, the market’s overbought, and I’m a little bit cautious that we might see a slight pull back for prices. In summary, I think this is a great opportunity if you have old crop corn in the bin to be moving it, because unless it’s a legit flash drought from here on out, there still is a lot of old crop corn that has to come to town.

Todd Gleason: How should producers and yourself consider the issue still related to the Black Sea and to the Middle East and logistical problems that it has created, particularly for wheat and corn?

Naomi Blohm: With the geopolitical struggles that are out there, that’s been part of the reason why the markets have been working higher, and it is something that could keep market prices supported. If they have continued struggles over there, it might allow for better exports from the United States to other countries. We might see an uptick in corn exports, but the USDA just accounted for that on the most recent WASDE, they increased export demand for corn. The same would be true for wheat; maybe we see other countries want to be buying some of our wheat if they can’t get it out of the Black Sea region. I have a hunch, Russia has said that in spite of all the struggles between Ukraine and Russia with some of their waterway issues, Russia is looking for different ways to get the wheat to export. It’s not that there’s a lack of product to be exported in the Black Sea, it’s just the short term transportation hiccup to get it out of the countries.

Todd Gleason: Thanks much, we’ll talk with you again next week.

Naomi Blohm: Thank you.

Todd Gleason: That’s Naomi Blohm. She is with Total Farm Marketing.

08:21 USDA Crop Progress Report

Todd Gleason: Yesterday afternoon the United States Department of Agriculture released the weekly crop progress report. 59% of the corn crop is silking across the nation. That’s 5 percentage points ahead of average. Corn in the dough stage sits at 13%, 11% is the historical 5-year average. National corn condition is rated 67% good to excellent. Here are some of the developments in the key states: South Dakota corn silking is 19 percentage points ahead of its 5-year average, coming in at 49%. Iowa corn silking at 72%, 15 points ahead of the typical pace. Minnesota at 58%, that’s 14 points ahead of the 5-year average. Kansas corn in the dough stage is at 36%, running 12 points hotter than normal, and conversely, Nebraska is lagging just a bit in the dough stage sitting at just 6% against a 12% 5-year average.

Moving to soybeans, the national crop is 66% blooming, 6 points ahead of average. Soybean setting pods reached 32%, 8 points ahead of the typical 24% pace, and the national soybean crop is 66% good to excellent. Here are some of the interesting regional numbers: We’ll start with South Dakota again, they’re 62% blooming for their soybeans, that’s 19 percentage points ahead of the 5-year average. 76% of the soybeans in Minnesota are blooming, that’s 12 percentage points above the 5-year average. 40% are setting pods, a full 17 points ahead of the historical norm. Illinois soybean setting pods sits at 37%, they’re 12 points ahead of their usual pace. North Dakota bean setting pods have advanced, tracking 9 points ahead of the 5-year average at 20%, and Kansas bean setting pods are also accelerating, coming in 8 points ahead of the 5-year average at 22%.

Finally, looking at winter wheat, the US winter wheat harvest is 74% complete, just ahead of the 71% 5-year pace. South Dakota, again, experiencing a remarkably early winter wheat harvest, not a good one, but still remarkably ahead, sitting at 61% complete compared to its typical 32% pace.

10:48 Crop Protection Network Update

Todd Gleason: Now let’s check in on the Crop Protection Network. This is operated by the Land Grant university plant pathologists and is an early warning system of sorts for diseases in crops like corn and soybeans. For tar spot, it still shows that central Indiana is one of the hot spots around the nation, right through Vermillion County in Illinois, that’s near Danville. Otherwise, there are some new reports this week in Illinois, there in LaSalle and Kendall and Grundy counties, along with Knox County. 16 counties in Iowa are reporting some tar spot, most of those are along Interstate 80, and then of course we’ve talked about Nebraska where the bulk of the eastern half of the state has some reported tar spot. Those were earlier in the year along the Kansas border as well. And that’s a quick look at corn diseases. For soybean diseases, they’re nearly non-existent in the database that’s operated by the Crop Protection Network. You can find more at cropprotectionnetwork.org.

12:55 Ag Energies with Dave Chatterton, Strategic Farm Marketing

Todd Gleason: You’re listening to the Closing Market Report on this Tuesday afternoon. It comes to you from Illinois Public Media. Check us out online at willag.org. A couple of interesting things are taking place this week. On Wednesday, tomorrow, you may join the crop scientists for the Monmouth field day, check out all the details on our calendar of events online at willag.org, that kicks off at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow morning. Thursday evening is the Dixon Springs Ag Center’s beef field day. If you have not been to that one, it’s a really good event and I hope you’ll catch up with them as well. You can find all the details again at willag.org in the calendar of events.

Each Tuesday we take a look at the agricultural energies. Today we’re joined by Dave Chatterton, he’s at Strategic Farm Marketing. Hello Dave, thanks for being with us today.

Dave Chatterton: Good to be with you here. It has certainly been a pretty active oil and energy market of late.

Todd Gleason: Tell me about this last few weeks as the Iran war has heated back up. What kinds of things have you been worried about?

Dave Chatterton: It’s now a war that’s developing on a number of fronts. Not only do we have the US-Iran directly in the Strait of Hormuz, we now have Yemen and the Houthi rebels threatening shipping through the Red Sea on the west side of Saudi Arabia and out through the ports that get to the Aden Sea. Of course we’ve got things going on with Russia and Ukraine. I think the best way to frame that up Todd is I’ll pick diesel fuel. If you look at the pricing back in mid-March when we got to the peak in terms of diesel fuel futures, we hit $4.83. We got all the way down to $3.05 there in mid-June after the ceasefire was supposedly put in place on June 17th. As that’s fallen apart, we’re now back up with heating oil futures into that 4.20, 4.30 range. Markets are backing back and forth and putting a lot of volatility in front of you as a consumer or an end user of diesel fuel or any kind of energy product, whether you’re filling your gasoline tank at the convenience store or whether you’re on the farm. It’s challenging times for sure.

Todd Gleason: We talked about this earlier in the year when there was the possibility of peace and what producers might or maybe should do about their fall needs, whether that be for diesel fuel or natural gas. Have you been having discussions with producers about what that looks like today?

Dave Chatterton: It’s certainly been a renewed question that we’ve gotten this week and last as things have toggled back up. If you remember back the last time you and I spoke, we were talking about keeping some working inventory in front of you and keeping some fuel in your tanks or fuel under contract. Maybe not covering all of your gallons to get you through fall or the end of the year, but certainly having a chunk of those done. That was because of the upside risk and the ability to have a lasting peace deal, particularly in the Strait of Hormuz, is going to prove difficult. We know that it’s proved difficult in the Black Sea region between Russia and Ukraine and at this point things seem to be getting worse, not better, Todd. Like it or not, I think we still have to bite the bullet and be a buyer on dips here. The open-endedness and the uncertainty of what may happen down the road is a tough deal. A good example: Goldman Sachs was out to their clients this morning talking about the ability for crude oil to get to 120 here in the Brent market by the fourth quarter if the strait remains challenged or in jeopardy. Right now, that’s a $30 rally in Brent crude from where we’re at right now. That’s another 20 or 30 or 40 cents in diesel fuel.

Todd Gleason: On a related energy issue, what worries should producers have today about their fall fertilizer needs?

Dave Chatterton: Unfortunately, it’s going from bad to worse. I think you throw Russia in there as well and Russia today is closing a few of their ports due to security issues and basically an inability to protect ships going in and out of certain spots. How long this can sustain, we’re not sure, but in March it sounded like a long time till fall. We’re sitting here in July, it’s not that long till fall. I think you need to be concerned and watch what happens here. The fertilizer situation, we do seem to have some working inventory in front of us in terms of the dealer network or the supply network here in the US. I think South America is probably in a little bit more jeopardy here between now and the end of the year as they get ready to plant a crop here in the fall, but it’s going to be a problem they’re going to have to live with for a while. When you talk about 25% of global oil supply or global oil trade, we’re looking at a similar type of number on the fertilizer side for at least these certain products. The chance that this could get worse before it gets better would be the way to view it.

Todd Gleason: To this point in time, the Trump administration and the market has been using the United States as the backstop, meaning that the Trump administration has opened the SPR up, our oil reserves, they’ve emptied them out, they were lower going in anyway. How much of a concern is that for you?

Dave Chatterton: I think you have to be concerned. There’s maybe three things I would highlight. One, I think if we see the Red Sea closed due to this Houthi rebel situation, you’re talking about not only Saudi exports but others. You’re talking 6 to 7 million barrels a day that could potentially be locked in and that’s in addition to half a million barrels a day of straight up distillate exports or diesel fuel exports. You throw that on top of what’s happening here with the SPR in the US and we’re at a 43-year low on the SPR. In 1983 I didn’t even have a driver’s license at that point. So we’re talking about going back several decades here and looking at what happens. There’s just not a lot of good solutions that we can do. Our crude oil production here in the US continues to be at a record high, our refineries are running as hard as they can, but we’re also exporting a lot of product. Not only in the US have reserves been drawn down but the IEA has had an uncoordinated draw across the globe to others who hold strategic reserves and we’re in a situation where hurricane season is just getting started here. We have the first tropical storm in the Gulf this week. As things heat up into the fall, defining what that top end can be for oil gets very dangerous. It’s a very tiptoe type of period in the next several months for the oil markets.

Todd Gleason: 1983 was the very first year that I went on the radio for a paid gig. I was 19 years old doing the Illinois State Fair radio network for 11 days from Springfield. Thank you much, I appreciate that you have reminded me of my age and that you are much younger than I.

Dave Chatterton: I was bailing hay in McDonough County, for five bucks a day it seems like.

Todd Gleason: I had a better job than you did in that case, maybe, I don’t know. Hey, thank you much, and we’ll talk with you again soon enough, I’m sure, particularly for commodity week on Thursday of this week.

Dave Chatterton: Thanks, Todd.

Todd Gleason: That of course is Dave Chatterton, he is with Strategic Farm Marketing.

19:55 Ag Weather with Don Day, Day Weather

Todd Gleason: Don Day of Day Weather out of Cheyenne, Wyoming now joins us to take a look at the forecast. Don, I hear you’re traveling today. Where are you?

Don Day: I am in Tucson, Arizona at the US Dry Bean Convention, and of course everybody wants to know about the weather, so that’s why I’m here.

Todd Gleason: Of course they do. And a Dry Bean Convention, kind of an odd, I would think, that you’re in Arizona at this point, because really what I want to hear about is those areas of North Dakota. That’s kind of where I wanted to start. That is a dry bean growing region, particularly to the western half of that state. Are farmers worried at this point?

Don Day: They are. It’s interesting, you leave North Dakota and you come to Tucson where it’s raining and actually cooler. They headed south to cool off and see what it looks like to have rain. The pattern that we’ve been in, this big high and this very warm weather that has dominated the northern plains and parts of the central United States over the last 10 days or so. That high pressure ridge is shifting south and westward. What that is doing is it’s taking any available subtropical moisture coming up out of the desert southwest, curving into the central part of the country to miss and stay to the west and east of those areas. The upper midwest and the northern plains are going to continue to be very warm, and while there will occasionally be some thunderstorm activity coming in, it’s not going to be enough to take the edge off the heat and dryness.

Todd Gleason: So do you think that this heat will be enough to cause an issue related to pollination, the dryness, and how far into the greater part of the corn belt might it slip?

Don Day: As we get into the northern and western corn belt in particular, as we leave July and head into August, I think that’s the center of the heat. If we were to draw a bullseye in terms of where the warmest anomaly is going to be, it’s going to be in those eastern areas of the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, eastern areas of Nebraska, and then that will extend southward into Kansas, Oklahoma, and parts of northern and central Texas, while the other ends of the country, the far west and the far east, the anomaly may be the opposite, it actually may be a little cooler and wetter than average. We’re definitely setting up shop where I think the northern and northwest corn belt will be most susceptible to the hottest, driest.

Todd Gleason: Anything else that we ought to take up today, or does that cover most of it?

Don Day: I think that covers most of it. In the weeks ahead, we are heading into some critical weeks, and it’s not unusual at all this time of year to see a big high in the middle part of the country. It all depends on where it wants to be and how it shifts around and regulates the heat and moisture across the US.

Todd Gleason: Thank you much Don and enjoy yourself in Tucson.

Don Day: Thank you.

Todd Gleason: That’s Don Day, he is with Day Weather in Cheyenne, Wyoming, joined us on this Tuesday edition of the Closing Market Report that came to you from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world, online, on demand at willag.org. I’m Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason.

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