Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market reported as the January 2026. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett of agmarket.net. Kurt Kimmel is out of the office for the afternoon.

We'll turn our attention to the PTX announcements that came last Monday at a press event. We've talked about some of these already, but today, we'll talk about Arrowtube. It's a twist on planting. You wanna hear more about that, and then we'll turn our attention to the weather forecast too. We'll do that with Mark Russo of Everestream Analytics on this Monday edition of 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, where today you may purchase your tickets for the all day outlook at the Beef House in Covington, Indiana. It's scheduled for Tuesday, March 3. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. March corn for the day finished at four dollars twenty eight and a quarter down 2 and a quarter cents. The May at $4.36, two lower, and December, a quarter of a cent lower at $4.55.

Beans, a nearby March contract at $10.61 and three quarters down six for the day. The May futures at $10.74, five and a half lower, and November soybeans, $10.79. They finished three lower on the afternoon. Wheat futures in the soft red finished the day at $5.22 and a half. That was 7¢ lower.

The hard red at $5.29 and three quarters down 11. Both of those are in the March contract on this Monday afternoon. Don't forget to visit our website at willag.org where you can sign up for the all day outlook at the beef house in Covington, Indiana. Matt Bennett from agmarket.net is now here filling in for Kirk Kimmel for the afternoon. Hi, Matt.

Thanks for being with us. I appreciate that. I thought the market was gonna be pretty steady for the day, but at some point, something changed, particularly in the soybeans. What took place that made that market go down?

Matt Bennett: Yeah. I mean, we got off to a pretty good start. Overnight market looked good, really, a range of, you know, $14.15 cents. And unfortunately, we settled on the on the downside of that. So coming out of the gate here this morning, you know, we saw excellent export inspections again, both corn and soybeans.

We knew that corn would be good again. Bean shipments have been solid. Know, China's been taking some beans, which is certainly good to see because a lot of us been concerned that, you know, big sales don't always equal big shipments. And so what we've seen there is is is a fair amount of those beans get shipped out. But I don't know.

Part of the problem, Todd, is all eyes are on weather. We know demand's been good. We know exports been good for both of late. Know, ethanol has been good for corn. You name it.

We've just had really strong demand, but weather in Argentina is getting a little bit of press here. The last three weeks, the corn crops actually downgrade been downgraded, 30% total. I believe it was 7%, then 11%, then 12% last week. And so, you know, the hot, dry weather down there is certainly taking its toll. It kinda started out in the southern part of Argentina, and then it's expanded somewhat.

There are some calls for some potential rainfall, and I do think that the market was paying pretty close to that.

Todd Gleason: Okay. So if the market has been paying paying close attention to that, and it's rectifying itself some, I don't know that, you know, dry weather or corn weather can really do very much. On top of what has been termed or is a very bearish USDA report released by in January. Do you see this marketplace trending sideways into the, I guess, the the the March in the prospective plantings report? How do you imagine it will go for the first quarter of the year?

Matt Bennett: You know, a lot of times you see a little bit of strength in here, especially as you're trying to sort out insurance prices. You know, from a cash standpoint, you've gotta assume with how much cash corn we've got sitting around here that it might be pretty tough to get flat cash really to move a whole lot higher. The assumption after the report, of course, is that, you know, maybe basis to do some of the work. There's no doubt that we've seen a little bit of price appreciation since the report came out because essentially we stabilized this market somewhat, saw a little bit of a rally last week. But the unfortunate reality is on any rally you see, typically, base is gonna widen out, especially this time of year for those that haven't already been moving corn.

It might give them a little bit of an incentive to go ahead and get rid of some of those bushels, which is certainly going to take basis in the direction we don't want. So it's a really hard time of year, especially with a record crop, to expect that we can get cash prices to appreciate.

Todd Gleason: And soybeans, what do you see coming?

Matt Bennett: Yeah. I mean, on soybeans, it's a little bit of a different game. I mean, there's no doubt that, domestic consumption has just become a massive, topic. You know, if we continue to see the kind of crush that we've seen, no doubt that crushers are gonna kinda keep that basis in decent shape. Actually saw some basis narrowing here today.

You know, I believe in Decatur, they were 7¢ better as far as their base was concerned. Some of that could be weather related by all means, but there's no question whatsoever. The demand's just been really strong here domestically. And with that being the case, I would assume that, you know, cash beans, especially if you're in an area with a good draw, you'll probably see those prices at least hold somewhat together. But on the charts, really, beans don't look all that great.

I'd be a little bit cautious just to get too bullish in here.

Todd Gleason: And then, a couple of other things to ask you about cattle market in particular. I know you watch that closely. Can that market sustain itself?

Matt Bennett: It's tough to think that it would. I mean, the thing is when whenever it comes to cattle, I mean, yes, you had a nice day again here today, especially feeders up a couple bucks, you know, fats up a buck. But the thing is with with cattle, fundamentally, we all know the story. It's excessively tight. You gotta ask yourself if you're a big money player, the funds, if you will.

Funds are the ones that drove cattle to all time record highs. You know, do do they have the appetite to go ahead and push it even farther? And I think that that's problematic. You know, there's no doubt that food inflation is something that's a top priority for the administration, and they've certainly done everything they could to keep it under control, especially with beef prices. So I think I'd be a little bit cautious as to assume we're gonna make new highs.

I think that it would take yeoman's work to get that to happen at this stage of the game, but it's certainly been nice to see the recovery that we saw, you know, here over the last few weeks.

Todd Gleason: And finally, know that people can still sign up for the farming for profit, not price conference that you're holding in Nashville. That starts this weekend on Saturday and runs through February 2. Sure wish I could be there, but I'll be on the East Coast during that time frame. Have you heard from Nashville? What I have seen are just devastating ice storm, and winter storm, problems there.

I imagine you suspect that should all be cleaned up or mostly cleaned up by the time we get to Saturday, and you'll still be good to go.

Matt Bennett: Yeah. We'll be good to go. Certainly be cleaned up. I think, of course, the biggest issues they've got, of course, is in the neighborhoods where there's a lot of trees. Unfortunately, that's where you've got most of the problems.

I believe downtown for the most part is gonna be okay. But, you know, talk to my buddy Joe Vaclavik, and, they certainly got trees down everywhere. It's just a a massive mess. A lot of them are without a power and hoping that they'll get it back sometime this week, but it's gonna take a little while to sort through that mess.

Todd Gleason: Our hearts go out to them. But, of course, folks who wanna travel to Nashville this weekend, they can Saturday for your farming for profit, not price conference. Looks like it should be a really good program.

Matt Bennett: Oh, absolutely. We're excited about it. Yeah. Joe Jansen will be down there on Saturday on our our AgLenders conference. So, you know, a lot of people are interested just to see the state of everything.

Doctor David Colby there as well. So and then Sunday, Monday, we've got, you name it, a really good lineup speakers. And so very excited to to get everyone together and hopefully come up with, you know, a few more solutions and not talk about too many problems.

Todd Gleason: Indeed. Thanks much, Matt. I appreciate it.

Matt Bennett: Absolutely. Thank you.

Todd Gleason: Matt Bennett is with agmarket.net. That's the same place online, Ag Market dot net, that you can sign up for that farming for profit, not price conference. If you'd still like to go, their registration is open. Three things of note for the afternoon. First, don't forget to visit willag.org, willag.org, to purchase your tickets for the All Day Ag Outlook.

The cost is just $40. We did not raise the price this year. Again, just $40. It's been that way for some time now at willag.org. The date to the All Day Ag Outlook is Tuesday, March 3.

Buy your tickets today. Second, I'm traveling tomorrow on Wednesday, so I'll be out of the office hosting the conservation cropping seminars in DeKalb and Mount Vernon. And then following that, I'll be traveling to the East Coast returning Thursday and Friday of next week. We'll be here for commodity week and, of course, the closing market report then. And finally, on the item you're just about to hear, this was recorded on Monday of last week at Precision Planting in Morton, Illinois where they introduced the Arrow Tube.

The company has a new name relatively speaking. It is PTX and then there are different versions of that precision planting and PTX Trimble. But this is PTX and something called the Arrow Tube. It can be retrofitted into most planters. We're now joined by Jeremy Hoddle.

He is a product manager at Precision Planting. We're going to talk about an introduction that was made this week, something brand new from the company called AeroTube. This of course is part of their planting system, a new part of their planting system, and it is all about orientation and not orientation into precision planting products, but orientation of the seed. Can you tell me a little bit about it, Jeremy?

Jeremy Hodel: Sure. So the ArrowTube seed delivery system, is unique in that it takes full control of the all aspects of the seed as it's placed in the ground, and so in addition to having uniform spacing and seed depth, we are also putting the seed in the ground in a preferred orientation for agronomic benefits.

Todd Gleason: Why do we need to orient the corn seed when it goes into the ground?

Jeremy Hodel: So I kind of think of it in two different perspectives. The first being the emergence piece, which because of the way the coleoptile protrudes from the seed, it always comes out in the same direction depending on how the seed is oriented in the ground. That's going to affect the distance that coleoptile has to travel in order to get to the surface. And so if you've got some seeds that are tipped down, others tip up, sideways, etcetera, the distance and the effort that that seed has to, exude to get that coleoptile to the surface is gonna vary and it's gonna change how long it takes. And so in terms of having the most plant by plant yield potential, you wanna make sure that each plant comes out of the ground uniformly and consistently, as quickly as possible.

So if we can put all of the seeds with a tip down orientation or as many of them as possible in that orientation, we're able to reduce the number of plants that come out of the ground late, and that's gonna give us a higher yield potential. The second piece that I think about is how it affects the leaf orientation of the plant after it comes out of the ground. And it turns out that corn seeds have a relationship between the the position of the embryo portion of the seed and the direction of the leaves. It's not a one to one direct every plant all the time, but statistically, if you plant a corn seed, especially the one that's tipped down with the embryo facing the the adjacent row, you're gonna be more likely to have a higher percentage of the leaves that also are aligned in a in a way where there's fewer leaves that overlap with neighboring plants. And so you get a higher amount of sunlight hitting those leaves.

You're able to capture more of that energy and produce more yield in the end.

Todd Gleason: So in the end, you have developed a way to not only space and quickly plant seed corn, but you're able to plant it tip down so that the fat end is at the top and what you call the coleoptile or what most farmers will think of as when it spikes through is the shortest distance from the seed to the soil surface, as well as putting that seed with the flat face facing out from one row to the other, so that the leaves span the row and cover it more quickly and don't interfere with each other, with its neighbor. And that really helps the corn first emerge. How quickly do you suppose that happens and how how much of the percentage of the corn can come up within that time frame that you're talking about? It's about twelve hours I think is what you are looking at?

Jeremy Hodel: Yeah. Suppose that depends on a few different things. I guess technically it really should be considered in terms of GDU accumulation, growing degree units. But typical conditions you could say, you know, if you can get all of the plants to come out of the ground within a twenty four hour window, I mean, yeah, ideally even less than that. But, you know, I think if if you're able to get the bulk of your plants out of the ground within twenty four hours, you're doing pretty good.

So that's that's a reasonable target, I think. In most conditions today, you're you're going to have a decent number of plants be, you know, multiple days behind due to a variety of factors, but one of which being the seed orientation.

Todd Gleason: So the point is to get them up and out of the ground as quickly as possible after planting, and so the emergence all comes within a twelve to twenty four hour period. That gives the plant, in this case corn, a good start, an equal start, that means all those plants try to stay at the same growth rate the rest of the season. I think that would be important by the time you get to harvest. And then that harvesting of light, the interception that happens because of the leaf orientation across the rows clearly must be really important too.

Jeremy Hodel: Yeah. For sure. I mean, as you think about how a corn plant is able to generate yield, generate bushels, it it relies on the the water and the nutrients that that it's able to absorb, but what powers the the process of photosynthesis that's giving you the energy that it converts to starches and and yield ultimately is is a function of how much sunlight it's able to harvest and and drive that chemical reaction. And so it's definitely an important factor.

Todd Gleason: Lastly, producers will be interested to know if it's available for this planting season and how hard the thing is to install.

Jeremy Hodel: Its availability, we are going to be doing one final pre commercial season this this '26 where we kinda have everything hopefully finalized as far as the design of the product, but giving it one final test in the field before we turn it loose for sale. So we we intend to be able to start taking orders later in this year. And what was your second question? I'm sorry.

Todd Gleason: How hard is it to install?

Jeremy Hodel: Yeah. So installation, that's one of the things that I think is is really exciting about the product, especially for some of our existing customers who already have our meter, for instance, the VSAT two meter. We we work directly with with that same technology from a metering standpoint. And as far as the seed delivery unit itself, it retrofits into existing row units. You know, of course, you have to remove whatever your previous seed delivery system.

There's a few components to attach the bottom and the top, but it it all drops right in essentially to replace whatever other seed delivery system you have.

Todd Gleason: Jeremy Hoddle is with PTX, that's part of Precision Planting in Tremont, Illinois. Let's check the weather forecast now. Mark Russo is here. He's with Everstream Analytics. Hi, Mark.

Thanks for being with us. Let's get started. Begin in South America. What's your assessment of crops there and conditions and what the next couple of weeks might look like?

Mark Russo: Yeah. Overall conditions across much of South America are in really good shape. That's the case across Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina. Right now, Argentina eyes are on Argentina because crop conditions have started to slip a little bit as a result of some of the heat and dryness there, especially in the southern part of their grain belt. However, that does look to change here, and some improve or some stabilization or improvement is expected here coming up as the pattern does begin to offer some opportunities for rain across Argentina.

So some relief is on the way there. And then up across Brazil, the pattern looks still very favorable for crop development with generally near normal rainfall. And in areas where they're beginning to harvest soybeans, it doesn't look too wet to cause any kind of early disruptions in harvest activity. So South America here moving into early February is looking, pretty darn good.

Todd Gleason: Can you recap in The United States the storm we had over the weekend? It was big, dropped an awful lot of snow, sometimes in strange places too. What happened?

Mark Russo: Certainly one for the record books and one of the most widespread and most impactful winter storms covering a large area of the Central And Eastern US. And we haven't seen one of these storms in in numerous winters here. And so from the Southern Plains and West Texas all the way over to the Northeast, we saw snow totals ranging anywhere from two to four inches on the lower end of the range to as much as 18 to 20 inches on the higher end of the range, some of the highest totals there in the Northeast. And then on the southern part of the precipitation shield was frozen precip, and that was primarily in the form of ice with some sleet, and that also extended from Southwest Texas all the way across to areas of Georgia and the Carolinas, even a little bit into the Mid Atlantic area. And because of some of that ice, we've seen some significant power outages.

At one point, nearly a a million utility customers without power in in those areas of the Deep South, and just, you know, big impacts ranging from power outages, potentially long outages, but but then also just halting of transportation as many key interstates and transportation corridors were impacted by the snow and ice, you know, focused south.

Todd Gleason: I understand that you and all your meteorological friends have gathered in Houston or are trying to gather in Houston for a great big conference. I would think that this would be something everybody would just be chattering about there today.

Mark Russo: Oh, absolutely. And, yeah, chattering here in recent days, especially as numerous of us have attempted, and some of us without any issue traveling to Houston, others having some travel difficulties, but just the impact of the storm, and again, something that we haven't seen in numerous winters, and on top of that, you know, extreme cold coming in, or it's been in place and more cold on the way. So certainly extreme when it comes to meteorological events, and we're right in the middle of it here, in Houston.

Todd Gleason: Houston, you're 34 degrees today. That reminds me. I saw 19 in Austin yesterday, but it was just darn cold in a large part of the hard red winter wheat growing regions across the Southwest, I would think in Texas, Oklahoma, maybe Kansas. Is there any issue as it's related to winter kill in your opinion?

Mark Russo: Yeah. We don't think there was any widespread significant damage. I certainly can't rule out some spotty damage in parts of Northwest Kansas and kinda on the border there of Nebraska. There were a few locations yesterday morning that dropped down to minus 12, minus 13, and snow cover was very spotty there. So that was a setup that could have resulted in some localized damage there.

And then across this Midwest soft red winter wheat belt, because of the large spatial extent of snow, there was extensive snow cover and protection here from these subzero temperatures over the past couple of mornings and what will continue for another couple of mornings. So if there was any damage, again, very localized or isolated versus widespread and major.

Todd Gleason: K. Thank you much. We'll talk with you again soon enough.

Mark Russo: Yeah. You're welcome, Todd.

Todd Gleason: That's Mark Russo. He is

Matt Bennett: with

Todd Gleason: 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. I'm University of Illinois Extensions, Todd Gleason.