Grain Markets and Other Stuff
Joe Vaclavik and Mackenzie Johnston discuss the grain markets, the business of farming, news related to agriculture, and a variety of other topics.
Grain Markets and Other Stuff
Rollins Talks More Farm Aid + 24/7 Commodity Trading
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Futures and options trading involves risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone.
Fertilizer prices are climbing, corn futures are rallying, and Kalshi just entered the commodity trading game—here's everything moving ag markets this week.
The Trump administration is weighing support packages for farmers dealing with elevated fertilizer costs, while the DOJ investigates potential price collusion in the sector.
Could Kalshi's new 24/7 corn, soybean, and wheat prediction markets actually shake up the CME? We dig into what that could mean for retail and institutional traders alike.
On the crop side, early planting has been disrupted by heavy Corn Belt rainfall—but USDA data shows both corn and soybeans are still running ahead of the five-year average. May corn settled near $4.51, its highest point in over a week.
Plus, ethanol production hits another seasonal high (up nearly 10% year-over-year).
NOPA's March crush data sets a near record despite missing estimates, soy oil stocks hit a 13-year March high, and the S&P 500 closes above 7,000 for the first time ever.
All that plus E15 legislation updates, Corn Belt weather maps, and ethanol margin charts.
Rollins, Fertilizer Prices, Aid
SPEAKER_01Morning guys, it's Thursday, April 16th, 523 a.m. Central Time. Grain markets are mixed to higher this morning. May corn futures down a half cent at 450 and three quarters. May soybeans down three and a quarter at eleven sixty-three and three-quarters. May Chicago wheat up eight at six oh one and three quarters. May Kansas City wheat up 13 and a quarter at 638 and three-quarters. May Spring wheat up 12 cents at 651 and a half. Brooke Rollins was talking this week. Let's start there.
SPEAKER_00Right. So Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins said the Trump administration is considering support packages to help farmers manage rising fertilizer prices. Rollins expects prices to decline once the Iran war ends. But until then, the administration is working with fertilizer companies to alleviate cost pressures. She also emphasized the need to address consolidation across the fertilizer seed and farm equipment industries, citing its impact on farm profitability. Meanwhile, the DOJ continues to investigate potential price collusion within the fertilizer sector.
SPEAKER_01Another aid package, huh?
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm.
24/7 Commodity Trading
SPEAKER_01Um, I'll tell you what, we talked about that Farm Bureau fertilizer survey yesterday. And I asked people, I said, hey, send me an email or uh comment on YouTube if you have thoughts or just tell me what your situation is. I got a ton of emails, and I'm more confused now about the whole thing than I was before because the responses were so highly variable. There were people that said, Joe, in my neighborhood, we got nothing bought. Nothing, nothing was bought. Guys are in a really tough spot. The finances are bad. Other people said, Hey, you know, I'd say 80 to 90 percent of uh farmers in my neighborhood got fertilizer bought. So it's it's highly variable, and I'm I have less confidence in my opinion of the situation now than I did before. I just I don't really have a clue what's going on. Um, these farm aid packages, I mean, they may be forced to do something because um farmers are in touch such a tough spot now, as really as a direct result of the administration's actions with regard to Iran. So, are they gonna go and uh give more money to farmers? They certainly could. It would be a band-aid on top of a band-aid on top of a band-aid. Inflation is defined as the general rise in price levels of goods and services over time, which means each unit of currency buys less than it did before. In other words, a decrease in purchasing power. Its main cause is an imbalance between money supply and economic output when the amount of money circulating in a farm economy grows faster than the actual production of goods and services. Too much money ends up chasing too few goods, pushing prices up. Um, if they do more farm aid, another aid package, it's just going to keep input prices high as it's done in the past. Uh, this is just like a very vicious circle of aid and inflation and aid and inflation. And I don't know, I don't know how we get off that that wheel. And Brooke Rollins kind of said that when she was on when we did our interview with her several months ago now. Um, she kind of said that. She's like, this is this is tricky to you know kind of thread the needle and try to make sure farmers don't go out of business, but at the same time, like stop this input inflation. It's very, very tricky.
SPEAKER_00Prediction market platform CalShi has launched new agricultural commodity prediction markets. The company now offers contracts for corn, soybeans, and wheat alongside other new markets such as diesel and natural gas. The expansion comes as commodity markets have grown in both both volume and volatility, largely driven by geopolitical uncertainty tied to the Iran war. These new offerings lower barriers to entry, allowing retail traders to participate in commodities that were previously capital intensive. Calci also recently secured approval for margin trading, making the platform more attractive to institutional investors.
Corn Bounce, Planting Disruptions
SPEAKER_01I can't help but wonder if CalShi and other platforms like this are going to disrupt trading at the CME. These uh platforms, Calci, it's gonna be 24-7 uh trading in these commodity contracts. So envision this. It's uh Sunday afternoon in June, and we're watching weather forecasts. And in the past, you had to wonder where's corn going to open Sunday night? And now, maybe it could be this year, maybe next year, maybe it never gains traction, but you could run into a situation where, hey, we'll just look at the Calci contracts and we'll know what's going on. I wonder if CME is going to have to take a step to stay competitive here. Uh, I've talked in the past about how CME could push toward a 24-7 trading type situation. They're already doing so with regard to crypto beginning at the end of May. And uh Terry Duffy, who is the CEO of CME group, said at a recent SEC and CFTC roundtable that markets will soon demand 24-7 trading, with crypto serving as the optimal path forward. So they're gonna start with crypto and do they move into a corn and soybean market that's open 24-7? I mean, I hope not. I think that would be terrible. But um, I mean, I don't want to watch the markets on Sunday morning or Saturday afternoon, but they are a publicly traded company and they're gonna do what they have to do to stay competitive and stay ahead of this thing. They've got that partnership with FanDuel. I wouldn't be surprised if they made a move toward that because they don't they don't want to lose market share. They just don't. Um, I don't I don't love anything about it, but uh I have a feeling that's the way we're gonna be headed.
SPEAKER_00Corn Futures rallied yesterday amid planting disruptions. The May 26th contract gained roughly eight cents to settle near 451 per bushel, marking its highest level in over a week. Although it is still early, rainfall across the corn belt has disrupted early season planting. The precipitation has helped ease drought conditions, though it has become excessive in parts of the Great Lakes region, causing localized flooding. Despite these challenges, the USDA reported on Monday that both corn and soybean planting remain above the five-year average. Soybean and wheat futures also closed higher yesterday.
SPEAKER_01Shout out to Reuters for using the correct word, which is disrupt or disruption, and not the word delay, which has a whole different set of connotations, as we've discussed in the past. Um, are mid-April planting disruptions enough to spark a rally? Historically, the answer is no. However, the speculators that play in these markets now are not the speculators that we had 10, 15, 20 years ago. They're different. Uh Pete Myers talked with us at length about that. So I'm not going to say it's impossible that uh the algorithms get the idea that, hey, you know, look at this rain, look at these forecasts. You know, it's it's wet. Uh maybe there will be some delays ultimately. We're not there yet. We can't use that word yet. Um, the radar is active this morning over parts of the corn belt, Illinois, uh, into Indiana, uh, Arkansas, it's gonna move into Tennessee and um further east. The forecast, there's gonna be some more rain this weekend, the way that it looks over the next seven days. This is some uh GFS ensemble data from our friends at Crop Profit. U.S. corn areas are gonna see only 7474 percent of normal rainfall. However, the central corn belt, like Illinois, eastern Iowa, uh, Indiana, they're gonna be wetter than normal. The west is gonna be drier than normal. There's some conflict in the extended forecast. This 8 to 14 day uh GFS ensemble is calling for above normal rainfall pretty much across the corn belt. Although I was looking at the uh most recent GFS run, and it's a little bit drier for the central corn belt. So I think that there are some things to uh be seen there. Soybeans have acted really well, I think, all things considered. I mean, we've been just consolidating for the most part. We know that speculators have a big net long here. We know that the farmer in the United States is not holding very many old crop soybeans. Um, new crop market has acted good also. Here's Kansas City wheat. We uh could very easily go up and post some fresh highs today. The weather uh forecast for HRW wheat areas in the United States does not really look very good. There's nothing, nothing for these western uh HRW wheat areas on tap and then during the next 10 days, and even the extended stuff looks iffy, and that's why uh Kansas City Wheat Futures are leading the way this morning.
SPEAKER_00If you guys have not checked out our premium content, you sure need to do so. Joe, can you tell our viewers about some of our recent premium videos?
SPEAKER_01Brian Spoke was on the with McKenzie, did some chart stuff yesterday.
SPEAKER_00Cotton, rice, you guys did corn, soybeans, and of course we did corn, soybeans, cattle, um, the whole gambit.
Strong Soybean Crush Report
SPEAKER_01Yeah, if you guys are looking for technical info, Brian's the best in the business, and a lot of times the technical stuff will help you to separate the noise from what's really going on. Um, you guys did cattle, half an hour worth of cattle info, which I can never do in a million years. It was very, very good. Ross is fantastic. Uh, Pete Meyer was on earlier this week, talked about grain marketing. Where would Pete be if he was a farmer? Pete's been a trader and an analyst uh for 40 something years, and his opinions we take very seriously because uh he's been around the block a few times. We are doing a um daily fund tracker in our email every day now, and this is kind of like institutional great info that we're able to sell to you guys. And uh people have been requesting this for us from years from us for years, and we're doing it now. If you guys want to see the premium stuff, go to standardgrain.com. You can sign up this morning. This is a$50 per month subscription. You can cancel at any time. No other fee, no other obligation, nobody will try to sell you anything else. I know you guys are super busy. Uh, you're getting ready to plant. You may be planting. You could sign up on your phone in like 30 seconds. Um, this is actually some great stuff you can listen to or watch uh while you're in the tractor or in the truck or whatever. Um, it's uh super easy to access. Everything's just one click to play the videos on your phone. The emails go straight to your phone. It's all super easily uh read on a mobile device. Give that deal a shot this morning, guys.
SPEAKER_00Uh the national uh, excuse me, NOPA released its March crash data yesterday. The US soybean crush climbed to the second highest level on record as NOPA members processed 226.16 million bushels. The crush was up 8.3% uh compared to February and also up 16% from March 2025. However, last month's crush fell short of the average trade estimate of 229.98 million bushels. End of month, soybean oil stocks fell to 2.04 billion pounds, down 2% from February, but up a whopping 36% compared to last year, marking a 13-year high for the month of March. Stocks came in below the average trade estimate of 2.17 billion pounds.
Ethanol Production
SPEAKER_01We're crushing a ton of soybeans. Look at crush margins, best they've ever been, basically. Um, there is a ton of incentive to crush soybeans at capacity in the United States, and that's exactly what's going on. And this is exactly what we need to offset a reduced export program. So uh, yeah, we're moving in the right direction here.
SPEAKER_00U.S. ethanol production climbed to another seasonal high last week. Weekly output was reported at 1.12 million barrels per day, up slightly compared to the prior week and up 9.7% versus the same week last year. Ethanol stocks rose to 26.7 million barrels. The print was up 2.5% compared to the previous week, but down 1.2% compared to the same week last year. According to Reuters data, U.S. ethanol margins range from 20 cents to 50 cents positive across the corn belt.
RFA and E15
SPEAKER_01Yep, margins are good. That's a very good production number. Uh stocks are much higher than we'd like them to be. USDA might be slightly too high with its corn for ethanol number for this year, but I'm not going to make too many arguments about it. It's not going to be like 100 million bushels. It could be 20 or 30 million, maybe. I don't know. We'll see what happens.
SPEAKER_00The Renewable Fuels Association continues to advocate for year-round nationwide sales of E-15. With Congress back in session after a two-week uh recess, the group believes that now is the time to increase pressure on lawmakers to pass legislation. Nearly two months have passed since the House E-15 Rural Domestic Energy Council's deadline to introduce a bill allowing year-round sales. Uh, the RFA argues that passing the legislation would help lower fuel costs for consumers, especially with gasoline prices near record highs. It would also provide relief to farmers facing significant economic challenges.
Stock Market Records
SPEAKER_01To be clear, they did do another um temporary E-15 deal for this year that runs through May and they'll probably extend it, I think. But what the biofuel lobbies are seeking, what the corn lobby is seeking, is permanent legislation to permanently allow year-round E-15. And they're having a very, very difficult time because the oil lobby is much more powerful and doesn't want this. And I think they're going to continue to have a tough time.
SPEAKER_00The stock market climbed to record highs yesterday. The SP 500 gained 0.8% to close above 7,000, surpassing its previous record set back in January. The NASDAQ also reached a new all-time high, gaining 1.4% and extending its longest winning streak since 2019. Easing tensions in the Middle East, optimism surrounding AI and strong corporate earnings fueled the rally. On Wednesday, President Trump stated that the Iran war is nearing an end, even as the U.S. continues to continues its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Oil prices were largely unchanged yesterday, with U.S. crude posting its calmest session in weeks, gaining only one cent.
SPEAKER_01This is all very shocking considering the fact that gasoline prices and and more importantly, perhaps diesel prices have just skyrocketed. Um, here's EIA on highway diesel fuel price average up 215 per gallon or up 62% from the January low. And the question is like, when does this become inflationary? And it already has. I mean, trucking and freight carriers, of course, have to raise their prices right away. And then there's like a three to eight week lag typically when manufacturers and distributors have to hike prices. Retailers, it's like six to twelve weeks. So there's gonna be a point here. This thing doesn't come down, come down fast, and it's gonna happen soon, where everything is gonna have to reprice, whether it's it's groceries, I mean TVs, you name it. Anything that moves on a truck, which is everything, it's gonna have to reprice. And it's shocking. I mean, you can't write this stuff that you you couldn't make this up. The fact that the stock market's at all-time highs, despite what appear to be some fairly severe inflationary pressures. Maybe the market, maybe the market actually believes that um that the war comes to an end soon. I don't know, but it's uh it's pretty shocking, especially to people who were bearish the stock market. It's uh it's uh no fun to be in that situation. What did cattle yesterday?
SPEAKER_00Uh cattle futures took a step back. Live cattle were 35 cents to a buck 40 lower, with the exception of the front month contract that gained five cents. Feeders saw losses ranging from 237 down to 430. Box beef prices were lower. Choice was down to buck 22 at 381.98, and Select was also down a buck 22 at 378.58.
SPEAKER_01I'll call outside markets pretty quiet this morning. The SP's up three points, but did notch a record high yesterday. Treasuries are mixed. US dollars up just a little bit. Crude oil is quiet, up$1.10 in the May WTI 9239. Have a great day, guys. We'll be back on Friday.