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This edition of the Closing Market Report begins with commodity market analysis by Matt Bennett, who discusses recent soybean sales and variable corn yield reports impacting prices. The program then transitions to an agricultural news update covering a potential USDA harvest fuel relief program and ongoing Senate negotiations to pass a farm bill before the year ends. A feature segment by Hope Kirwan explores Sargento's development of a new natural American cheese designed to replicate the melt of processed cheese without using artificial emulsifiers. Finally, Mike Tannura provides a comprehensive agricultural weather forecast detailing wet conditions for hard red winter wheat, dry harvest weather in the eastern Corn Belt, and heavy rains across Brazil and Argentina driven by a strong El Niño.

01:39 Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, AgMarket
07:23 WILLAg News Update
10:40 A New American Slice for your Toasted Cheese
15:34 Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, Tstorm Weather

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Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant University, this is the Closing Market Report. I’m Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason. Coming up, we’ll talk about the commodity markets with Matt Bennett. He’s at AgMarket.net out of Windsor, Illinois. We’ll hear today also about one of my favorite foods, the grilled cheese sandwich, and how a cheese company from Wisconsin is hoping to adapt it to natural cheese cut slices. And then we’ll turn our attention to the weather forecast. As we wrap up, we’ll talk with Mike Tannura. He is with Tstorm Weather out of Naperville, Illinois. 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.

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

Todd Gleason: December corn for the day settled at $4.16 and a half, two and three-quarters lower. The March at $4.70, down three. And May corn at $4.82 and a half, down two and three-quarters of a cent. November beans, $12.53, up seven and three-quarters. January at $12.64 and a half, up six and a half cents. Bean meal futures a dollar lower, the bean oil 77 cents higher. Wheat futures for the soft red down three and a half, and the December at $6.24 and three-quarters. And the hard red at $6.65 and three-quarters, down seven and a quarter.

01:39 Ag Markets with Matt Bennett, AgMarket

Todd Gleason: Matt Bennett from AgMarket now joins us to take a look at the marketplace. Hello, Matt, how are you today?

Matt Bennett: I’m doing well, and you?

Todd Gleason: I’m doing very well. I want to know about what happened in the soybeans. They are managing to finish off the day in the green.

Matt Bennett: Yeah, I mean, soybean sales last week weren’t anything super exciting, but then this week we’re at almost 3 million tons. I mean, just an incredible amount of soybean sales there. Corn sales were solid as well at 1.5 million tons, but soybeans were definitely the star of the show as far as sales go. And I think that it strengthened people’s ideas that this export program could end up being pretty impressive. And so beans kind of bounced, if you will, which after the last couple of weeks, has been pretty much a downhill move. I mean, I think we had seven or eight sessions in a row that were lower. We of course closed higher today, and that was after a little bit of reversal there for corn yesterday, closed a little lower today, but corn also looks like it’s at least trying to make a stand down here.

Todd Gleason: Do you think it can?

Matt Bennett: Yeah, I mean, the thing is, Todd, you hear varying reports on yield. I’ve got to think that you’re going to see a tale of two different crops maybe on this November report. It sure seems to me like beans have nowhere to go but up as far as national yield goes. We’re just hearing a lot of really good yields on corn. We’re hearing a lot of “corn’s not there” type of stories. There are some really good corn in places, particularly in southern Minnesota, northern Iowa, but there’s a whole lot of areas that it’s just not as good. So the thing is, funds have been liquidating, and they don’t really care about yield stories so much. You’ve got harvest pressure kind of spilling in. I think funds are more to blame than harvest pressure because I think a lot of growers, especially after hearing about another $8 billion heading their way, are probably going to be very tight-fisted on bushels. So I’ve got to think moving forward that it’s going to take a little more to pry that corn out of the farmer’s hands. So maybe corn has a chance here to at least stabilize.

Todd Gleason: Clearly, soybeans have a better yield this year. At least that’s what everybody believes, and it seems to be that the combines are telling them that. I know that things are different for corn, but the “corn is not there” and “my corn is really bad” are two different things. I’m cynical a bit as to how off this crop might be from what USDA has in its current WASDE numbers and supply and demand figures. How far down do you think it goes from where it is?

Matt Bennett: Well, we get a lot of yield reports. We heard from a grower today in York County that had a 227 or 228 APH, and had 800 acres of corn this year that went 153. That’s a significant reduction. One of my big growers up along I–80 said, “I know that people felt like northern Illinois would carry the state, and we’re not going to carry anything.” He said they’re 20 to 30 off of last year, farms like 15,000 acres. So I do think that you’re going to see Illinois down for starters. I think Iowa at 219 is too rich. At the same time, I think Minnesota probably goes up. So I’ve got to think that there’s going to be some give and take here and there. How high is the USDA? I feel pretty confident that the final yield will be under 180. November, I don’t know what they give us, maybe half a bushel to a bushel. But if the USDA senses that they’re too high, I don’t think they’re going to do it all in one month by any means. They haven’t been known historically to do that anyway.

Todd Gleason: I should be careful because I know that the immediate area, east central Illinois, certainly has been impacted and the yields here. But sometimes I feel like producers get backyard-itis, me as well when I’m looking out, and I was just thinking about what does this really look like across the whole of the United States. How did Nebraska pull through, do you suppose?

Matt Bennett: The thing about Nebraska, I talked to one of the seed guys in Nebraska I’m close to, and he said the northeastern part of the state looked pretty decent but then had a whole lot of wind. They’ve got a lot of corn on the ground. He is estimating 10 to 15% yield loss. He said the areas that are heavily irrigated, he thinks they’re going to hold their weight pretty well, but otherwise he felt like they got hit by tar spot pretty significantly. So he felt like they were too low in September and too high in October, and that they’d come in somewhere a little closer to September than October. So he kind of feels like Nebraska was a bit rich as well. Decent crop, but definitely not as big as what the USDA suggested.

Todd Gleason: Clearly, if you had been watching the maps for tar spot during the summer that the plant pathologists put out from the Land Grant Universities, that was the center or epicenter of tar spot for the whole of the nation. In fact, Iowa, a little bit of Illinois, Indiana, central Indiana had some, but it sure looked like Nebraska was the roughest place. Anything else before I let you go?

Matt Bennett: No, I just think there’s a lot to be learned. I’ve told you this before and I’ll tell you it again, it’s going to be a long time until we really get a handle on what this final yield is. But I still feel like beans are going to move higher and corn is probably going to edge down just a little bit.

Todd Gleason: Thank you much. I appreciate it.

Matt Bennett: Absolutely. Thank you.

Todd Gleason: That’s Matt Bennett. He is with AgMarket.

07:23 WILLAg News Update

Todd Gleason: In today’s agricultural news, we’ll start with diesel fuel. USDA’s new harvest fuel relief program could push government payments to farmers to a record $55.4 billion in 2026. That’s if the estimated $8 billion in diesel assistance is distributed before year’s end. That would surpass the previous high of $45.6 billion in 2020 and account for nearly one-third of USDA’s projected 2026 net farm income. The program comes as farmers face elevated fuel and fertilizer costs tied in part to the Middle East conflict and related market disruptions. Farm groups have said additional aid is needed to support struggling producers, while some economists question whether increasing government payments is the best long-term solution, as they say those payments are incorporated right back into the input cost. Critics, including the Iowa Farmers Union and advocacy group Farm Action, argue the assistance addresses symptoms rather than underlying economic challenges in agriculture. According to Politico, payments are not expected until late November, possibly early December, leaving questions about their economic and political impact ahead of the 2026 election.

Well, let’s stay in Washington, D.C., where Senate Republicans will press for a last-minute farm bill, even if it has to ride on another bill. Giving the farm bill a legislative vessel could avoid having the key farm measure slip into a new Congress, possibly a different majority. Senate Ag Chair John Thune has a warning. His fear is that Democrats will write a different one if they take the majority in the midterm election. Senate Majority Leader and Ag Committee member John Thune insisted recently that his party will do everything possible to get the job done.

John Thune: One way or the other, we are going to get the rest of this farm bill done. And after this election is over with, we’ll figure out a way or a pathway, an avenue. Perhaps it rides on something else.

Todd Gleason: Ag Committee member Senator Chuck Grassley speculates what that something else could be.

Chuck Grassley: We have a rural health package that we put together at the end of the year. Maybe another one would be there’s a good chance that we could get a permitting bill passed. Maybe another one would be for 66 years in a row, we’ve had a defense authorization bill.

Todd Gleason: That particular bill did not make it through Congress because of the war in Iran, forcing the president to turn again to the CCC for this new farm aid. But Grassley insists a farm bill must get done this year.

Chuck Grassley: It’s necessary because Republicans have been fighting so hard to get reference prices increased by law nationwide year-round, and that’s in that farm bill as well.

Todd Gleason: Senator Chuck Grassley from Iowa and a quick look at today’s agricultural news.

10:40 A New American Slice for your Toasted Cheese

Todd Gleason: You know, it’s that time of year when you might just think to yourself, “Ooh, I need a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup.” That classic grilled cheese remains the best in my opinion made on white bread and with that, oh so gooey American cheese slice. Or, bear with me here, maybe from a natural cut. Hope Kirwan reports from Harvest Public Media.

Hope Kirwan: At Rudy’s Drive-In in La Crosse, Wisconsin, diners can go back to another era. Carhops on roller skates balance frosty mugs of root beer and baskets of food. On the griddle inside is another relic, slices of gooey American cheese melting over burgers.

Justin Smith: It’s just the way it melts. You get the string pull off of it.

Hope Kirwan: Owner Justin Smith says American cheese is a key part of the nostalgia of Rudy’s, and its performance in the kitchen is unmatched.

Justin Smith: We use it on our chili dogs too. Just the way it looks, melts down. It’s perfect.

Hope Kirwan: Processed cheese was once seen as the way of the future, rising to popularity during the age of TV dinners and other convenience items. But in recent years, consumers are moving away from products considered artificial in favor of clean label foods with fewer ingredients. The movement has recently been in the spotlight thanks to the Trump administration’s focus on reducing consumption of ultra-processed foods. Now Wisconsin cheese company Sargento is hoping to capture the best of both worlds by giving nostalgia seekers a real cheese alternative to American cheese. Here’s Rod Hogan, Sargento’s Senior Vice President of Innovation.

Rod Hogan: We really took processed cheese or what people love about processed cheese, the way I think about it, updated it for the way Americans are eating today.

Hope Kirwan: Their new natural American cheese debuted on store shelves across the country last year. And to understand why this product is in a league of its own, processed cheese expert Lloyd Metzger says you have to understand the science behind processed cheese.

Lloyd Metzger: So it’s really literally all about the melt.

Hope Kirwan: At a molecular level, natural cheese is a loose network of proteins with milk’s butter fat trapped inside. But Metzger, who’s a former academic researcher and now works for Valley Queen Cheese in South Dakota, says this fragile protein structure is compromised when the cheese melts.

Lloyd Metzger: So you’ll see, literally butterfat start to come out of it and you’ll see this stringy kind of gloppy mess.

Hope Kirwan: He says processors discovered they could avoid this separation by forcing the milk proteins to latch directly onto the fat. The process involves mixing melted cheese with an emulsifying salt, changing the chemistry of the product altogether.

Lloyd Metzger: So now when you remelt it afterwards, it’s going to be this beautiful smooth, even, velvety melt that you won’t ever get out of natural cheese.

Hope Kirwan: Metzger says what’s exciting about Sargento’s new product is that it forms this protein-fat pairing without using the emulsifying salt or the cooking process. According to John Rogers, Sargento’s Vice President of Research and Development, it took roughly a decade of trial and error to get the science just right. At the company’s technical center in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, he mans a flat-top griddle to demonstrate what he calls the gold standard of American cheese performance, a grilled cheese sandwich.

John Rogers: I think the team here at Sargento has probably made thousands of grilled cheese to get to the point that we’re at with natural American for sure.

Hope Kirwan: He butters slices of bread and adds the natural American. After toasting on each side, along with a few minutes steaming under a lid, it’s ready for me to try. That’s good. That’s a good grilled cheese. The melt is definitely, you can tell the difference. The taste and feel of the creamy, golden center takes me right back to my childhood days of Kraft Singles. Hogan, from Sargento, says that’s the whole point. For years their company has been slowly converting the people who grew up on American cheese to natural. That always meant sacrificing the mild flavor and even melt of processed cheese.

Rod Hogan: So now we want to give that natural cheese user the option to come back into a category that they actually love.

Hope Kirwan: He says their new product is shelved right next to the processed slices, hopefully making it clear to consumers that it’s a new natural take on the beloved classic. I’m Hope Kirwan, Harvest Public Media.

15:34 Ag Weather with Mike Tannura, Tstorm Weather

Todd Gleason: Harvest Public Media is a collaboration of public media newsrooms throughout the Midwest and Great Plains, which report on food systems, environment, and rural life. You are listening to the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media on this Thursday afternoon. Find us online at WILLAg.org. Our theme music is written, performed, produced, and courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer Tim Gleason. Let’s turn our attention now to the growing regions across the planet. Mike Tannura, President and CEO at Tstorm Weather at Tstorm.net online out of Naperville, Illinois, is now here. Mike, we have a lot of ground to cover. Let’s begin with the hard red winter wheat growing regions of the United States. They have been getting a little rain. I think it’s even slowed them down some. Can you tell me about those areas?

Mike Tannura: Well, it certainly slowed them down in parts of Oklahoma and Texas. Some of those areas saw more than five inches of rain last week, so that’s just too much water. But the bigger picture is that it’s been a wet autumn. This is going to go down as one of the wetter autumns on record, and to this point is probably helping out that crop. The bigger story even beyond that is that more rain is on the way. We have a system that will move through this weekend and early next week, and then another one about a week from now. Both of those will produce substantial totals in the plains. And because of that, the hard red winter wheat crop is going to turn quite a bit wetter. Now, some of the highest totals that we’re going to see will be to the west of where those people saw five inches of rain, so we don’t think this will be focused on that area that is saturated. It’ll be more in Colorado and western areas of Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. So in the end, Todd, basically we’re going to head right into November with pretty ideal soil moisture as the winter time approaches.

Todd Gleason: That takes care of hard red. What about soft red across Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, those places?

Mike Tannura: Well, it’s kind of the opposite story there. A lot of those areas have been quite a bit drier than normal, not only over the last couple of weeks but going all the way back into the summer. So you could look at it one of two different ways. If you get a lot of rain, that would be nice because then the wheat crop would get a nice drink. On the other hand, this lack of rain is really helping out with planting, and the mild weather is also helping with establishment. As we move forward, there will be some rain in those areas, but not until about ten days from now. So this dry weather that we’ve been in over the last several days is basically going to continue. It’s unusual to forecast no rain for a big chunk of a crop, but that’s pretty much what we’re in. Upper-level high pressure is centered on the central and eastern U.S., and that system that brings all the rain to the hard red winter wheat crop, well, that will never make it fully across until we get, again, about ten days out, when it’ll start to eat into that upper-level high.

Todd Gleason: What is your assessment of the corn belt at this time?

Mike Tannura: Well, conditions for harvesting are looking pretty good from the lack of rain in recent days, and also from a lack of rain going forward. Pretty much anybody east of the Mississippi River is going to have a wide-open window all the way into late next week, if not beyond then. Once you get to the west of the Mississippi River in parts of Iowa, Minnesota, and Nebraska, they’ll start tapping into some of those rains late this weekend and early next week. So conditions might not be as ideal, but we’re not talking about heavy rain out there. We’re just talking about half of an inch to maybe an inch. And while maybe not ideal for harvesting, that’s not newsworthy.

Todd Gleason: And then turn your attention to South America. Talk about Brazil first.

Mike Tannura: Well, the strong El Niño is certainly driving their weather pattern. They’ve had a lot of rain over the last one to two months, and that weather pattern is going to continue right into November. As long as that jet stream stays aligned overhead, just more and more rain is going to keep on falling. So a big chunk of the corn, soybean, and wheat belts across Brazil have been wetter than normal over the last 15 days, the last 30 days, going back even beyond that. And there is more rain on the way, not only today and tomorrow in those southern growing areas that have been particularly wet, but pretty much everybody is going to tap into this, Todd. So the same story is going to happen for Brazil right into next month, which is just for more rain.

Todd Gleason: This includes the center west and maybe the northeastern states as well. Are they in a different part of the world that makes them drier? I’m thinking of Tocantins, but start with Mato Grosso.

Mike Tannura: Well, they’re all tapping into the same pattern, Todd. I mean, this is what happens sometimes when you get a big, strong El Niño like the one that started in 1982 and also the one that was in 1997. Those both had widespread rains across the entire growing belt, and that’s what we’re seeing right now. We’re seeing rains not only in the south, but also in the center west, like you’re talking about, and also in the north. The north usually doesn’t start getting pretty good rains until we’re a little bit deeper into November, but they saw some nice rains this week. They’ll see more nice rains next week. And this is a widespread phenomenon at this point in time, Todd.

Todd Gleason: And I know the northern parts of Argentina probably are wet too, simply because of their colocation with southern Brazil. Paraguay in the same fashion. Is there really any difference in what you see in that part of the world and further to the south?

Mike Tannura: Well, the big difference as you move further south is how cool it’s been. If you look at Argentina, it’s going to have one of its coolest Octobers, if not the coolest, in more than 50 years of records. So this is an unusual cool snap that they’ve been in. They have one more big cold snap to go through this weekend and early next week, and that’s part of the reason we know this record will happen. So some of this conversation is already built into the weather that we know is coming up. But that wheat crop there in Argentina must be looking pretty good because it’s been cool for a long time. It’s going to stay that way into next month. They’ve had quite a bit of rain as well, so they have pretty much saturated conditions, despite not having too much rain over the last ten days. But there is going to rain today and tomorrow, and that’ll moisten up that crop once again. And it’s just kind of the same story, Todd. Now, it hasn’t been as wet in Argentina, and it doesn’t look as wet going forward, but that cool weather is probably the biggest difference once you get that far south. It’s just been pretty cool, and that’s also what’s keeping that jet stream further to the north, aligned right across Brazil.

Todd Gleason: We’ll check in with you again next week. Thank you much, Mike.

Mike Tannura: Sounds great, Todd. Talk to you then.

Todd Gleason: That’s Mike Tannura. He is with Tstorm Weather at Tstorm.net online. Serves as the president and CEO. You’ve been listening to the Closing Market Report on this Thursday afternoon. It comes to you from Illinois Public Media online on demand at WILLAg.org. I’m Extension’s Todd Gleason.