Todd Gleason: From the land to Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market reported as the February 2026. I'm Extensions Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett from agmarket.net. He'll come to us today from the commodity classic taking place in San Antonio, Texas, and then we'll turn our attention to the agricultural news for the afternoon.

And along the way, I'll remind you to pick up your tickets for the All Day Ag Outlook next Tuesday. Matt will be there. I hope you will too. The cost is just $40 through Friday and thereafter a bit more, but you can still show up on Tuesday morning. And as we wrap up our time together, we'll talk too about the weather forecast with Mike Tenora.

He is the president and CEO at T Storm Weather all on this Thursday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio with the farming world online on demand at willag.org. March corn today settled in Chicago at 04:33 and three quarters up two and three quarters. May a penny and a half higher at $4.43 and a half. And December corn, new crop unchanged, $4.67 for the settlement price.

March beans, eleven forty seven and three quarters down a half. November, down a quarter of a cent at $11.27 and a half. Bean meal, 70¢ lower. The bean oil, up a dollar and 3¢. Wheat futures, soft bread, 600, five seventy one and three quarters, and the hard bread winter wheat at $5.51 and a half that finished a penny lower on this Thursday afternoon.

Matt Bennett from agmarket.net now joins us. He's at Commodity Classic. That's in San Antonio, Texas this year. Hi, Matt. I know that you did the early riser as usual on this Thursday morning, an annual event for you.

I don't recall for how many years, but a long time. How did it go?

Matt Bennett: Yeah. I mean, this was the twelfth year in a row we've done it. It's been it's been a lot of fun doing it. This year was different. You know, I had Joe Baclavik on with me and Mackenzie, his his sidekick.

And, you know, we we had a room full of people, and they were in a good mood in my opinion. And, you know, we just tried to shoot it as straight as possible. In all honesty, I feel like the grower's been a little bit better mood out here. I mean, they said the registration's up 15% this year, which considering the ag economy, you know, is is something to be said. So, you know, this is the thirtieth year, and there's a lot of, in all honesty, kinda extras going on this week and been quite a bit of fun being down here.

Todd Gleason: You know, why were they in a better mode, do you think?

Matt Bennett: That's a great question. You know? I mean, I've had a lot of guys, talk about their concerns with, obviously, the farm economy profit margins. But at the same time, I think that they've got some optimism. They know that demand's really strong.

It's something we hit on pretty hard here this morning, and they understand that not every marketing year is the same. And so when it gets right down to it, we've tried to encourage them, you know, if you can't call it a profit just yet, let's not lock that in this far out in front of harvest. Let's at least give this market a little bit of chance to see if we can find some sort of buying action. We know that a lot of these commodities have rallied. It's just ag commodities haven't really been able to participate.

And so, you know, if we give them a story to buy, we feel pretty strongly that you could see some excitement come into this thing.

Todd Gleason: I wanna know on that excitement side, did you hear a story out there? Are there things that are floating around inside the commodity classic itself that give you hope for the commodity markets? Or are there something that we should know about?

Matt Bennett: You know, we continue to hear that there's whispers of e 15. I mean, we've heard that forever, though, Todd. We've had so many opportunities to do something about e 15 and essentially have chosen not to. So in all honesty, I haven't heard anything concrete, you know, that tells me that, you know, we would look at something super exciting. But overall, I know secretary Rollins supposed to be speaking here today.

She may have already, in all honesty, been so busy at our booth. Haven't been able to think straight. And and that's one thing I would say is that foot traffic's just been incredible. A lot a lot of growers have come through talking to us, so been a lot of fun.

Todd Gleason: Have you heard anything about RVOs, RFS, 45Z, that kind of thing?

Matt Bennett: The main thing we continue to hear is that the numbers are going to be improved. Now the problem is we don't know if that means improved over a year ago or improved over their estimates from last summer. If it's improved over the estimates from last summer, Todd, that's a big deal. But my gut feeling is that it's not gonna be that bullish. I think it would be more along the lines of improved from what we saw a year ago.

So I do think that the build out of this industry is gonna continue. I just don't know that it's gonna be all at once like, people are hoping for.

Todd Gleason: And are they talking as it's related to 45 z, renewable diesel, the biomass fuels? Are they talking across the board about that? But because it sounds to me from the PharmDoc team like the oil that will need be needed to you be used would be kind of an all of the above corn oil, canola oil, of course, soybean oil, which has been leading the rally for soybeans. And are you hearing anything about those things?

Matt Bennett: Not necessarily. I mean, the one thing that we've heard, of course, is that, you know, whether we're gonna be doing some sort of a deal with just half, you know, of of the imported oil or, you know, they originally talked about maybe just doing away with all of them, which from a domestic standpoint from us would be a huge deal. Most are leaning towards it's just gonna be half moving forward. But overall, you've gotta assume, you know, most of your oils are going to participate. Soybean oil, I think, is preferred in a lot of situations, but at the same time, all of them that you suggested, it'd certainly be factored in.

Todd Gleason: Yeah. So we'll be watching that closely, and the half you're talking about is the value of the RIN, so a half value of a RIN for used cooking oil coming in for from outside of The United States. We'll see how that all develops, maybe in the next two weeks, I guess. I don't know whether that truly will be the case. Let's do talk about the marketplace for the day.

Soybeans have been a little bit all over the board. It appeared that there was a noon swoon, a pretty good one. What can you tell me about things that took place there?

Matt Bennett: Yeah. I mean, as far as beans are concerned, there's been a lot of excitement about what this is gonna look like, all everything that we just talked about with RVOs. But today, you just kinda fell off a little bit. I mean, overall, you know, there's a lot of talk about, obviously we've got good demand that we're talking about here but at the same time everyone is well understanding that we've got a massive crop out of South America so it's been tough to kind of push up and above. Mean you're hitting up on you know some of the highs that we saw earlier in the year which makes it really tough.

Do you want to go ahead and buy this thing closer to the highs or or kind of wait and see what this news looks like whenever it comes to the RVO? So in my opinion, this bean market's kind of stalled in here. I haven't seen enough enthusiasm to kinda push above those highs and find any buying above it.

Todd Gleason: I didn't look, although I'm pretty sure that the lead option nearby has a gap. The top of that would be at 76, I think. Can we push through that number?

Matt Bennett: I think it's possible, but you're gonna need some news to do that. I really feel like you're gonna have to have some news that we don't currently see. You're gonna have to have once again more enthusiasm, especially on domestic consumption. The problem that you if you wanna get excited about domestic consumption, you gotta remember the world balance sheet is still, more than robust. And so, you're not gonna chew into that world balance sheet to any great degree whenever you've got a 180,000,000 metric ton Brazilian crop.

Now Argentina still needs some rain. There's no doubt about it. It's early enough that they'll still be potentially okay. But Brazil's got a big crop, and there's just no way around it.

Todd Gleason: And your thoughts on the corn market for the day?

Matt Bennett: Yeah. Corn market, you know, we closed a little bit stronger down front month. Of course, March is going into delivery, and so you're gonna see a little bit of that, excitement there. A lot of times, that's something that we see. I feel like a fair amount of this actually been sold here recently versus just rolling them.

Some of them been rolled, no doubt about it, but a lot of growers got burnt rolling, this last year, and it just never panned out for them. I think some of them are hoping that maybe this year will be a little bit different, but at the same time, we've seen the commercials buy a fair amount of corn here recently. So it was nice to see a little bit of green on the screen. December corn holding in there at $4.67. Today, it hit $4.69.

I think it's gonna take a little bit of buying to get it above $4.70 because from what we can tell, there's a lot of resting orders wanting to hedge off the score at $4.70.

Todd Gleason: Two things before I let you go. Talk to anybody, particularly, I suppose, in Texas that has planted corn yet, and then looking forward to seeing you next week at the All Day Ag Outlook.

Matt Bennett: Yeah. We did we have talked to a handful of growers that have already planted. You know? They're fairly dry, kinda like we are at home, you know, in their, you know, it's 80 degrees down here plus today. So a lot of the guys, west and south of where we're at, they've actually been out there rolling already.

And, yeah, looking forward to getting there. I mean, it's been the same week as commodity for several years, so it's been tough to get there. But next week, I'm actually gonna be able to be home. So I'll be up there in Danville. Looking forward to seeing everyone.

Todd Gleason: You bet. And we're looking forward to having you there. We have a good crowd scheduled already. Those who have not can sign up as soon as possible at willag.org. Again, thank you, Matt, and safe travels back to the state of Illinois.

Matt Bennett: Absolutely. Thank you, bud.

Todd Gleason: Matt Bennett is with agmarket.net. In today's agricultural news, we'll start with the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio rivers. They all play a critical role in transporting agricultural goods even in the wintertime. And while navigation continues today, heavy river ice can cut travel speeds in half and requires square barge configurations to prevent that ice from packing up into the gaps and hindering steering. Jimmy Cheatham is a barge captain and says despite the challenges of the winter, goods are still moving.

Jimmy Cheatham: Our river system as we have it, the Lower Mississippi very seldom gets shut down. It moves a lot of tonnage. It's the lifeline of the upper rivers. You've got the upper, and you've got the Ohio, Tennessee River, the Cumberland River. The Missouri River pretty much shuts down during the winter months.

The Upper Mississippi shuts down during the winter months due to ice because it gets just too impossible to navigate. But we still move a lot of product out, and a lot of our imports come in for our agriculture customers, especially. A lot of salts has moved up north, building materials, coals transported south. We're still exporting a large amount of coal.

Todd Gleason: Now Cheatham says river levels are still running low.

Jimmy Cheatham: Commonly this time of year we have a little bit more water, but as the last five years we've experienced drought conditions, and right now we're still under a drought condition, I guess you could say. Even though we've had an ample amount of snowfall, we've had thaw, and we've had more snow, We've had rain. But the Lower Mississippi St. Louis South is still pretty treacherous to run. We're bringing 25 out of St.

Louis right now loads southbound. There's some 36 barge tows going south right now, where they could take forty two and forty six south. We do have some draft restrictions, but things are moving, and there's no major hiccups right now, which is a blessing.

Todd Gleason: To navigate treacherous winter conditions and lower water levels caused by ongoing droughts, captains must reduce towing sizes sometimes from more than 42 barges down to 25, which, of course, directly impacts corporate profitability. Let's move now from the Midwest to Washington DC, where president Trump's temporary tariffs to replace those the supreme court struck down may very well be a bridge back to the highly discretionary levels, say some trade experts. They made those comments during a recent Brookings panel discussion. A former USTR assistant general counsel in both the Trump and Biden administrations, Patrick Childress, says the window on Trump's short term tariffs will close quickly before stiffer ones take over.

Patrick Childress: We have a a hundred and fifty days at most before the section three zero one investigations conclude, And we expect that once those three zero one investigations conclude, those tariff rates are gonna snap right back to presupreme court decision levels.

Todd Gleason: Perhaps more quickly for China and Brazil where three zero one cases are already underway, Emily Blanchard is an associate business professor at Dartmouth.

Emily Blanchard: The big news for firms is, nope. As of Friday, it is very clear that the administration is gonna continue to pursue these high tariffs through other tariff authorities, probably section three zero one two thirty two, what have you.

Todd Gleason: Leaving current and future uncertainty over tax revenue, refunds, and trade deals made or stalled by the recent developments. But not uncertain is the president's intentions voiced by ag trade negotiator Julie Callahan at last week's USDA Ag Outlook Forum.

Julie Callahan: Access to The US market should not be considered a given or a right, and a lot of our trading partners in the past have felt that they could treat American companies and American farmers as badly as they wanted, and they would still have access to our market.

Todd Gleason: Callahan argues reciprocal tariffs have been a game changer, opening multiple markets at a time for meats, dairy crops, and biofuels that have been closed for decades. This, however, ignores what happened to the soybean market during the Trump administration's first tariff war. And that's a look at today's agricultural news. Let's take a look at the global growing regions now to see how the weather is impacting them. We're joined by Mike Tenure.

He's the president and CEO at t storm weather. That's tstorm.net online out of Naperville, Illinois. Thank you for being with us. A lot of ground to cover. Let's begin in Argentina.

They have had some dry conditions there. What is your assessment of the corn and soybean crops to begin with and what do you think looks like going forward?

Mike Tannura: Well, they've been riding this fine line between dry and very dry conditions, But for the most part, they've been getting at least a little bit of rain as soon as things were about to get pretty poor. So the way it looks today, even though it is dry across Argentina, they seem to be getting just enough rain to kind of hold things in check. Maybe we're not going to see a fantastic crop there, but it seems pretty unlikely that we're going to have a terrible one. There's only one caveat to this whole thing, Todd. We need one more big rain, and the big question right now is whether or not we're going to see that next week.

We know that a big upper level system is going to approach Argentina five to ten days from now. Now if that system were to move slowly and move directly overhead, that will lead to a pretty major rainfall event with two to five inches possible across Argentina. On the other hand, if it stalls to the west in the Pacific Ocean, which does occasionally happen, then we really wouldn't see very much rain at all. Maybe one to two inches in the western growing regions, but little to none in the East. And that'll play a pretty big role in how things shape up because it is March and soybeans are filling now, but as you move into later March and then in April, the season kind of comes to an end.

So this is one more chance for them to get the pretty nice rain. At this point in time, we're basically saying to our clients that you'll receive around half of normal to 100% of normal rainfall over the next fourteen days. So kind of in that middle ground where some areas will benefit, some areas might miss out, but all in all probably staying pretty stable with again, maybe not the best crop in the world, maybe not the worst crop in the world, you know, kind of in the middle in the way we sit right now.

Todd Gleason: Is there very much of a different story for Paraguay and the southern parts of Brazil, which would be in some respects, in the same locales?

Mike Tannura: Well, it's kind of similar there. They saw a lot better rains than Argentina earlier in the growing season, but they've been drying out a lot over the last few weeks and even extending into early January. We do need to see rains there as well because soybeans are filling, but you need to keep in mind that their growing season is pretty lengthy. And so while some soybeans certainly would benefit from rain, not all of these areas need it because as you move just outside of Rio Grande do Sul and just outside of Paraguay, they're harvesting. And so the lack of rain right now is a problem for farmers that plant it later, but it's not so much of a problem for the ones that planted early.

So in the end, we do need to see more rain. That's kind of the easy way to look at it because then those filling soybeans would get the rains they need and we'd still be able to harvest even if we had a little bit of rain. At this point, it looks pretty dry over the next ten days. There's a surface level high that's overhead, and that's going to limit rainfall there for the next ten days and maybe even longer than that. So overall, conditions in there might be declining a little bit, but keep in mind, Rio Grande Azul, which is kind of where the dryness story is the most prevalent, it's about 15% of soybeans in Brazil with most of the rest of them now moving past maturity and being harvested.

It's kind of unclear how big of a deal this is though. Again, we would just like to see more rain and that would put an end of the story.

Todd Gleason: How are things progressing in the Center West?

Mike Tannura: Well, they're seeing some pretty big rain. There's been stormy there for the last five to ten days and it's going to stay like that for a little while longer because of cool fronts that are moving through. That's going to slow down harvesting of those soybeans and maybe the bigger story would be the slowing of second corn planting. That is a major crop and it is being planted as we speak. But with all the rains that we're seeing, it's going to be a little bit challenging getting all it in in a quick manner.

Now all that being said, it's still very early for second corn. Key weather starts in about four to six weeks for that crop and then it'll last into the May. So even if we do get planting a little bit behind here, we think we'll still have time to have a nice crop.

Todd Gleason: Here in The United States, what are you watching in particular?

Mike Tannura: Well, this is a challenging one too because it's been pretty dry over the last two hundred days or so. If you think back to last growing season, rain started to shut down in late July and then in August especially, and has really been pretty dry ever since. The coverage of a hundred and eighty day drought is the highest in more than twelve years across the corn and soft red winter wheat production regions. And that also includes soybeans as well. So we need some rain.

Now we were thinking that this could become a problem and we've certainly talked about this over the last few shows. But the thing that's changing now is that it looks like a pretty wet pattern is ahead. We're in this cold weather scenario today, but it's going to warm up a lot this weekend before another cold front moves through. But then after that, that's where things get a little bit dicey. We're going to see the main storm track line up right across the Central United States and a number of waves of energy are going to move across that.

Temperatures are going to turn very warm once we get into the middle of next week and that's going to last for at least five to ten days. That's a great recipe for lots of showers and thunderstorms across a wide area. So it certainly looks like we're going to see drought ease once we get into March, and it might even break entirely in some of these areas. Some of the models that we've been looking at are suggesting more than six inches of rain in parts of the Corn Belt and Mid South over the next two weeks. And so, Todd, that's a lot of rain, and at this time of the year, that would certainly put a big dent in the drought.

Todd Gleason: Yeah. So the deficit could be made up fairly quickly, I guess, in part because if it was dry over the winter months, while there might be snow accumulations, it doesn't really amount to a lot of precipitation sometimes. How quickly can those deficits do you believe or historically can they be made up when springtime rains come?

Mike Tannura: Well, that's a great question and there's really two ways to think about it. But in absolute terms, you can make it up fairly quickly because of what you noted, which is basically that the winters are pretty dry across the Corn Belt, at least relative to the springs and the summers. Illinois, for example, averages around two inches of water for the month of January, but in May we average around five inches. And so that's a pretty big change. So if you're really dry in January, you know, you can make that up with some big rains in the spring.

Now probably the bigger difference in the situation that we have today is that it's been drier than normal basically every single month for the last six to seven months. And so will one or two big rains make up that deficit? Not entirely, but the other way to think about it is this. I mean, how much does it really matter in the end? Because if you think about corn or soybeans or winter wheat, what really matters a lot to them more than the total amount of rain over a six or nine or twelve month period is when does it happen and where was the crop when that happened.

And so for wheat as an example, even though it's been pretty dry for most of the fall and the winter, if we start getting really big rains next week and then lasting through March, even though we technically might still be in a drought at the March, if you see four, five, six, seven, eight inches of rain in the month of March on wheat, then nobody really cares about the technicalities of a drought. All it's really gonna matter is that they saw some nice rains when it mattered.

Todd Gleason: Hey, thank you much, Mike. We appreciate it. We'll talk with you again soon.

Mike Tannura: That sounds great, Todd.

Todd Gleason: That's Mike Tanuri. He's with t storm weather, president and CEO there. Tstorm.net online joined us on this Thursday afternoon here on willag.org. Later today, we'll record our commodity week program. Get it posted to the website by about 6PM tonight, maybe a bit later.

And then, of course, you'll hear it on many of these radio stations tomorrow and over the week in commodity week as our weekly look at what's happened in the world of agriculture. Now while you're at the website, willag.org, do get yourself registered for the all day ag outlook. It's next Tuesday at the beef house in Covington, Indiana. I'm University of Illinois Extensions, Todd Gleason.