Jul 31 | Closing Market Report
From the land to Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market reported as the July 2025. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett. He's agmarket.net in Windsor, Illinois.
Todd Gleason:That's located in Shelby County. We'll stay in Shelby County and discuss red crown rot, which has appeared there in soybean fields. We'll do that with Illinois Extension plant pathologist Boris Camilletti. You won't want to miss that one. And then we'll continue on with the theme of soybeans and move to the Soybean Association headquarters where this morning in Bloomington, I spoke with Andrew Larson, their government relations specialist, about the one big beautiful bill act.
Todd Gleason:And then as we close out our time together, we'll take a look at the weather forecast and the wet July and what August might bring. We'll do that with Mike Tenora at t storm weather on this Thursday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online on demand at willag.0rg.
announce:Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.
Todd Gleason:At the CME Group today, September corn at $3.94, 2 and a quarter higher, December at $4.13 and 3 quarters up a penny and a half a bushel, and the March at $4.30 and a half up one cent for the corn. August soybeans, $9.06 $1 for the old crop down 6. November at $9.89 and a quarter 6.5¢ lower. Bean meal futures at 2.618 up 1.1. The bean oil at $55.58.92 lower on the afternoon.
Todd Gleason:Wheat futures for the soft bread in the December contract at $5.42 and a half opinion three quarters lower, and the hard red December at $5.44 and 3 quarters up two and a half cents on the day. Live cattle futures in Chicago finished the nearby at $2.23 15. That's down $6.57 and a half cents. Feeders $8.20 lower, and the lean hogs 37 and a half cents higher for the day. They finished at $89 and 57 and a half cents on this Thursday afternoon.
Todd Gleason:You're listening to the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. Matt Bennett from agmarket.net now joins us to take a look at what's been happening in the marketplace. Hi, Matt. Thank you for being with us. What have you been watching closely today?
Matt Bennett:Yeah. A couple three different things. I mean, you know, you see the dollar continue to move a little bit higher, and, clearly, that's a headwind on commodities that don't need an additional headwind. You look at the corn market actually settled a little bit higher, which is certainly nice to see. But unfortunately, that's after we've really gotten pummeled here over the last couple of weeks.
Matt Bennett:Just on the eighteenth, we traded September corn up to $4.11 And right now, settled today at $3.94. So a lot of these cash bushels, I think, little bit of a, you know, give up mode type situation, and a lot of those bushels are are kinda showing up. You know, some of your end users, there's been a few pushes here and there. And I and I believe some of the end users were run a little bit thin, but a lot of the pushes that we've heard about have have started to dry up. Bean market off just a little.
Matt Bennett:I think the bean market's still concerned, you know, about are we going to get a trade deal with China or not? You know, they've essentially bought no beans off of us. So, you know, the bean crop looks good. Maybe not as good as corn does relatively speaking but good enough. Certainly looking at the demand situation and overall world balance sheet.
Todd Gleason:On the tariff side, the Trump administration along with Mexico announcing today that they will extend trade talks for another ninety days. The market seemed to take that in stride and really corn and most ag products are covered by the USMCA anyway. However, does that give you pause as it's related to China given that the Trump administration is already talking about extensions for one of our largest trade partners?
Matt Bennett:Yeah. I mean, it's it's a little bit aggravating, I think, for a lot of us in the trade did not have the direction that we'd like to have. You know, we hear about a lot of the trade deals getting finalized or pushed through, but we haven't really gotten a whole lot of specifics. If you look at the pause that you just mentioned, you know, clearly Mexico's been a massive buyer of corn this year. You certainly have to hope that that would be an easy one to come to grips with here pretty quickly, and it needs to, quite frankly.
Matt Bennett:But at the same time, you know, there's no guarantees here. Unfortunately, it's it's pretty tough to put your finger on anything right now and say, hey, this is a guarantee, you know, with what we've been dealing with. So there's a lot of unknowns here, and it makes it really tough on the producer who, quite frankly, is very much undersold on new crop, both corn and beans. And if the vast majority of growers would sell today, they're most likely going to be selling underwater unless they're assuming a yield that we've been hearing whispers of. Some guys think they could see you know, you know, well above APH yields, you know, in a large portion of the Corn Belt.
Matt Bennett:Those yields are certainly possible, but still, I think it's unfortunate in that there could be a fair amount of people that actually raise a record crop and lose money this year. So, you know, I take no joy in saying that. It's just the fact the reality looking at prices where they're at today.
Todd Gleason:How do you discuss this with producers? Because if they're looking at being underwater, is there much that they can do to protect themselves going forward to try to find a way to get more out of the marketplace?
Matt Bennett:Well, I think one of the biggest challenges we've got, Todd, is probably basis. You know, you look at basis for fall on corn, and, know, some of these guys have actually pushed basis a little bit here lately because the grower hasn't sold a lot of corn. Now they've relayed to me that they may push a little bit for quantity, but, you know, they expect basis to get super wide this fall. And why wouldn't it? You know, if you have multiple counties throughout the Corn Belt, you know, posting well above record yields, which is the assumption you make with some of these extremely large national yield numbers out there, then obviously, you're gonna have a bit of a issue moving this corner around and finding a home for all of it.
Matt Bennett:So there's no doubt basis could get super wide. We've told guys, if you need money in the fall, let's not make that decision going across the scale necessarily. Maybe try to shop for some basis, get some of that booked. But then at the same time, you know, turn around and maybe buy yourself a make call spread. I mean, we didn't tell them guys a limited risk position just in case this thing gets a post harvest bounce, just in case we flip the narrative on corn, which I think will happen at some point.
Matt Bennett:The reason I think that is due to the fact that we see corn acres dipping precipitously next year for a variety of reasons. Maybe the biggest one is the corn to fertilizer ratio and in tandem with the grower having a liquidity issue right now. So you've got to think that that will flip at some point. That keeps you in the game, gets your hands on your money and maybe pay some interest off. But we all know that most growers are going to have some financial needs for this fall.
Matt Bennett:And boy, I don't want to be making the decision on whether I want a store or sell when I go across a scale October 10, because I'm afraid the basis in Central Illinois could be 50 under.
Todd Gleason:Looking into 2026, fertilizer costs appeared to have jumped in mid summer. Is that what you were hearing?
Matt Bennett:Oh yeah. I mean, fertilizer costs were already high, but then clearly, you know, we've had issues, especially with the phosphate market. You know, there's just no relief there. Clearly, potash has been cheap relative to phosphate for quite some time. I mean, I'm talking pretty much the last year.
Matt Bennett:Nitrogen costs also look quite high as well, though. And so whenever you put that corn to fertilizer ratio and mix, I mean, it's essentially the highest we've ever seen other than 2,008. And so after two, what looks like the third straight year, according to a FarmDoc team of underwater type margins, it makes it really tough on a grower to step in and spend that kind of money on dry fertilizer and push corn acres for 26. So, you know, I think that it's gonna have a pretty big impact. The last thing I'll say on acres is that, you know, whenever you whenever you see a big acreage year that jumps up like we did this year, almost 4,000,000 acres, typically, the next year, you lose a fair amount of acres.
Matt Bennett:So I don't even know if you get to 90.6 from last year. So I do think better days are ahead at some point, but it could get pretty ugly between now and then as well.
Todd Gleason:Hey. Thanks much. We'll talk with you again next week.
Matt Bennett:Absolutely. Thanks.
Todd Gleason:That's Matt Bennett. He is with agmarket.net. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleeson. We're now joined by Andrew Larson, government relations at the Illinois Soybean Association held a town hall meeting at their headquarters in Bloomington Normal today to talk about some of the things that have been happening. I'd like to discuss the one big beautiful bill act with you.
Todd Gleason:Three items of concern from the Illinois Soybean Association. The first just simply has to do with reconciliation act process itself and how SNAP and farm policies went through it.
Andrew Larson:Yeah. I I think our our observation is that we wanna make sure that the farm bill, which has always been a bipartisan and great coalition between the hunger you know, folks advocating for for hungry folks around the country and agriculture come together, and that we also have the opportunity to really discuss these farm bills and farm policy in an open manner. We know that things happen quickly in the reconciliation process, and we really wanna make sure that we return to regular order and pass some farm bills on the regular order and schedule and make sure that we have that opportunity to really dive into all of ag policy comprehensively so that we can achieve the best value for the entire country.
Todd Gleason:The second issue relates to crop insurance SEO, in particular, the Farm Doc team and its one big beautiful bill act review webinar suggesting that this has been transitioned, SEO that is, from a crop insurance program, kind of the no do no harm area, to a direct payment program, and that it's also skewed to other parts of the country, particularly the South.
Andrew Larson:Yeah. I mean, that just goes back to our our desire to have more open conversations about what's happening in foreign policy. You know, I think that it we want folks that were if they receive benefits of these changes and these programs, let's address why they need those changes, and let's look at that holistically and have the opportunity to bring the voice and the concern of Midwestern Illinois farmers into that conversation as well in the same way. Because, you know, folks may have different needs in parts of the country, but let's make sure that we pass something that makes sense. We work on things in the future that continue to make sense for everyone.
Todd Gleason:And finally, something that has been trumpeted by much of agriculture but still is not clear exactly how it moves through the system is 45 z. This would involve biofuels. The Illinois Soybean Association would like to see a transition period, if nothing else, using the Blenders Tax Credit or 40 a.
Andrew Larson:Yeah. Absolutely. The 40 a credit's worked really well for over twenty years in this country as with incentivizing the retail sale of biodiesel, particularly here in Illinois, coupled with our state sales tax exemption. 45 z changes how the business and tax relationships happen, and there's still a lot of uncertainty. The rules aren't written yet by the Trump administration.
Andrew Larson:Even if we see those rules here in the next few months, there's still a lot of biodiesel plants been hurting across the country, and it's such a great demand driver for soybeans and soybean oil. We wanna continue to make sure we have that robust gallon for over 300 mil robust market for over 300,000,000 gallons of biodiesel here in Illinois annually. It's a great Illinois success story, something that helps drive support basis and support farmers across the state in Illinois. So we wanna continue to make sure it's there. And without some of this additional certainty through forty a, we believe that continues to put that in in somewhat of jeopardy.
Todd Gleason:Andrew Larson is with the Illinois Soybean Association and manages government relations for them. We talked to him at an Illinois Soybean Association town hall meeting in Bloomington Normal this morning. You're listening to the closing market report celebrating forty years on the air. Some 10,000 episodes and more than 30,000 interviews. Thanks for taking your time with us this afternoon.
Todd Gleason:Our theme music, by the way, is written, performed, produced in courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer Tim Gleason. Now up next, symptoms of red crown rot are appearing in commercial soybean fields. As of earlier this week, leaf stem and root symptoms have been observed in Shelby County, an area known with a history for the disease. Additional cases have been confirmed in University of Illinois research plots in Madison and Macoupin Counties, which also have recurrence of disease pressure. I spoke with Yobai plant pathologist Boris Camilletting about the disease.
Todd Gleason:Tell me about red crown rot as a disease. What is it?
Boris Camiletti:So red crown rot is a new and emerging disease here in the Midwest. It's a soy borne disease. It's causing some yield reductions in commercial fields. It's spreading. It was first detected in 2018 in Pike County, but now it's spread throughout the state, and every season we report new counties with the disease.
Boris Camiletti:And once you have the disease in a field, it's a pathogen that can produce some resistant structures called microsclerotia that will remain in the soil and will cause infections the following seasons. This is why when we highlight a county in our maps to keep track of the disease, we just keep it highlighted because there are high chances that you will see the problem again the following seasons.
Todd Gleason:When I took a look at that map on cropprotectionnetwork.org. It showed Illinois as primarily the place in the Midwest that has red crown rot. Do we know why that's the case?
Boris Camiletti:Yeah, no. Actually, we don't. What you see in the map is how we were able to keep track of the disease. So this disease can cause symptoms that can be very similar to those caused by other diseases that is called sudden death syndrome, which is a very well established disease in soybeans in the Midwest. So there a chance that for years this disease has been diagnosed as Sudden Death Syndrome.
Todd Gleason:It is called red crown rot for a reason. Can you give me that and how farmers and others might be able to identify it in the field?
Boris Camiletti:Yeah, so it's called red crown rot because it will cause a red discoloration at the base, at the stem base, and this discoloration can be noticed or observed even during the vegetative stages. Then, more close to R1, you can start seeing the foliar symptoms, although they are more common between R3 and R5. So we need to be very careful with the diagnosis and we always encourage everybody to send samples to our planned clinic that in just a couple of days can give you the right diagnosis.
Todd Gleason:Is there a reason to treat for this, whether it be in the field already or prior to its existence in the field?
Boris Camiletti:So for this disease, we don't have any foliar fungicides so far that can help you to control the disease. So there is not much that we can do in season to control the disease, but you know that you had it in the past, there are some seed treatments that are already registered to suppress the disease, and that's something that you can consider in future seasons if you are dealing with this disease.
Todd Gleason:What would you like farmers to do when they're scouting their fields? Won't want to walk through a soybean field, but what should they do?
Boris Camiletti:So, last week we sampled seven fields in Shelby County. There were fields that we knew that they had a problem in the past, so we know that the disease is there in 2023, right? So we visited the plots from the road. Honestly, you can't see anything. So you need to walk the fields, go very into the fields to start seeing the symptoms.
Boris Camiletti:So the foliar symptoms will show up later than the stem, for example. So if you want to scout, if you go and you scout and you don't see any foliar symptoms, you still can check the stems to see if you see this red discoloration on the stem base. But if you see the symptoms in the fields of the farmers or agronomists and want to share the location with us, we can run our detection model to see where are the hot spots and will also help us improve our model and to validate our model for red and broad detection.
Todd Gleason:All
Boris Camiletti:our research is supported by the Illinois Sovereign Association, so we are very grateful for the support. And most of what we do is public research, so it will be available at the end of the season.
Todd Gleason:That was University of Illinois Extension field crops plant pathologist Boris Camilletti discussing red crown rot of soybean. The disease can often be mistaken from the roadway as SDS or sudden death syndrome and require scouting to confirm its presence in a field. You're listening to the closing market report from Illinois Public Media on this Thursday afternoon. Let's take a look at the weather forecast now with Mike Tenora. He's at T Storm Weather, the president and CEO there.
Todd Gleason:Find him online at tstorm.net. Mike, thanks for being with us. Let's begin with just how wet we've been across the Midwest first.
Mike Tannura:Well, we just went through the wettest July across the seven state Corn Belt since 1993, and that gives you an idea of just how much rain we've seen. A lot of that wetness is being driven by what happened in Iowa. Around 10 inches fell across the state in this month, and that also is the wettest since just over 10 inches in 1993. So this just is telling us that we've had a lot of rain and the only other month that even comes close to this would be 1992. So you go back to 1960 and basically this was the third wettest July of the last sixty five seasons.
Mike Tannura:So that kind of gives us a background of where we are. Another way we can look at this is with our proprietary data. And we like to look at things in different windows of time. If we look at it over the last fourteen days or the last thirty days or the last sixty days, US corn is the wettest in more than fifteen years by this measure. So all these things are pointing to we're in the middle of one of the wetter growing seasons on record.
Mike Tannura:This also applies to soybeans but the soybean story isn't quite as pronounced. That's because it really hasn't been raining very much in the Mid South in recent weeks. That's kind of holding some of those numbers back a little bit. But the point is, Todd, is that it's very wet out there and arguably too wet in some areas, and that'll kinda be the story of this growing season.
Todd Gleason:When you look forward, how does the month of August lay out?
Mike Tannura:Well, as you can walk outside and see today, it's much much cooler than it has been. A large cool front went through, and that's going to leave this cool air mass in place into early next week. Now we don't think this is going to be a part of a major pattern change because we are going to warm up once we get beyond Sunday and Monday. Now is it going to return to highs in the nineties and lows in the seventies to 80 degrees? Probably not.
Mike Tannura:We could see a couple of days like that here and there. But the pattern going forward looks much more typical, which is where you kind of warm up for a few days, then you cool down for a few days, then you warm back up. And with that, you'll get some rain. Now the big uncertainty is, you know, how much rain are we going to see? The setup that's coming up for next week does not look nearly as what it has been.
Mike Tannura:So we don't think we're going to see these real big rains that we've been experiencing in recent weeks. There'll just be some scattered storms here and there. And then as far as the effect of that corn and soybean yields, well, that's a tricky question because typically you want to see a lot of rain at this time of the year, especially for soybeans. So if we did see that, it might not be necessarily a great story because of how wet it is now. So wet plus wet equals too wet.
Mike Tannura:So then we might not want to see all that much rain. But then of course, that gets a little complicated too because then you have to start asking yourself, well, what's the exact amount of rain that I need to have an ideal setup? And that whole equation has been really thrown off by the rain amounts over the last several weeks. So kind of a tricky setup in that regard, but rainfall at least going forward looks to be a little more typical than what it has been.
Todd Gleason:Mike, thank you much. I appreciate it.
Mike Tannura:Yeah. Thank you, Todd.
Todd Gleason:You're welcome. That's Mike Tenora. He is with t storm weather at tstorm.net online. You've been listening to the closing market report on this Thursday afternoon. Don't forget we'll record commodity week today and post it to our website this afternoon about 6PM at willag.org, willag.0rg.
Todd Gleason:It'll air on many of these radio stations over the weekend, and you can hear in its entirety tomorrow during the 02:00 hour here on Illinois Public Media. I'm extension's Todd Gleason.
Matt Bennett:Hi.
