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 Matt Bennett. He's at agmarket dot net, and then we'll turn our attention to crop residue, particularly the breakdown of corn trash and how it can be effectively managed.

Connor was on an Illinois Saving Association webinar earlier in the week. We'll give you directions to that YouTube so you can check it out too. And then as we turn our attention to the end of the program, we'll talk about the weather forecast with Mike Tanoram. He's at tstormweather@tstorm.net online, and we'll do all of that on this Thursday edition of the closing market report from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world online on demand at willag.org.

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

Todd Gleason: We'll make corn for the day at $4.62 and a half. That finished 2 and a quarter cents higher. July at $4.74 up to December contract, $4.88 and a half, a penny higher. And the May soybeans today, $12.27 and a quarter, up 13 and a quarter cents. July futures, $12.40, twelve and three quarters higher.

And November beans, $11.67 and a half, four and a quarter higher. Bean meal futures up $4.80. Bean oil, 26¢ higher. Wheat futures, soft red, 07/06/2009 and a half, up three and three quarters in the hard red July at $6.26 and a half. It finished unchanged on the afternoon.

Crude oil at $95.43 a barrel, $8.23 higher. Gasoline on the wholesale price at $2.91 and 3 tenths of a cent per gallon, up 15 and 8 tenths of a cent. Live cattle futures, a buck 30 higher. Feeder cattle, down 30¢ on the dame. And the lean hogs, 85¢ lower at $94.35.

Well, I'm at the iHotel again today. This is the third time this week today for an extension agriculture and agribusiness meeting. We'll hear from Connor Sibel, by the way. As you already know, he's at this meeting as well a bit later in our program, but let's do turn our attention to the marketplace. Matt Bennett is here from agmarket.net.

Now, hi, Matt. Thanks for being with us today.

Matt Bennett: Yeah, absolutely. For having me.

Todd Gleason: It's an interesting day. There were some problems in the Strait Of Hormuz, some ships that were attacked by Iran, and that sent the crude oil higher overnight and into the day trade. Some of the marketplace followed along. Tell me about it.

Matt Bennett: Yeah. I mean, as we speak, you know, crude oil, about $8. And so, you know, what you saw was corn really raised higher. I mean, at one time, we were trading 8 to 9¢ higher, especially on old crop. You know, we we had a fair amount of strength there.

You took corn all the way back up to four ninety five and three quarters. And so a high the other night on Sunday was four ninety eight and a half. And so, you know, we kinda went back up to some of those levels. I know we saw earlier in the week tested, or come close to testing them and then kinda fell back. Beans held together better than corn, while beans settled well off their highs, about 13 off the highs.

You still had double digit gains on front months. You know? Look at the deferreds, You know? And November beans went up to $11.74 and closed at $11.65. So, you know, pretty good price levels, though, you know, compared to three, four weeks ago.

You know, these are prices none of us really thought were gonna happen. So, you know, yeah, you fell off the board somewhat, but we're still looking at awfully good prices.

Todd Gleason: Why do you suppose soybeans managed to hold better than corn today?

Matt Bennett: I just think there's a fair amount of optimism, of course, with the, you know, renewable, fuels legislation, first of all. Second of all, Brazil, being in a position right now where they've kinda halted, what they're putting out on the market for China anyway because they've had some quality concern issues. And so yesterday, that story kinda hit. A lot of people didn't know if there was a lot of authenticity to it, but it sure seems like there could be a pause there. Now China's bought a ton of beans off Brazil recently.

But at the same time, you know, there's still some question marks as to, you know, how soon are they gonna be able to resume to where both Brazil and China feels good about what's going on there.

Todd Gleason: Cargill making that announcement as well. So it does seem like there is some legs under the idea that something is put there, and there may not be as many beans traveling towards China. I suspect that'll be fixed fairly quickly. When producers call you, are they saying, have I sold enough, and should I sell more, or are they still waiting?

Matt Bennett: Yeah. I think it's a variety of things. You know, you're hearing from producers that say, hey. I sold some corn at $4.50 or at $11. You know, I feel like maybe I shouldn't go ahead and sell more.

Now in most cases, those, guys and gals didn't get over, you know, overly hedged at those levels. So rewarding the market in increments is something we've kind of encouraged them to look at as long as they're in a profitable position, you know, basis their APH. And so, know, I think there's a lot of angst and uncertainty as to how much could this thing go higher. You know, people wanna maybe consider, having a hedge and then kinda covering that hedge. But, you know, this option volatility is just blown up.

So these options have gotten very expensive. It's a little harder to buy that and then have some sort of a call, just in case the market continues higher. So, you know, I do think people get a little more concerned, a little uneasy as the market goes up. But what in my opinion, we need to do is be looking at it as, you know, a gift of a rally that we can at least latch on to a portion of it, have some good sales in place. If it goes on up, we'll have more to sell.

Todd Gleason: Yeah. For soybeans?

Matt Bennett: Yeah. I mean, same type of thing, Todd. I mean, you know, whenever you look at eleven sixty five beans, especially, like, right here in Central Illinois, you know, we're in a position where, you know, we can make pretty good money just at normal type of yields. And so, in my opinion, something we need to be looking closely at, again, in increments. You know?

But at same time, if someone says I can make money at, you know, ten fifty beans and we're sitting here at eleven fifty, you know, maybe it's something they need to take a shot at getting a little more aggressive, especially if they've got insured bushels, you know, basis their, you know, crop insurance program.

Todd Gleason: Well, let's turn your attention to production directly. I'm wondering whether the rainfall that we've had recently in your part of the world has brought your soils back to the point where you're happy with them and the moisture levels that they have at this time. And then what are you hearing from farmers across the Midwest?

Matt Bennett: Yeah. I mean, there's no doubt in our area, you know, we've had a solid four to five inches most places we've farmed. You know, we were running about 14 inches behind over the last twelve months. And so, you know, clearly, you know, it's been nice to see these rains for the most part come fairly slowly, giving us a chance to maybe get some of that to soak in. I feel really good about having good seed beds this spring.

I I would assume that, you know, our subsoil still is maybe not quite where we'd want it to be, but I've gotta think we're in way better shape than we were just a month ago. And then you talk to producers in some areas, even of Illinois, that have missed out on the bigger rains, and there's no doubt that there's a lot of angst there. You get farther west, and some folks are super dry. And so I think there's still a lot of uncertainty and concern, you know, as you flip from this La Nina, the neutral insole that they're talking about. You know, there's no doubt that if you get into an El Nino, there's a chance we could see a much more active rainfall pattern later in the summer.

If that's the case and we can spoon feed this crop, feel pretty good about it.

Todd Gleason: Anything else before I let you go for the day?

Matt Bennett: No. I think we're in good shape. You know? I think we just need to respect the rally, maybe reward it in small increments, and I hope we can see it continue.

Todd Gleason: Hey. Thank you much, and I appreciate it.

Matt Bennett: Absolutely. Thank you.

Todd Gleason: That is Matt Bennett. He is with agmarket.net. Now you can hear Matt again on today's Commodity Week recording. Actually, it was recorded during the All Day Ag Outlook. That was on the March.

Matt and the rest of the group said not so much difference. I will say that Matt's numbers there, particularly on the options, have changed a lot, as you already heard. So keep that in mind. I'll remind you that along the way when you're listening to the program, but it is a really, really good solid forty minutes. Commodity week is our weekly look at what's happened in the world of agriculture.

You can hear it tomorrow right here on our home station. Many of these radio stations will carry it over the weekend, and it's up online after 06:00 this evening at willag.org. Earlier this week, Connor Sybil was on a webinar that the soybean association put together. However, it looked a lot at corn because there's an awful lot of residue that gets in the way of soybeans coming up. Those who are no tillers will know very well that soybeans, you know, they do great, but they're kinda slow and they look pretty sloppy for the first month or so in no till.

Residue management in corn is an issue across the board. This is something you discuss during that webinar. We'll talk about where you can find it a bit later as a YouTube video, but I wanna know what you told producers in this webinar about it on Tuesday.

Connor Sible: Yeah. So residue management is an interesting topic. We're hearing a lot about it, And it makes a lot of sense because it doesn't matter what type of rotation you're in or what type of tillage system. If you're no till, conventional till, cover crops, all of the above, you're dealing with residue in some way or form. Cover crop no till is more obvious, but higher yields.

You know, my favorite fun fact these days is every bushel of corn you produce sends 44 pounds of dry matter out the back end of the combine, and that's like a straw bale. It doesn't seem like much, does it? But if your yields are up 10 bushels, that's four forty more pounds of residue. If the yields in the last decade on your farm are up 20 bushels, you're talking almost 1,000 pounds of residue per acre. And have we thought about managing it that way?

So that's kind of what we went through is how do we then manage the residue in the different types of systems that I mentioned.

Todd Gleason: Okay. So let's go through the systems. Start with conventional tillage. How would you tell producers to manage the residue?

Connor Sible: Yep. So tillage is probably the best way to get residue to break down because it puts the residues in the soils where the microbes are. But beyond that, especially when we look at these high, high yields, two fifty plus yields on corn side, even tillage leaves residues out on the surface. So what other opportunities might we look at? We start to think about maybe a nutritional basis.

We sometimes refer that as the chemical in air quotes there, something like nitrogen and sulfur to help the microbes break the residue down. Just a little bit out in the fall, we're looking ammonium sulfate as an example as a residue seasoning. So we'd like to say for the microbes to better break them down because they want to break that cornstalk down, but it's not very palatable, not very digestible. Can we make it a little more easier for them to do their job? So ammonium sulfate.

Todd Gleason: Tillage, fairly easy to understand. The ammonium sulfate in the fall seems like an interesting concept, though it gets cold. Does it continue to work in the colder conditions? And how do you go about making these applications and making sure that when you put this down, that it might work? Is it cost effective?

Connor Sible: Great question on that. And with that ammonium sulfate, we are seeing cost effective. We've been doing about a £200 rate on the high end. We think you can go down even in that 75 to 100 pound rate. That's getting us somewhere around that 20 pound sulfur.

The idea of this is c to n ratio, and we know that corn stalks have a high c to n ratio, not palatable for microbes. Putting a little bit of that ammonium sulfate out there, again, it's not fertilizing the crop, it's fertilizing the microbes to go after the residues, it's just giving a little bit of nitrogen and that sulfur. We talk C to N ratios, we don't talk C to S ratios very much, but they're significantly higher, upwards of three fifty to one in some cases. What that means is there's a lot of carbon, a little bit of sulfur, it's harder for the microbes to break it down. If we give them some of that, it makes it easier for them to break down those residues, and that's what we're looking at.

The soil is also pretty good at holding on to sulfur. There's been questions about sulfate and the leaching, so new data coming out with anion exchange capacity of soils being higher. We are not necessarily seeing that sulfur loss, Sometimes we're seeing it residual one or two years even later. So it's sticking around and helping the microbes break the residues down. What's the application process?

So we're starting with keeping it simple. Probably goes out with your fall P and K in a dry broadcast spread. Try not to add another pass to the field. Can we do something that we're already likely to be doing and add it to that pass?

Todd Gleason: Is there a temperature variation that you should not apply after?

Connor Sible: That's a good question and one maybe we don't have an exact answer on. We do know when we get below freezing, all microbial activity starts to go down. So whether you give them resources or not, maybe they're not gonna be very active on that. However, when the soil temperatures go down, we also know we're not as active on that nitrogen, that sulfur movement, so it's probably gonna stick around. And when things warm up in the spring, it's there ready to go.

So we're not too temperature dependent today.

Todd Gleason: Good for no till and conventional tillage, I suppose, particularly if you're not doing fall tillage.

Connor Sible: Yeah. We've done it in both tilled and no till systems, and we're seeing positive benefits. Back to your original question on the economics, it has been breakeven to positive. We have not necessarily had data come back yet where we've lost money on that additional fertility cost. Tell me about the biologicals.

Yep. So then the next thing is when you say, know, talking to folks, Connor, I'm doing the mechanical, I'm doing the chemical, what's maybe next? We hear about this biological space. It's probably the area of biological products seeing the biggest surge right now, residue management. These are living microbial products that we spray typically in a no till system with the fall burn down on the residues to try and get them to break down faster.

The idea is the microbes in our soils break down residues. But if you're in no till systems, where are the residues on top of the soil, and if you're not incorporating them, maybe putting the microbes directly onto those residues is a solution. These are things we are looking at. Still a lot we have yet to uncover. What our data does show is that that nitrogen sulfur component or the mechanical, whether you're tilling or sizing it with a combine chopper, those are the best returns, the most consistent returns.

When we get to the biologicals, they tend to perform better when we're already doing something like a mechanical or a nutritional basis on residue. So that would be a good recommendation. It's the next thing to do not to use it to try and maybe replace some of the more basic ergonomic principles we're familiar with.

Todd Gleason: This was one topic you covered during the webinar for the Illinois Soybean Association. Just what were the other topics and maybe if you know what I should put

Connor Sible: in the search engine to find this on YouTube would be. So we certainly think about residue management. Here we talked about the opportunities and practices, but then there's the why. Why should we be thinking about the residue? Residue accumulation can interfere with the planner, can overwinter disease, and then we talked about nutritional value.

Do you want to know how much nutrition is in that corn stalks or in that cover crop, those topics were covered on there as well.

Todd Gleason: And how do we find this YouTube? Do you know?

Connor Sible: I believe it's on the field adviser forums, whether that's their YouTube channel or directly on their website, it should be posted there as well.

Todd Gleason: Thank you much, Conor. Thank you. Conor Sybil is in crop physiology. He is a crop scientist here on the Urbana Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. Let's turn our attention now to the global growing regions.

Mike Tenure is here. He's from T Storm Weather, president and CEO there in Naperville, Illinois at tstorm.net online. Hi, Mike. Thanks for being with us. A lot of area to cover today.

Let's start in Argentina with the soybean crop. Tell me about it, please.

Mike Tannura: Well they're pretty dry from limited rainfall over the last one to two months. They do have a pretty decent rain event on the way this weekend and early next week. An upper level system is going to produce one to two inches in most of those areas. We think that the dryness story will diminish a little bit through next week but it's probably not going to be enough to turn what's a normal or a below normal sized crop into a bumper crop. But still some good rains that crop is still sensitive and this is still going to be a beneficial event.

Todd Gleason: Does that dryness spread into Southern Brazil maybe Paraguay?

Mike Tannura: It certainly does. Rio Grande do Sul and Paraguay have not received very much rain over the last one to two months and they are an area that needs rain as well. Soybeans in those locations are planted later than the rest of Brazil and that's why even though most of Brazil is harvesting away as we speak these southern areas are not and they don't have very much rain in the forecast. The stubborn surface level high is located nearby and that's not going to move and because of that we think that filling soybeans in both Paraguay and Rio Grande do Sul, which accounts for about 15% of Brazil's production, They're going to stay pretty dry all the way through the middle of the month and probably into the end of the month so not the best story for a close for them.

Todd Gleason: Does this dryness have much of an impact do you suppose on second crop corn which is in the planting progress at this point?

Mike Tannura: Well, it would if corn was planted that far to the South, but second crop corn only extends as far south as Parana and then everything to the North is from there. And Parana is on kind of the edge here of the dryness. They aren't going to receive very much rain over the next couple of weeks either but they're also planting as you noted so it's not so much of a concern there though they would benefit from a little more rain because about 75% of the crop is already planted and they're going to be finishing that up over the next one to two weeks. It's a totally different story though as you move North of Paranaum and that's where about 75 to maybe even 80% of the corn is produced. That area has been receiving a lot of rain lately and it's going to continue to stay stormy all the way into the end of the month.

They don't start to turn sensitive until April, so this rain, while beneficial for corn that's now coming out of the ground and just getting bigger it's not really super sensitive yet so a lot depends on what happens in April and at this point they're going to move into April with pretty ideal soil moisture.

Todd Gleason: Here in The United States I'd like to explore the winter wheat crop coming out of dormancy. Start with the hard red winter wheat growing regions.

Mike Tannura: Well parts of this region would benefit from rain primarily in Oklahoma and Texas but the rest of the hard red winter wheat belt has been doing okay over the last few months and so we don't have a ton of concern over the recent lack of rain in the plains. The thing that's going to change though as we move forward is that there's not a whole lot of rain in the forecast for Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas over the next two weeks and maybe even into April. So it's a little dry in some of these areas now again especially in Oklahoma and Texas and this story is probably going to become more amplified as we move into the end of the month. Now, all of that being said, you need to keep in mind that the climate of April is much, much wetter than March and that's because the overall weather pattern starts to slow down and that allows passing systems to pull muggier air into the planes. And so right now, we don't have a ton of concern about this.

If it's a month from now and we're telling you the same forecast, that's a problem. But we expect that rain should show up at some point. That's usually what happens, but you just have to kind of keep watching it.

Todd Gleason: I suspect things are different for the soft red winter wheat crop from Missouri through Illinois, Indiana, and parts eastward.

Mike Tannura: Well, is. And it's an interesting difference because they've been in a drought that extends all the way back into late July and August, but all of a sudden over the last ten days we've had a lot of pretty big rains and the drought and the dryness story are coming to an end. There is some more rain on the way for that same area this weekend and even into early next week, maybe a half of an inch or so for soft red winter wheat. That again will just kind of keep things in check here for a while. The soft red winter wheat story, while maybe more anomalous if you look at it over a long period of time, even if you look at it over the short window, which is really what matters to that crop.

It's got some nice rains lately and a little more is hot.

Todd Gleason: Speaking of short windows, anything for the Midwest that we need to discuss as it's related to the weather in the short term?

Mike Tannura: Well, we need to keep an eye on what's happening in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan this weekend. There's a lot of signals that there's going to be a blizzard in parts of these areas with 10 to maybe even 20 inches or more of snow in each of those states. Even though that's maybe not a big deal for overall US agriculture, it certainly is an event to monitor because that would disrupt logistics along Interstate 90 and parts of 94, maybe even parts of I-eighty too because this system is going to be a big one. We'll be watching that over the course of the next few days. Just something to watch, we don't think that will extend much into Illinois and Indiana because they'll be just a little bit too far south except maybe in the far far northern parts of those states.

Todd Gleason: And finally because we've been watching wheat so closely as it relates to what's happening in The Middle East, I'm wondering what that crop looks like there.

Mike Tannura: Well, they've had a lot of rains over the course of the winter, and so we would have to guess that they've probably been looking pretty good to this point in time. There is a couple of major events that are going to happen there over the next week. A big upper level system is going to move directly over The Middle East this weekend and then another one is going to come up around Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday next week. We're looking for some pretty major rain totals across the entire wheat region here extending from Southeast Turkey through Iraq and Iran. Looks like anywhere from two to five inches, maybe even six inches of rain is possible in those wheat areas, and that's well more than three times the normal amount of rain you'd see in a two week period in March.

So this is a major event. There could be some flooding in these areas too, so certainly the weather is going to be playing a role in what's happening out there with the wheat crop and probably with all the other things too.

Todd Gleason: Hey. Thanks much, Mike.

Mike Tannura: Yep. Sounds great, Todd. Talk to you soon.

Todd Gleason: Indeed. That's Mike Tanuri. He is with T Storm Weather. That's t storm dot debt online. Find us online, by the way, at willag.org.

That's willag.org. Remember, we'll have commodity week up on our website there by about 06:00 this evening, and many of these radio stations will carry it over the weekend. Our home station will carry it in full tomorrow afternoon during this hour. I'm extension's Todd Gleason.