Todd Gleason: From the Lend Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market report. It is the January 2026. I'm Extensions, Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Mike Zuzolo.

He's at globalcomresearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas, and Mike will be back again in the second half of our program. We recorded yesterday afternoon for commodity week. He, along with Logan Kimmel and Jim McCormick, did a great job discussing all the developments that took place in the agricultural world and commodities this week. You can stay with us. You'll hear all of that.

If not, it's up online at willag.org right now. Also during the first half of this program, as usual, we'll be joined by Eric Snodgrass from Nutrien Ag Solutions and Aggabal during this Friday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public EDM. It is public radio for the farming world online on demand anytime you'd like to hear us. Mike Zuzlow of globalcomresearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. You can also hear Mike in our commodity week program.

That'll come up immediately following this interview. Well, actually, after Eric Snodgrass, but you get the idea. If you can stay with us for the whole hour, you'll hear all of it here right on our home station, and it's up online. Commodity week at w I l l a g dot o r g right now or in your favorite podcast application. Thanks for being here yesterday and today, Mike.

I appreciate that.

Mike Zuzolo: Great to be back with you, Todd. Another great commodity week group. I just love doing these with the groups. They're just wonderful when you get everybody together and and and have the agenda set up and and how you orchestrate everything.

Todd Gleason: Well, thank you, Mike. You, Jim McCormick, and Logan Kimmel did a great job yesterday. We did not cover purposely some of the global numbers. I'm wondering if you could go through what we're hearing out of Conab in Brazil and from Argentina, some of the sources there, and how that plays in your thinking.

Mike Zuzolo: Yeah. You bet. And I think it's worth saying before we start on these specific numbers is we were fed a lot of changes and updates from a variety of sources out of South America, both Argentina and Brazil this week. Almost all of them you would classify as price negative for the soy complex, especially with one estimate climbing well above 180,000,000 metric tons. But in that context, we still had the soybeans really perform well Thursday and Friday, and we're able actually, on Friday, March beans, now the lead month future is able to get above its Thursday's high and, you know, conclude an outside week higher in the price action.

So really amazing performance given the fact that, as you say, we started off the week with Brazil soybean projection by USDA at a 178,000,000 metric tons. That was up 3,000,000 metric tons, but we didn't stop there. And by the time we got to Friday, we had several estimates out and, you know, Sophos Mercado is another key private projection number estimate of they came out at one seventy nine point three million metric tons. As you look at the at the Brazilian production when it comes to AgroConsult, they went above 182,000,000 metric tons. And I believe most of this, especially with the USDA, the yield is not the issue.

In fact, USDA's got 5.8 tons per hectare. That was actually down from last year by three tenths of a ton. I think it's really the acreage base. If I remember right, we're looking at a 120,000,000 acres of soybeans planted in Brazil this year. So just a staggering number as they can continue to expand their acreage base.

Argentina, a little bit different situation when it comes to the Brazilian soybean numbers all looked very similar when it came to everybody increased. Everybody's close to one eighty, but big differences between the Rosario exchange. I noted, Todd, at 62,000,000 metric tons for the corn crop, whereas Argentina corn for USDA's report at the beginning of the week came in at 53,000,000 metric tons. So 9,000,000 metric ton difference there, both of those fresh estimates. Here again, I looked at the acreage and the yield.

It looks as though we have probably a little bit of a combination. USDA is at 7.1 tons per hectare, on a decent acreage base, but, Rosario is higher than that. So I would say the trade is probably buying more into USDA than Rosario given the impending drought that we're starting to see as we get into the January in the pompous regions.

Todd Gleason: How important is it for US producers to consider these competing supplies from outside The United States and the impact it may be having on their local basis?

Mike Zuzolo: Yeah. In in fact, you know, tying the two together, domestic basis and the global supply demand balance sheet, we have to remember that it is not, you know, five or ten years ago. We have an unbelievably bigger infrastructure and supply chain set up between China and Brazil and China and South America than we had ten years ago. And so they're gonna be more competitive on the basis on the transportation costs than they ever have been before. And we also have to remember, we are in the starting of harvest.

I mean, harvesting of new crop beans has already begun in Parana, Mato Grosso, Bahia, a lot of the power states, and and they're gonna start gaining momentum by the end of this month. There's just less weather bullishness because of harvest pressure, in Brazil as a whole compared to Argentina. And, you know, Argentina is just tiny compared to Brazil in both corn and beans, but Argentina exports so much more of their corn out. They are bigger player in the world into the trade than than than, Brazil is maybe oversized, I should say, an oversized player. Plus this furry corn crop as it gets planted with the Brazilian soybeans getting harvested right now, this weather market's just now starting.

So when I look at, you know, the top eight or nine factors that drive prices, especially given USDA cutting The US exports 60,000,000 bushels this week, it's just very difficult to say beans can be the price leader to the upside. You can say that soybean oil could be the price leader to the upside depending on what the Trump administration and EPA do with their domestic policy. But then Friday, we saw Canada and China come together and agree to lower tariffs in Canadian canola. And so it is it's much more of a dynamic and moving moving target in soybeans as far as giving us support in the long term. It seems a lot like last year.

It needs to be sold, and profit needs to be locked in a lot more aggressively, it would seem to me. Hey. Thank you, Mike. Great to be with you, sir. Thanks.

Todd Gleason: That's Mike Souzolo. He is with GlobalCom Research dot com out of Atchison, Kansas. Speaking of mister Kearney, the prime minister in Canada, he was in Beijing. And up next, we have a story from north of the border and a farm broadcaster who is located in the Ontario province. The closing market report is a production of Illinois Public Media Online On Demand at willag.org where you can listen to our programming.

Click and play from the website at willag.org. Up next, something from north of the border. Canada's leader is looking away from The United States to build international trade relationships. Dennis Guy, farm broadcaster from the Ontario province,

Dennis Guy: has more. President Trump has described the USMCA as transitional, and meeting with Canadian prime minister Carney at the White House last year, Trump said the deal may have served its purpose. As an international trade agreement that's been the envy of the world and as the pillar of economic integration for nearly forty years, North American free trade is at a critical juncture. In large part, as a response to Trump's dismissive tone of This week, Carney flew to Beijing to meet with the President of China to discuss various issues, including China's high tariffs faced by Canadian pork, seafood, and canola. Carney told reporters that he sees agri food tariffs as one of his top issues for discussion on his China agenda.

Mark Carney: The objective of the meeting was to establish that relationship to unlock very important shorter term issues. Canola, same with the fishing issue. Those are important issues for us. We're gonna be working hard to get those results. For those hardworking farmers, fishers, it means a pathway to address the tariffs that China has on them.

Dennis Guy: Almost to illustrate Kearney's goal of securing less dependency on American trade, president Trump was within a stone's throw of the Canadian border on the same day that Kearney was talking to reporters in China. At an automotive plant in Detroit, Trump continued to dismiss the need for an ongoing USMCA pact.

Donald Trump: It's irrelevant to me. I don't even think about USMCA. We don't need their product. We don't need cars made in Canada. We don't need cars made in Mexico.

We wanna make them here.

Dennis Guy: Ottawa is highly aware that courting a more positive relationship with China will cause friction with American negotiators currently at the beginning stage of formally reviewing the USMCA. But Prime Minister Carney explained that as dealing with a US administration on trade issues becomes increasingly difficult, it only makes good economic sense to build closer ties with the world's second largest economy, China.

Mark Carney: It's important that we are engaged with the world's largest country by population, second largest economy by value, and increasingly influential to the global system. It opens up a much bigger set of opportunities over the course of the next few months for a broader range of Canadian businesses to come back to a relationship, and you build on that. That's what is now unlocked, which was not the case twenty four hours ago.

Dennis Guy: Reporting from Canada, I'm Dennis Guy,

Todd Gleason: and I'm Illinois Extinction's Todd Gleeson. Let's check-in on the global growing regions, with Eric Snodgrass now. He's a meteorologist at NutriNag Solutions and with Agribil joins us each and every Friday. Thanks for being with us again, Eric. I'd like to get started here in The United States, because I was thinking as I was looking outside today, hey.

Wait a second. A little bit of snow that we've had sort of melting. We're in the mid thirties for the day. I hadn't been paying attention exactly as to when the super cold weather's supposed to come in, but it's headed our way. Right?

Eric Snodgrass: It is. Yeah. I mean, the the warm up we've had today has been on some south winds. I'm actually looking at my window at a at the neighbor's flag, and it's still blowing out of the south. And so we crept up with some warmer temperatures, but this is this is pretty short lived.

As we work our way through the weekend, I mean, there's a chance that by Sunday night and Monday morning, we're talking about, like, single digit lows or even colder in places. And then there's a couple more times late next week and then again next weekend where these temperatures are going to be way below average. And we've got repeated shots of very, very cold air, and it's coming on some pretty strong winds. I'm not sure if you've seen this this week, but from Montana through Wyoming, parts of the Dakotas down into Colorado, even Western Nebraska, they're they're looking at 60 to 80 mile an hour winds today. But it's not the winds there that I'm concerned about, to be honest with you.

It's the winds over the Arctic. So you mentioned the temperatures. There is this area up in the Arctic right now that's getting the squeeze. From Alaska all the way over to Scandinavia, we're about to what we call bridge the Arctic with a ridge. And that bridging ridge, that's kinda hard to say, is gonna just displace cold air, Todd.

And it is on its way toward us, so it's gonna it's gonna really drop temperatures in a huge way here across the Midwest. And that's gonna come with with some snow. It's gonna come with some windy conditions at time and just overall unpleasant. I don't think it's gonna it's not gonna be nice for a while. So I'm gonna laugh about it.

Maybe that'll make me feel better.

Todd Gleason: Well, maybe, or you can just run those two snow throwers you have. Although I don't think we're going to get that much snow, particularly in the Eastern Corn Belt, which worries me a little bit Yeah. Because we have and remain kind of dry Yeah. Particularly from here going east, I think.

Eric Snodgrass: We are. And and may not feel it when you go out and just look, but if you get down in that soil and just kinda take a look at some of the just the state of the vegetation this time of year, which is, you know, it's usually brown and dead and whatever, but things just don't have that that kinda real rich look to them, which they can carry in winter. And as a result, I think there's a lot of clues out there that just suggest that this is been a dry one. And we're gonna have to rely a lot on spring rains to get us out of this mess once we get later into, you know, March and into April to revive the soil moisture problem. But, Todd, you're right.

I mean, we are gonna get some snow, but it's coming out of clippers, which are, by their very nature, dry. They're they're originating up in, you know, Canada. But I will say this. Watch let's call it January 23 to the twenty sixth. On the nose of the biggest push of the Arctic air, I think there's the chance that we could squeeze out a bit more moisture in this area, not from a big, you know, spinning low pressure system, but just a squeeze on the front end of an Arctic front that could bring some moisture.

But, again, frozen moisture on top of frozen soil is not a drought curing event, so we'd have to just think about it that way.

Todd Gleason: Now we have been talking about ushering out the little girl and ushering in a little boy. Yeah. Is that moving along?

Eric Snodgrass: It is quite rapidly, and there's a lot of people across this country that can't wait for that to happen. And many of them are in the Cotton Belt or in the winter wheat Belt where I mean, Todd, I I keep looking at it every day, but in Hays, Kansas, okay, right in the middle of Kansas, they've almost picked up 60 GDDs so far in 2026. Now normal is nothing. Right? They shouldn't have any, but it's been that mild the farther west you go.

Well, the other problem is it's bone dry. It's extremely dry in parts of the Mid South. It's dry in the Delta. It's dry in the Plains. Western Nebraska, driest since 1893.

And all that would go away if we could get the jet stream to finally come out of Hawaii and hit hit California. And that's more typical of an El Nino. Now the problem is is we may not make the transition fast enough to benefit from that in winter. And then here's the big issue. El Nino transition year.

So you come out of El Nino into El Nino. We tend to not see as much spring severe weather in the Central Plains. And that's an area that I'm worried about, that if we don't get some sort of change, they're gonna have drought there that builds all, you know, all all spring long as well. So where could the severe weather be? More Midwest, Mid South, Southeast?

And that gives us just a different look at 2026 growing season that we've seen in a while. So there's a lot still on the table right now, but that big transition away from La Nina is gonna be the probably the biggest story going forward into 2026, because it is happening today, moving fast right now, and we're about to see a a sizable shift that we haven't seen since 2023.

Todd Gleason: Anything in the history of weather that gives you a clue as to how this might play out?

Eric Snodgrass: There there is. And this is where things kinda get a little interesting in terms of like, hey, let's go find years that just peak our interests. And so let me give you some of them that goes back into the eighties. Alright? Years where we've come out of a La Nina into an El Nino.

My my favorite year is 2018. But in my analog package here we go. Ready? Twenty twenty three, 2014, twenty o nine, o six, o two, 1997, 1994, 1991, and 1986. Now I know that's a lot of years for people listening to process, but some of those years are gonna start to ring ring a bell with a few folks.

And if you're thinking it through, what's crazy is some of those transition years were absolute bin busters for Illinois. I'm thinking like, you know, 2018 or 2014 or 2009. But we also remember that o two was scorching hot, '91 was scorching hot, and so it's it's a mixed bag going forward. Interestingly enough, since we were just talking about the plains, those years were often dry in France. They were dry in parts of Spain, and they were dry in Ukraine and parts of Russia in April and May, which meant that that winter wheat crop tended to struggle coming out into those critical time periods for rainfall.

So my long story short here, Todd, is that for the Northern Hemisphere, there is something on the table that's gonna put a little bit of risk into the upcoming growing season, which is why we gotta keep talking every Friday.

Todd Gleason: Okay. Let's switch from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere because there are impacts there as well when we make the transitions. What are you watching?

Eric Snodgrass: Okay. There's two things. First of all, we looked at the most recent NDVI data, and for all of Brazil's growing areas right now, it is now in the fourth week of record high territory. And I'm just gonna say this, and people that understand statistics are probably gonna yell at me, and that's okay. But it's very rare, okay, to have seven or eight straight months of just great weather for them.

And statistically, it's hard to tease this out, but when you look historically, you tend to have a problem at some point over a seven month stretch in South America, and they're three and a half months into near perfect weather. And so what I'm questioning here is over the next few weeks, does it get really wet and impact the harvest rate, which has just started? Or at some point, do we start to think about maybe the impacts on the safrinha crop, which could be huge for the North American growing season next year for corn? I'm not saying that there's a problem right now. I'm just saying history would tell me that I better be looking for some sort of shift, especially with all everything else that's going on in the atmosphere right now.

So, Todd, it's bit of an exciting time to start forecasting this stuff, but at the same time, I'm not so excited about having just to stay indoors straight through for the next, I don't know, twenty days as we start to unleash some Arctic air.

Todd Gleason: Well, you could just go out west. It's been kinda warm and dry out there.

Eric Snodgrass: Yeah. I was in Phoenix earlier this week, and I got a sunburn on my forehead while I was at a meeting out there. And then went to Sacramento just yesterday and was watching them do flood irrigation on their rice paddies, which was just amazing. But the temperatures were amazing, and I'm like, oh, man. I gotta I gotta go home now.

Todd Gleason: Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. You were watching them do flood irrigation on rice paddies in Sacramento?

Eric Snodgrass: Yep. Outside of Sacramento. There's a lot of rice grown there. Uh-huh.

Todd Gleason: Unbelievable. Yeah.

Eric Snodgrass: I didn't know that either. Know that.

Todd Gleason: Alright. Well, we will talk to you in the future. Oh, by the way, I spent some time this morning. Folks will wanna know putting the registration page together for the All Day I got. Look.

It's not open yet, but that's coming up in March, not too far away, and you'll be kicking it off that morning. I appreciate that.

Eric Snodgrass: Yeah. You bet. We'll have a we'll know a better story by that point too, which will be a good time to have that meeting.

Todd Gleason: Indeed. That's Eric Snodgrass. He is with Nutrien Ag Solutions, and Daggerable will join us at the All Day Eye Outlook. That's Tuesday, March 3. I'll have some more information for you that coming up in the next week or week and a half or so, and registration page will be up as well in the mean space.

You can always just visit us online at willag.org. It'll show up there eventually, willag.org. If you can stay with us, you'll hear our Commodity Week program next in its entirety, if not many of these radio stations. We'll carry it over the weekend, and it's up online right now, again, at willag.org. Well, welcome to commodity week.

I am Todd Gleason. Our panelists for the day include Logan Kimmel at roachag dot com. He's out of Naperville, Illinois. Jim McCormick is here from agmarket.net in Barrington, Illinois. And Mike Zusolo joins us from Atchison, Kansas at globalcomresearch.com.

Commodity Week is a production of Illinois public media. It's public radio for the farming world online on demand @willag.org. Mike Zuzolo. Let's begin with the Monday reports. It was an interesting report related to both the crop production and the WASDE figures or world agricultural supply and demand estimates along with the winter wheat numbers and the grain stocks.

Mike, I I want you to run through the winter wheat planted acreage numbers for me if you could really quickly and give me a quick assessment of that, and then we'll get into the meat of those reports that took place on Monday.

Mike Zuzolo: Yeah. You bet. 33,000,000 acres all winter wheat, Todd. The trade was pretty much on the low end of that number. In other words, they were thinking 32.4.

So while it's a a lower number as a whole over the last five years, it was still above the average trade guess. So that kinda put some different tint on the reaction in the market. Hard red wheat, stayed pretty even with last year at 23.5. SRW, the same 6.14 right there with last year. We did lose some in white wheat with no surprise there with the, Upper Midwest Plains, issues that we've had weather wise.

They came in at 3.36. Since the report came out and those water those winter wheat members have been digested, it's really the trade I think has really gone back to what's happening over in the Black Sea and what's happening with the crude oil market. They didn't even really look at the fact that winter wheat, drought issues on Thursday when we got the weekly update are still posting 19% above a year ago, and we're looking fourteen days out in hard red wheat belt country with very little precip coming off 60 degree temperatures heading into twenty, thirty degree temperatures. So still a lot of weather, I think, to trade in that wheat.

Todd Gleason: You may hear more from Mike Zuzolo along with Logan Kimmel and Jim McCormick and our commodity Week program online right now if you'd like at willag.org, willag.org. Many of these radio stations will carry it over the weekend. You've been listening to the closing market report on this Friday afternoon. Do visit that website where you'll also find information from the agricultural economist, the crop scientist, and the animal scientist from right here on the Urbana Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. I'm Extension's Todd Gleason.