cmr261030

The October 30, 2026, broadcast of the *Closing Market Report* features host Todd Gleason discussing agricultural market dynamics and global weather impacts with industry experts. Mike Zuzolo of Global Commodity Analytics and Consulting analyzes how geopolitical tensions in the Black Sea and Middle East, combined with evolving U.S. biofuels policies, are influencing wheat, crude oil, corn, and soybean prices. Meteorologist Eric Snodgrass of Nutrien Ag Solutions then details the effects of an early polar vortex split on Midwest fall weather, noting a brief period of mild temperatures before a cold front, and evaluates delayed planting conditions and dry weather risks in Brazil's agricultural regions.

01:34 Ag Markets with Mike Zuzolo, Global Commodity Analytics and Consulting
12:21 Ag Weather with Eric Snodgrass, Nutrien Ag Solutions

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Todd Gleason: From the Land Grant University in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, this is the Closing Market Report for this, the 30th day of October, 2026. I’m extension’s Todd Gleason. Coming up, we’ll talk about the commodity markets with Mike Zuzolo; he’s with GlobalCommodityResearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas. And Eric Snodgrass will be here from Nutrien Ag Solutions and Agrible to discuss the weather forecast. If you can stay with us for the whole hour on our home station, you’ll hear all of our commodity week program with Shane Holtorf at Logic Ag Marketing and Garrett Toy of AgTraderTalk.com. If not, the whole program is up online right now at willag.org, and many of these radio stations will carry it over the weekend.

Todd Gleason: December corn for the day settled at $4.47 and three-quarters, three and a half lower. The March at $4.61, down three and three-quarters, and May four lower at $4.69. November beans, $12.22 and a quarter, up two and a half cents. January, $12.34 and a quarter, a half lower, and the March beans $12.43 and three-quarters, a quarter of a cent higher for the day. Bean meal futures down $4.70 at $324.60. The bean oil, 26 cents higher at $65.90. Wheat futures, soft red down a quarter at $6.03 and a half for the December contract. The hard red December at $6.44 and a quarter. It finished a penny lower on this Friday afternoon. You’re listening to the Closing Market Report; it comes to you from Illinois Public Media.

Ag Markets with Mike Zuzolo, Global Commodity Analytics and Consulting

Todd Gleason: Mike Zuzolo, GlobalCommodityResearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas, now joins us to take a look at the marketplace on this Friday afternoon. Hi, Mike. Happy Halloween to you.

Mike Zuzolo: You the same to you, Todd. Are you dressing up as a piece of corn?

Todd Gleason: No, I’m going to go as a farm broadcaster this year, I think. Are you going as a broker?

Mike Zuzolo: Yes, I’m going as a broke broker. There you go. That happens.

Todd Gleason: Okay. Now, let’s talk about the marketplace. I think going into the election, one of the most interesting things is what happens post-election, and how things progress actually in not only Iran, where things could get hairy really quickly, but also in the Black Sea. Have you been thinking through this process?

Mike Zuzolo: Yeah, and I have been ever since we sat down at the NAFB conference last November. And so we’re literally almost a year away now from when we started talking about the wheat relationship with the crude oil relationship, and that got refined and better defined because of the biofuels policy of President Trump’s administration after February and after the tariffs were put in place. And I think it’s still very much, if not, that is the key to how we finish out 2026 and how we go into 2027. And you bring up a huge point because we are probably going to have to interject and fuse together the post-election reaction. My sense right now is that the market has not priced in any conclusion to who’s going to win the Senate, and that that’s going to make or break whether the dollar becomes a safe haven and gets bought again, and whether the bond yields return and go higher, and pressure that risk management mindset, that risk mindset that we’ve talked a lot about. Because historically, when the balance of power shifts, especially in this case I think with President Trump who has wanted a weaker dollar through the tariffs and through monetary policy, that may reverse itself. So my sense is the Senate is going to be the deciding factor. We got great inflation numbers this week, we got a great reaction to the Federal Reserve standing pat, in that the dollar went down towards its monthly low. The bond yields, the 10-year bond yields, Treasuries went down and closed below 5% Friday. So that’s kind of the setup on the macro environment.

Todd Gleason: Okay, so I’m going to do a quick commercial, but it has to do with wheat and the biofuels policy, so I think you’ll be okay with this. Because the Illinois Farm Economics Summits, the ag economists going on the road in December, the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th across the state. And biofuels policy, 45Z, will be on the ticket on that day. You can find out all the details online, farmdocdaily.illinois.edu. I’ll tell you more later in this broadcast as well. 45Z, an important function that you mentioned in your opening comments about the biofuels policy that has come forth from the Trump administration. How does it impact corn, soybeans, probably wheat as well? How do you play that all out?

Mike Zuzolo: Well, the problem with 45Z right now is that we’re kind of back in second gear if you ask me. Some of the research that has been done, and I have not double-checked it or cross-checked it, but they’re great professional researchers and obviously U of I being one of them, it seems like it’s a little bit more convoluted as to what you can call the biofuel to be able to get the 100% exemption on. And I think that might be a big discussion this winter, and that might be a major sticking point to who is in charge in Washington in terms of Congress. And whether the farm bill gets through, and whether this EPA decision gets pushed back, and so on and so forth. Not to sway anybody obviously, but this is a big policy year and it has been. And I think it’s very important. Outside of that, though, Todd, is that we have not resolved the issue of, in the month of October, crude oil moving from $91 to $110.50 last week. That’s a 21% gain in the month of October. Soft red wheat, exact opposite direction, 9% loss going from the $6.83, $6.90 area down to $6.21 this week in the lead month futures. I see the fundamentals as almost identical between the Black Sea and the Middle East in terms of the real-time fundamentals. But in the month of October, one big thing happened: the Russians and the Ukrainians said they’re going to talk peace in terms of a grain corridor in November. And then that was followed up with Russia this week saying they’re going to let some wheat go through the Sea of Azov entering the Black Sea, but with a naval convoy behind it. So my opinion is pretty strong at this point. These two features and factors need to come back together. Again, I think that the Black Sea grain corridor is priced in, whereas with the crude oil, the market realized that this supply issue is still very, very constrained, especially on the Russian refinery side of the equation, especially on the Middle East refinery situation. But I could also argue, look, we had five grain ships reportedly sunk off the coast of Romania this month of October, and we’re still talking about Ukraine potentially coming in and having to not harvest fields in certain provinces because they’re running out of supplies. So you can say on paper that they have this production and they have these exportable supplies, but do they really have them for the market? And I think maybe November is the month the end-user has to make a decision.

Todd Gleason: Okay, so you’re suggesting then that both oil and grain supplies, Black Sea and Iran as well, are tight, or are you suggesting in part that wheat particularly would be coming out of the Black Sea and not as tight?

Mike Zuzolo: Yeah, I’ll thread the needle. I think either the energies need to come down and meet the wheat, or vice versa, because the supply side is increasing in the Strait of Hormuz on the crude oil side, but not on the refined products. And that diesel-soybean oil relationship needs to come back together in my opinion, especially with Ukraine on Friday morning hitting, for the first time in probably two weeks I guess, the first Russian refinery again with the drone strikes. So I think also put into this, I’m going to wedge into it the idea that why would China come in and inquire, based upon the Bloomberg report Thursday, about US soft red wheat? I think that’s an end-user, and I think there’s a lot of Asian end-users probably looking for wheat and corn at this stage. And so I think in 30 days, we’ll have a pretty good idea of whether the wheat goes up and the corn especially, and gets closer to the EU price of $8.75 a bushel where we closed essentially this week, or we see the energy pull back with some of the other commodities like gold and silver on Friday.

Todd Gleason: You mentioned the crude oil-soybean oil relationship. Soybean oil appears that it is wanting to come back up. Is that what you’re thinking?

Mike Zuzolo: Yeah, I think so. And I think a big thing happened technically this week: we went through the $65.50 level. That was the support levels for the last four or five months on that lead month soybean oil trade, and we saw that $65.50 go, ran stops, but then we jumped right back up above it. I thought that was a pretty nice feature on the technicals. I would also say the meal market is in play. It’s looking wobbly at this point technically, but I could offset that with only one contract of November deliveries when we started deliveries Thursday night. So light deliveries I really like, because those deliveries are a seller’s option. That means the seller doesn’t see the price as worthy of going to and letting it go; that the Chicago price is too cheap, in other words.

Todd Gleason: Any final word from you today?

Mike Zuzolo: Yeah, a big thing for me on the wheat market is the hard red wheat and the acreage base, and the idea that we’re going to get a big bunch of acres out of the wheat. I don’t see it, just because I don’t think we’ve gotten enough rains in some areas and too much rains in others. So that’s something else to be watching the next week or so.

Todd Gleason: Hey, thank you much, Mike.

Mike Zuzolo: Thank you, sir.

Todd Gleason: That’s Mike Zuzolo. He’s with GlobalCommodityResearch.com out of Atchison, Kansas.

Todd Gleason: You’re listening to the Closing Market Report from Illinois Public Media on this Friday afternoon. Our theme music is written, performed, produced, and courtesy of Logan County, Illinois farmer Tim Gleason.

Todd Gleason: You know, this year’s series of IFES meetings—that’s the Illinois Farm Economics Summits—are coming up in the month of December. During that, the farmdoc team will update those in attendance on the current state of the Midwest farm economy and discuss the challenges and opportunities currently facing producers. Now, despite improved pricing prospects, producers continue to operate in a challenging environment with tight margins. Production costs have continued to rise and remain subject to uncertainty and volatility. That’s due to ongoing geopolitical developments. At the same time, changes to biofuels and 45Z tax policies may create market opportunities for grains and oilseeds produced in ways that allow biofuels producers to qualify for low-carbon fuel tax credits. The farmdoc team will try to delve into all of that and explain it in a half-day event across the state in December. On the 14th, we’ll be in Mount Vernon. In Sherman, near Springfield, on the 15th, that’s a Tuesday. Peoria, actually East Peoria at the Par-A-Dice Hotel on the 16th, on Wednesday. And we’ll wrap things up on Thursday, December the 17th, in DeKalb at the Farm Bureau building there in Sycamore. You can join us too; visit our website, farmdocdaily.illinois.edu, and look for IFES under events, or scroll down to the calendar at willag.org. Don’t wait; register today for the Illinois Farm Economics Summits coming up in the month of December.

Ag Weather with Eric Snodgrass, Nutrien Ag Solutions

Todd Gleason: Let’s turn our attention now to the climate and weather across the planet and the growing regions. Eric Snodgrass is here; he’s with Nutrien Ag Solutions and Agrible. Hi, Eric, thanks for being with us again.

Eric Snodgrass: Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Todd Gleason: Where do you want to start today?

Eric Snodgrass: Well, I think the big news story that’s just running rampant on social media is all about this polar vortex split, right? So, you know, we’re coming off this really hot October. It’s one of the warmest on record, and our records go back to late 1890s, so that’s impressive to think about that. And just to keep these 70s and even 80-degree temperatures around, and I mean, shoot, Halloween’s going to be mild for us, and so it’s something else. Well, happening way up, you know, around the North Pole as we lose daylight hours and it cools off naturally just without the exposure to the sun, well, we developed the polar vortex. It happens every single year. But what’s odd about what’s going on right now is there’s a lot of warmth in the Pacific, right? We’ve talked a lot about El Niño. Well, it seems to be linking up with the fact that we’re perturbing the polar vortex early. Now, if everyone listening has not followed what any of this means, this is it in a nutshell: strong polar vortexes keep a lot of cold air over the Arctic. They don’t let it spill out. When you perturb them or make them weaker, they have the ability to let that cold air out, but it has to be timed and co-located with a good reservoir of cold air that can move across the country. And we don’t have that. So yes, is the polar vortex splitting right now? Absolutely. Is it early? Earliest on record, it’s a pretty amazing event. What does it mean? Nothing. And that’s what’s kind of interesting. If it was January and I was bringing this up, man, we would have nothing else to talk about other than the big Arctic outbreak that’s going to follow. But it’s October when this is happening; the polar vortex is not fully established yet, folks are really having a discussion. So, Todd, if I string this all together, you know, this is what it means: we’re going to finish this month mild. We’re going to get into early November, there’s going to be a cold front that comes through mid-week next week after the election day, and it’s going to cool us off. But nothing like we can get cooled off for this time of year, and there’s no deep reservoir of cold air sitting over Canada that any of the things we’ve talked about can shove that down into the central part of the United States. So, we’ll likely start off, you know, in November without major, major disruptions in temperature. And that’s good and that’s bad. It’s good because we don’t want the shock factor. It’s bad because we need the soil temperatures to back down a little bit, and we may not see them getting below 50 consistently until after November 6th or 7th.

Todd Gleason: Interesting, so we’ll have to wait for the anhydrous ammonia applications at least until then. Let’s start with Saturday night because it is Halloween, and I’m looking at rainfall, mostly worried about cold temperatures and rainfall for that. And then really what rainfall might look like across the next week or so.

Eric Snodgrass: Yeah, so we’ve been relatively dry, right? We’ve had this nice open window to get a lot of harvest done, and things have moved along pretty well. And honestly, that was not well forecasted by me when I was trying to predict October back in September. I thought we’d see tighter windows, and we didn’t. So I gotta confess, Todd, we missed that, but I think no one’s going to be upset on that miss. Now, we do have the chance, there is a chance around here, central Illinois, there’s a chance for light rain on Halloween. I don’t think it’s going to be widespread, I don’t think it’s something that we’re going to have to worry too much about. The real chance is going to come next week, though. We’ve got a big low that’s going to come through the Rockies, southern Rockies, that’s going to eject into the Plains, get to us, you know, around election day, so Tuesday into Wednesday, it’s going to drag a front through us and then knock the temperatures back as we mentioned a few moments ago. Pinning down rainfall amounts right now, I’ll just tell you this: there’s about an 80% chance that we grab an inch. Okay, so it’s not like a slam dunk, super heavy rains; it’s all dependent on the speed of this system. But once it goes through, we get back into cooler, drier air from the north for a little while beyond that. So yeah, that’s what our next seven days looks like.

Todd Gleason: Cooler, drier by what kinds of temperatures do you mean on the following week then?

Eric Snodgrass: Yeah, that’s important you ask that, Todd. I’m saying cooler and drier by the standards we’ve been used to for the last couple of weeks. So no more of these 70s and 80s, we’re going to go back into more typical fall weather. Overnight lows will likely brush down there close to freezing, and then we’ll see daytime highs probably struggling to get out of the 50s, rather than poking their head up way up there in the 70s and 80s.

Todd Gleason: That is November, so that is perfectly fine. What’s of interest to you out of Brazil?

Eric Snodgrass: Yeah, now this is interesting. So last week, this week excuse me, on Tuesday I got to meet with a group of 12 Brazilian… well, I wouldn’t want to call them growers, these are like, honestly, they were pretty big land owners. So they have people at home right now planting and doing all their stuff, and they were on a trip to the US. I got to spend quite a bit of time with them, Todd, so here’s what I learned, okay? Now, first thing is, I’m going to talk politics just so, just because we can. They love Trump, and you can fill in the blank as to why, it doesn’t matter, but they love Trump. They were pretty upset about the election of Lula. Primary reason is around the economy, and the big idea with them is that interest rates are 15 to 20%, so it’s hard to borrow money. So they were saying like, a lot of these big guys are buying up the small guys right now because they can’t afford to farm. Next question I asked them, I said, tell me about acreage. They said our problem this year is acreage is flat. We don’t have the capital to invest in the new acreage, so they said, unlike the last 15 to 20 years where they’ve expanded three to four percent, they said it’s flat to a half percent. Optimism on the start of the crop is very good, though. They said we got rain, and it rained, we planted fast; in fact, later today, Todd, we’ll get those new numbers out. They may be 90 to 95% done in the north. They said there are delays in the south where it’s been too wet. Biggest thing I showed them, I said the Amazon is dry right now, and I said you haven’t even fully seen the monsoon setup. I’m concerned about mid-summer, so that’d be December and January for them. I said I’m concerned about mid-summer stretches of dry weather. And they cannot handle that when their temperatures are up there in the high 30s, maybe even low 40s Celsius, that’s upper 90s, lower 100s, and that tends to peel back on their yield potential right around grain fill. So we’re talking January and even early February. So I told them, there’s some built-in risk with this forecast because the Amazon is not wet, I mean, we’ve got a deficit of rainfall in that area. So the other big concern is they’re delayed south; it’s been too cool and too wet to the south, and so I would just say, they’re not exactly firing on all cylinders, even though their optimism is high. So very interesting discussion with those guys, and you and I are going to have a lot to talk about with Brazilian weather in the next few months.

Todd Gleason: Indeed. Hey, thank you much, I appreciate it. We’ll talk with you again soon enough.

Eric Snodgrass: Yeah, thank you.

Todd Gleason: Eric Snodgrass is with Nutrien Ag Solutions and Agrible. Joined us on this Friday edition of the Closing Market Report that came to you from Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world, online on demand at willag.org. That’s w-i-l-l-a-g dot o-r-g.