Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant University in Urbana Champaign, Illinois. This is the closing market report. It is the March 2026. I'm extension's Todd Gleason. Coming up, we'll talk about the commodity markets with Mike Souzala, globalcomresearch.com out of Acheson, Kansas, and Eric Snodgrass will join us from Nutrien Ag Solutions in Dagrabul.

Along the way, I'll remind you to stay with us for our commodity week program if you can for the whole of the hour. Otherwise, you'll hear a portion of that program. It was recorded at the All Day Egg Outlook during the Beef House event on Tuesday of this past week. That's March 3. Our panelists for that day on the soybean panel were Chip Nellinger of Blue Reef Agrimarketing along with Ellen Deirden of AgReview and Greg Johnson of Total Grain Marketing.

Should be a great hour if you can stay with us. If not, it's up online right now, and many of these radio stations will carry commodity week over the weekend. So stay with us this afternoon as we start the program with the closing market report right now.

announce: Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.

Todd Gleason: July corn for the day settled $4.71, 8 and a quarter higher. December at $4.84 and a half, up six and a half. May beans up 21 and a half. The July 20 and a half higher, they finished at twelve thirteen. November at eleven forty six and three quarters, up 10 and a quarter cents, and soft red winter wheat up 33 at $6.16 and 3 quarters of a cent.

The hard red at $6.23 and a half up 31. Both of those in the May contract. July futures there, $6.35 and a half up 30¢ for the day. Mike Zuzula, globalcomresearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas now joins us on this Friday to talk about a marketplace that has just been booming for the day. First, though, let me thank you for making the trip to the Beef House on Tuesday.

You make the meeting so special. I really appreciate it that you came all the way in for the All Day Ag Outlook.

Mike Zuzolol: Todd, I appreciate you saying that, but I just have to say you and all the participants are just wonderful, and I I kinda forget each year how special it is there and to be able to sit at the table and talk to clients or even strangers and then meet, you know, my colleagues up on the panel and catch up with everybody and see you. It was a great meeting. It always is, but it's just a great way to spend a day together. And I always kinda think of it as kinda like fellowship and and getting together and and especially what looked to be a really lackluster 2026 about three weeks ago. Now we've got crude oil markets that are leading the commodities higher, and, you know, all of a sudden, the sun has broken through the clouds, it seems.

Todd Gleason: Yeah. Well, so tell me about the market today. And I take it it's led by crude because that sucker has just picked up and taken off.

Mike Zuzolol: Yeah. It is. But I would also say that as we talked about on Tuesday, on the corn panel when we saw each other, it it's been about the crude oil and the dollar and the precious metals. And and those three assets giving us an indication of whether the market, the investment, financial markets, commodity markets are inflationary in their mindset or deflationary slash stagflationary that the prices go up sharply and it's gonna hurt and curtail demand. And and that would be indicative of the dollar going into a safe haven and and investors jumping into the dollar and buying it as a safe haven.

We saw that throughout the week. And when we were together on Tuesday, we saw that type of price action where the dollar was sharply higher, the metal sharply lower, and that really took the the upside potential away from the grains, and and the soybean complex. But then as we've gotten through the rest of this week, Friday was kind of a a breakout day in in terms of sentiment, I think, not just because of the Strait Of Hormuz not opening up and more big countries shutting in their oil production, more countries like China shutting down, and India shutting down their exports of gasoline and heating oil and and crude oil to preserve their domestic supplies, but we also had a jobs report that was exceptionally negative in the market size, and that really weakened the dollar. So all of a sudden, you had a sharply higher crude market, sharply lower dollar market, and then the the, metals markets were able to find some support, and that inflationary bell kinda got rung. And I really would say that along with some winter wheat weather still being out there looming kind of orbiting out there as a very supportive feature for the hard red wheat really took hold on Friday in 2023 levels in crude oil, contract highs, and lead month soybeans, and, you know, 20 plus cent higher gains in the wheat.

So that crude oil wheat relationship is very much intact. So now crude oil, it's gonna give, but it's probably gonna eventually take away depending on what happens with the geopolitics.

Todd Gleason: Yeah. So the crude oil up, more than $10 or thereabouts, above $90 a barrel at this point today and another big gain. The US dollar down, I don't know, 36 hundreds or there, about 36¢ that is. And so I I'm I'm just wondering between those two, does that tell you that we'll have more sales? I mean, for instance, for corn, we're already on an extraordinary pace.

Would that be the case for corn, and do you think soybeans will actually be marketed more likely, given the lower dollar, although soybeans just jumped in price?

Mike Zuzolol: Yeah. I I would say two things. In the very short term, Friday and and through next week, I I think we'll probably see some additional short term pressure even if the crude oil goes sharply higher with the dollar lower. We might not get that kind of a move initially in the in the corn and to a lesser degree the beans because I do think there's some cash selling that started at the end of this week. I I probably had more calls on Thursday night through Friday from clients that I've had in six months.

Thankfully, we still have some old crop corn to let go of. We're done with old crop beans. But with that 30¢ rally in the hard red wheat market, I I think this is where if you continue to keep that Strait Of Hormuz closed, I think it was Goldman Sachs was estimating between seven and eleven million barrels a day of oil is not getting through to the world marketplace. If that continues, as I said it on my blog on Thursday night, that's I think the genie comes out of the bottle next week if we don't get this under control because at some point, it's probably gonna be too late to create a market that allows fertilizer prices, diesel prices, and and even the the the chemical prices to come back down, and they may, you know, kinda bake in this price rally into our physical markets and our inputs for the corn. And so back when you and I started in agriculture media and agriculture commodities, the old mindset was if the raw material goes up, then the commodity needs to go up.

So if all these inputs are going up, corn should be more valuable. And I do think we'll start talking about an acreage shift back into more beans if we don't get this thing under control.

Todd Gleason: Tell me about the 92,000 jobs that were lost for the month of February, what that means to our own economy. And then I've I've got a lot of other questions here, but let's start with with the jobs loss and, and how you see that impacting the marketplace.

Mike Zuzolol: Yeah. This is one of those things where the market's not, I don't think, really looking at the situation or until that jobs loss data came out, wasn't looking at the situation that the Fed could actually cut rates in 2026 because of higher crude oil prices. The market was kind of a binary saying higher crude means inflation, means the Fed can't cut rates. I'm, I'm different because of the way the seventies and eighties were. And and and if you have in a a supply shock type inflation, that usually creates a recession, and you gotta get ahead of that if you're the Federal Reserve.

That jobs report, I think, woke the market up to the idea that, wow, bad jobs and high crude oil prices equals stagflation. The Fed's gonna have to jump in here and do something about this, and I think that really pummeled the dollar. I'd love to see that dollar continue to go lower because as we talked about in the in the, outlook meeting or at the ag ag outlook meeting there at the Beef House. President Trump's policy has been to weaken the dollar through tariffs, and now I think he wants to do it through the Federal Reserve by changing leadership and and moving in a mindset that we wanna keep weakening that dollar to improve improve that America first type mindset and policy that he's put forth.

Todd Gleason: Let's go back to the Middle East. The Strait Of Hormuz shut down. Iran doesn't look like it's moving. And the president's saying, I'm only welcoming unconditional surrender. That feels like a long way apart before there could be a settlement in this situation.

Mike Zuzolol: Yeah. It does. I think that's a really good way to frame it because I think it was Politico came out shortly before the close and the grains and said that the Pentagon or some in in Washington in this administration were planning on months, not weeks for this situation to continue. That probably helped give us these new highs at the end of the week because it it really does bake bake into the cake that the longer it goes, the harder it's gonna be to unwrap, and it's gonna be a situation where even though we're not taking much offline as far as damaged production facilities or the supply chain getting damaged, it still takes a while to restart facilities even if they're not damaged. So I I think the clock really is ticking that genie is gonna come out of the bottle.

I put it at next week. I was thinking and I told so this is the beef house. I didn't think we'd go above $80 in New York until next week if this was still going on and then we head towards a 100. The market's way ahead of that. They're getting way ahead of this because they're just so nervous.

They're putting his maximum pressure on the administration to get that Hormuz, that Strait Of Hormuz opened up.

Todd Gleason: Yeah. It was the Pentagon, and I think they were talking about September, in that particular release. So interesting things. We'll have to continue to watch it. Anything before I let you go?

Mike Zuzolol: I I would say this. I I I think that the the corn market still has not woken up given the export demand, and and I would say we still have ahead of us whether president Xi and president Trump meet. And all week long this week, I've seen more and more coming out of Asia. The president Xi doesn't know how to handle having president Trump at a state visit given the fact that he is a friend to Iran and the leader of Iran is gone. So if that doesn't happen, if that meeting between those two doesn't happen, after we get past the WASDE, after we get past the acreage report, does that open the downside up for the soybeans?

So that's something to keep in mind.

Todd Gleason: Thank you much. I appreciate it. Thanks, Todd. Mhmm. Mike Zuzolo is at globalcomresearch.com out of Acheson, Kansas.

Let's check out what's been happening in the global growing regions across the planet. Eric Snodgrass is here. He's with NutriNAG Solutions and Agribil. Hi, Eric. Thanks for being with us.

Where are you traveling to today?

Eric Snodgrass: I'm actually trying to drive across the state of Illinois, east to west over to Carthage to talk with some growers this afternoon. But I'm gonna be honest with you. I kinda wish my car had a sail on it because the amount of wind across the midsection of the state today out of the South is crazy. And, it's bringing in all the warmth, but I can't seem to be able to drive in a straight line.

Todd Gleason: I felt that when I was coming into campus today. Just a big wind blowing. Tell me about that big wind really and what it brought to us earlier in the week, the kind of rainfall that came across the Midwest.

Eric Snodgrass: Yeah. I mean, we saw in some areas just a tremendous amount of rainfall. In fact, we went from talking about drought situation in, you know, parts of Illinois and Indiana, and now we've got the rivers are flooding. We've got saturated soils. I mean, I watched part of Arkansas, Southern Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky, Southern Half of Indiana go from their soil moisture values in the lowest two percentile on March 1, and now they are in the ninetieth percentile as of March 6.

So that was a lot of very, very heavy rain, and that is what that's what we can do here in the Midwest. We can completely undo a winter drought or fall drought that lasted in such a short amount of time. So the question is, is it just gonna keep raining and make more problems? And then what about the severe weather today?

Todd Gleason: And the answer is? Yeah. So I I'll be honest.

Eric Snodgrass: There's a little part of me that's excited I'm driving over to Western Illinois because I'm gonna be getting inching closer and closer to where the the risk for the severe weather is going to be. And so we're watching a huge area, coming out of the plains toward the Midwest today. The storm protection center's been all over it all week, and there's the risk of kind of all of it, hail, straight line winds, and tornadoes. I'm just gonna say this to everybody that's listening. We just need to be very weather aware over the next, let's call it, twelve to eighteen hours.

Have multiple ways of accessing weather data. Weather.gov is the best. Make sure you have a good app for radar on your phone. Just stay in tune because the storms that are coming through this area are gonna be potent. That doesn't mean all of you are gonna get hit with bad weather.

But last night, we had a massive tornado in Oklahoma, and and then this morning, there was a report of fatalities. So I just don't want to I don't wanna come off, alarmist, but I also wanna make sure that everyone knows this is the time to be prepared.

Todd Gleason: Alright. How much rain do you think we will get out of this system, and will it continue? Is it in a small band? Can we continue to lose some of this drought across the Midwest? And I'm really thinking about the Western Part Of The Corn Belt.

Eric Snodgrass: Yeah. So the new drought monitor came out on Thursday. But remember, when we get it on Thursday, it has data available through Tuesday. When we were at the beef house, it had just started raining. Right?

So that was the beginning of of the rain. And, right now, the drop monitor is still sitting at 75% coverage for The United States. And honestly, Todd, we are still in that epicenter in East Central Illinois where it's been so dry. Now I anticipate that by the time we get into early April, that number could be down as low as 60%. And the main areas getting the upcoming rains are gonna stretch from Eastern Texas and Eastern Oklahoma straight through the Eastern Corn Belt even into the Northeast United States.

And we live right in the middle of that. So I am anticipating more meaningful rainfall, possibly picking up another couple of inches with time. And to get that in March is is huge rather than getting it in April and May when it's gonna really disrupt our, our spring planting. So there's good moisture return. It is gonna eat away at the drought monitor, but not in Western Texas or Western Oklahoma, Colorado, Western Kansas, or most of Nebraska.

Eastern Nebraska, yes, but Western, no. And that's where drought is probably gonna linger through the month of March into early April.

Todd Gleason: Transition from La Nina to El Nino. We've been talking about it. Continuing still?

Eric Snodgrass: Not just continuing, Todd, but in in my little nerd world that I live in, yesterday morning on the fifth, we got all new data that came out from one of our models called the European model. And I'm gonna tell you something. It's not just calling for El Nino. This model swinging for the fences, looking at temperatures by late summer across the Equatorial Pacific, two to two and a half degrees Celsius above average. Now for people that don't know, they're like, okay.

Should I care? The answer is yes. That would actually classify if. If the model's right, that would classify this event as a super mean.

Todd Gleason: Oh, no. Last one of these we saw. Little boy, little girl, and super?

Eric Snodgrass: Yes. There's What?

Todd Gleason: Oh my.

Eric Snodgrass: This is just what we do. We we come up with terms, and this is gonna be a strong one. So strong El Nino conditions by summer going into fall. It's gonna affect the hurricane season. It's gonna affect next winter's precipitation.

And as cold as we were this winter in the eastern half of the country, we will likely be just as mild next year if if this El Nino does what typical El Ninos do. So big changes coming, and we've not seen changes like this in a while. And I'm just gonna tell you something, Todd. Right now, every seasonal forecast for summer is buyer beware. I mentioned that on Tuesday at the All Day Ag Outlook.

What I wanna make sure that everyone understands is that every time we forecast big El Nino events, the models wanna make it very, very wet in summer in the midsection of North America. And I'm just gonna tell you, some folks will get it. You'll get your summer thunderstorms. Others will miss. There will be problems.

There always is every season. Just don't rest on El Nino being your best friend this summer.

Todd Gleason: On that cautionary note, I will not ask you if we can rest on the impact of Super Nino in South America before we go today. Thank you much. And, hey, have fun in Carthage. It's just a beautiful small town. I've been there a couple of times.

Yeah. Nestled between Macomb and Keokuk and South Of Nauvoo. Great place to be.

Eric Snodgrass: It is. I'm looking forward to it.

Todd Gleason: And, of course, is Eric Snodgrass. He's with Nutrien Ag Solutions and Agrabal. Joined us here on this Friday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. It's public radio for the farming world. If you can stay with us for the whole of the hour, you'll hear all of our commodity week program recorded at the Beef House earlier in the week.

If not, it's up on our website already at willag.org, and many of these radio stations will carry it over the weekend.

Eric Snodgrass: Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension.

Todd Gleason: Welcome to Commodity Week. I am Todd Gleason. Today's program is taken from the all day ag outlook, our morning soybean panel, including Ellen Dearden from AgReview in Morton, Illinois, along with Chip Nellinger, who also is in Morton. He's with Blue Reef Agrimarketing, and Greg Johnson of TGN. That's total grain marketing in Champaign, Illinois.

Commodity Week, of course, is a production of Illinois public media. It's public radio for the farming world online on demand anytime you'd like to listen at willag.org. That's willag.org. Now let's go to the beef house in Covington, Indiana on Tuesday, March 3, and hear what the folks on the soybean panel had to say. I asked Ellen Dearden to lay out her thoughts first.

Ellen Dearden: I'm surprised, like a lot of other folks, that the rally that came out of the mid January lows has gone as far as it has. I see a lot of hope from Chinese business build into this market, and I'm not so sure that we're gonna see Chinese business actually come about. So I'm really, thinking that this is a good time period to be cleaning out of old crop beans and probably, getting well along on new crop sales. I do believe that, with the price of fertilizers probably and the availability given the Middle East situation, that we may end up seeing a few more beans being planted than, what the, report came out of the ag forum suggested.

Todd Gleason: Chip Nellinger, your opening statements?

Chip Nellinger: Yeah. I I very much, agree with what Ellen said. I I I think to put in perspective, a couple things hit me. Number one, if China that's a big if. If they buy another 8,000,000 metric tons, there's that still puts them slightly under the previous two years.

The USDA has a billion $6.50 projected for exports. You have to assume that there is already a a a fair amount of Chinese business in there. Yes. We're increasing the crush and the and the renewable diesel. That's gonna be a a supportive factor, but they already have increased the crush estimates as well.

And so if they do, if if if they do buy 8,000,000 more tons, I'm not so sure that that increases the exports because it kind of messes with the free market. You're looking at a crop size, in Brazil of at least six and a half billion bushels, maybe higher. For reference, we raised 4,200,000,000 bushels. So if China is forced to make a noneconomic decision to buy more of our beans, I'm not sure it actually increases exports. And the end result, we're gonna lose some, out the back door to, Brazil, and it's hard for me to believe that we won't have an effect of that massive supply, for for quite a mile.

That does not mean they can't run another $50.60, 80¢ higher because the funds don't, sometimes, you know, factor in the fundamentals like that. But in the end, I think the massive crop in Brazil is is something that's gonna hang over the market for a while.

Todd Gleason: And Greg Johnson. Well, every year,

Greg Johnson: we have a series of factors and unknown factors, and throughout the course of the year, the knowns, the unknowns become known. I think this year we have a lot more unknowns than what I can ever remember in a long time. And so more unknowns means more price volatility. I think we'll have a wider range of bean prices this year. Normally, have $1.8 swing from high to low.

That's the average. I think we'll see $2 plus from high to low this year. Some of the known factors is Brazil. Everybody's mentioned that. Joanna's mentioned that.

Chip's mentioned that. They grow 6,500,000,000 bushels. Just for comparison, The US is number two at 4.3 and Argentina's a distant third at 1.3. So Brazil is here for the long run. Here's the other thing that hasn't been mentioned.

Agriculture accounts for 5.5% of The US GDP. Agriculture accounts for 30% of Brazil's GDP. They're they are very, very, committed to agriculture in Brazil. I don't see that changing.

Todd Gleason: That's Greg Johnson. He's with TGM. Totalgrainmarketing.com, was joined on stage during the all day outlook Tuesday, March 3 at the Beef House in Covington, Indiana by Chip Nellinger of Blue Reef Agrimarketing and Ellen Deirden of Ag Review. If you can stay with us for the rest of the hour, you'll hear all of that program. If not, it's up online right now at willag.org.

That's willag.org. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleeson or Commodity Week in a moment on our home station. Otherwise, many of these radio stations will carry it over the weekend.