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The July 1, 2026, edition of the Closing Market Report covers recent commodity market trends and global weather impacts. The episode opens with a daily market recap, noting gains in corn, soybeans, and wheat futures, alongside slight declines in livestock futures such as live cattle and lean hogs.
Greg Johnson of Total Grain Marketing analyzes the fallout from recent USDA reports, noting that despite bearish data on corn and soybean stocks and acreage, markets rallied due to traders taking profits on short positions. Looking ahead, Johnson emphasizes that upcoming rainfall in the Corn Belt is expected to benefit pollination, which will likely suppress weather-driven price rallies and keep producers reluctant to sell their grain at current low prices.
Meteorologist Drew Lerner of World Weather, Inc. details the North American weather outlook, forecasting cooler and wetter conditions for the U.S. Midwest in July. While this moisture is largely beneficial for the corn and soybean crops, excessive rainfall threatens production potential in parts of the lower Midwest and the Canadian prairies, though improved dry conditions in the U.S. High Plains are currently aiding the winter wheat harvest.
Lerner concludes with an update on severe heat and drought conditions affecting European agriculture, particularly in France. The region has received a fraction of its normal rainfall since March, and while mature winter crops like wheat and rapeseed were rushed to the finish line to avoid catastrophe, summer crops face significant yield losses if substantial precipitation does not arrive by late July.
02:34 Ag Markets with Greg Johnson, TGM
13:39 Ag Weather with Drew Lerner, World Weather, Inc
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Greg Johnson of Total Grain Marketing analyzes the fallout from recent USDA reports, noting that despite bearish data on corn and soybean stocks and acreage, markets rallied due to traders taking profits on short positions. Looking ahead, Johnson emphasizes that upcoming rainfall in the Corn Belt is expected to benefit pollination, which will likely suppress weather-driven price rallies and keep producers reluctant to sell their grain at current low prices.
Meteorologist Drew Lerner of World Weather, Inc. details the North American weather outlook, forecasting cooler and wetter conditions for the U.S. Midwest in July. While this moisture is largely beneficial for the corn and soybean crops, excessive rainfall threatens production potential in parts of the lower Midwest and the Canadian prairies, though improved dry conditions in the U.S. High Plains are currently aiding the winter wheat harvest.
Lerner concludes with an update on severe heat and drought conditions affecting European agriculture, particularly in France. The region has received a fraction of its normal rainfall since March, and while mature winter crops like wheat and rapeseed were rushed to the finish line to avoid catastrophe, summer crops face significant yield losses if substantial precipitation does not arrive by late July.
02:34 Ag Markets with Greg Johnson, TGM
13:39 Ag Weather with Drew Lerner, World Weather, Inc
★ Support this podcast ★
Creators and Guests
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
cmr260701
The July 1, 2026, edition of the Closing Market Report covers recent commodity market trends and global weather impacts. The episode opens with a daily market recap, noting gains in corn, soybeans, and wheat futures, alongside slight declines in livestock futures such as live cattle and lean hogs.
Greg Johnson of Total Grain Marketing analyzes the fallout from recent USDA reports, noting that despite bearish data on corn and soybean stocks and acreage, markets rallied due to traders taking profits on short positions. Looking ahead, Johnson emphasizes that upcoming rainfall in the Corn Belt is expected to benefit pollination, which will likely suppress weather-driven price rallies and keep producers reluctant to sell their grain at current low prices.
Meteorologist Drew Lerner of World Weather, Inc. details the North American weather outlook, forecasting cooler and wetter conditions for the U.S. Midwest in July. While this moisture is largely beneficial for the corn and soybean crops, excessive rainfall threatens production potential in parts of the lower Midwest and the Canadian prairies, though improved dry conditions in the U.S. High Plains are currently aiding the winter wheat harvest.
Lerner concludes with an update on severe heat and drought conditions affecting European agriculture, particularly in France. The region has received a fraction of its normal rainfall since March, and while mature winter crops like wheat and rapeseed were rushed to the finish line to avoid catastrophe, summer crops face significant yield losses if substantial precipitation does not arrive by late July.
02:34 Ag Markets with Greg Johnson, TGM
13:39 Ag Weather with Drew Lerner, World Weather, Inc
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Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant University in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report. It is the first day of July, 2026. I’m University of Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason. Today, we’ll take an in-depth look at the commodity markets with Greg Johnson. He’s at TGM, that’s Total Grain Marketing, right here in Champaign County, post-USDA report and looking forward into the growing season. We’ll also hear the July forecast from Drew Lerner at World Weather, Inc. in Kansas City, and how it may impact not only crops here, but around the planet. We’ll do all of that on this Wednesday edition of the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world, online on demand at WILLAg.org.
Announcer: Todd Gleason’s services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.
Todd Gleason: July corn for the day settled at $4.21. It was 8 1/4 higher. December at $4.42 1/4, up 6 1/4, and July soybeans today 9 1/2 cents higher, finished at $11.26 1/4. November $11.49 1/4, 5 1/2 cents higher. Bean meal futures at $306.60, $1.90 higher. Bean oil up 28 cents at $67.02. Wheat futures, July soft red finished 11 1/4 cents higher at $5.92. The hard red at $6.23 1/4, up 12 1/4. Both of those in the harvest month, that would be the July contract. Live cattle futures at $241.82 1/2, 60 cents lower on the day. The feeder cattle at $364.15, down 45 cents, and lean hogs off $1.15 at $97.05 per 100 pounds on this Wednesday afternoon. Crude oil futures at $68.39 a barrel, $1.11 lower. Diesel fuel down 2/10 of a cent, $3.20 7/10 per gallon. And the wholesale price of gasoline today at $2.94 3/10. That’s currently 4 8/10 of a cent higher. Some of the outside markets, the Dow Jones Industrial Average around 55 points higher at 52,717, and the S&P 500 up around 9 3/4 points at 7,558 points for the afternoon.
02:34 Ag Markets with Greg Johnson, TGM
Todd Gleason: Greg Johnson from TGM now joins us. That’s Total Grain Marketing. He’s at the elevator right here in Champaign County. Hi Greg, thanks for being with us today.
Greg Johnson: Good to be with you, Todd.
Todd Gleason: What’d you think of yesterday’s USDA reports?
Greg Johnson: I told producers that we dodged a bullet yesterday. If you look at the numbers on the surface, none of the numbers were friendly. Quarterly stocks on corn were lower than the trade expectation, but still almost a billion bushels higher than what it was a year ago. And then the acreage number did not decrease at all. They kept it at 95.3, and the trade was looking for 400,000 acres less. So both old crop numbers and new crop numbers on corn were not friendly. Bean stocks number was higher than last year, and then the acres increased by 700,000. Traders were only thinking it might be 400,000 or 500,000. So on the surface, the numbers were, I would say, not friendly. But the reaction to the report was, and I think the reason for that is we lost 80-some cents in corn over the last month and a half, and we lost $1.20 in beans over the last month and a half, two months. So it was a new quarter starting today. It’s a new month starting today. So the funds, I think, really were short going into that report and they were right to do so, I guess. And now that the report’s behind us, I think they decided to take some profit, and now we’re probably got back to trading a weather market. If it rains a little bit every week in July, the market will struggle to rally very much. If we do have some weather problems with all the rain we had early and the roots not maybe going down as far, maybe we can talk about a weather issue sometime later in July or August. But the report in and of itself I think was not friendly on the surface, but the market did not sell off as a result of that. So like I say, I think we dodged a bullet yesterday.
Todd Gleason: So speaking of rain, I’m just looking at our local forecast, actually the Peoria forecast. But even in our local forecast, we start rain Friday, I mean, and chances that is, and all the way through Friday of next week. So it appears despite the fact that we’ve had really kind of warm weather, even hot weather, that this crop is going to continue to get rainfall and right through the beginning of pollination for some fields I would think.
Greg Johnson: Exactly. I’ve always been told that hot and wet is a jungle, hot and dry is a desert. And we’d much prefer the jungle to the desert. So crops grow in a jungle and so hot is one thing, as long as we have moisture to go along with that heat, I think we’ll be fine. So you’re right, the next seven days there’s rain in the forecast and we’ll start to see corn start to pollinate in that kind of an environment. So if we could keep that up for three weeks, I think we could get most of the corn pollinated in good shape and we’ll go from there. So all we can do is basically go a week at a time, and it does look like next week the forecast looks pretty favorable for crop development.
Todd Gleason: Yeah, under 90 degrees for the daily highs too, so 93 and above is that part where we start to worry about pollination and whether it can actually take place physiologically, but below that probably sounds good, particularly if it’s a little wet and we have some rainfall. So we’ll see how all of that turns out. What else are you watching in the marketplace today?
Greg Johnson: Really the weather, we’ve kind of turned our focus to the weather. I think the funds look like they’re going to have already taken some profit. Today is day two of the rally, if you want to call it that, but it just doesn’t feel like anybody wants to get long this market. I think we’re just seeing more of a profit-taking environment from the shorts that they’ve had on over the last six to eight weeks. So the weather really looks to be the main concern. I don’t know that we’re going to see any policy changes. President Trump has talked about asking Congress for another $11 billion in aid to the farmers. I don’t know if that has much of a market impact. It might stimulate a little bit of farmer movement if the farmers think that they’ve got some money coming from the government on top of what they can get from the market. Because I can tell you that grain movement has really slowed to a halt with this drop-off in price. Now give it a few weeks and maybe farmers will adjust their sights. But right now, nobody seems very willing to want to sell either corn or beans at these lower levels. And as a result, we’ve seen basis levels, we talked about this last week, improve three to five cents in corn and five to 10 cents in beans. We saw that again this week as the bids rolled from the July futures to the September futures on corn and from the July futures to the August futures on soybeans. I think most of the elevators used that opportunity to adjust their bids and basically the net effect was an increase in basis once again. So this is the second week in a row that we’ve had a very good increase in basis levels. That’s the good news for farmers. The bad news obviously is the futures market hasn’t done much up until yesterday and today. So the basis has had to do a lot of the work and we’re talking five or ten cents, but the futures market moves much more than that. So farmers are still very unwilling sellers at these prices and like I say, I think that’ll continue for another couple of weeks, and then we’ll see whether the farmers throw in the towel or hold out for some kind of a weather rally later on this summer.
Todd Gleason: Is that for both old and new crop?
Greg Johnson: Exactly. Yeah, the new crop. There’s a fair amount of old crop corn that’s left unsold, probably 20, 25 percent. But the farmers have not sold very much new crop corn or beans. I’d say probably less than 20 percent on the corn, maybe 25 to 30 percent on the beans, which is getting close to average, but still both are below average and the corn number for new crop is well below average.
Todd Gleason: So looking at the charts, I was just thinking about new crop and I was looking at new crop soybeans. We can take up new crop corn as well. But soybeans, kind of in a range recently. You know, $11.20 on the bottom side. There’s a contract low in there. And $11.60 on the top side, we’ve hit that I don’t know, four or five times in the last couple of weeks on the daily chart. We’re up on the top end of the range at the moment. When you suggested that producers might have to adjust later on, are you thinking that that $11.60 might be a long ways away in the future?
Greg Johnson: Well, if you pull back and look even back to late last year, October, November, December, bean prices actually dropped below $10. Now I’m not predicting that because we’ve had more government-mandated demand for the biodiesel since then. So we don’t need to go there. But I guess my point is $11.60, November beans today are at about $11.50. $11.60 is not a bad price. It’s probably about the midpoint. So we’ve been higher but we’ve definitely been lower. Whereas corn, we’re kind of sitting at contract lows, or just two days ago we were at contract lows. So I understand why farmers are reluctant to sell corn at these prices. But soybeans, you know, if you look at the big picture, unless you really think China is going to come in and bail us out, this might not be a bad place to get some beans sold.
Todd Gleason: Yeah, and bailing us out might be from a low much further down than this.
Greg Johnson: That’s it. China has been rumored to probably wait until August. You know, let the bean price go lower, especially if it rains a little bit more here in July, let the beans go down and then China might step in sometime in August to try to buy beans, try to pick a low. So you’re exactly right. We may go lower before we bounce a little bit.
Todd Gleason: I haven’t looked to see what the soy corn ratio might be at this point, but I assume that one of the two is not in the right place given what normal conditions would be, and that they’ll have to converge at some point, and it sounds like convergence down is more likely given decent weather at the moment.
Greg Johnson: Yeah, and again, that soybean corn ratio, we talk about it a lot, and it does affect acreage mix in some of the peripheral states: the Dakotas, the Missouris, the Kentuckys. But the three I states, we seem to be very consistent: 52 percent corn, 48 percent beans. We’re on a rotation and I think it would take something drastic, and I thought this past year with the high fertilizer prices that might be the thing that gets us out of our 52–48, but according to the government acreage number that did not change very much. That ratio is still the same. And that’s probably another good opportunity to bring up that last year, the government came out with a 95.3 million corn acreage number on the June 30th report and we thought we had dodged a bullet. But if you remember in September, they raised the acres. Then in November, they raised them again. And in January, they raised them again. So by the time it was all said and done, we had 3 million more corn acres than what the June number was. And I guess I’m still gonna keep an eye on that. You never know why the government takes so long to adjust their acreage numbers, but last year they waited until September before we had that big jump. And who knows if that happens again this year or not.
Todd Gleason: Well, I’m so glad we could both be a fount of positive news today.
Greg Johnson: I know, I know. It’s like an umpire, we have to call ’em like we see ’em. And unfortunately today there’s just not a lot of good news to hang your hat on yet.
Todd Gleason: Yeah, and if we’re positive news it would probably be dry conditions and it could be here. Anyway, we’ll talk about that maybe sometime in the future. Thank you for joining us today. I really appreciate it.
Greg Johnson: Thanks, Todd.
Todd Gleason: Of course, it’s Greg Johnson. He is with TGM. That’s Total Grain Marketing dot com.
Announcer: You’re listening to the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world, online on demand at WILLAg.org. Our theme music is written, performed, produced, and provided by Logan County, Illinois farmer Tim Gleason. Have you checked out our website lately? I hope so. But if not, make sure you do. You’ll find there a calendar of events. And in that calendar, you’ll find many of the University of Illinois Agronomy Day and Extension events for the summer months. We hope you can find a time to come and join us in the field this summer with the University of Illinois Extension across the state of Illinois. The next one is at the Orr Center. That’s on the 15th of July.
13:39 Ag Weather with Drew Lerner, World Weather, Inc
Todd Gleason: Let’s turn our attention to the global growing regions and climate and weather conditions across each of them. Drew Lerner is now here. He is with World Weather, Inc. in Kansas City. Hello, Drew. Thank you for being with us.
Drew Lerner: Thanks. Hope you’ve had a good week. I know it’s a little warm and sticky, but it is July now, right?
Todd Gleason: It is July, which reminds me, we need a July outlook from you. Do you have one for the Corn Belt?
Drew Lerner: Yeah, well we can pretend like I know what I’m doing and we’ll talk about July. You know, we are about to turn the corner again. You know, everyone’s been talking about the warm weather and the lack of rain this week, which I think has been just absolutely perfect for the crop. We’ve had a lot of areas that have been pretty darn wet and we’ve had a lot of coolness around. So I think that bringing in this little short-term bout of warm and drier weather has been a little bit of a blessing for the crop. But we are going to go back the other way. In July, we are going to return a northwesterly flow pattern aloft, and that’s going to bring little bouts of cooler weather into the Midwest. Nothing cold, but cooler. And as each little frontal system drops through the region, we will have a chance for precipitation, and scattered showers and thunderstorms will be common. And I wouldn’t be surprised that we’ll get back into that old mode of getting some pretty hefty rains. And unfortunately, the month of July looks to be at least near to above normal in the lower parts of the Midwest. Including that Ohio Basin area where Kentucky and Southern Indiana recently got pretty engulfed with a lot of water. Missouri too. We may see some of those battles with excess moisture continuing. In the northwestern Corn Belt, we’ve had a little bit of a drier bias in recent weeks, and I think that will perpetuate during July as well. But I do think that South Dakota, Minnesota, and parts of Iowa will still get some timely rain. Nebraska too. Not necessarily normal rain, but there will be enough timeliness in it that the yields will probably be okay up that way. In the Plains, I think that in general we’ll have just kind of a sporadic rainfall pattern. Kind of classic summertime weather there. It will be a little bit warmer than normal in that part of the country and hotter still further to the west. But it’s not a bad-looking July. I am a little concerned about the moisture surpluses in parts of the Midwest though.
Todd Gleason: Let’s turn your attention directly to wheat harvest. Some of the growing regions when we were talking to Greg Johnson a bit earlier in the program, I believe off-air he and I were talking about wheat harvest in the area. Soft red winter wheat in central and east central Illinois, he thought, you know, harvested, it started, there were some issues related to the rainfall we’ve had. And it’ll probably wrap up, you know, tomorrow or something like that. But I want to know wheat harvest across much of the other areas, particularly hard red winter wheat growing regions of the nation. We’ll take some time, how has it been going and what are your expectations for their ability to continue to bring that crop in?
Drew Lerner: Yeah, you know, for hard red winter wheat country, I think we’ve kind of quieted down the atmosphere a little bit. We were getting a little too much rain a little too often in parts of southern Nebraska and especially Kansas and Oklahoma in the past few weeks. And just here in the last several days, we’ve seen much better conditions evolve. A lot less rainfall, more sunshine, a little more wind, and some lower humidity in the High Plains. So I think that will get perpetuated for a little while longer. We will get back into a pattern of scattered showers and thunderstorms, but nothing abnormal, nothing that would seriously stall that harvest. So I don’t think there’s a real serious threat any longer to the quality of unharvested crops at the moment. We will watch closely to make sure we don’t get a frontal boundary to drop into the Central Plains and become stationary and produce multiple waves of rain. That’s a possibility, but not necessarily in the official forecast at the moment.
Todd Gleason: Speaking of the Northern Plains, go a little further north of that into the prairies of Canada. What do you see there?
Drew Lerner: Yeah, I think that both the Northern Plains of the US I think will probably do a little bit better with general crop development for the spring wheat there. Not so much in the way of excess moisture like we have in Canada. Canada is a different situation right now, a lot of surplus moisture across the entire prairies. But there are some areas that are really way too wet and I think that there’s been a loss of production potential in portions of north-central Alberta. That’s an area that last I heard they had 17 inches of rain in the month of June. That’s a lot more than normal folks. They should normally get two or three inches at the most and that’s just crazy. And it’s a pretty large area in Alberta. And now in east-central, well we’ll just call it eastern Saskatchewan and western Manitoba, this storm this week pushed them over the edge too. They were already dealing with some excess moisture and some standing water, but it’s much more widespread now than it was. So some wheat acreage loss is likely to occur in these two areas. Now don’t, it’s easy to take this too far. These are fair-sized areas, but it’s not the entire production area. So we’ll still have a fair crop from the rest of the region, but they definitely need drier weather. And the month of July should help them about, well it should help them quite a bit. Let’s put it that way. It will be a little bit warmer, but they are still going to see showers and thunderstorms. The big thing that’s going to be missing in July is these mammoth upper-level low-pressure systems that make it rain for days on end. Those will not be around. And so they’ll still deal with scattered storms, but it will be warmer so they will make some headway in the right direction I think.
Todd Gleason: We have been talking for several weeks now about really poor conditions, hot and dry both, in parts of France through Western and Eastern Europe. Did things change at all over the last week?
Drew Lerner: Yeah, I think for the most part, the biggest thing that took place since we talked last was there was a frontal boundary that did move through. There was actually a few scattered thunderstorms that occurred in France over the weekend, I think it was mostly Sunday. And there was actually a couple of spots that got an inch of rain, but most of the rain was not nearly that great and the coverage was not that great either. And so a big part of France is still way too dry. Very short top and subsoil moisture. And the temperatures did back off instead of being in the upper 90s to lower 100s, we’ve been seeing temperatures mostly in the upper 80s and 90s. But the forecast is for the heat to return this coming weekend and on into next week. It will not be as hot as it was last week, but there is no rain in the forecast for most of France for at least 10 days. And there are some models out there suggesting two full weeks of additional dry weather. And keep in mind, they’ve had less than half of normal rain since March. And the month of May was 25 percent of normal and June was something similar. So it is very dry in the unirrigated areas.
Todd Gleason: What do we know or what do you know about their winter wheat harvest and their summer crops, corn, under those conditions? Anything?
Drew Lerner: Yeah, I saw an article yesterday out of France that did suggest that the wheat and rapeseed crops were mature, that they had lost yield, but it wasn’t a crisis because there was favorable soil moisture going into June. And so the crop was rushed to the finish line and did come up short, but it wasn’t a crisis. Now from a summer crop perspective, it sounds like there’s a lot of potential loss in front of us if we can’t turn this scenario around. The second half of July will absolutely have to be wetter and probably wetter than normal in order to give these crops a good chance to respond and to make up for their lost time. So I think we’ll need to watch that pretty closely. The way it looks to me right now, the second half of July will offer scattered showers and a little more seasonally warm conditions, but not necessarily a big soaking for that period of time.
Todd Gleason: Thank you very much, Drew. We appreciate it. Have a great day.
Drew Lerner: You too.
Todd Gleason: Drew Lerner is with World Weather, Inc. in Kansas City. Joined us on this Wednesday 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. There by the way, today you can find the latest from the crop scientist, the animal scientist, and the agricultural economist. In fact, that happens each and every business day. You’ll find updates there at WILLAg.org from the University of Illinois. I’m Extension’s Todd Gleason.