Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market report for the February 2026. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Greg Johnson. He's a TGM.

We'll hear again Gary Schnicki from the University of Illinois, an interview I did with him about crop insurance last week, some updates to it, and then we'll turn our attention to the weather forecast. Rue Lerner is out of the office today, so we'll hear from Nutrien Ag Solutions senior meteorologist Andrew Pritchard on this Wednesday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. Greg Johnson from TGM. That's Total Grain Marketing now joins us as usual on a Wednesday.

Hi, Greg. Thanks much for being with us. I think the big story for the day is the weather is really nice. So you're outside and listening, thank you. It's just it's just a gorgeous day.

Trade is relatively quiet in Chicago, has been for the good part of the week. Tell me about it, please.

Greg Johnson: Yeah. It it corn is just stuck in the middle. December corn is trading around $4.60 and it's been between $4.50 and $4.70 forever. And so we're stuck right in the middle of the range. The old crop March corn contract is in the lower half of that $4.25 to $4.50 range.

Farmers are a little bit more under sold on old crop corn. We think they're only 63% sold. Normally, they're probably more closer to 70 or 75% sold at this time of year. So there's some old crop corn hanging over the market. That's probably why we're in the lower part of that trading range.

But the new crop corn, right in the middle, it's been dry. Farmers are talking about how dry it is, but it's only February and that doesn't seem to have translated into much concern at the board of trade. We do get an acreage number from the Ag Outlook form here Thursday, Friday. Maybe that'll help us out. Just looking back, the last five years of corn acres have been 93, 88, 95, 91, and 99 last year for an average of 95.

So if you just go with the averages, we may see a 95 number come out on corn in the next couple of days. And if you use a 182 yield, that's a 15,800,000,000 bushel supply, and we're using a little over 16,000,000,000. So we will cut down the carryout a little bit, but not much. 2.1 might go down to 1.8. So it basically is gonna take a weather problem, I think, to really get this market excited.

Otherwise, we just need to continue to sell at that upper end of that range, and I think we'll get chances to do that this spring and summer. But as far as making all new highs closer to $5 without a weather problem, I guess I don't see that in the cards.

Todd Gleason: The egg form starts, as you mentioned, tomorrow. The grains outlook along with the rest of the outlooks are all due to be released at 6AM central, 07:00 in the Eastern time zone. We'll talk about those during both the closing market report and commodity week tomorrow. On the range, being at the top end, have farmers been good about making sales new crop for corn and soybeans at the top ends of the range?

Greg Johnson: No. Corn corn's zero. You know, we're basically at zero on new crop corn, and I guess I don't blame them. I mean, I think we'll get a chance to sell $4.75 December corn at some point in time. We're at 4.6 today, so I'm not looking for a big rally, but there's no penalty for not selling new crop corn today versus a month from now or three months from now.

So I guess I'm willing to be patient. New crop beans, we are seeing a little bit of interest. New crop beans were a dollar 20 higher than where we were back in April when we made the lows, and we're only 15¢ off the highs that we made back in November 2025. So we're at some very good prices here recently. And I really do think that farmers are thinking about taking advantage of this soybean rally, but that we haven't seen it translate into actual sales yet.

I think that farmers are concerned just like the speculators and everybody else. What if China buys the extra 8,000,000 metric tons of beans that Trump tweeted about a week ago? That's got people concerned. And, you know, if it's all additional demand, that's one thing. We could see $12 beans.

But if that just means we're going to have other countries buy beans from Brazil instead of from The US, it really is an additional demand, in which case then these prices probably would be a good level to sell at. So there's a lot of uncertainty, with that tweet, and I guess uncertainty sometimes is good. We get some higher highs, but we but also we can get some lower lows if the funds get disappointed and and bail out of their positions. So I guess we'll just have to wait and see on that.

Todd Gleason: Hey. Thanks much, for being with us today and for coming over to the All Day Ag Outlook in a couple of weeks at the Beef House in Covington, Indiana.

Greg Johnson: Looking forward to it, Todd.

Todd Gleason: Greg Johnson is with TGM. If you'd like to join us at the Beef House for the All Day Ag Outlook, you can do that. Just purchase your tickets. They're online right now at willag.org. Let's return now to a conversation I had last week with the University of Illinois agricultural economist Garishnicki.

You've heard this once, but it is worth repeating. We discussed the March crop insurance decisions. Now so far during this crop insurance price setting month, the projected corn price is lower than last year. However, soybean guarantees, they're slightly higher. This conversation, again recorded last week, highlights the impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which increased subsidy levels for SCO and ECO to 80%.

Due to these increased subsidies, SNCCI, as you'll hear, advises farmers to consider adding ECO and maybe SCO to their crop insurance portfolios. Now for producers in Central Illinois, he specifically recommends looking at adding ECO at 95% and potentially lowering the underlying revenue protection or RP coverage to maintain similar premium cost. If you want, you can see these numbers and play around with them on an updated insurance evaluator tool on the PharmDoc website. It's good across the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota. Now let's pick up with last week's crop insurance conversation.

I asked Gary to lay out the basics at the time.

Gary Schnitkey: Right now, if we were setting those prices, we would be looking at a $4.58, price for, corn. That's about not quite halfway through the month. That would be a little bit below last year. So, yeah, we would be setting our projected pricing guarantees a little bit lower. For soybeans, we're looking at $10.93 right now.

That would be slightly higher than last year, just a bit. It was $10.54 last year. So corn guarantees down a little bit, soybean guarantees up a little bit. I find it interesting that if we're looking at where the futures markets are, everybody's talking about good large, corn crops, but the the futures markets are suggesting soybeans are more profitable this year than last year.

Todd Gleason: Again, just a reminder, I recorded this last week, so those numbers are a week old. I did ask Gary also to talk about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Gary Schnitkey: So this year or the One Big Beautiful Bill, the big change that's impacting this year is that they increase the subsidy levels on all the combo products and on SCL and ECL. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act increased the subsidy level for SCL and RMA administratively, and also increased the ECL subsidy level. Those are now at 80%, up from 65, and that is, that will cause that decision to look at ECO and SCO. I would suggest that all farmers take a look at ECO and SCO. That 80% subsidy will lower the premiums.

And when we look at our insurance evaluator, combinations of ECO and even lowering our underlying RP coverage levels will result in lower lower premiums and about the same risk, gains as if you had a had a RP at 85% coverage last year.

Todd Gleason: Let's break down a couple of those. First, quick question. Did RP subsidy change as well, or did it stay the same?

Gary Schnitkey: RP subsidy levels also went up. They went up on both basic and optional units and on enterprise units. So this year you will see lower premiums, if all else is equal, for combo products. The increase is less for the basic optional and enterprise units of the combo product. That that increase on SEO is worth looking at.

Todd Gleason: Now that we have that out of the way, so it it sounds as if, just based on all things equal, that, if we were to buy the same product, this year and had last year prices, it would be cheaper, to do so. And because we have lower prices, it's actually depending, I suppose, on volatility and how things end up going to be cheaper as well. Is that a deuce there that, you know, two times that you'll get a reduction in total crop insurance, costs?

Gary Schnitkey: Yeah. So and you're exactly right. By the way, we're we're we're not to the point where we're setting the volatility. That's only the last five days of the month. So but if you looked at it, particularly for corn, it would be lower, and that will lower premiums for for combo product and SCO.

So, yes, that that will have an have an impact. It will, if you have the same APH, likely lower your premium costs this year versus last year. There's some other things that go on too. They change the rates, so we haven't really looked at whether those rate changes have increased or decreased costs this year. But overall, you can expect a bit a bit lower premiums for those for those combo RP products.

Todd Gleason: This is the point where I need to interject again. These numbers are all floating and will do so until the end of the month of February. Volatility, of course, is set in the last five days. The prices are set throughout the month of February, and then the March decisions can be made. Now on the March at the beef house in Covington, Indiana, you can hear Gary's final decisions as it's related to ECO, SEO, and crop insurance decisions, but you need to be there.

Cost is just $40. You can sign up right now at willag.org. Now let's turn back to the conversation with Gary Schnitke held last week. We'll drill down on highly productive soils in Central Illinois, a corn soybean rotation, and what decisions can and maybe should be made.

Gary Schnitkey: If you're in Central Illinois, you're probably at the 80 or 85% coverage level for RP. The first thing that I would suggest looking at is adding ECL at the 95% level. The 95% level is, and and that'll add to your premium, by the way. So just adding that, you're gonna probably add $45 to your premium.

Todd Gleason: I will make note that this was the same recommendation you had last year, but you were like, you can do it. But this year, the subsidy makes it worthwhile. The extra subsidy makes it worthwhile.

Gary Schnitkey: The extra subsidy makes it worthwhile. And also, RMA increased expected yields across the state. And those expected yield increases were pretty large. So the combination of that 80% and those higher expected yields cause that to look look look like something you should look at. Alright.

So now you're thinking adding ECO and you're at RP 80 or 85%. I would think about lowering that coverage level to maybe 75%, maybe 65%. Just take a look. Here's what you're doing. You're increasing the subsidy level because the subsidy level goes up as you increase that coverage level, so you're increasing that.

And you'll find that with the combination of that, and even if you add SCL, you'll be at the same premium level as last year. And our insurance evaluator says you'll have roughly the same downside risk. If you really want to maximize everything, stay at R P 85 and add ECO 95% to it, you're adding to the cost, but that will be your quote, unquote, best risk level. But if you wanna lower those, you can get a pretty good lower end risk.

Todd Gleason: If you're at 85 plus the ECO, to 95, are you skipping 1% in there with the SEO, is that correct, from eighty eighty five to 86? Yeah.

Gary Schnitkey: I I that's almost, secondary issue. I mean,

Todd Gleason: honestly, that's But but my question is, if you are say, go to 65, how much are you skipping?

Gary Schnitkey: Alright. So first, yes, you would be skipping some, and then SCL begins adding adding adding risk protection. But your big risk protection comes by adding that 95% on top. And if you think about it, in Illinois, Central Illinois, it takes a lot to trigger losses, and 5% loss is easier to trigger than 85 or 75% loss. So, and, again, if you want to keep your premiums within some range, you can do it by lowering the RP coverage level.

Todd Gleason: Recapping that last part of the conversation, now Schnitke is advocating farmers look at taking 95% ECO and lowering the RP coverage. Remember, there are three subsidized crop insurance products which work together. The RP coverage is a choice at 65%, 70%, 75%, 80% or 85%. SCO covers from the RP choice to 86% and it's no longer tied to the ARC or PLC decision, so it's just available. And finally, ECO ups the coverage to 90 or 95%.

You can choose to forego the SEO, by the way, leaving a gap. Again, it's probably best just to come see Gary in person at the All Day Ag Outlook, Tuesday, March 3 at the Beef House. Tickets online at willag.org, willag.org, or at the PharmDoc daily website. Finally, there's a brand new updated tool connected to that PharmDoc website. I asked Gary to tell me about the insurance evaluator.

Gary Schnitkey: We have the insurance evaluator. It was specifically designed to look at SCL and ECL combinations with your combo products. So you put in your RP product, maybe you put in what you did last year, and then we can compare what what some alternatives are.

Todd Gleason: Good in all the counties around the nation?

Gary Schnitkey: Good in from Ohio to Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota. We're working on releasing it to other counties, but we feel really comfortable in the midst of the Corn Belt.

Todd Gleason: I spoke with University of Illinois agricultural economist Gary Schnicki during the February. The crop insurance decisions are due by mid March. The finalized numbers will come out at the February. Let's take a look at the weather forecast for some of the growing regions across the planet now. Drew Lerner is not available this afternoon.

We're joined by Andrew Pritchard. He's the senior meteorologist at Nutrien Ag Solutions. Thank you so much for filling in this afternoon. I appreciate that, Andrew. I wanna stay in North America today if we could because there's a lot of things happening.

For instance, today, it is just magnificent outside. It may come at a cost at some point. Can you tell me about this current weather and maybe some risk of storms that might be involved with tomorrow?

Andrew Pritchard: Absolutely. And and you're right. It's a beautiful warm, windy, early spring day across a lot of the Midwest and back into the Central And Southern Plains. And really before I get into a potential, you know, severe weather risk here in the Midwest, I wanna talk about the impacts of this warm, windy weather when you combine it with a couple other ingredients, that being very dry, you know, soils, dry vegetation, and available fuels for potential grass fires and field fires, which we've seen beginning yesterday. We saw some really intense fires get going where we had an extremely critical fire weather risk, that being across portions of Kansas, Oklahoma into Texas, New Mexico, and Eastern Colorado, even up into parts of Southwestern Nebraska.

But a couple of very intense fires, one particularly in the Woodward, Kansas area or I'm sorry, Woodward, Oklahoma area that crossed into Kansas later on during the afternoon and evening. We still have critical risks for a fire across that portion of the Southern Plains that I just mentioned, that being the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles, portions of Southwest Kansas, Southeastern Colorado into Eastern New Mexico. But with this area of low pressure, kind of a lead wave of low pressure across the Great Lakes right now, the one that is bringing the warm, windy, beautiful weather to Todd and I here in Central Illinois, we've actually got these critical fire weather values, critical fire weather risks expanding into portions of Iowa in Northwestern Illinois, portions of Southwest Wisconsin, and Far Eastern Nebraska as well. We've got red flag warnings in effect across a lot of these areas. So, you know, it's important that we're just, you know, taking precautions with this.

I know it's exciting to get out and maybe start some early field work. But in these areas where we have these elevated fire weather, you know, risks, any fire that begins could really quickly become out of control. And that's what we saw yesterday and what we're hoping not to see happen, you know, so so bad, as we move through the next twenty four hours today. Now as we get into the forecast over the next twenty four hours, we've got another area of low pressure that's gonna be ejecting across the Southwestern US lifting into the Ohio Valley during the day on Thursday. Now this one won't have a ton of moisture to work with, but it looks like it may have just enough to get some scattered storms going in the Saint Louis area, maybe early in the afternoon with those storms then tracking from west to east across portions of Central And Southern Illinois, eventually making their way over toward maybe the Indianapolis area as we get into Thursday afternoon and evening.

Now what we're expecting here is maybe a, again, a cluster of storms that it's kind of an interesting unique risk that we can sometimes get here in the Midwest where maybe the the only and the most significant risk is a couple of tornadoes with these storms. It's sometimes where we we don't even see these storms get tall or intense enough to produce a lot of lightning, but we've got a a rotating updraft that could maybe, again, produce a couple tornadoes and maybe some some reports of some hail across, the Ohio River Valley during the day, Thursday into Thursday evening. Now the pattern does remain, you know, relatively active as we move forward over the next seven to ten days. But I'll be honest, you know, the models have really struggled to have any sort of consistency, you know, between them themselves. Themselves.

And, I mean, run to run consistency with the same models is changing a lot. And then we've also got big disagreement across the board when it comes to, you know, trying to figure out the storm track here and which of these storms are going to, you know, maybe bring some moisture that we desperately need. And I'll be honest with you, over the last twelve to twenty four hours, the trend has been maybe a little bit less wet across some of these areas, you know, talking about the Red River of the South into the Lower And Mid Mississippi Valleys, the Ohio River Valleys where it's been rather dry over this winter. So it is warm and windy today, and there's a couple of, you know, you know, trouble spots that come along with that. But we're continuing to just kind of watch this pattern sort itself out over the next couple of weeks.

Todd Gleason: Do you think the near term rains will have a chance to do much, if anything, about the drop, particularly in East Central Illinois?

Andrew Pritchard: You know, it's this system that's gonna come through Thursday, the problem with it is we're talking about probably isolated to scattered showers and storms. So some people are gonna definitely get a drink. I mean, where we get the heavier storms to go, we'll get some moisture in the soil. But what we really need to start to take a bite out of this drought, which, you know, you can trace its origins certainly back to the end of last summer, but a lot of the Eastern Corn Belt here, you know, talked about portions of East Central Illinois. You know, we were dry going back to the 2024, and then 2025 came down to to be one of the top three driest years on record in some of these areas.

So what we really need is a few really big storm systems that produce a wide swath of rain. You know? There's several states wide that, you know, maybe we get a rain that lasts a day or two or something like that. But if you just go back to the, you know, beginning of this water year, going back to last fall, you know, a lot of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio were chasing a four inch deficit, and then it gets even higher as you go down south into parts of the Lower And Mid Mississippi Valley. So it is good to get some moisture.

I certainly don't wanna scoff at it. You know, some rain is better than no rain. But the problem here with this, you know, first area of low pressure today and the next one tomorrow is they're rather moisture starved and we're not getting a big widespread area of rain like we should, you know, or like we would like, I should say. And and instead, we're getting more of the hit or miss variety. And that really is why I'm kind of concerned about, you know, some of the change in the forecast heading into next week where if we would have talked maybe three days ago, I would have said that, you know, it seems like we've got storm after storm kind of lined up here, bringing that broad brush, you know, with half an inch or an inch of rain with each one of them.

And and now we're getting kind of these drier storm systems where really a lot of Illinois, you know, East Central Illinois, surrounding portions of Illinois into Indiana and Ohio, over the next ten days, there's just not a lot at this point. We get a couple of these storm systems. The pattern's certainly active. There's a couple areas of low pressure, but just kind of looking at the latest model output that came out overnight, if I were to just kind of verbatim buy what it's giving to me, we're talking about a few tenths of an inch, maybe up to a half an inch in some of these areas that desperately need four or five times that as we head into the March. So it looks like parts of the Southern US, I'm talking about maybe Far Eastern Arkansas and into Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, that's certainly some dry areas that are going to get some rain on the order of a couple of inches.

And parts of Kentucky and Tennessee may, you know, hope to overachieve in some areas here and push beyond that half an inch to one inch threshold. But certainly, I've seen a bit of a downtrend on the, at least near term rainfall forecast, whereas it it looks like that February 21 through the twenty eighth time frame, that last week of February, it looks loaded with storm systems that were gonna bring badly needed moisture. And and now they look a little moisture starved to me, you know, if compared to what it was maybe forty eight hours ago. And, you know, I'm kind of was looking at the European model when I was saying that. And as we're talking, just wanted to make sure the the GFS, the American model here is kind of aligned with that, and it certainly is.

East Central Illinois all the way over towards parts of Western Ohio, we're talking about less than half an inch of rain over the next ten days and coming in isolated hit or miss fashion here is, again, some moisture is better than none, but this is not necessarily a pattern that's really gonna take a big bite out of this drought at least over the next ten to fourteen days, it seems.

Todd Gleason: Thank you so much, Andrew, for all the information. I really appreciate it.

Andrew Pritchard: Hey. I appreciate the opportunity to join us today, Todd.

Todd Gleason: That's senior meteorologist at Nutrien Ag Solutions, Andrew Pritchard. He joined us on this Wednesday edition of the closing market report that came to you from Illinois Public Media at willag.org. I'm Todd Gleason.