Sep 15 | Closing Market Report
From the land to Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market reported as the September 2025. I'm extension's Tug Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Kurt Kimmel. He's from agmarket.net.
Todd Gleason:We'll take a look back at last Friday's USDA report, particularly the NAST numbers and the changes that came in both the yield and the acreage for corn and soybeans. Ben Brown at the University of Missouri with Extension and FAPRI, the Food and Agricultural Policy Research will join us, and then we'll turn our attention to the weather forecast. Mark Russo of Everstream Analytics will be here as usual for Monday afternoon on the closing market report that comes to you from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online on demand at willag.org willag.0rg. And one other note, for all those who made a gift last week during our fall fun drive, thank you.
Todd Gleason:Thank you very much for the kind donation. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. December corn for the day at $4.23 and a quarter down six and three quarters of a cent. The March at $4.41, 6 and a quarter cents lower. And the May futures in the corn at $4.51 and a quarter down five and three quarters of a cent.
Todd Gleason:November beans, three and a half lower, ten forty two and three quarters the settlement price. January 1061 and three quarters down three and a half, and the March at $10.00 7 and rather at $10.76 and a half down three and 3 quarters of a cent. Bean meal futures down $2.40. The bean oil, 9¢ higher for the day. Weed futures up a penny and a half in the December for the soft red at $5.25 a bushel.
Todd Gleason:The hard red December at $5.14, 3 quarters of a cent lower. And the live cattle future is in Chicago, finished at $2.36 27 and a half, up $4.35. Feeders $8.70 higher at $354.50, and lean hogs at $88.85, 22 and a half cents higher. Crude oil at $63.25 a barrel, up 56¢. Diesel fuel at $2.33 or rather $2.33 and a tenth of a cent, a 4 and a tenth higher, and gasoline at a dollar 95 a gallon.
Todd Gleason:That's up about 2 and 1 tenth of a cent. Here to talk about these numbers and much more is Kurt Kimmel. He's from agmarket.net out of Normal, Illinois. Good afternoon to you, Kurt. Thanks for being with us.
Curt Kimmel:Well, good afternoon, Ty. Glad to be here again. Thank you.
Todd Gleason:We will take a look at the numbers from the USDA on Friday of last week with you in just a moment, but I am interested in that $8.70 move in the feeder catalyst, the October futures. You had to be watching that with interest as well, I would suppose. What's happening in that marketplace today?
Curt Kimmel:Oh, boy. Yes. It's worse than the pork bellies back in the day. It's amazing, how fast, how how volatile. But if you kind of just look at a price chart, it seems like about once a month, the feeder market breaks about for two days or so, then back up, here we go again.
Curt Kimmel:It's just continued concern, about the tightness of the beef supply here in The US. I think we'll go back up and test the ten and twenty day moving averages and kinda see what happens at that level. The commodity funds, kind of liquidated it through here, slipped out some longs, so we'll see if they wanna reposition back long or or continue, to kinda slip out as we move forward in through here. The thing is, this is all great and everything, but for the consumer, man, it's just kinda bad news. You go to some meat counters in through here, these higher cut ins are just out of getting out of reach of the American public in through here.
Curt Kimmel:So, it does help beef and not beef, but pork and poultry consumption, so we'll see if this, trend continues. If you draw a downtrend line on the chart, that's that's where we're gonna be at here later on the week to test, see if we go through it or not, Todd.
Todd Gleason:On Friday, USDA released the September crop reduction and world ag supply and demand estimates report. They changed yield, dropped that for, corn and soybeans, and they upped acreage actually for both. The marketplace took that in stride on Friday, reacted, I think, lower very quickly, but then turned around, gained a dime for the day in the corn. It took six and three quarters of a cent off that today. Can we have a turnaround Tuesday tomorrow, do you suppose?
Curt Kimmel:Boy, we'll we'll see through here. I think we'll find some stability, but the bottom line is we need more bearish reports. I think this is the first time in a long time we saw a disappointing report and the market went sharply higher or left seemed to be sharply higher compared to what we've been used to, but I kind of feel maybe the market got ahead of itself when you look at the overall numbers. It's kind of amazing we found an extra 3,500,000 corn acres being planted. Past history it seems like when there's acreage in question it takes four to six months before they figure it out to subtract acres, but adding acres they're fairly quick on it, but we'll see how things unfold here.
Curt Kimmel:The demand on the corn might be just a little high, but you start taking away demand, I think that might be a mistake. I think demand still continues to be there. But it's gonna be a market we're gonna trade for quite some time as we move forward. The strength though, I think is short covering from funds. The rest may be short about 70,000 corn and about 7,000 bean contracts.
Curt Kimmel:But technically, we've moved above some resistance levels. We're in a position here where fundamentally we're starting to see some concerns about this August and September weather. You know, we've gone through some, rust concerns, tar spot concerns, dry weather concerns, and early yield reports continue to be highly, highly variable. Most of the corn's been coming in, you know, in the Eastern Belt through here. There has been some reports of 20 bushel better than a year ago.
Curt Kimmel:So this yield data is going to be listened to and watched to very closely as we move on. Soybean wise, didn't hear a whole lot of yields here today, but as of end of last week, 50 to 70 bushel, a lot of 9% beans, so it's going be important to see some moisture to get these, get the bean moisture back up because there's going be a lot of shatter, field loss, just plain loss from light bean test weights. The double crop beans is the main concern, boy, guys that tried double crop beans here, throughout Central Illinois, very disappointed, because, you know, just wonder if we have any pods on them at all. Even Southern Illinois ran out of moisture, so the double crop, beans are gonna be watched fairly closely here.
Todd Gleason:Hey. Thanks much. We appreciate you taking so much time with us again today.
Curt Kimmel:You bet. Take care, Todd.
Todd Gleason:You too. That's Kurt Kimmel. He is with agmarket.net out of Normal, Illinois. Joins us each and every Monday here on the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. Do visit our website.
Todd Gleason:The address is willag.org, willag.0rg. There you'll find information from the agricultural economist, the animal scientist, and the crop scientist each and every day of the week. There's usually a new article on every business day so check it out at wllag.org and if you scroll down the page you'll find a calendar of events and on Thursday of this week you'll see that Gary Schnitke and Nick Poulson are hosting a webinar, it's free, called Farmland Values and Rental Agreements in Illinois for 2026. You want to sign up for that whether you listen live at 11AM on Thursday or not. You can listen after the fact.
Todd Gleason:Be sure to register for the farmland values and rental agreements webinar that's coming up on Thursday at 11AM. Sign up for the webinar. You can watch it on YouTube after the fact, but you'll get an email telling you that it's already taken place and or that you can listen to it live if you register today. Again, that's in the calendar of events at willag.org. If you've listened to the program long enough, know that from time to time I will talk about those who have made a difference in my life.
Todd Gleason:Sometimes they're mentors and other times they're friends. Other times they are friends of my family. Today I'd like to talk a little bit about governor Jim Edgar. Actually, I really didn't know Jim very well until the last fifteen years. In fact, on the Monday prior to the Farm Progress Show, I made a quick trip to his home in Springfield and picked up his dog.
Todd Gleason:My wife and I have cared for Jim's dogs for about fifteen years when he travels, and on this occasion, they were expecting to go to a wedding. I sat down for the first time on that evening with Jim and Brenda for about an hour at their kitchen table. We had a discussion about a lot of things. He was jovial, happy even it seemed, and I was glad that that was the case. Jim Edgar was a good man.
Todd Gleason:He did many great things for the state of Illinois. He balanced the budget. He made sure that money was flowing to public schools. He liked the state fair. That's not really something most people think, and I asked him about that some time ago, and he was a little taken aback.
Todd Gleason:He really liked the state fair. But more importantly, he was somebody who urged everybody across the aisle to work together. To that end, he worked at Harvard and here at the University of Illinois and even at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library to build out a pool of potential future legislators that would be able to reach across the aisle and get things done in a noble and kind and talkative fashion even. Jim Edgar passed away at the age of 79. I will miss him greatly and send my condolences to his family.
Todd Gleason:You're listening to the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. Our theme music is written, performed, produced in courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer Tim Gleason. Find us online at willag.org. That's willag.0rg, where you'll find a new article each and every business day from the animal scientist, the crop scientist, and the agricultural economist here on the Urbana Champaign campus of the U of I. And in the calendar of events on this Thursday, you'll find a way to register for the free farmland values and rental agreements webinar with Gary Schnitke and Nick Paulson.
Todd Gleason:Don't wait. Get signed up today. That's in the calendar of events at wilag.org. Ben Brown, agricultural economist, the University of Missouri with FAPRI, the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, an extension there now joins us to take a look at a broader perspective of the marketplace. You've had some time to review and think about the USDA reports, particularly the crop production numbers that were released by, NASS on Friday morning last week.
Todd Gleason:They updated both acreage and yield. Can you tell me about those changes and what you think they might mean?
Ben Brown:Sure. Yeah. So I think the biggest surprise for everybody was the increase in US corn planted area. Now USDA has started incorporating FSA data as early as August now. So these are certified acreage reports.
Ben Brown:And they've always incorporated them throughout the growing season as the data came available. It's getting a little bit more efficient. And so some of our contacts at USDA, I think it was two or three years ago, they announced that they were gonna start incorporating that in August. And so we saw a rise in planted acreage for corn in August, and I think most people thought that that was kind of the big wave. And so then to follow it up in September with another one and a half million acres of additional corn planted area to take it up to 98,700,000 acres, which I believe, I think off the top of my head, that's the largest US corn planted acreage since like 1936, if I remember right.
Ben Brown:And so that was probably the biggest surprise. Not saying it's a surprise from the standpoint that I don't believe it because all winter as, you know, we were traveling around last year and even in the spring, it just it gave the appearance that we were gonna plant a lot of corn acres. Every other crop was trying to give corn acreage. I think the the farmer angst is is gonna come from the standpoint of we've now had two large revisions this month that weren't represented in in the June acreage report, which, you know, for corn farmers, if this had been recaptured in those June reports, it would have been a bigger bearish factor than what what that June report was. So, you know, we're now getting more supply just due to higher acreage.
Ben Brown:They did reduce the yield. Guess to to swing back over to the yield, did reduce the yield two bushels to the acre down to one eighty six point seven. That's still seven almost seven and a half bushels per acre higher than where we were last year for a US national average yield. Large corn supplies across the board.
Todd Gleason:Does it change your feeling about the marketplace going forward very much?
Ben Brown:Yes and no. From the standpoint of corn prices, I would say that, I'm undersold, in my corn markets. We just haven't had a whole lot of chances to sell corn. We're harvesting now, and and we're under sold for where we'd like to be. The global corn market is still rather tight.
Ben Brown:There's a lot of places around the world that need corn. So my hope, and the reason I started off by saying we were undersold is, my hope is that this winter we get maybe a little bit of a weather scare in South America that gives us an opportunity to pick up some price support on the corn side. So that's from the standpoint of that's what I've been thinking. This extra million and a half acres of corn certainly I think dampens some of my expectations of what we could see on the corn side. But I'm still thinking we see a little bit higher prices as we get ready to start the South American corn planting season.
Ben Brown:And that'll be about around December. But that that might be our our best opportunity for some higher corn prices this year.
Todd Gleason:So there is quite a bit of time to wait if that's what you're hoping for. I mean, it it would be all the way until next summer really before you a harvest out of that. There can be a lot of things happening happening in the midst of it. As you suggested producers really undersold, honestly, I almost thought that last Friday's dime rally might have been a place to if you had things going across the scale to to market. I don't know whether you would agree with that or not, but it seemed that way.
Todd Gleason:You can talk about that if you want. On the soybean side, there were, all just some minor changes. They did drop yield by a tenth of a bushel to 53 and a half, and they raised harvested acres there by two tenths as well of a million acres. So I don't know what you think of that set of numbers.
Ben Brown:Yeah. The soybean numbers, I don't think we have a full picture of The US soybean yields yet. September is always a little bit tricky. I think we'll see a better representation of The US soybean crop in the October report from a yield side. They did reduce exports 20,000,000 bushels for this new crop.
Ben Brown:I think that has the potential to move lower even. And so I I I think any changes that we see in yield will be partially offset with reductions in exports as well.
Todd Gleason:Any other things that we ought to know about before I let you go?
Ben Brown:No. I think that's about it. The one thing back on the corn, which I hate to go back to crop, but the one thing on the corn side is some pretty sizable demand numbers for that new crop twenty twenty five-twenty six corn use. So I think there definitely is strong corn use out there and that's helping to support some of these prices. Even though these prices aren't overly strong and we're sitting here saying, well this is below profit, You know, still still rather robust demand and that's that's what we like to see because then if you start to get a challenge in South America in a tight global market, we could see corn prices rally quickly.
Ben Brown:But, again, you gotta have some type of catalyst to get there.
Todd Gleason:And thank you much. We appreciate it. Thanks, Todd. That's Ben Brown. He's an agricultural economist at the University of Missouri with FAPRI, the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute and Extension.
Todd Gleason:Let's check the weather forecast now with Mark Russo from Everstream Analytics. Hello, Mark. Thanks for being with us again on a Monday.
Mark Russo:Hello, Todd. Thanks for having me.
Todd Gleason:It has been dry, really dry, particularly in my part of the world in East Central Illinois, but lots of, the Corn Belt to the East and to the South of here has been dry. Mhmm. And even Iowa, other places have not had a lot of rain recently. Do we expect that to change? Because there is some worry now about the Mississippi River and its ability to move grain swiftly and easily.
Mark Russo:Well, Todd, for this week, the pattern is still the same. It still looks to be on the dry side much of this week across Illinois, let alone much of the Corn Belt. Also, temperatures remaining well above normal with more, you know, kind of summer like heat here for several more days. The opportunity for better rainfall is going to come up next week. It starts in some of the Western Belt here this weekend and starts to shift eastward over time.
Mark Russo:It doesn't look like any kind of huge rain event, but it does look like widespread light to moderate rains via several systems will be, working their way across, the Midwest next week.
Todd Gleason:So light to moderate enough to begin to rejuvenate or at least to maintain water levels in the Mississippi, Missouri, the Illinois, and the Ohio rivers?
Mark Russo:Yeah. Likely enough to at least stabilize things and, you know, prohibit from from at least dropping, which has been the trend now for, you know, well over a month. But it doesn't look heavy enough or over a long duration amount of time to start, you know, recovering things in a significant way. But, yeah, certainly something to watch here. How long does this does next week's better rainfall pattern last?
Todd Gleason:Now on next week, does that came come with colder weather and does it get colder as we move into the month of October?
Mark Russo:No. It doesn't look to be accompanied by colder weather. In fact, temperatures look to remain above normal, just not to the levels of this week. But no sign right now of any at least return to the anomalous cold like what we had in recent weeks.
Todd Gleason:Does it appear in South America they're still set up for the return of rainfall and the start of their planting season?
Mark Russo:It does. In Mato Grosso, let alone much of Center West Brazil, rain activity is expected to develop starting later on this week, continuing into next week. That would be a very normal start to the rainy season for that area and initiate more planting. Still is some little bit of debate in the magnitude of rains and the exact location of where the highest amounts are going to be. But the overall pattern is certainly becoming much more conducive for rain development in the start of the rainy season.
Mark Russo:The only area from now through the end of the month that could miss out initially is Mato Grosso Do Sol, but again, that's not of any immediate concern.
Todd Gleason:Spring, of course, arrives further the further south you go, the later it is. So any issues that you're thinking about as it's related to crops in Southern Brazil, Paraguay, and into parts of Argentina?
Mark Russo:No concerns at this time, although I did want to point out that the pattern is again turning more active across Argentina. And soil moisture right now is pretty abundant for this time of year in mid September, so that'll continue to maintain those abundant soil moisture levels. That's great for winter wheat, but it could start to interfere with a little bit of summer crop planting across that area. So not a concern now, but just something to keep an eye on.
Todd Gleason:Hey. Thank you much. We appreciate it.
Mark Russo:You're welcome, Ted.
Todd Gleason:That's Mark Russo. He is with Everstream Analytics, joined us on this Monday edition of the closing market report that came to you from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online on demand at willag.org that's willag.org and there at the top of the page you'll find a way to continue making a gift to Illinois Public Media in support of agriculture. It's quick, it's simple, and easy to do. I know we finished our fall fun drive up but I'll have you in the tractor cab and the combine cab for the next month or so so expect me to remind you from time to time that if you've been listening and it makes a difference, please do make a kind donation and thank you for doing that.
Todd Gleason:We'll talk with you again tomorrow here on the closing market report at the same time or as a podcast. Look for it in your favorite podcast applications or play it directly. Again, from willag.org. I'm extensions, Todd Gleeson.
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