May 29 | Closing Market Report
From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois, this is the closing market report. It is the 05/29/2025. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett. He's at AgMarket.net.
Todd Gleason:Gary Schnitke will be here to talk a little bit about what's in the big beautiful bill that impacts agriculture, in this case crop insurance and premiums. And then as we wrap up our time together, we'll talk about the weather too. We'll do that with Mike Tenora at t storm weather, that's t storm dot net online during this Thursday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online on demand anytime you'd like to listen at willag.org or in your favorite podcast applications. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.
Todd Gleason:July corn for the day settled at $4.47, 4 lower. December at $4.41 and a quarter down two and a quarter. Oh, and the September at $4.27 and a quarter, two and a half lower for the corn. July soybeans ten fifty one and three quarters up three and a quarter since August '3 and a quarter higher, and November at $10.37 at a quarter down a quarter of a cent. Bean meal futures up $2.7 Bean oil 54¢ lower and wheat futures soft red up three and three quarters.
Todd Gleason:Settlement price there in the July contract at $5.34 The hard red July at five point three one and three quarters up 6 and a half cents. Live cattle futures in Chicago up a dollar 90 at $2.10, 7 and a half. Feeder cattle at $2.99 92 and a half up $4.30, and the lean hogs at a hundred and $2.97 and a half cents per hundred pounds, down 32 and a half cents for the day. Crude oil on the afternoon at $60.92 a barrel, down 92¢. Diesel fuel or heating oil at $2.03 and 6 tenths of a cent, 3 and 4 tenths of a cent lower.
Todd Gleason:And the wholesale price of gasoline for the day finished the nearby contract at $2.00 3 and 7 tenths of a cent, 2 and a half cents higher. Matt Bennett from Market.net now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. Good afternoon to you, Matt. Thanks for being with us again.
Matt Bennett:Oh, absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Todd Gleason:First off, did you get everything planted?
Matt Bennett:Yeah. A couple days ago, we finally finished up. You know, we had that rain a week ago, Sunday, Monday. Yeah. The inch to an inch and a half down here.
Matt Bennett:We could have gone earlier if we just could have got some heat, but, you know, it was so cold that, we just couldn't get things to dry out very well. And so I had to wait around a little bit. Finally, we're able to work some ground there on actually, on Monday there on Memorial Day. And I finished working on Tuesday, let it air a little bit, and we're able to get it all wrapped up. So finally got done at least for now.
Matt Bennett:I don't think we're gonna have any replant, but, there's a couple fields that were planted there, ten days ago that, right before that rain that were struggling a little bit. Fortunately, we had two tenths of rain yesterday, and, I do think that that, softened things up a little bit, and I think we'll be okay.
Todd Gleason:Many people in your area still trying to finish up their planting season?
Matt Bennett:Yeah, especially here in south, you know, so there's a few people riding here for sure. You know, it's just a hit and miss on where you got the rain and where you didn't. You get south of us, and a lot of those guys had a pretty good little run. But, unfortunately, you know, they've been even wetter yet than what we've been. So, you know, there's still a lot to get put in the field south of us.
Matt Bennett:Be very interesting to see how this weather is moving forward. It looks like maybe we'll have a shot at some drier weather here for a little bit. One nice thing, of course, Todd, is, we got some heat. So, that's certainly gonna help things, help things get up and going, you know, give a little push to some of those crops that, trying to get out of the ground too.
Todd Gleason:Of course, Mattoon is, what, thirty five, forty minutes to the south of Champaign directly on, the interstate, headed through Effingham and then on to either Memphis or Nashville, depending on which direction you're going, to give an idea where you are. What are you thinking about the marketplace this week? And then looking forward to USDA's monthly numbers that come out in June as well, if you have thought about that.
Matt Bennett:Yeah. I mean, the first question, what do I think about the market this week? You know, I don't know if I wanna say what I really think because you'd have to edit it out. But golly, Todd, it's just been it's just been a rough week. I mean, there's not much going on today, two to four lower on corn, beans a shade higher to a shade lower.
Matt Bennett:Wheat, of all things, actually, was higher today. You know, you've got a little bit of excitement there, if you will. I would call it excitement because wheat just hasn't been able to find, you know, any sort of positive momentum whatsoever here for quite some time. But, you know, when you look at this corn market, bear spreading again today. You know, you had July down four.
Matt Bennett:This was down two and a quarter. And so, it's very interesting to see the funds just continue to pile on to their long, shorts, most likely, well over a hundred thousand, contracts short at this point. You know? And that's in the face of the second part of your question, you know, this June report. So, you know, you look at what exports have been.
Matt Bennett:You look at what ethanol demand, again, today was strong. It was up on the weak. Stocks were lower. So good ethanol report. You've gotta assume when you looked at inspections this week, for instance, we're about 29% ahead of last year's pace, whereas the USDA is projecting just over 10% ahead of last year's pace.
Matt Bennett:And so, you know, there's no question that looking at the June report, very high probability USDA raises exports once again. And so my my assumption here is that you're gonna see a carryout one three five or below. Then with that the case, I think that it highlights the need to have a big yield. Now other thing is, Todd, what are acres gonna be? That's the number one question I continue to get asked.
Matt Bennett:And, clearly, south of us over into Ohio, you know, there could be a few acres you lose. But, Todd, I'd be very cautious to assume we lose acres overall because I think that the rapid pace in the Northern Half of Illinois through Iowa through Nebraska and the Dakotas leads me to believe that maybe there was a little more corn plant in those parts of the world And I know people don't wanna hear this, but I'm I'm afraid maybe that acreage number creeps higher in June.
Todd Gleason:So USDA, NASS will be contacting producers, getting an idea what they actually planted starting next week, maybe already started, and those numbers will show up at the June in the acreage report. We'll look forward to that. One of the items that sticks in my mind for the day was the two US courts, not just one, but two, have said that the Trump administration's tariffs imposed on the April, that would be the 10%, along with the reciprocals, which are paused mostly, were, not legal under this under the emergency act that he was using from 1977. It would also include the Mexico, Canada, and China, tariffs that were imposed before that. The trade took that in stride, didn't seem to really care very much.
Todd Gleason:And does does it make much difference to you?
Matt Bennett:Yeah. I mean, some of these guys, like Goldman Sachs, came out today and said, ultimately, they don't think it's gonna impact anything. It's more of a roadblock. They feel like he will accomplish his task one way or the other to try to cure some of these trade imbalances. You know, I think that, it's problematic for, the corn and bean markets, though, if any of our trade partners say, you know what?
Matt Bennett:We're not gonna try to equal out these trade imbalances because one of the big ways they can do that, of course, is buying our agricultural products, which, you know, readily accessible. You know, we've been very competitive. We're starting to lose our competitive edge in corn. Brazil is starting to pick up a little bit of that business. But, there's no doubt, Todd, that, if they put a roadblock in front of him here, you know, love him or hate him, it's not necessarily a good thing, you know, for our commodities because a lot of people viewed this as an opportunity to get some of those trade imbalances cured.
Matt Bennett:So I I think moving forward, we're just gonna have to see how this thing plays out. But by all means, you would expect they're gonna try to find any way they can to try to fix some of these trade imbalances moving forward, which, wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing for us as US Growers.
Todd Gleason:Hey. Thank you much, I, and we'll talk with you again next week.
Matt Bennett:Absolutely, Todd. Thank you.
Todd Gleason:Mhmm. Matt Bennett is with AgMarket.net. We're now joined by Gary Schnickke, agricultural economist on the Urbana Champaign campus of the U of I, a member of the PharmDoc team. Henik Paulson, Jonathan Coppas, and Carl Zuloff have penned an article for the FarmDoc website. This one is titled impacts a premium support increase of basic and optional units in the house reconciliation bill.
Todd Gleason:Short version is this is an update of some of the farm bill functions, particularly as it's related to crop insurance in the big beautiful bill. So let's let's go through, first what basic and optional units are as compared to what farmers in Corn Belt stage generally use.
Gary Schnitkey:Yeah. So when farmers buy, you know, their RP or other farm level products, and in Illinois, it's primarily farm RP, they have to make a unit choice, and there's four of them actually, basic, optional, enterprise, and whole farm units. Most farmers in Illinois pick enterprise units, which is all of one crop in a county. So they would have one insurance policy for corn and one for soybeans per county. Basic and optional are divide acres up basic by ownership split, so all cash rent and each share rent landowner would have its own unit and optional units divide those out further by township section.
Gary Schnitkey:So those are optional basic and enterprise are the three big choices that are made for most insurance plans.
Todd Gleason:And the changes that congress is considering are about what?
Gary Schnitkey:So the farmer the the house reconciliation bill increased premium support or premium subsidies for basic and optional units, and it's roughly a 4% increase. So what that would do would be to increase the federal portion of the total premium and the farmer paid premium for basic and optional units here. The key here is that Midwest Farmers tend to take enterprise units and there weren't any changes to enterprise unit subsidy levels. So it would be basic and optional units that would get that increase and not enterprise units.
Todd Gleason:How much in the way of cash rent and share rent or the landowner side is on basic?
Gary Schnitkey:So that depends, but a share rent landowner, if if they're eligible for enterprise units, would probably be in enterprise units. We can't we don't know that breakdown or that isn't provided by RMA, which is which is what. So
Todd Gleason:So, essentially, I would say if they own one farm, they're probably on basic. But if they own more than one farm, they're on an enterprise unit?
Gary Schnitkey:That would probably be true.
Todd Gleason:Yep. Yep. Just trying to get an idea for the landowners what the difference might be. So, now let's dive into this just a little bit. It is a 4%, extra subsidy.
Todd Gleason:What does that mean as it relates to how insurance rates might change?
Gary Schnitkey:So four to 5%, so if you're looking in Illinois, you're probably looking at something in the $40 total premium range. For many farmers it would be a dollar, dollar 50 decrease in in in premiums if they have basic and optional units. And, again, if you have have enterprise units, you wouldn't be getting that. We calculated what it would be on average for, you know, all counties in the nation. And in Illinois and all of the Midwest, the impact of this would be less than $1 per acre.
Gary Schnitkey:So and that is partly due to Illinois being a low risk state and using more enterprise units than basic and optional units.
Todd Gleason:Are there regions of the country that use more basic and optional units?
Gary Schnitkey:In in some of the areas would be California and the West Coast, and they that's primarily due to there being specialty crop production out there, and they tend to use basic and optional units. The middle part of the state nation, excuse me, the Western Great Plains like Western Nebraska, Western Kansas, the Panhandle Of Texas, and Colorado tend to use more basic and optional units than do the rest of the country, and so does the Southeast. Georgia, Florida, South Carolina tend to use more basic and optional units. And again, they would be a lot of that would be related to peanuts as well. So there's there are regions that use more of it.
Gary Schnitkey:They tend to be either higher value crops such as California and higher risk crops such as the Great Plains and and Southeast.
Todd Gleason:Any commentary on what what value this might have as it's related to a general farm policy?
Gary Schnitkey:So, yeah, so from a farm policy standpoint, you wonder why congress chose to do basic and optional units rather than all the units that would obviously have regional impacts and why why why basic and optional units were chosen and not given to enterprise would be a good choice. Good good question. Particularly given that enterprise units have some advantages over basic and optional, they tend to have lower premiums because of more diversification. So why are we penalizing those policies. You know, the other question you could have is, farmers are already insuring 90% plus acres that are insured.
Gary Schnitkey:So what's the problem that we need higher subsidy rates here and could we use that in some other way? So you know why was enterprise units left out and why are we increasing subsidies is a good question. I would also note that anytime we're increasing premium, those premium supports, we're putting more dollars in high risk areas because, you know, 4% of a $40 policy in Illinois is less than 44% of a hundred dollar policy in the Great Plains or Southeast. So as we've increased these premium sports, we're getting some areas into the income support range with these crap insurance policies. And why are we doing that for making those on the basis of providing more support for high risk areas versus lower risk areas?
Todd Gleason:Within the budget, how much budget increase is this over a ten year period?
Gary Schnitkey:So this would be roughly $2,000,000,000 over a ten year period. That's a relatively small part of the some 4% increase, but nevertheless, it's $2,000,000,000 over ten years.
Todd Gleason:That is not accounting for possible changes in those outlying areas where it may make a difference.
Gary Schnitkey:Yeah. And, you know, you would reasonably expect increase in subsidy to increase coverage levels and a movement towards more basic and optional units, which would thereby increase those costs.
Todd Gleason:Thank you much, Gary.
Gary Schnitkey:You're welcome.
Todd Gleason:Gary Schnitke is an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois. You may read the article online at farmdocdaily.illinois.edu. The closing market report is a production of Illinois Public Media. Our theme music is written, performed, and courtesy of Logan County, Illinois Farmer, Tim Gleason. Let's turn our attention to the growing regions across the planet.
Todd Gleason:We'll stay here in The United States. Mike Tenure is with us. He's the president and CEO at tStormWeather. Hello, Mike. Thanks for being with us on a Thursday again.
Mike Tannura:Thanks a lot, Todd. Always great being here.
Todd Gleason:Well, let's talk about the weather in the midsection of the country, the growing regions of the Corn Belt and other places. What do you see for the next five to ten days?
Mike Tannura:Well, we've been in this cool pattern for the last ten days, and that's going to end over the next five days. So once we get into early next week, everybody will be nice and mild with temperatures in the seventies and eighties during the daytime. That is going to last for a while because we don't see any major cool spells beyond the next five to ten days. So we think that temperatures will be a lot warmer going forward. With that though comes rain.
Mike Tannura:There's a big system that'll move across the Central US next week, and that should bring three quarters of an inch to one and three quarters of an inch of rain to pretty much all corn, soybeans, spring wheat, and even winter wheat. So a pretty large system is going to pass next week. Beyond then, the pattern doesn't look all that different than the one that's coming up, and so we think that storminess is pretty much going to linger across the heart of the Central US over the next ten days and maybe even over the June.
Todd Gleason:Now let's divide it into sections of, the Corn Belt, relatively speaking. But I wanna start with the spring wheat areas to begin with in the Northwestern Part of the Mid West? That would be Minnesota and North Dakota. What do you see for them?
Mike Tannura:Well, the rain that's coming up next week is probably not ideal. About half of that crop had more than twice its normal rainfall over the last two weeks, and it's too wet. And that's very likely what's driving the low condition ratings that we've seen for that crop. So even though it will be warmer and that will certainly help with the growth of that crop, it's also going to turn in wetter and it's already wet. So we think that the argument can be made that the rain next week and beyond then is not what we want to see for spring wheat.
Mike Tannura:We need some drier weather over the next couple of weeks, but that just doesn't seem to be what's about to happen. So their crop is wet and is going to stay wet.
Todd Gleason:And the primary Corn Belt growing regions from the Dakotas to Ohio, are there differences as it relates to what the weather looks like over that same time frame?
Mike Tannura:Well, it's going to be the same weather with this pretty widespread event next week and probably beyond then too. So they're also going to tap into a lot of rain in this key area of the Corn Belt, but conditions have not been all that wet in recent weeks. And actually, it's been drier than normal over the last thirty days across pretty big section of Iowa through Northern Illinois and into Northern Indiana. So the rain coming up is going to keep soy moisture in check, and it'll prevent, the dryness story from becoming notable. And so overall, for the heart of corn and soybeans, the upcoming rains next week are probably going to be a good thing, especially when you combine them with some of the mild weather that's coming up.
Todd Gleason:And in the Mid South and Delta Region, what do you see?
Mike Tannura:Well, they're saturated. They've had a lot of rain over the last one to two months, even earlier this week, and they're going to see a little more rain today. And then they get hit by this rain event later next week, That's going to keep soil saturated in this area. So you could argue that there's too much rain coming up for the Mid South, and when we talk about those states, we primarily mean the corn, soybean, and wheat areas of Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and then south into Mississippi. So this region is going to probably see a little bit too much rain, kind of like what we're seeing across the Dakotas.
Mike Tannura:So Todd, a real challenging situation and the one thing we didn't even mention is that we're still trying to finish up with corn, soybean, and spring wheat planting. In the one regard, the dryness that's in the Corn Belt is going to help accelerate that process, but on the other hand, everything's going to come to a pretty rapid close next week as we get into another significant rain. So this has been a challenging story to compartmentalize for everyone, but all in all, just kind of a mixed bag with really varied conditions across the Central US.
Todd Gleason:And if you were to summarize that first ten days of June, is there an easy way to do it?
Mike Tannura:Well, to mild and stormy. It doesn't look like it's going to be dry and it looks like it's going to be pretty nice as far as temperatures go with highs in the 70s and 80s most days. So pretty stormy open to June just with some mild temperatures.
Todd Gleason:Hey. Thank you much, Mike.
Mike Tannura:Yeah. Great being here, Todd.
Todd Gleason:Mike Tenure is the president and CEO of t storm weather at tstorm.net online. Joined us for this Thursday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Medium. You may find us online. Listen to us on demand anytime you'd like at willag.org, w I l l a g 0 r g, whereby about 06:00 this evening, we'll post our weekly commodity week program. That's a broader look at the marketplace.
Todd Gleason:Our panelists this week will include Chip Millanger and Shane Holdtorb. You'll wanna listen to that up at six tonight and on many of these radio stations tomorrow or over the weekend. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.
