Aug 21 | 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 Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason. We'll get right into things today as we have a full schedule. Corn in the September up 7 and a quarter cents at $3.87 at a quarter.
Todd Gleason:December at four eleven and three quarters, seven and three quarters higher, and the March at four twenty nine and three quarters up seven and three quarters of a cent. Soybeans in the September, $10.34 and a half, 19 and a half higher. November, ten fifty six up 20. January at $10.73 and 3 quarters up 18 and a half. Bean meal, $4.80 higher.
Todd Gleason:The bean oil, up $2.44. Sweet future soft red, up a penny and a half, finished at $5.29 and 3 quarters of a cent, and the hard red at $5.26, up two and three quarters of a cent. Matt Bennett with agmarket.net now joins us to take a look at, what's been happening at the CME Group in Chicago. Hi, Matt. Thanks for being with us.
Todd Gleason:Tell me about the trade today. We have another little up move.
Matt Bennett:Yeah. Definitely an up move. You know, to be honest with you, last night whenever we got through Illinois results, you know, I thought maybe the overnight market would be a little excited on corn. It didn't really bat much of an eye. I mean, you start digging into those numbers.
Matt Bennett:And if you take a, you know, pro farmer number and you bump it up, whatever it is, 3.9 bushel or, you know, you're looking at, you're still looking at a pretty massive drop from, you know, what the USDA is forecasting. So pro form a one ninety nine, USDA at 02/21. I mean, you could be talking a couple 100,000,000 bushel actually just out of Illinois alone if that's correct. So you came in here this morning, and there's a lot of scuttle about what exactly is getting into the bean and bean oil market. I do know that a couple of the announcements I saw didn't necessarily have a lot to do with bean oil.
Matt Bennett:Mean, they were talking about what refinery exemptions might look like and then that they're going to come out with new guidelines, if you will, that would embolden what we've already heard from the EPA. So I do think that probably played into soybean oil. But certainly a fantastic day for both corn and beans. I've gotta think these two results have got something to do with it.
Todd Gleason:Okay. You've been around quite a bit, and you've been talking to producers at these technology days. Are you of a mind that $2.21 is just way too big? Is it the two seventeen they came out with last year? Do you think it's what?
Todd Gleason:Two ten, two twelve in Illinois?
Matt Bennett:That's a great question, Todd. And, I mean, it's hard to know. I mean, last week being in El Paso and talking to growers there, you know, one grower had told me that he was part of the problem with the USDA at two twenty one because he said that he was two forty for a whole farm average on what he reported to USDA. Now he said that after walking the fields with his agronomist and he showed me pictures that he had massive tip back and that his agronomist felt like he was closer to 200. You know?
Matt Bennett:So that's a pretty big drop. Now I know we've got some tip back. We've got some in or some disease pressure. In my opinion, Todd, if I was gonna say right now, you know, I'm gonna say something closer to 200 than two twenty. But, again, it just depends on how everyone finishes.
Matt Bennett:I think everyone's had kind of a rough finish in my part of the world, and I don't wanna get backyard it is too bad.
Todd Gleason:Yeah. When you talk to folks in in the northern part of the state, and I made note of this a couple of times, and you'll hear it later in this program too, that the crop scouts, while they made talked about southern rust and we hear about it in Illinois, They made a much bigger deal of it, much tougher in Iowa, and I think Illinois may be far better off.
Matt Bennett:Yeah. I think when you get into Northern Illinois, I've talked to some growers that have told me they've easily got the best crop they've ever seen. I think when you get South of Interstate 80, you start to run into some issues, especially for those that had a drier biased finish, first of all. And second of all, your fungicide clearly, for some folks, might have been better. But I mean, try talking someone into the doing that whenever you've got $4 corn.
Matt Bennett:And so I totally understand the frustration and the dilemma that they're dealing with. But Illinois, in my opinion, I think there's going be areas that are going to easily have the best yields they've ever seen. Whereas some areas, I think that growers are gonna be sorely disappointed whenever they get into their fields. So everything looks great from the road. We just have to be a little cautious as to assume that it's as good out in the middle as what it looks from the roadside.
Todd Gleason:Regardless, I'll bet we'll have corn piles this fall, and we'll have storage issues just because the soybeans aren't moving.
Matt Bennett:Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I expect basis is gonna be rough as a cob, especially right in the middle of harvest. You got huge carry on these beans, and so lot a of growers are sitting here saying, I may even put some beans in the bin this year. And I'll you what, I can't argue with that.
Matt Bennett:I mean, you look at July beans today at over $11 and you start to look at some little better values there. I mean, it's just massive carry to get out to summer. So it's something I think we need to pay very close attention to and and try to play that game as much as possible.
Todd Gleason:What are you telling producers about what to do with the corn they might not store in that case?
Matt Bennett:Yeah. I just don't want us to take the basis in the middle of harvest. I'm afraid that's gonna be a rough go. Storage obviously is very expensive. I think storing some, okay.
Matt Bennett:I don't wanna get too heavy on commercial storage just due to how expensive it is. And and margins are so tight already that if I wanna be patient till next spring, you know, I might have 50¢ a bushel wrapped up in that. While we can expect basis to improve, we don't know about futures, especially with a big crop. So I'm going to go ahead and get most of that locked in here soon. But I want to keep some upside open.
Matt Bennett:So we've been just entering some May call spreads, something for a third to a half the cost of storage commercially. And it keeps us long until we get out there past February crop insurance and the March planting tensions because I do think you're looking at significantly smaller acreage here this next year whenever it comes to corn.
Todd Gleason:Thank you much. I appreciate it.
Matt Bennett:Absolutely, Todd.
Todd Gleason:That's Matt Bennett. He is with agmarket.net. Let's check-in on the eastern leg of the Pro Farmer Midwest crop tour. We're now joined by Oliver Sloop on this Thursday. Oliver, thank you for being with us all week and reporting.
Todd Gleason:Can you start with some kind of the fundamentals that came out of Illinois for you as you were listening last night to what all the rest of the folks that were on the routes had to say about the state?
Oliver Sloup:Well, it it becomes kind of a recurring theme, and it's just underwhelming. And I've had to explain to people, you know, what I mean by underwhelming all week long. It's not that it's it's bad corn or terrible corn. It's really good corn out there. But coming into this week, the expectations were set just so high.
Oliver Sloup:And it's just can you meet those expectations? Pro Farmer came out with Illinois at $1.99.57. That's below last year's two zero four point one four. So, again, underwhelming is the key there. Now the margin for error for pro farmer versus the USDA's final number in Illinois is about four and a half bushel.
Oliver Sloup:So if you tack that on to what they released last night, you're still looking basically right at last year's yield near two zero four, and that's well below what the USDA has estimated right now, which is two twenty one. So falling short of expectations so far has been the theme, and I think you're starting to maybe see that add a little bit of a tailwind to prices here, in today's trade.
Todd Gleason:You know, August, by the way, was $2.17 from USDA, so that number, was large kind of like this year. So as you said, it's a big number regardless. It's just not as big as it had been. The good news is there's 8¢ on the marketplace. Because you're a broker, I'm gonna ask you this question about this really quickly.
Todd Gleason:Given the size of the crop, the fact that soybeans are unlikely to move, at least through November unless there's some breakthrough in the trade agreements, with China, and we might have some real issues with storage. Do you think producers should take advantage of making cash sales that would have to go across the scale? I know it's a low price.
Oliver Sloup:It is it is a low price. I think it probably is, very dependent on each person's, you know, situation. We work with a wide number of clients. Some have done really good at marketing this year. Some have maybe waited for a little bit better price action that just never came.
Oliver Sloup:So it's you know, it depends on an individual situation. I would say we do get a nice rally like we've seen over the last week and a half. You should probably consider rewarding the market, and and protecting some of that downside because if we do end up with decent weather here to round out this year's crop, there's, you know, potential for a retest of the recent lows. The upside, you know, potentially limited unless we do get some sort of trade agreement, which I'm not gonna hold my breath for.
Todd Gleason:Okay. Now let's turn your attention back to the task at hand, which is taking counts in the state of Iowa. You are South of Dyersville, and to the North and East of Cedar Rapids in Jones County. What have you been finding?
Oliver Sloup:So far, it's been it's been pretty good corn. I would say quite quite a bit better than what we've seen in Illinois in the prior two days. A little bit more consistency. Here in Iowa, I think a lot better moisture situation has certainly helped things along through the first three districts yesterday, and then Pro Farmer came out with about a 200 bushel per acre average. So, again,
Oliver Sloup:a little bit short of what the expectations are, but still really, really good corn. It'll be interesting to see what the what the final numbers for Iowa are tonight and then what Pro Farmer puts out tomorrow afternoon with regards to a national estimate.
Todd Gleason:You're at the moment traveling through an area that extends through the Southwestern part of Wisconsin that, generally speaking, does a lot of corn on corn acres. I'm wondering if you found anything that wasn't so good today.
Oliver Sloup:There were a few little hiccups, but, I would say for the most part, the consistency here in Iowa so far has been really key. We did drive past some, some areas on the highway that had obviously been hit by some storms and some hail. But largely speaking, things look, a little bit more consistent than what we saw in the prior few days.
Todd Gleason:And one last thing. I know you stop every 20 miles, and it's the first cornfield probably on the right or something along those lines after that. When you go in, do you have a set number of paces that you walk into a field?
Oliver Sloup:Yeah. So we go 35 paces in past the end row, and then we hook the 30 foot rope and count the ears on each side, and then we pull ears five, eight, and 11. So we can stay consistently random, I guess, is the way to put it.
Todd Gleason:That is a good way to do it. Thank you much, and thank you so much for being with us all week, Oliver.
Oliver Sloup:Thank you. Take care.
Todd Gleason:Oliver Sloop is with Blue Line Futures traveling on the eastern leg of the Pro Farmer crop tour. On the western leg, we've been talking to Sherman Newland this week. He now joins us. Hey. Thank you much, Sherman, for being with us, and congratulations on being awarded last night as a master scout.
Todd Gleason:I bet that's kind of a big thrill. There can't be too many of you, I suppose.
Sherman Newlin:Yeah. Don't know how many there are. Yeah. It was it was, sure a surprise, last night, to say the least. You know?
Sherman Newlin:They usually get them out on Friday night, but, since Chip wasn't gonna be here tonight or, yeah, tonight, they they decided to do it last night.
Todd Gleason:Yeah. I know. He's a big Iowa State fan, so he had to fly out for that game in in Ireland. But but, you know, that's we we'll we'll forgive him for that. Yeah. Right? That that that's okay. That's okay.
Todd Gleason:So you have been traveling, in, the Northwestern Part of Iowa. I think you started today, not very much, and then mostly, along, I 94 in Minnesota, not actually on 94 or thereabouts, but really close. What'd you find today?
Sherman Newlin:Yeah. We didn't make any stops in Iowa. We had to get up here in the Southwest Corner of Minnesota. We've been in Nobles County, Murray County, Cottonwood, Watawnwan, and Martin County today. A lot better than what we saw last year, that's for sure.
Sherman Newlin:We've had 10 stops in District 7 And 8. Our corn truck average is two twelve year over year. That's 29% over last year, which is one sixty four. 19% over 02/2023, which is one seventy seven. SOIC, we have 1,300 pod counts on.
Sherman Newlin:That is up 10% from last year and up 15% from 2023. Overall, good crop, not a lot of disease, little bit of rust. Know, last year they had so much rain in through here that, you know, drowned out a lot of areas, but things are progressing pretty well. A lot of the corn's in early dent stage, you know, so overall it's kind of like what we saw in Iowa, pretty good looking, you know, lush looking crop.
Todd Gleason:Yeah, so in Iowa you traveled through the most productive district in the state year in and year out. That's the central district in the western part of the state. You're also in one of the most productive areas of Minnesota today. When you talked to producer or to your fellow scouts last night about other parts of Iowa, were they as impressed with the crop as you were?
Sherman Newlin:In spots. I mean, a lot of they saw a lot of rust. They really did see a lot of rust. We saw some, you know, we saw a couple of fields that may, you know, end up hurting the yield on those fields, but we had a representative there from BASF and his comment was they didn't know if, you know, some of that corn was going to make it to black layer before it starts shutting down because of the rust. We'll see.
Sherman Newlin:Still a good crop out there, I mean, in Iowa, but, you know, the disease is kind of surprising how quick it takes over and, you know, how bad it is in some fields and then not bad, you know, not near as bad in others.
Todd Gleason:When you think about the whole of what you've seen and what you've scouted in your part of the world near Hudsonville, which would be kind of the Terre Haute area, just for lack of a better place to put it, Indiana, but you're on the Illinois side. What do you think of the crop as a whole? What do you suppose?
Sherman Newlin:As a whole, I mean, it's a good it's a big crop. It's gonna be a big crop now. But I'm beginning to think, you know, we're not probably going to maybe reach the lofty goals of what USDA put out there. I mean, I could see them dropping this corn yield two or three bushel anyway. It wouldn't surprise me with the disease and what they found in Northern Illinois in some of the dry areas.
Sherman Newlin:But the Western states, I mean, talk about Kansas, you talk about Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, they're gonna be quite a bit above average. So, I mean, we could come in a little bit below USDA numbers, but overall, it's still gonna be a big crop no matter how we cut it.
Todd Gleason:Yeah. Somebody had asked me on X what the trade was thinking, and what you were you guys were working with a couple of days ago. And I said, I really didn't know, but that it was about how good the crop was gonna be in South Dakota, Nebraska, parts of Western Iowa, Minnesota, and how much it would offset anything that's not coming in Ohio and Indiana. I hadn't thought about Illinois coming up short. I'm still not certain.
Todd Gleason:I don't know. Do you think Illinois will come up very much short?
Sherman Newlin:I, you know, I don't know. I did make a stop on my way up to Chicago on Saturday, you know, North Of Gilman a little bit, and the corn looked really good. I mean, I didn't see any problems there. Nice, good sized ears. You know, seemed like North Of Champaign, yes, there's some dry areas, and I know some other areas have been hurt, you know, from there north.
Sherman Newlin:But again, there's going to be some really good corn, you know, in the state of Illinois and soybeans. I mean, our particular farm, I think we're, you know, we're pushing we're gonna push a record, if not beat it, for corn. I don't know about beans because the forecast is wind dry, and we still need rain in August to finish these soybeans.
Todd Gleason:Yeah, there are places in Southern Illinois that just have had way too much rain up front and then really dry. Again, acreage numbers are just not big enough to move the needle really. And I did note that in Illinois the crop scouts, while they found disease and there is southern rust in the northern part of the state, at least to this point, it hadn't blossomed out. And so unlike in Iowa where you heard about it a lot on on x, so much in Illinois. Just Yeah.
Todd Gleason:Note noted that it was there, not that it was a problem. So
Sherman Newlin:Right.
Todd Gleason:See how all that turns out. Yeah. Well, it'll be interesting to see what the numbers look like when they're released on Friday from, the folks at Pro Farmer. There is a difference between the tour national numbers, and even their statewide numbers when they give them. So we'll have those tomorrow, and I thank you for being with us all week.
Todd Gleason:It's really great that you do this year in and year out for us.
Sherman Newlin:You bet. Glad to do it.
Todd Gleason:Yeah. It's Sherman Newland. He is traveling on the western leg of the Pro Farmer crop tour. He's with Risk Management Commodities, a division of Zener Ag Hedge. Let's check on the global growing regions.
Todd Gleason:We'll stay here in the Midwest mostly today with Mike Tenore. He's at t storm weather president and CEO there, tstorm.net online. Hi, Mike. Thanks for being with us. Let's get right to this because I think we've got some things to cover as it's related to the corn crop and the soybean crop.
Todd Gleason:It's the month of August. Soybeans are an August crop. Corn, however, is in the midst of fill. A little rainfall usually is good for that. Dry conditions are not great for either crop.
Todd Gleason:What do you see coming up?
Mike Tannura:Well, the setup has changed a little bit in recent weeks. If you look at the Southeast 40% of US corn and soybeans, they've dried out a lot over the last two to three weeks. And as we move forward, there's very little rain in the forecast. A large surface level high is forming, and that's going to keep a wide area dry over the next ten days. So we don't think there's very much rain in the forecast for the Corn Belt.
Mike Tannura:That could change a little bit in September with some showers and storms here and there. But, basically, the seventh day Corn Belt is going to be drier to much drier than normal all the way into the end of the month. And even though this might be a little bit surprising to think about, especially if you're in the northern areas of the Corn Belt, this is going to end up being the driest August in the Corn Belt since either 2020 or 2013, and that's, again, due to all the rain that has been missing out in these southern and eastern growing areas.
Todd Gleason:As you look forward through the month, you don't see the rainfall. Is it cool through the month like we're starting out now?
Mike Tannura:Well, temperatures will be ideal over this period of time. We have a very cool air mass that's going to move in this weekend and then linger over much of next week. High temperatures will only be in the sixties and seventies in most of the Corn Belt with lows in the forties and fifties. So this is a big change, and those types of temperatures are pretty ideal. Now the only thing we need to keep in mind is that it has been hot up until very recently, and it still will be hot today in the Western Corn Belt.
Mike Tannura:So we're still kinda transitioning into that. And until we get there, there will be some stress on corn and maybe to some extent soybeans from all the heat that we've had. So it's been a challenging growing season in in that regard, Todd. We've never really had a clean story. We've never had the cool and wet weather.
Mike Tannura:We've never had the dry and hot weather, which are kind of the easiest ones to understand. So it's been kind of in the middle where it was hot and wet during parts of the season. Now it's very dry, but it's also going to be very cool and just kind of a real mixed bag without ever kinda tapping into that either perfect scenario or the super problematic scenario, which are most, easier to understand and discuss.
Todd Gleason:You know, the pro farmer crop tour scouts have been out all week. The one state that they don't get to that actually plays in the corn market is actually Kansas. It raises more corn than wheat by bushels. What do you see in the hard red winter wheat regions, for that crop?
Mike Tannura:Well, Kansas has been getting some pretty fantastic rains all summer long. They've been very wet, and they're going to turn quite a bit wetter next week. We talked about all the dryness, but we kind of ignored that region a little bit because even though, they do produce some corn, if you look at this the Southern Plains from Colorado and Kansas onto the South, it's only about seven to 8% of US corn, and it's kinda planted a little bit differently than what we have further to the East. But they're going to get hammered by rainfall next week. While that cool air mass is sitting on the Corn Belt, it's going to allow for waves of energy to move along the southern edge of it, and that's the recipe for big thunderstorms in the plains.
Mike Tannura:So Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas will more than likely see one to three inches of rain next week starting on Sunday and Monday, and that will turn that portion of the corn crop wet. But that only accounts for maybe two to 3% of US soybeans, so not much. But hard red winter wheat will have a full soil moisture basket heading into planting next month.
Todd Gleason:Thanks much. We'll talk with you again next week.
Mike Tannura:Sounds great, Todd. Thanks a lot.
Todd Gleason:Mhmm. Mike Tenaris with t storm weather. That's tstorm.net online joined us on this Thursday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. Quick reminder that you should come visit us in the University of Illinois tent at the Farm Progress Show next week. Up online at willag.org you can see what's happening in the tent as it's related to the stage and which of the crop scientists, the agricultural economists, and many others will be visiting with us and what times and what days.
Todd Gleason:Check it out and make sure that you put that on your list when you come to the Farm Progress Show in Decatur next week. Until then, I wish you a great afternoon and a fantastic week.
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