Closing Market Report

Todd Gleason: 00:00

From the Lend to Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois, this is the closing market reported as the August 2025. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk with Mike Zuzla, globalcomresearch.com about the commodity markets and today's trade. Mike will also join us if you can stay with us for the whole hour on our home station, you'll hear this for our commodity week program. Our other panelists for that were Naomi Bloem of Total Farm Marketing and Greg Johnson of Total Grain Marketing.

Todd Gleason: 00:29

In the closing market report, we'll also talk today with Eric Snograss of Nutrien Ag Solutions about the weather forecast and we'll get a quick update of some things that have been happening in Washington DC on this Friday edition of the Illinois Public Media Ag programming. Find it online at willag.org where it is public radio for the farming world. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. September corn for the day settled at three eighty three and three quarters up eight and three quarters of a cent. December at four zero five and a quarter eight higher.

Todd Gleason: 01:05

And the March at $4.22 and a half up 8 and a half cents. September beans fourteen and three quarters higher. Finished at $10.22 and a quarter November ten forty two and a half up 14¢. Bean meal futures 90¢ lower, the bean oil up a dollar and 19¢. Soft red winter wheat, 2 and a half cents higher at $5.27.

Todd Gleason: 01:25

The hard red at $5.28 and a half up two and a half as well, and live cattle futures were up $3.82 and a half cents. Mike Zuzula of globalcomresearch.com from Acheson, Kansas now joins us. Thank you, Mike. It is great to talk with you again. This is the third time this week, and despite them being on Tuesday, Thursday, and today, Friday, things have been different each day.

Todd Gleason: 01:49

That's not always the case in the marketplace, and I certainly did not expect it to be different after the USDA report on Tuesday. I was hopeful, but I'm surprised actually.

Mike Zuzolo: 02:01

Yeah. That huge sense of deja vu with last year in August, you know, it started at the July when we didn't get any kind of commodity demand low, grain demand low led by the corn like I was hoping we would because USDA did cut those ending stocks for the 2425 substantially again, Todd. And we're very, very thin on supplies right now heading into harvest, which that will begin in the South very soon. But, yeah, the the the issue with the August now having passed is even a greater sense of deja vu in the aftermath of the WASDE report because in part while we were able to get up to closing positive for the week in the corn led by the soybeans and led by the weather, that again just smells so strongly of last year at this time. And, you know, thankfully, we've got some real technical support underneath us now as we head into the end of the month, as we head into a lot of private crop tours and numbers that are gonna be tossed around the next couple weeks.

Mike Zuzolo: 03:09

And so the lows from last year of 360.5 in lead month corn made on the week of the August 26, 936.25 in soybeans made this same week last year in August. And then the soft red wheat 4.93 and a half also made on the August last year. These are the three numbers that I think are substantially more important than they were a week ago and before the report. And especially, I would say that soft red wheat price because we got within $6.07 cents of that level as we trimmed, you know, price action and and sank right heading into the WASDE numbers.

Todd Gleason: 03:50

Next week, the pro farmer crop tour will be out. We cover it intentionally, because I like to know what's in the field. It oftentimes does not have much of an impact on the marketplace, and I understand why that's the case. Next week seems like it could be different. It would either substantiate what USDA has said, in which case the marketplace is currently trading that to the best of my my knowledge or at least feels like it still is, or it would give us a look at a big crop getting smaller, and that would be a whole different sort of feel to the market.

Todd Gleason: 04:31

Yeah. I I agree with you.

Mike Zuzolo: 04:32

I would say this. I I think that maybe in soybeans as we closed out Friday, the fact that we got back towards that three week high that we made before August futures expired of $10.25 and a half, very, very close, right up against the twenty six week moving average in lead month soybeans. We were able to get within 3 or 4¢ of that, I think it was on Friday. That suggested to me being back to 10.25 in the front end would suggest to me with the world supplies that the trade is trimming the USDA yield right now that 53.6 yield, I think it was. They're trimming that I think as we closed out Friday's trade.

Mike Zuzolo: 05:10

But in the corn, I wholeheartedly agree that the trade is very leery about trimming. The the nicest thing to me other than the technicals that we talked about about this week for corn was the fact that we saw the spreads come around the September, March, the September, July. It seemed as though we tried to make a low in those spreads. That's gonna be really important as we get this crop data because I would think that if you continue to hear crop data out of corn tours that suggest a much lower corn yield, you'd bring the premium back into the front end and take it out of the back end and reduce that carrying charge. So I think that's a really important element to last to next week's trade.

Todd Gleason: 05:50

Okay. So I know you had been a seller of soybeans into the marketplace. Are are you scale up selling still as we try to move corn through a a higher move, if that's possible?

Mike Zuzolo: 06:05

Yes. That is. I I I would say the November beans, you're a technician and you think about the weather staying hot and dry fundamentally another two weeks, because it's so critical of a time period that it looks like there might be a what would be called a bull flag in the market with two sharp days higher, one late last week and one this week on Monday, and then you've got three pretty much consolidation days following those two sharp moves higher. That I would call a bullish flag that could project up to that June high of $10.74 a quarter in November. Those would be the areas that I'd be looking at to get caught up and do some more bean hedges.

Mike Zuzolo: 06:46

And then hopefully with the way that bean corn ratio is so stretched that whatever beans go up, the corn tries to go up almost the same amount. If we could get, you know, $25.30 cents out of the December corn here and move it back up towards that $4.44 50 level, that would be really, really nice to get some off the combine sales done.

Todd Gleason: 07:06

Alright. That would be fantastic. You just made the day of a lot of producers who are hopeful that that might be the case, but we never know. So what else are you watching? Anything in the cattle market that we need to be aware of or other things that you have been thinking about?

Todd Gleason: 07:20

You're always looking at wheat as well.

Mike Zuzolo: 07:22

Yeah. We had in the cattle, we should mention the screwworm, press conference by governor Abbott and secretary of agriculture Rollins. It was no change. The most important point that I pulled out of it and watched the whole thing was our ports are not opening until screwworm is pushed back to the Darien Gap in Central America. And it's going to take some time to do that as we build new facilities and we bring on new cooperation and real time tracking and some other things that they announced.

Mike Zuzolo: 07:51

They're putting a lot of money behind this. Obviously, it's important. And so the cattle were able to go higher, make new daily highs. We still have not taken out the record highs in August front end cattle, August front end feeders from August 7. Those are important numbers next week as well because you want this momentum to continue, especially with the cash mark coming around.

Mike Zuzolo: 08:11

The only other thing I'd mention is the US Russia summit. The dollar and the crude oil, I suspect, are gonna be talked about a lot next week depending on how this meeting goes.

Todd Gleason: 08:21

Speaking of talking, thank you so much for being with me on Tuesday, yesterday for commodity week, which if folks stick around, they will hear at least a portion of it. All of it on our home station coming up shortly, and then again today as usual on a Friday. I really appreciate it.

Mike Zuzolo: 08:34

Well, Todd, I appreciate you and Will Radio. You helped build my business, and that's something you'll never see me forget.

Todd Gleason: 08:40

That, of course, is a you helped build our relationship here too. Thank you. Mike Souslow, of course, is with globalcommresearch.com out of Acheson, Kansas. Up next, Democrats have been ramping up their criticism of USDA's reorganizational plan. Some in the GOP are also unhappy.

Todd Gleason: 09:04

23 house ag democrats wrote secretary Rollins saying they were not consulted on the reorganization to create five regional hubs and service to farmers will suffer. Top senate ag democrat Amy Klobuchar claimed at a hearing last month that a 2019 move to Kansas City, Missouri in the first Trump term was a disaster.

Amy Klobuchar: 09:26

GAO explicitly stated based on this much smaller relocation, that ERS produced fewer key reports and that NIFA, known as NIFA, took longer to process grants.

Todd Gleason: 09:40

But deputy USDA secretary Steven Vaden was ready for that attack.

Stephen Vaden: 09:45

From January 2021 to January 2025, the Biden administration, 2,200 employees left Washington DC. There was no congressional notice. There was no outcry. There was no committee hearing.

Todd Gleason: 10:04

And while that's all true, it's not really the same as those employees moved out not because they were let go.

Stephen Vaden: 10:12

For more than seventeen hundred days, extending well beyond any fair definition of the COVID pandemic, USDA was on a maximum telework footing.

Todd Gleason: 10:25

Again, there is a difference between being relocated and or fired and working out of your home. Still some Republicans looked at this and were not pleased because USDA simply didn't consult them this time on the new hub plan first which is an actual reorganization of USDA, said Iowa senator Chuck Grassley.

Charles Grassley: 10:49

Now maybe it wasn't they wouldn't have picked Des Moines, Iowa, but I'd like to know why Kansas City was picked over Des Moines, Iowa.

Todd Gleason: 10:57

Rasley says Vaden finally agreed to consult lawmakers, but after the fact, giving members less sway in final decisions and adding that chair Buzman has called for a senate hearing over the same concerns. You're listening to the closing market report from Illinois public media celebrating forty years on the air, more than 10,000 episodes and 30,000 interviews. Our theme music, by the way, has written, performed, produced in courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer, Tim Gleeson. On this Friday, let's check-in with Eric Snodgrass at Nutrien Ag Solutions and Agrabal. Thanks Eric for being with us.

Todd Gleason: 11:45

The month of August has been running warm depending on where you are. Can you take a quick look back at the first fifteen days since we're halfway through the month now?

Eric Snodgrass: 11:57

Yeah. It has been, warm, and it's been dry now. The first four days of August were nice and cool. Remember those? Those was amazing start to the month.

Eric Snodgrass: 12:04

Oh, yeah. And then about the time you had to go to the fair, you know, we've just cranked the thermostat up, and it's still quite high. And especially going to the weekend, we're gonna get temps deep into the nineties, which was interesting. We were kinda chatting about this offline, but, you know, it's watching the corn crop respond to the heat and drier conditions as of late. It's been a pretty rapid transition here at the end of this growing season.

Eric Snodgrass: 12:26

Now, know, drier overall for much of the country in August so far. And we do have rains, but they're not coming really here. It's gonna be more of the Upper Midwest. Again, Minnesota, Wisconsin grabbing more of the precipitation than us. That doesn't mean we won't get any, but I'm just saying patterns more suited to bring some moisture there.

Eric Snodgrass: 12:43

But, you know, we saw the drought monitor expand in the Mid South after what had been about fifteen days of drier weather down there. And it continues to be quite expansive in the Western United States as well. But this would have been much more important news if we were talking about it 40 ago. But instead, here we are at the August, and it's it's kind of a moot point given all the other massive estimates we've seen on this crowd.

Todd Gleason: 13:07

What do you see for the next fifteen days?

Eric Snodgrass: 13:10

So the heat doesn't stick around for too long. We get a break of it by mid next week. And then whatever's left, a warm up that comes back seems to wanna get punched again by another blast of some cooler air that's gonna just anchor around the Great Lakes into the Northeast. So any heat we have is still coming in these waves like the one we we're in right now. So it's not like, you know, we have those summers where it just pours on and never lets up.

Eric Snodgrass: 13:34

And about the only thing that hasn't fully let up this summer has been the warmer overnight lows. Mean, it was 78 this morning in St. Louis. And so we do have questions about the Eastern Corn Belt and how good the crop could be as it is. Is it as good or is this potential as high as the Western Corn Belt?

Eric Snodgrass: 13:51

That that's a question needs answered, Todd. And I I don't know that I have it yet. I think we're gonna see yield checks revealing it, but it's overall drier but not dry going through the next fifteen days.

Todd Gleason: 14:01

Okay. And the thing I always think about at the end of the season is the bowling alley or at least what I call the bowling alley on the, Western Tip Of Africa opening up and hurricanes are rolling down the alley towards The United States and where they turn and and how they make it into the into The US and what what that actually means. So what kind of hurricane options do we have coming up at the end of the month or now for that matter?

Eric Snodgrass: 14:26

Yeah. I mean, the the the nation as it concerns with weather doesn't really care about the Corn Belt today. They're thinking more a lot more about what's going on with hurricane Erin. Erin over the weekend will likely jump up to at least cat three, probably cat four by early next week. And the scary part about Erin is that where it currently sits and where it was born reminds a whole lot of folks of Hurricane Florence.

Eric Snodgrass: 14:48

And that was 02/2018. Now get this, Florence in 2018 came into North Carolina and dropped 57 inches of rain in three days. So, yeah, you have a right to be worried about Aaron. But right now, as of Friday, almost every ounce of evidence that I have for Aaron suggests that it stays out in open ocean, maybe grazing the East Coast, but more likely hitting Bermuda. Now if that changes, you're gonna hear every single meteorologist out there ringing a pretty loud bell next week.

Eric Snodgrass: 15:14

But there is only one other piece to it, and that is a little disturbance in The Gulf, but it's gonna go over the Rio Grande. It's not gonna go over Texas and come up our way. So in the near term, not a lot of support from the tropics dumping moisture. I think these beans need one more kick of rain. We're not gonna get it from a hurricane anytime soon.

Eric Snodgrass: 15:31

But I wouldn't rule out a more active second half of the season after we get into early September. Remember, the peak is around September 15.

Todd Gleason: 15:38

Yeah. I like a Labor Day weekend rainfall on soybeans just to get them done and really put the put the grain on them. So we'll see how that goes. Speaking of September and fall, what have you been thinking?

Eric Snodgrass: 15:51

Alright. So since 2020, we've had four La Nina falls and one El Nino fall. K? And the El Nino fall was 2023. So the two surrounding it, '22 and '24, remember, were bone dry.

Eric Snodgrass: 16:06

I mean, last last year was the worst. So we have another weak La Nina sitting there, and there's a lot of question. Do we have a dry fall coming up? And a lot of folks, like, fine. Bring in a dry fall.

Eric Snodgrass: 16:16

I get my harvest done quickly. Just don't make it as dry as last year. We didn't get any meaningful rain last year until we got into November. So historical precedents would tell me to tell you, hey. There's a good chance we have a little bit drier than average fall, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Eric Snodgrass: 16:30

But if that La Nina kicks it up a notch and keeps going into winter, it could really set us up for a more active winter as we typically see through the Ohio Valley, but a lot of that's unknown. I think the bigger question, Todd, will be if that same effect from a La Nina that typically happens to North America also happens in South America. And that would be by the time we get into October, do the rains come on on time or even early to let them get established quickly? And I'm curious, Todd, have you heard they gonna get to plant on September 1 again this year in certain states in Brazil?

Todd Gleason: 17:03

You know, I was with a series of Paraguayan farmers who farm in Brazil last night, and I did not ask, mostly because of the language barrier. So so I I tried to ask, but it just didn't didn't happen. So I have not heard. I don't know whether they get to go step step one or step 15 at the moment. I we'll find out soon enough, though.

Eric Snodgrass: 17:24

That's for sure. And I I think that date's gonna be important, especially if the rains come in.

Todd Gleason: 17:27

Alright. Hey. Thanks much. We'll talk to you again soon.

Eric Snodgrass: 17:30

Alright. Sounds good.

Todd Gleason: 17:30

Eric Snodgrass is with Nutrien Ag Solutions and Agribal joined us on this Friday edition of the closing market report that came to you from Illinois. Public media online on demand at willag.org. That's willag.0rg. Don't forget the Illinois State Fair runs through Sunday. And that next week, the pro farmer crop tour kicks off.

Todd Gleason: 17:52

We'll be checking in on it each day of the week to see how things are going both on the eastern and the western legs, and then the following week is Farm Progress Show in Decatur. Put that one on your must do list. Visit the Farm Progress Show Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, the last full August in Decatur. I'll give you more details as we get closer to the time.