Soybean Marketing ALERT! Farmers Pay Attention!

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Futures and options trading involves risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone.

✅ Corn & soybean futures recap — what's driving the move higher
✅ Trump extends Iran ceasefire — and what it means for crude oil & biofuels
✅ Senate eyes $15–$20B in additional farmer aid — but is it actually coming?
✅ Biofuel demand surging as crude oil climbs 30%+ since the start of the Iran war
✅ Kalshi & Polymarket moving into crypto perpetual futures — could this force CME's hand on 24/7 commodity markets?
✅ ADM crude corn oil spill on the Mississippi River at Red Wing, MN
✅ USDA flash sales — 12 million bushels of corn sold to Colombia and unknown destinations

Transcript

Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Good morning, everybody. It's Wednesday, April 22nd, 523 a.m. Central Time. Welcome back to Grain Markets and Other Stuff. This is the best grain market show on the planet. We are often imitated, never duplicated. We are here for you guys every single morning, McKenzie. Every morning, bright and early. We're here for you. I'm Joe McKenzie Johnston is my co-host. Mackenzie, say hi to the people.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Good morning, everybody.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

It's important that you say hi because you're much more delightful than I am.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Oh, okay.

Soybean Marketing Alert and Grain Action

SPEAKER_00 0:35

So you gotta, you know, that makes sense. Start the people off on the right foot. Um, grain markets are mostly higher this morning. May corn futures up two and a half at 456 and a quarter. May soybeans up eight at 1182 and a half. May Chicago wheat up one and three quarters at 606 and three quarters. May Kansas City wheat down one at 642 and a half. May spring wheat up a half at 666. Let's start off with uh grain price action this morning.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Corn and soybean futures moved higher yesterday, with the May 26 corn contract rising nearly two cents to settle near 454 per bushel, and the May soybean contract gaining roughly nine cents to close near 1175 per bushel. The gains were driven by forecasted rainfall that is expected, that is expected to slow planting progress across the corn belt. Additional support stemmed from rising crude oil prices amid escalating tensions over in the Middle East. Wheat futures also climbed higher due to concerns over continuing deterioration of crop conditions.

Trump / Iran

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Grain marketing alert, possibly. If you are behind with regard to your new crop soybean marketing, the November soybean contract is essentially at its highs. It's within a couple of ticks of the highs that were posted in early March, which is uh very impressive. Now, I don't know if you should be selling here or not. I'm not recommending that to you necessarily as a uh listener, but this is the best that you could have done uh to this point in time. Now, soybeans on the board at 1172, 1173, November futures. That's probably still not a profitable level for a lot of you guys, especially if you're out west where basis is bad, but it's the best that it's been. There were some uh, I'm not even gonna call them rumors, there was some chatter floating around regarding Chinese interest in U.S. soybeans yesterday. I'm not sure if it's old crop or new crop. I'm not sure if it's real at all. Uh U.S. soybeans are not competitive versus Brazil on the export market, given that that, given that monster crop that they have down there. December corn futures look a hell of a lot better. We've had a nice uh little winning streak going on here. Resistance very clearly in the 492 to 498 and a half zone. And I think just once you get up into the 490s, the farmer gets a little bit more interested in pricing uh new crop corn bushels and new crop corn futures, December corn futures um in the 490s, that is something that probably is associated with uh at least a break-even or maybe some profitability for a lot of you guys listening, even if the basis is bad, that could still be something that uh that you may able you may be able to make it work. Here is HRW wheat, and given we're talking about weather here just in just a second, but given the uh dryness and the dry forecast in the U.S. Southern Plains, I wouldn't be shocked to see this thing post some fresh highs at some point this week. I didn't do like a full weather rundown today, but look at this. So Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, uh going to be very wet over the next seven days. And if they're we're not gonna use the delay word yet, but planting disruptions are going to continue in parts of Iowa and parts of Missouri. Is the market paying attention to this? Maybe it is. Maybe it is. It's uh it's kind of early. It's too early to call them delays, like I said, but um, we could very well be building some risk premium ahead of the U.S. growing season here. Now, the other thing that you need to look at on this map, look at the western half of Kansas, look at uh eastern Colorado, look at uh North Texas, western Oklahoma. There's no rain on tap for these dry HRW wheat areas. So the crop conditions there are gonna only get worse the way that it looks. I'm sure the ex I didn't even look at the extended stuff this morning. I'm sure there's some rain in the extended forecast, as there has been for the last six weeks, and it just never really materializes or comes to fruition. So we've still got ourselves a problem in um HRW wheat country.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

President Trump extended the ceasefire with Iran yesterday, just one day before it was set to expire, despite previously signaling that an extension was unlikely. The ceasefire will remain in place until Iran submits a new proposal. Negotiations were expected to resume this week in Pakistan, but Tehran refused to attend, citing unreasonable U.S. demands. Iran has indicated it will keep the Strait of Hormuz closed as long as the U.S. maintains its blockade of the waterway. Prospects for a lasting agreement remain uncertain, with both sides holding firm on key issues such as Iran's nuclear program.

More 2026 Farmer Aid

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Here's the Trump Truth Social Post. I'm not going to read it. Um, it's just back and forth, back and forth. The markets appear to be just exhausted of this. I mean, crude oil's just been choppy. Um we're trading in the, you know, this June contract now, which is is lead month. I mean, you're trading a range from 80 bucks up to like 100 basically, and we're kind of in the middle of that range. So the markets are not reacting to the headlines the way that they once did. Maybe the stock market is. The stock market is up this morning. The SP is up like half a percentage point and has acted very well. There are other things going on there besides a ceasefire. I mean, there's uh some earnings that have been out that have been very strong. Um, there's there's other there are other factors at play. But I think that in general, like that you look at the crude oil market, which had been the big volatile, you know, we're up or down 10 bucks every single day. It's it's really quieted down quite a bit.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

Additional farmer aid may be available this year, according to Randy Russell, an ag lobbyist with the Russell Group. There is support in the U.S. Senate for an additional$15 to$20 billion in assistance. However, details remain unclear and the funding is not guaranteed. Momentum behind additional aid has slowed as lawmakers have shifted their focus to other priorities, such as year-round nationwide E15 sales, additional assistance could still be included in a supplemental spending package or a scaled-down farm bill before the end of the year.

Biofuel Momentum

SPEAKER_00 6:14

So this guy isn't uh a lobbyist for ag, and I don't know exactly what that means, but he's he's not the powerful lobbyist in DC. The oil lobby is very powerful. There are other lobbies that are much more powerful. I wish uh lobbyists would always give interviews because they work, they work in the shadows, you know. I mean, nobody knows like who the lobbyists are. You just know that they're super powerful and that uh they're the ones who really run the government, which is unfortunate. Um, as re as it relates to additional aid, they could do it, they could call it whatever they want. They could say this is your fertilizer aid payment, this is your fuel aid payment, this is your you know, ABCD payment. I mean, it's it's possible. I'm not gonna write it off.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Biofuels are gaining momentum as oil prices surge amid the Iran war, with crude pricing, with crude prices rising more than 30% since the conflict began in late February. Countries across Asia, which are heavily reliant on oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, are boosting biofuel adoption to reduce import dependence and manage energy prices. Other countries, such as Vietnam and Indonesia, are also moving to increase biofuel blending mandates. While biofuels can help ease fuel shortages and price pressures, structural constraints, including production capacity and feedstock availability, will likely limit rapid expansion.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

It's cool that it's happening overseas. It would be even cooler if it happened here in the United States. Uh, E85 is 87 cents uh per gallon cheaper than regular gasoline. Regular national average according to AAA 402, E85 at 315. If you look at the futures prices, the uh disparity is even greater. Arbob unleaded is up uh almost 90% year to date, and it's 321 a gallon on the board. That's a futures price, of course. Cash uh unleaded at the pump, obviously more. Plant ethanol is a dollar ninety one a gallon. So um, you know, somebody tell Congress that this could help to cheapen up gas prices. Let's do some permanent year-round E15 stuff. But again, the oil lobby's got too much damn money.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

If 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?

"Perpetual" Futures Contracts

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Hidden interest costs are killing your farm. Is that hyperbole? Maybe it is, but let me read you a statistic. If you have 100,000 bushels of corn in storage and you're paying 7.25% interest, ballpark, and there's some variability here, that equates to$2,389.66 per month in interest costs. Uh, that's$85.41 per day. Or if you you're to do it on a per bushel basis, that's three cents per bushel monthly. There are hidden interest costs that people are paying attention to. Guys just have unpriced bushels of corn, soybeans, whatever, sitting in the bin, and they don't know, they don't understand that these hidden interest costs are eating them alive. If you if you're a farmer and you got unpriced grain in storage and you had to write a check every month on that hundred thousand for 2,400 bucks, you'd sell the stuff today. You you couldn't handle it. You couldn't handle writing the damn check. But it's a hidden cost. And Chris went into great detail. This was like a 30-minute video, talked about all of the nuance and all the details. He made a free calculator available. It was in the midday email yesterday. You just clicked it to download the Excel file, and you can see exactly how this is working out. And it it works through different different levels of interest rates, and uh, you can punch in your own amount of bushels and what you're paying and uh all that stuff. It's it's really fantastic. And and I wish more people were aware of this because they're just not. Um, Ryan Bennis was on earlier this week. We talked about calculating insurance payments, another uh kind of hardcore grain marketing uh information session with Ryan, and he also had a calculator that he made available to help you quantify what indemnity payments could look like for both RP and then SEO ECO if we get into that situation. If you 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. We send out two emails per day, 5 a.m. Central Time, 10 a.m. Central Time. All of the premium videos are included as links in those emails. So you just click to play. There's no login instructions. It's not messy at all. It's it's very, very easy to do. I know you guys are busy, you're in the truck, you're in the tractor. You can sign up on your phone in 30 seconds, you get the email on your phone. It's literally you open it, you click, play the video, and uh you could be listening to this stuff and help to uh improve your bottom line. I'm telling you, that video with Chris yesterday is information that nine out of 10 of our subscribers are just not working with, and they should be, and you guys should be too.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Calci and polymarket are expanding further into cryptocurrency trading as both prediction market platforms are preparing to launch perpetual futures, which are crypto native derivatives with no expiration and built-in leverage. They allow users to increase both risk exposure and potential returns. Crypto trading is already a rapidly growing segment for both platforms, and these new products aim to capitalize on that momentum. Regulatory scrutiny of perpetual futures may increase, as the CFTC has indicated, interest in overseeing these instruments, especially as they gain uh traction among traditional financial traders.

ADM Corn Oil Spill

SPEAKER_00 11:15

I know most of you guys don't care much about crypto, but CalShi is offering commodity uh contracts. And these are like what they call binary outcome contracts, is what they're offering right now. So they're like weekly contracts on corn, soybeans, wheat, cattle, whatever it is. So here's an example of one. Uh, this is the one that's listed right now. What is the corn price gonna be on April 30th, you know, after the close? So is that is that next, when is that next week, next Thursday at the close? And um, it's like it's either yes or no. Are we gonna be 456 or above or below? This is going to, I think, very quickly turn into a situation where Calci and other uh platforms are offering something like a perpetual futures contract. And this stuff trades 24-7. And I think that ultimately this could force the CME into offering 24-7 commodity markets, which I don't want to see at all. But CME, as we've discussed, they are a publicly traded company, they need to compete. If there are people out there that want to trade grain markets on Sunday morning or Saturday afternoon, um, they're absolutely gonna allow them to do so. And they may be forced to do so in order to compete. They got to keep the shareholders happy. They don't care about you, they care about the shareholders. And if Calchi or uh Polymarket or whoever, if they start to eat into their volume even just a little bit, they're gonna break and they're gonna say, hey, we're going 24-7, and it's gonna be, it's gonna be a bad deal. I don't like the future. It's a scary place. I don't hope we go there.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Thousands of gallons of crude or crude corn oil spilled into the Mississippi River earlier this week. The incident occurred at ADM's Red Wing, Minnesota facility, where a barge spilled an estimated 3,000 to 3,500 gallons of corn oil. Emergency crews responded quickly to contain and limit the spread of the spill. Additional local and state agencies assisted in securing the area and managing the cleanup. According to authorities, there is no risk to public health, and cleanup efforts are ongoing.

Corn Sales

SPEAKER_00 13:09

The source was traced to a hatch leak on the barge, a narrow single point of failure that uh triggered a multi-agency response, the cause still under investigation. Um this is less hazardous than petroleum-based products, but environmental experts say that vegetable oil spills can still damage local ecosystems, forming a surface film that reduces oxygen exchange in the water and can coat the feathers of waterfowl or the gills on aquatic life. I'll tell you what, if this was in the lake in my backyard where I fish, I'd be pissed. I'd be furious, be absolutely furious. The sheen on the river measured roughly uh 50 feet wide by 500 feet long. Uh ADM. Get it together, guys.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

USDA reported multiple flash sales yesterday. U.S. exporters sold 4 million bushels of corn to Columbia and 8 million bushels of corn to unknown destinations for delivery during the current marketing year.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

That's great. We're competitive. Uh, this should continue. What did cattle do yesterday?

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Cattle futures were lower once again. Live cattle were$1.52 to$252 lower. Feeders saw losses ranging from$220 down to$255. Meanwhile, boxed beef prices were higher. Choice was up to$262 at$386.18, and Select was up$359 at$387.20.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

As I mentioned earlier, the stock market's higher. The SP is up 41 points, which is six tenths of a percentage point. The Dow's up 250. Treasury's up just a little bit. US dollar is about flat. Crude oil is up 40 cents in the June WTI at 90 oh seven. Have a great day, guys. We'll be back on Thursday.