Aug 18 | Closing Market Report
From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois, this is the closing market report. It is the August 2025. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. It's the pro farmer crop tour week. We'll have updates from both the eastern and the western legs today.
Todd Gleason:We'll hear about the marketplace with Kurt Kimmel from agmarket.net, and there's a big announcement from University of Illinois Extension. We'll find out more as we make our way through this Monday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. September corn for the day at $3.83 finished three quarters of a cent lower. December up a penny and a quarter at $4.00 6 and a half, and the March at $4.24 and a quarter up one and three quarters.
Todd Gleason:November beans at $10.41 and a quarter, a penny and a quarter lower, and the January at $10.60. Down a penny and a half for the day. Here to talk about these numbers and what's been happening at the CME Group is Kurt Kimmel from agmarket.net and I know Kurt that you have been watching, the first day of the Pro Farmer crop tour, but there's a whole lot happening in the world, including Washington DC and what's taking place, between president Trump, president Zelensky, and those from Europe as well. What was the trade mostly focused on?
Curt Kimmel:Well, it's probably none of the above. It's most quiet, stable trade I've seen on a Monday for years. I traded both sides. The market finished mixed, for the most part, so I think the trades are kinda harmful until the next few drops. As far as the outside news is political and across, the world, you know, something will happen probably 02:00 in the morning on that, but it's an ongoing process as as far as, Ukraine, Russia, and The US.
Curt Kimmel:We'll we'll see how that unfolds. Probably a bigger thing that's on hold is, Chinese, demand, where we are with them. That's an ongoing process but the main focus is of course the Midwest tour that's taking place. I heard multiple different things, I don't know, lot of it was not compared to a year ago, but Karen Bronski had one earlier this morning in the Southeast, South Dakota there, corn yields 33% a year ago, pod counts up 7%, and corn yield's 198 and before it's 149, and pod counts was thirteen oh five and the previous five years was twelve twenty five so that's what you gotta look at. They go on the same route year after year and so we'll have a compare to the average and that'll give the trade an idea of what you're receiving when you see those totals.
Curt Kimmel:You know, some spots were good, tip back was evident in just about all of the pictures for the most part. Disease, there's some pictures of some disease pressure, fungus pressure. We'll see how this affects the crop here as we go forward. Big thing is it's a good crop, how big it is, that's out to the jury to decide here as we move clear into next year, actually.
Todd Gleason:We'll talk with Sherman Newlin from risk man management commodities in just a bit. He is traveling with Karen. In fact, I know there was a really big number, that pulled. They pulled at one stop. I unbelievable number for South Dakota.
Todd Gleason:It may have thrown their average up a little bit. We'll see how that all throws out. And we'll get those numbers tonight. If folks are interested, they can see historical numbers from the Pro Farmer tours from twenty three four, '22, '23, and '24 on our website. When the numbers for tonight are posted for South Dakota and Indiana, those will be up too, and you can hear again whatever is taking place.
Todd Gleason:We'll follow really closely. It was a quiet day in Chicago. I'm wondering when you look at the charts how you're feeling about the corn market particularly, and if soybeans and corn can manage to stay sideways to higher into the harvest time frame or not?
Curt Kimmel:It's a good question because a year ago I believe we bottomed on August 26. The December corn futures itself bottomed out at $4.85 last week's low was $4.92 is that close enough? Or do we want to go down and make a new low here a little bit later on? Lead contract was $3.65. So there's some ideas, you know, under $4 might be enough for now.
Curt Kimmel:Seasonally, traditionally, we see some lows during this time window. Momentum indicators, they give a bullish trend divergence on corn particularly, so we'll see if that takes traction and goes up and takes out the downtrend line and try to get something to go in through here. The thing is, if the futures have a little giddy up, but going through here, the cash is probably gonna struggle with the crop coming on and the basis could, widen out. So we're playing a little bit of cat and mouse here between the cash market and the futures market type.
Todd Gleason:Anything from the livestock market?
Curt Kimmel:The feeder cattle market particularly continues to be a bottle rocket. There's no top to it whatsoever. The feeder's ability to close above this three fifty area kind of opens the door to continue to march higher here. Brian, our technical analyst feels probably if we stay above three fifty, there's not a 4 or $5 to the upside.
Todd Gleason:Thank you much, Kirk. Kirk Kinlawitz with agmarket.net. One quick news item for the day, Doctor. Matthew Vann has been appointed the new associate dean and director of extension. Doctor.
Todd Gleason:Vann brings more than a decade of extension leadership and applied research experience, most recently at North Carolina State University. There he also led the departmental extension programming in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences. His work has focused on aligning science with community needs, strengthening statewide partnerships and expanding the reach and relevance of extension in both rural and urban settings. He is deeply committed to the values that define the land to grant tradition and brings a forward looking perspective grounded in collaboration, service and responsiveness. We'll have more I know with Doctor.
Todd Gleason:Van in the near future. The Pro Farmer crop tour is underway across seven Midwestern states today. All week, we'll be checking in on both the eastern and the western legs. We'll start with Lane Akre. He is an economist at Pro Farmer and sets the stage as it relates to Ohio.
Lane Akre:Ohio is going be a key focus. Last year's crop came in a little bit below what we expected, below a record crop, but this year USDA is anticipating the second biggest crop ever coming out of Ohio. We're driving into Indiana and USDA is expecting a record crop in Indiana. There's a lot of question whether or not the crop's going to get there. We've had a lot of rain throughout the growing season, and with the really hot temperatures that we've had with wetness, there's a lot of concerns about disease pressure.
Lane Akre:So we'll see where this crop ends up. We'll see what it looks like. We'll be taking samples periodically, randomly using the same routes we've used for thirty years.
Todd Gleason:The crop tour goes back a little farther than thirty years. Its roots go all the way back to the 1970s when corn growers here in the state of Illinois kicked it off. Was It picked up by the Illinois Farm Bureau eventually, an agrivisor, their marketing side at the time, managed the program. The way the tour operates today in fact still really hasn't changed since then. In 1989, I went to the field with the agrivisor, Crop Tour.
Todd Gleason:The roundtable discussion. In the heartland of America, it is often a source of information, a way for farmers to keep up on crop conditions in their neighbor's field. But in a world where agricultural trade encompasses the globe, it falls far short of any real value. These people are in search of a broader perspective. They are floor traders from the Futures Exchange in Chicago, grain merchandisers from The United States, Japan and Germany, US Department of Ag officials, agricultural meteorologists, and journalists.
Todd Gleason:The one common thread they share is a desire for more information on the American corn crop. But setting around a table is not how they have come by such valuable information. They are AgriVisor crop tour scouts and have spent the day on the road and in the cornfield gathering vital statistics on a 1989 corn crop.
Jim Quinton:Starting spot with that one. We won't count that one. We'll start with this plant. If you'll hold that tape measure, I'll sing out when we got 17.5.
Todd Gleason:Tour host and agribizer market analyst Jim Quinton is making corn yield calculations. To ensure randomness, the calculations are made the same distance into the field each stop, 36 paces in from the edge. He lays off a one roll strip, equal to one one thousandths of an acre. In this particular case, the test strip is seventeen and one half feet long. The number of plants in the strip are counted and multiplied by 1,000 to obtain a total plant count for the entire acre.
Jim Quinton:Eighteen, nineteen ears and one one thousandth of an acre, so that's like a 19,000 plant population. For a random selection, we'll
Jim Quinton:take the seventh, the eleventh, and the thirteenth ear. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Peel that down, look at the brain in that cub.
Todd Gleason:The number of ears on the plants are counted and then once again to ensure randomness. The same ear numbers from each strip are taken for the final counts in the yield calculations.
Jim Quinton:In this case, the ear numbers are the seventh, eleventh, and thirteenth ears in the test strip.
Jim Quinton:And now number 13. Those are three randomly selected ears in the sample. And this one is two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, eighteen. So we got eighteen, eighteen, and 16. That's an average of 17.3.
Jim Quinton:And the length of kernels on the cob here. One, two, three, four, five, six.
Todd Gleason:For the final calculation, the number of kernels around each and the length of each of the three errors are counted and averaged. Then all the calculations are translated onto the corn yield calculator. It is actually a slide rule.
Jim Quinton:Thirty, thirty one, 32, 33, 34, 35, thirty six, thirty seven, 38, call it 38. And on the calculator then, if we use number of rows of kernels around the cob it averaged 17.3. The length of kernels we'll call 38. So we'll set 38 on about 17.3. Oops, that's down there.
Jim Quinton:There we go. And we had 19,000 plants. That's a 139 bushels to the acre. Assuming that the kernel weight will be normal weight. That's what this cornmeal calculator cannot do is tell you whether the kernel size itself is be bigger than, smaller than, or about normal.
Todd Gleason:From here it's another 20 miles on the road to the next stop, the car talk centers on one thing, crop conditions. Jim Quentin.
Jim Quinton:If dry matter accumulates in the corn kernel at the rate of 1% per day for the first ten days, two percent per day for the next forty after pollination, and then 1% per day for the final ten days, that'd be sixty days span to have a 100% dry matter accumulation from pollination to black layer formation. If this corn is pollinated on August 20 and you got a killing freeze on September 30, you would be at the 70 percentile of dry matter accumulation the day the corn plant died. If that calculated yield for that spot was 192 bushels, that'd cut you down to 130 bushels of yield right then and there, overnight. That's all that field would have. And it'd be 130 bushels of some of the most ungodly crap you ever took to an elevator.
Todd Gleason:20 miles later, it's out of the car and into the field again, where we find just such a situation.
Jim Quinton:Depending on how, these latest, stocks pollinate, it could make almost 30 bushel difference in the yield of this field. And it's very, very late and I think we have to question whether even the late stalks will make it before a frost.
Todd Gleason:As you come up on the field from the road in here, this field looks like a good field. If you're just driving by it, I mean it's probably 12 feet tall or better and green as can be and there's plenty of moisture out here. Throw you?
Jim Quinton:Well, that's the old windshield method. The old windshield method is okay for vegetative matter, but it's not okay for counting grain.
Todd Gleason:Just over 40 participants rode in eight cars on this six to eight three day crop tour. What they found was a crop better than suspected, holding its own on the job stricken Western Corn Belt and coming out in the rain soaked East. One other note from the tour, we were reminded of a childhood rule, look both ways before you cross the road.
Todd Gleason:Let's check-in now on the eastern leg of the Pro Farmer crop tour. We're now joined by Oliver Sloop. He is with BlueLine Futures. You might recognize him from either Bar Chart or Agweb. Thank you, Oliver, for being with us.
Todd Gleason:Quick. If you could, tell me a little bit about BlueLine.
Oliver Sloup:Sure. BlueLine Futures is, independent futures and commodities brokerage firm. We're headquartered out of the Chicago Board of Trade. We've got a great team in house that, as you've mentioned, puts out a lot of great daily content. My niche area is the grain and livestock markets, and my colleagues cover precious metals, energies, indices, etcetera.
Oliver Sloup:So we've got, again, a great team in house that puts together a lot of great information, kinda give our clients a playbook, for the day and what's going on in the market.
Todd Gleason:You have a great deal of historical depth there at, the CME Group, particularly in the CBOT with Lynn Waldoc. I read about that. I'm looking forward to hearing what you've been seeing on the Eastern Lake first. Are you traveling the same area you normally do? And how many years have you done that?
Oliver Sloup:This is my fourth year, and we are on a different route than we have had in the years prior. We're on a split route, so half of our crew covers one half of the route, and then we're covering the other half. And we're obviously started in Ohio, with a meeting last night. So the other half of our team is checking Ohio. We jumped straight over into Indiana.
Oliver Sloup:And so far from what we've seen, it's kind of been lackluster. The USDA set a really, really high bar on expectations. And I think even prior to the USDA, people had pretty lofty expectations of what was out there. But it the tip back seems to be a reoccurring theme that I didn't think that we would see as frequently. Now we're only, you know, six, seven, eight stops in so far today, but it has popped up more frequently than I would have guessed.
Oliver Sloup:So something interesting of note there. I talked to a farmer in Brunei, Indiana earlier this morning, and he was talking about the similarities between this year and last year and talking about the need for moisture and rain. They've got a 50% chance tomorrow, and then after that, there's really nothing on the the forecast for ten days or so. So they still need some rain, to finish these crops out.
Todd Gleason:You are headed eventually to just north of, Indianapolis. Where does your route run today?
Oliver Sloup:So we again, we started, kinda hopped over near Fort Wayne and just working our way through Adams County, Wells County, Blackbird, Jay, Madison, Grant, etcetera. Then we'll just stop, as you mentioned, just North of Indianapolis. So we're probably about halfway done through the day. Still got a lot of fields to check. But I think even talking with other scouts, that that I've formed relationships with throughout the years, Living up to the expectations that the USDA put, I think, is is gonna be pretty difficult to do as of now.
Curt Kimmel:Do you
Todd Gleason:have a running tally on the tour average so far for your route?
Oliver Sloup:For our route, I don't have an average down. We've seen a a pretty wide range. I think the lowest that we have is one sixty one, and the highest right now is two thirty five. So kinda right in the middle. Historically, looking at how that compares to last year, maybe about the same, maybe a a little bit better in some of these counties.
Oliver Sloup:But, again, to the to the lofty expectations that have been set, would say we're we're falling short of that.
Todd Gleason:That's Oliver Sloop of Blue Line Futures. He's on the eastern leg of the Pro Farmer crop tour. Now joining us from the Western leg is Sherman Newlin. We know him from risk management commodities. However, there is an incorporation between risk management and Zaner Ag Hedge.
Todd Gleason:Thank you, Sherman. In your new capacity, You're traveling out west with, eventually, Ted Seifried, who's also going to be on our program. Thank you for being with us. And I bet you're looking forward to the new adventure and cooperation collaboration between these two companies.
Sherman Newlin:Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, we merged with them. Karen Braun came on board as well, so I think that's going to be a huge plus with her analysis. So I think when you put it all together, we're going to be able to offer, you know, clients hopefully a lot better insight, you know, an analysis into what the markets might be doing and where they might be going.
Todd Gleason:Now I know you're traveling with Karen today and she does the data work. Do you have a route average for corn and soybeans so far and how many places have you visited in South Dakota?
Sherman Newlin:We do, sir. Yes. We've had 10 stops in South Dakota. Soybeans, thirteen thirty one pod average. That's up 7% year over year.
Sherman Newlin:Corn, we've got a 185.3 average, that is up 22% year over year, which was last year's 152.4. So, so far, I mean, most of the stops have been better.
Todd Gleason:And so you're in pretty decent area of South Dakota. Is it irrigated or non irrigated?
Sherman Newlin:Some of it's irrigated. No, we haven't sampled any irrigated fields.
Todd Gleason:I bet you have been impressed if that's dry land fields in that case.
Sherman Newlin:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it rained last night. So, you know, we got mud sticking to our shoes on every stop.
Sherman Newlin:So basically, headed straight south out of Sioux Falls, Todd, and then we went over to the west a couple of counties and then back jogged back south and worked our way down to Yankton.
Todd Gleason:How many years have you run this particular route, and how does it compare to the past?
Sherman Newlin:This is my eighth well, my fifth year running this route. This is my eighth year on tour. So but, yeah, comparing, you you know, to the past, it's it's better. You can just tell the I mean, there we are finding some disease. There is some southern rust and, you know, a little bit of gray leaf spot out through there.
Sherman Newlin:But, you know, overall, the the plant can you know, conditions, it's lush. It's green. Things look look pretty darn good, you know, from everything that we've seen. You know, it's a you know, if we have a good finish, I think they've got a good potential for some, you know, really good crops. I mean, one of our stops, we had on corn a two seventy two average.
Sherman Newlin:That was our third stop on the day. And then our last stop in Yankton County, we had an average of two twenty one point nine.
Todd Gleason:Those are some stellar yields for that part of the world.
Sherman Newlin:Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. I mean, yes, it is.
Sherman Newlin:And we, you know, we had some one forties and some one nineties in there. But, yeah, we've we've had we've had some pretty good, you know, yields. You know, and pods are too. I mean, the pod count's up. You know, one I think our first stop, we had over 1,500 pods, 1,552 pods in the you know, which is significantly higher than what it usually is.
Sherman Newlin:So, you know, one of our stops in we had 2,014 pods. So pod counts up, you know, if we can finish, I think they're gonna have a, you know, pretty darn good bean crop out here as well. But the corn, you know, everything is, you know, yards are lush. Everything's green. Overall, are looking looking pretty good for this area.
Todd Gleason:Alright. Thanks much, Sherman. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
Sherman Newlin:Okay. Alright. Sounds good.
Todd Gleason:Sherman Newland is traveling on the western leg of the Pro Farmer crop tour. He's in South Dakota today. Last year, the Pro Farmer tour showed a one fifty five point five one bushel to the acre yield USDA has this year at a 168 bushels to the acre. If you'd like to learn more about the crop tour, you can hear these interviews again and see some of the tour averages as they're released overnight on our website at willag.org. That's willag.0rg.
Todd Gleason:It is public radio for the farming world. Thank you for listening. We'll be back again tomorrow with more from the crop tour and, of course, updates on what's happening in the commodity markets as well and the weather forecast. We'll hear from Don Day tomorrow at Day Weather in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.
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