North Central Illinois Ag Mag - Winter 2026

2026 OUTLOOK

•Corn, soybean demand

•Crop marketing plans

•Soil tests for fertilizer

Bridge assistance payment rates set

Mustard: $23 21

Peanuts: $55 65

Rice: $132 89

Sesame: $13�68

By TOM C. DORAN tdoran@shawmedia com

WASHINGTON — Per-acre payment specifics for the $12 billion Farmer Bridge Assistance Program were released on New Year’s Eve.

Farmers who qualify for the FBA Program can expect payments in their bank accounts by Feb. 28, according to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.

The one-time per-acre payment rates for the FBA eligible commodities that trigger a payment are as follows:

Barley: $20 51 Canola: $23 57

Chickpeas — Large: $26�46

Chickpeas — Small: $33 36

Corn: $44 36 Cotton: $117 35

Soybeans: $30�88

Oats: $81 75

Peas: $19 60

Safflower: $24 86

Sorghum: $48�11

Sunflower: $17�32

Wheat: $39 35

ELIGIBILITY

FBA payments are based on 2025 planted acres, Economic Research Service cost of production and the World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimate Report.

Double-crop acres, including all initial and subsequently planted crops, are eligible. Prevent-plant acres are not eligible. All intended row crop uses are eligible for FBA except grazing, volunteer stands, experimental, green manure, crops left standing and abandoned, or cover crops.

ture strongly urges producers to take advantage of the new risk management tools provided for in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to best protect against future price risk and volatility.

The budget reconciliation bill’s federal crop insurance improvements include expanding benefits for beginning farmers and ranchers, increasing coverage options and making crop insurance more affordable.

ILLINOIS, INDIANA

Based on the USDA’s most recent crop production report and small grains summary, here are the statewide totals Illinois and Indiana farmers will receive for their planted acres:

Flax: $8 05 Lentils: $23 98

Crop insurance linkage is not required. However, the U.S. Department of Agricul -

• Illinois — corn, $440.72 million; soybeans, $316.52 million; and wheat, $30.693 million.

• Indiana — corn, $239.544 million; soybeans, $168.296 $12B in farm aid expected Feb. 28

million; and wheat, $12.592 million.

SPECIALTY CROP ASSISTANCE

Of the $12 billion being provided by the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act, up to $11 billion is being directed to eligible row crop producers and the remaining $1 billion in assistance is reserved for specialty crops and sugar.

Timelines for payments to producers of these speciality crops are still under development and require additional understanding of market impacts and economic needs.

Producers, including specialty crop producers and stakeholder groups, can submit questions to farmerbridge@ usda.gov.

More information about FBA is available online at www.fsa.usda.gov/fba or you can contact your local USDA Farm Service Agency county office.

“These one-time payments give farmers the bridge to con-

tinue to feed and clothe America and the world while the Trump administration continues opening new markets and strengthening the farm safety net. USDA is making this process as simple and seamless as possible so producers can focus on what they do best — feeding and fueling our nation,” Rollins said.

“President Trump committed to increase certainty in the farm economy, and farmers can count on these payment rate calculations when going to the bank as they plan for the spring planting season. Putting ‘Farmers First’ means delivering real relief when it matters.”

PREVIOUS PAYMENTS

Similar direct payments were issued by the FSA in 2025 to agricultural producers of eligible commodities for the 2024 crop year through the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program.

Congress authorized $10 billion in payments for that program through the Amer-

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ican Relief Act approved in late 2024.

Those one-time economic assistance payments were aimed at helping producers mitigate the impacts of increased costs and falling commodity prices.

Per-acre payments in that program included corn, $42.91; wheat, $30.69; and soybeans, $29.76.

REACTION

“We are appreciative of Secretary Rollins and the USDA for creating the Farmer Bridge Assistance Program, which begins to assist growers facing economic pain and hardships,” said Jed Bower, National Corn Growers

Association president.

“Corn growers have been sounding the alarm about the fact that farmers have been faced with multiple consecu-

tive years of low corn prices and high input costs.

“While this financial assistance is helpful and welcomed, we urgently need the administration and Congress to develop markets in the U.S. and abroad that will provide growers with more long-term economic certainty.”

“We appreciate the administration’s attention to the challenges farmers continue to face in today’s market,” said American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland.

“We believe the Farmer Bridge Assistance Program is a positive first step to restore certainty as soybean farmers market this year’s crop and plan for the 2026 planting season. We look forward to working with Congress and the administration on broader support for the farm economy, including long-term, market-driven solutions that strengthen demand for U.S. soy and allow farmers to compete and thrive in the global market.”

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Corn, soybean demand in new year a mixed bag

By TOM C. DORAN tdoran@shawmedia com

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — The outlook for the four pieces of the demand pies that drive corn and soybean prices is anticipated to include some growth and a wild card in 2026.

Joe Janzen, University of Illinois agricultural economist, sliced the demand pie to open U of I Extension’s Farm Assets Conference on Dec. 12 at the AgriCenter in Bloomington.

Here are Janzen’s views on what has and could happen in the new year on the demand side of the crop balance sheets.

ON FEED

The two big domestic pieces are animal feed. That means meal in the case of soybeans and corn used for animal feed.

Overall, in terms of feed’s impact on grain prices, my take is that we’re certainly not in the stage where we’re going to see dramatic growth in that corn for feed number or the domestic meal demand number happening in the next six months to a year. It’s probably going to take longer than that.

The big story is when will the U.S. livestock herd begin to grow again? We saw that cattle herd shrank into 2014 when prices got really high. We rebuilt the herd, then we’ve had drought and other issues that have caused a substantial reduction in overall cattle inventories. That is expected to maybe hit bottom.

The number as of Jan. 1, 2025, was 86.7 million cows and calves in the United States. USDA’s expectation for overall

cattle numbers is basically to be flat Jan. 1, 2026.

Everyone is looking for signals of a cattle herd rebuild. The way that we would see that, potentially, is a reduction in the number of cattle on feed as heifers get retained to build the herd.

We’ve actually seen the number of cattle on feed be remarkably stable in spite of overall reductions in the size of the herd.

We had about 12 million animals on feed as of Nov. 1. The most recent data suggested that the November 2025 number was like a slight reduction, so maybe this is a signal that we’re getting some of this retention and maybe a boost in feed demand into 2026 as the herd grows.

This is complicated by our

trade situation where we should be typically bringing animals across the border from Mexico into the United States to be fed here. That isn’t happening because of some of the trade issues or pest issues in the livestock sector.

So, that number fell in November, but people are saying that’s not necessarily a strong indicator of a herd rebuild.

ON BIOFUELS

The picture’s relatively strong on the biofuel side. The growth in the last few years has been all in the soybean oil used for the biofuels piece, but it’s important to remember that that slice is a relatively small slice of the pie, because every bushel of soybean is only about 20% oil and we’re using roughly half of the oil that we produce here in the United States for biofuels. That proportion is expected to increase. I think some of that’s built into pricing already.

We’re producing levels of

ethanol that are very similar to where we were in that pre-COVID maximum level, maybe some slight increases above that, but overall the ethanol production is looking really strong and we’re growing renewable diesel. This is increasing oil’s value in the crush.

In the last five years, we’ve seen a shift in the soybean sector away from meal as the primary demand driver and toward oil. Now the value of a soybean is between, say, 35% to 50% oil and a corresponding percentage coming from meal, and this thing is getting much more volatile.

The thing I think about going into next year is there’s a strong potential for biofuels demand in the soybean sector, but it’s creating maybe a little bit more volatility than it did pre-2020 when this share was relatively stable.

ON EXPORTS

Sort of the big wild card, the one that we maybe think about the most in terms of its impact on price because

it is much more flexible is the export piece.

The feed piece and the biofuels piece tend not to move a lot. They tend to be what economists would call relatively inelastic. They aren’t very sensitive to price.

We use about the same amount of corn for ethanol no matter the price, year to year, and that export piece is really the flex piece that, if we have a big corn crop in the U.S., as we think we do, how are we gonna use that up?

This export piece for corn is growing. This export piece for soybeans is shrinking. At this talk even just two years ago, that slice of the pie would be substantially larger.

There’s this idea that maybe the trade war is cooling off. We certainly haven’t seen the level of tariff tit-fortat that we saw back in the spring, particularly around what was called Liberation Day and the huge raft of U.S. tariffs that was announced in April.

Both Treasury Secretary

Scott Bessent and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins say we are right on track, everything is going well, that China is in the “correct cadence,” according to Secretary Bessent, in terms of its purchases of U.S. soybeans. I think everyone should be right to be somewhat skeptical of those claims.

Maybe the trade war’s cooling off, but it’s cooling off to a place where there has been a substantial and persistent decline in U.S. soybean export demand. We see that in the Chinese customs data on soybean imports from all destinations. We can get data on what’s going on with Brazil.

We’re seeing China is importing more soybeans than ever, the highest levels of monthly soybean imports into China we’ve seen in recent memory. None of that’s coming from the U.S.

Where it typically starts to ramp up U.S. exports to China — in September, October, November — have been

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zeros. We’re going to see something in December, we just don’t have the data yet. The ships are on their way, but the number is going to be really small, and we see that in our soybean export sales pace.

We are substantially below soybean exports relative to the previous year. There’s just no sort of beating around the bush. We just are substantially below where we would normally be in terms of soybean exports, and China has to be the culprit.

What we know about Chinese soybean purchases to date, they are 26% (as of

Dec. 12) of the 12 million metric ton target for calendar year 2025 that the Trump administration said. That’s their target, not mine, and not China’s necessarily.

We’ve got about 118 million bushels of known China purchases. Some of those have already happened as of mid-November when the data from other countries is most recent. They are only 23% of all of our export sales to date.

China is typically a substantially larger percentage — more than half. So, that 25% of the business is basically gone. I don’t see how it comes back because we’re into December, January where basically our soybean export business drops off perceptibly.

A lot of that is built into

the current USDA supply and demand forecast level for soybean exports, but I’m even worried about getting to that level. If we continue on this pace, sort of what the typical pace looks like, we get somewhere closer to more like 1.4 billion bushels of total soybean exports, and that’s substantially below that typical pace.

Corn export sales, totally the opposite. Corn export business has been incredibly strong. I think part of that is a function of relatively low prices and the big U.S. corn crop. A lot of that’s baked into USDA’s current supply and demand tables, as well.

ON TRADE POLICY

The last sort of wild card here is what does happen to trade policy. The tariffs

that we imposed on many countries back in the spring could be ruled invalid by the U.S. Supreme Court. That’s a case that they heard back in November and will rule on in the new year.

We have betting markets that are trading on the probability that that indeed happens, that the U.S Supreme Court rules that those tariffs are illegal and they put the probability at the Trump administration winning that case at only about 25% right now.

How much stock you take in that number? I leave that to your own personal discretion, but it looks like we could see a substantial amount of trade policy uncertainty going forward into the near future. It’s not over yet.

Support payments may sway marketing plans

By TOM C. DORAN tdoran@shawmedia com

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. —

Don’t let the prospect of ad hoc government support payments sway crop marketing plans in the current window of opportunities, according to an agricultural economist.

“The one place that you don’t necessarily want to put yourself is where you have a very narrow window to market what’s left of the 2025 crop,” said Joe Janzen at University of Illinois Extension’s Farm Assets Conference on Dec. 12.

“The danger that I see, particularly with the announcement of some ad hoc support payments to the farm sector, is kind of an unwillingness to think about moving bushels in January, February, March, and holding that crop until

right before the next harvest, and all that supply is going to come to market at one point in time. That’s likely to lead to relatively poor pricing in that, let’s say, May to July marketing window, when you’ve got to get ready for the crop that’s coming in 2026,” the U of I agricultural economist said.

“The one thing we can do, if we can’t predict prices, is at least spread those sales out over as wide of a window as possible to manage some of that risk.”

SOYBEAN OUTLOOK

Price signals through late December indicate a swing

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back toward more soybean acres in 2026.

U.S. farmers planted 98.7 million acres of corn and 81.1 million acres of soybeans in 2025 — a much larger gap than usual historically.

“We do plant more corn acres than soybeans, but it’s usually much closer than it was in 2025. Price signals are not necessarily strongly encouraging that, but at least they’re swinging back toward more soybean acres, and I think that’s also built into the limits on soybean price upside,” Janzen said.

U of I’s farmdoc team concurs with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s December forecast that the 2025-2026 season-average soybean will be $10.50 per bushel.

The post-harvest soybean market has a bit volatile,

particular with the run-up of prices that began in the second half of October and peaked at just over $11.50 per bushel in mid-November before falling back.

“The difficult part is these slight rallies that we’ve seen in the last month and a half, maybe they’re the result of news, maybe there’s a China export demand story there. We also got through harvest pretty quickly, and there is typically sort of a post-harvest rally. Once the combines stopped rolling and grain gets put in the bin, the market’s going to reward people who pull that out a little bit earlier than they might otherwise,” Janzen said.

Another market-swaying factor in the near future is the record Brazilian soybean crop that’s about to be harvested.

Brazil is projected to harvest 6.5 billion bushels of soybeans in 2026, compared to the previous record of 6.301 billion bushels in 2025.

“The global balance sheet is filling up,”Janzen said.

USDA forecasts soybean exports of 1.635 billion bushels in the current marketing year, while farmdoc plugged in 1.5 billion bushels of exports in its balance sheet. USDA projects ending stocks of 290 million bushels, and farmdoc projects ending soybean supplies of 377 million bushels on lower production and exports.

“We are going to see the swing back to more soybean acres in 2026 that’s going to fill up the soybean balance sheet. I think there’s some reason to be maybe skeptical, even of the export number that USDA has for soybeans, given the story of where we’re at with China trade,” Janzen said.

CORN OUTLOOK

Corn prices are expected to grind sideways in the first half of 2026 due to continued high supply levels.

“The March futures price is around $4.50 per bushel and has been there for a long time with some wiggles here and there for most of last year,” Janzen said.

USDA and farmdoc anticipate the 2025-2026 season-average corn price of $4 per bushel.

USDA had ending stocks of 2.019 billion bushels as of the December estimate, while farmdoc’s year-end balance estimate is 2.132 billion bushels on slightly lower production, but also lower feed use and exports.

“USDA’s balance sheet has stocks-to-use levels (12.5%) that are consistent with a corn price at the farm gate right around $4, and I don’t see any reason to deviate from that,” Janzen said.

“If anything, I think USDA might reduce its yield esti -

mates going forward, that they’re still at a very high estimate for yield that a lot of people in the trade think is too high. But I think we’ll see corresponding reductions in use that kind of keep us around the price levels that we’re at.

“USDA is building in a healthy level of production; 95 million acres is their longrun corn acreage estimate for 2026. That might be high, but even if you reduce that number, you’re still looking at a pretty substantial carryout. They have pretty optimistic expectations for feed use (6.1 billion bushels) and exports (3.2 billion bushels) going forward into 2026.

“We’re remain at stock levels that would be burdensome that keep corn prices in that $4 range.”

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Futures and basis corn and soybean prices have moved off of the harvest lows.

“It’s really hard to sort out to what extent the post-harvest rally was export-newsdriven and how much of it just was high inventories being held back by the U.S farmer and the market needing to rally to pull some of that grain into the supply chain,” Janzen said.

“How much is that trade optimism driving the soybean rally? Well, I think the last couple days (in mid-December) have suggested a good portion of that was maybe some misplaced (China trade) optimism.

“The current volatility in calendar spreads suggests some potential for a price volatility in 2026. The situation is much less certain with that volatility and spreads suggesting we’re not sure. We’re not slamming the brakes on marketing and saying, hold as much as you can. So, I think that puts the farmer in maybe a slightly more precarious position.”

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Keep fertilizer expense in check with soil tests

By TOM C. DORAN tdoran@shawmedia com

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — With season-average corn and soybeans prices in the new year projected to remain at current levels, agronomists recommend prioritizing nutrient management to improve the bottom line.

“You can’t farm without buying seed. If you don’t buy herbicides, you’re going to have a mess, too. So, you have some things that you have to spend money on,” said Tim Smith, Cropsmith president and managing agronomist.

“If you still have dry fertilizer decisions to make and you’ve got soil test data to look at, this is a perfect time to evaluate where there’s high-testing sites that are not going to respond to fertilizer, also low-testing sites that would be prioritized to reduce yield losses,” said John Jones, University of Illinois assistant professor of agronomy and U of I Extension soil fertility specialist.

During a br-eak at the Illinois Soybean Association’s recent “Soil Test Interpretation for Profitable Management” prog-ram, Smith and Jones stressed the need to focus on what the soil offers from a nutrient standpoint.

“You can still sample in the spring if you don’t have soil test data to work off of. For phospho-

rus and potassium, I would recommend considering when was your last soil test, what you’re looking at, and making sure you have accurate removal and yield data to estimate any maintenance rates,” Jones said.

“There’s a lot of fertility in our soil,” he said.

“A soil test gives us an opportunity to measure that and know whether we can cut back on that input when times are tough. And it’s directly related to, if I’m not getting a response to that fertilizer at this time, should I be spending that money? And maybe times are good in a few years and you say, OK, I’m going to spend some more money at that time and build up the soil,” Smith added.

“We treat our soils like they’re a bank account as far as fertility and it’s not really good. If it’s a bank account, it’s the worst bank account you could ever have. Your interest would just evaporate and those type of things. So, there are good opportunities to really moderate or cut out some fertility, especially if you’ve been putting good amounts of fertilizer on in the past.”

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BEST RETURN ON INVESTMENT

Jones noted soil testing offers the best ROI in farming.

“Regular soil testing within your rotation makes a lot of sense. Many are on a four-year rotation of soil testing, we’ll say, every two corn and soybean years. I would say if you’re getting to a point where you’re in high-yielding scenarios where you have high removal rates, if you can snap that back to a two-year rotation for soil testing, I think there’s a benefit there on the cost savings that you may find,” Jones said.

4 RS

Farmers may feel it’s too risky to cut back on nitrogen applications in times of tight budgets, but university research indicates too much “insurance” nitrogen is sometimes being applied.

Smith recommends implementing the four Rs — right source, matches fertilizer to crop needs; right rate, matches amount of fertilizer type crop needs; right time, makes nutrients available when crop needs them; and right place, keep nutrients where crops can use them.

“There’s opportunity there to use the 4Rs, do it at a better time and doing placement with good forms that are protected. You can grow just as good of crop by really making

See EXPENSE, Page 16

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good decisions around nitrogen,” Smith said.

“There’s such a big opportunity to improve how we manage nitrogen, which also reduces cost. Now, you may have to do a little more work to get there, a little more thought, maybe it’s some investments in equipment, but it should be well worth it to do those type of things.”

PAGE 15 Jones

NITROGEN RATE TOOL

Research-based Maximum Return to Nitrogen guidelines are available at no cost for producers. The online calculator at cornratecalc.org is specific for various regions in Illinois, Indiana and other Corn Belt states.

“I would suggest looking at the corn N rate calcula-

tor website, an application that we provide and update every year with nitrogen guidelines for Illinois. Those focus on economic optimum nitrogen rates, which are usually about one to two bushels off of the maximum yield that we can achieve in a study. We’ve essentially let the last pound of nitrogen pay for itself with a bushel gain. So, we’re leaning to both an agronomic and an economic optimum,” Jones said.

“MRTN is a good starting point, but it’s only a starting point. It’s a nice average for areas of the state, but you have to look at your own farm and see what you can do,” Smith added.

“Farmers are putting in -

“There are good opportunities to really moderate or cut out some fertility, especially if you’ve been putting good amounts of fertilizer on in the past.”

John Jones

UNIVERSITY OF

ILLINOIS

surance nitrogen on top of MRTN, and that’s really not necessary on most of the farms. But if you do some simple things where you put a little more, a little less in different areas of your farm over time, you get a pretty good idea of where you need to be.”

PRIORITIZE NUTRIENTS

“When there are challenging margins, we should be thinking about nutrients that we prioritize as something that is important. For example, we have a lot of data that shows if we’re

low enough in soil test K, our internal nitrogen use efficiency crashes. Make sure you identify what’s potentially limiting and really knowing that you’re going to get an economic response to that,” Jones said.

“Soil testing has always been important. We do pH, P, K testing, and nitrogen soil testing is something I’d like to see us work more on in the future. I think that there’s some opportunity for that in the future, but I think people aren’t ready for that yet, but I think we’re getting there,” Smith added.

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Growing worldwide demand for ethanol

Bright corn feed, food, fuel outlook

By TOM C. DORAN tdoran@shawmedia com

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — U.S. corn exports continued at record pace through the end of 2025, while the future global demand potential for ethanol remains bright.

Collin Watters, IL Corn director of exports and logistics, and Mark Wilson, west-central Illinois farmer near Toulon and U.S. Grains and BioProducts Council chairman, gave their outlooks on trade, transportation and global grain markets at the recent Farm Assets Conference.

When asked what the best option was for future corn demand outside the United States, Wilson said “ethanol,” with out hesitation.

He recalled his recent conversation with Doug Bergen, POET vice president of corporate affairs.

“He’s more excited now that he’s ever been with the potential for ethanol,” Wilson said at the University of Illinois Extension-hosted conference.

Much of the excitement centers around other countries adopting ethanol policies of 10% or 15% mixes in their fuel.

“India is going to 20% ethanol in their fuels. The big one, nobody’s talking about, which could be huge, is maritime fuels. Maris, which is the No. 2 shipping company in the world, uses 6 billion gallons of fuel a year. They’re doing a test right now with an engine that will do half methanol, half ethanol,” Wilson said.

“There’s a lot of talk that they want to get out of this bunker crude, which is dirty, black, smokey fuel. That could be a huge market, because that’s No. 2.”

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration data, fuel ethanol exports to India reached 3.539 million barrels between January and September of 2025, averaging nearly 400,000 barrels monthly.

“If India adopts ethanol for

cooking fuel, that’s another area. Right now they’re using dung cakes, sticks and coal to cook with in a lot of the villages. We’ve done studies on it, and if 1% of the people in India adopt clean-burning ethanol cook stoves, that’s 40 million gallons of ethanol right there. If we can get 10%, that’s 400 million gallons,” Wilson said.

Japan is also a large a growing market for ethanol demand.

“They’re going to E10 with their gasoline, and when they get to E10, which they say will be by 2030, that’s a 1 billion gallon market. Right now we’re shipping 100 million gallons over there,” he said.

“That’s a potential billion gallon market. And they will probably source 85% of that ethanol from the U.S., because they don’t want to put all their eggs in one basket,” Wilson said.

“Japan also has a goal of 10% sustainable aviation fuel by 2030, and I think everybody knows they’re not going to be able to make that. That’s just too big of a jump, but they are

on a path to get that done and to work through that.

“Japan is pushing hard on this, and they’re pushing that they think that alcohol-to-jet fuel is the way to go. They are seriously looking at building plants. Carbon sequestration is huge with them, because they’re all about carbon and getting that score as low as possible. And if they can get the carbon sequestration that makes our ethanol way better to get into that fuel.”

EXPORT RECORDS

In the December domestic supply and demand report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture increased corn exports to a record 3.2 billion bushels, a 125 million bushel increase over the previous month and 342 million above the 2024-2025 estimate.

“We’re at record levels on corn exports. We’re already above last year’s. Mexico’s just been huge. They’re just continuing to increase their production, and that’s going up every year,” Wilson said.

“I know there’s talk about, whether they hate Trump, love Trump, doesn’t matter, there’s 35 countries that we have agreements, frameworks, executive orders, whatever, done with, and in the past, when we did trade agreements, it took two to seven years to get a trade agreement. These have been done in two to five months.

“The only problem is these are executive orders, and anybody can come in as president and change them, Trump himself can change them, but right now we’re seeing a lot of excitement out there. This is more excitement than we’ve had in decades to trade, to getting out there and

making deals, making things happen, and we’re seeing that.”

AVIATION FUEL

The 106-billion-gallon global and 21-billion-gallon domestic commercial jet fuel market is projected to grow to over 230 billion gallons by 2050.

Cost-competitive, environmentally sustainable aviation fuels are recognized as a critical part of decoupling carbon growth from market growth, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

As an alternative to petroleum jet fuel, SAF can be produced from agricultural and waste feedstocks and blended with petroleum jet fuel.

Watters said using ethanol in a mix for jet fuel is five to 10 years down the road.

“The technology exists. It’s not just a theoretical thing, but it hasn’t been really commercialized yet,” he said.

“I believe a plant in Georgia has restarted, but that’s more or less a demonstration facility, and I think their max is like 10 million gallons or something like that.

“Most of the SAF that’s available in the market today is derived from oils — so, whether it’s beef tallow or used cooking oil, soybean oil, palm oil, whatever. I suspect that will increase a little bit, that there’s a limit. We do have a limit on how much vegetable oil is available in the world right now.

“That’s why there’s a lot of interest in ethanol to jet fuel. I’m optimistic, but I think that’s probably a five- to 10-year timeline, and that’s maybe a little bit optimistic about it I suppose. I think it’ll come, but I don’t

think it’s going to be the panacea that I think some people have maybe made it out to be.”

“I think the price of it is the big thing. It’s about three times the cost of regular air fuel by the time they go through everything. I think that is a hindering point. Without some type of support by governance or something to get that through, it’s going to be a little harder.”

SAF CRITERIA

“Carbon intensity” is a key part of the SAF picture.

“For it to be considered sustainable aviation fuel right now, at least under the international kind of guidelines, is it has to meet at least a 50% reduction in carbon intensity,” Watters said.

“That’s something that’s really, really important, kind of this foundational issue, is that in order for ethanol-to-jet to become a reality, the process breaking the molecule, rebuilding and all of that adds carbon intensity. So, you’re beginning ethanol feed stock has to be at a low enough carbon intensity that it can be manipulated and built into SAF to reach that 50% target at least.

“So, as farmers, we’re going to be talking about carbon intensity more and more and more. This is going to become a part of the vocabulary. I don’t know how this is all going to play out, if there will be some kind of incentives for practice changes or anything else.

“I can foresee a future where commodities are potentially marketed with certifications of what your carbon intensity is. This is going to be getting more and more complicated, I think, as time goes on.”

Freight options provide advantages

By TOM C. DORAN tdoran@shawmedia�com

BLOOMINGTON, Ill.

— Rail and waterway transportation systems provide valuable assets for farmers.

“Illinois is situated in a really special place in the United States to be perfectly honest. There’s a lot of of farmers outside of Illinois that would love to be able to access the freight networks that we have available to us,” said Collin Watters, IL Corn’s director of exports and logistics.

Watters was among the presenters at the recent University of Illinois Extension’s Farm Assets Conference.

“The fact that Chicago is kind of center hub for the U.S in terms of rail, we have every Class I railroad and oftentimes some of those rail lines will parallel, too, so there’s some competition amongst the railroads,” he said.

“I lived in Montana for a while where you have one option — the BNSF railroad. If BNSF wants X number of dollars, you pay it, and that will ultimately come out of the farmer’s pocket.”

WATERWAYS

The real asset and difference-maker for Illinois is its water transportation system.

“It’s an incredibly efficient system, and although we believe that it could be far more efficient, it certainly is a huge benefit, and you can see that in basis numbers over time,” Watters said.

The water transportation system encompasses the Mississippi, Ohio, Kaskaskia and Illinois rivers and tributaries.

The Illinois waterways ranks eighth in the nation with 1,100 miles of inland waterways. The industries that are reliant on waterways provide 262,000 jobs, $17.7 billion in personal income,

$2 billion going back going back to state and local tax revenue, $28 billion in gross state product and nearly $67 billion in total output.

More than 70 million tons of product moves through the Illinois water transportation system annually — the equivalent of nearly 2 million semi trucks.

Nearly 34 million tons of corn, soybeans and food products for exports are moved along the water system each year, about 7.4 million tons of petroleum products and over 7 million tons of coal, lignite and coke products.

DESIGN LIFE EXCEEDED

The success of the water transportation system along the rivers in and adjacent to Illinois hinges on 26 locks and dam, 88% of which have exceeded their 50-year design life and have 600-foot chambers. Only four of those locks have modern 1,200foot chambers.

Jim Tarmann, IL Corn managing director, has been advocating for modernizing lock and dam infrastructure for decades and said most of the locks and dams in the system are now 75-plus years old.

“The locks and dams were built in the 1930s and 1940s. They were only expected to last like 50 years. On one hand, I’ll commend the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who’s in charge of keeping them operational and as efficient as they can, have done a good job, but on the other hand, I can criticize them for not keeping up, not pushing forward and not staying focused on areas of need,” Tarmann said.

“Back in 2000, our focus

A tow switching barges pulls an empty barge alongside one filled with soybeans at an Archer Daniels Midland grain terminal along the Mississippi River in Sauget in southwestern Illinois

began on a program called Navigation and Ecosystems Sustainability Program, which in essence was where the real bottleneck was within the upper Mississippi River system. That exists on locks 20 through 25 on the Mississippi and the LaGrange and Peoria locks on the Illinois. Those were determined to be the locks that were costing you, as farmers and landowners, the most inefficiency.

“Fast forward, we got authorization and approval for those locks and dams, and we said, ‘yay, we’ve got this, we’re just about there.’”

However, authorization for the work didn’t include funding.

Work continued until fiscal year 2022 when Congress authorized $732 million for a new 1,200-foot chamber at Lock and Dam 25 at Winfield in eastern Missouri on the Mississippi River. Of the seven new 1,200-foot lock chambers authorized by NESP, it was the first to be funded for construction.

Supporters of modernizing the lock and dam system believed work was finally going to begin. However, once the project was reevaluated, the construction cost rose to

now $2.2 billio n.

“We have less than half of the funding that we need to do that. So, now we’re back in the mode of trying to get the Corps to focus on specific things. Where is the money going to come from? We’re still moving forward, but it’s not quite as fast as what we thought initially was going to be,” Tarmann said.

Expanding the lock systems from 600-foot to 1,200foot chambers is all about improving efficiency.

“Those locks are 600-foot locks. Back in the 1930s and 1940s during the New Deal everybody probably thought, man, what a boondoggle. This is because we were using a steam-powered paddle wheel pushing through 600-foot docks that were way too big. A modern tow now is 1,200-foot,” Tarmann said.

The 1,200-foot tow require the barge tows to be broken into two for movement through the 600-foot lock, a procedure that generally takes about two to two and a half hours. A 1,200-foot lock will cut the time going through the system to a half hour or less, depending on the traffic.

Weeds a hot topic in survey

Responses spur new ISA research

By TOM C. DORAN tdoran@shawmedia com

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Using feedback from a farmer survey, the Illinois Soybean Association is investing checkoff funds toward research to address those concerns.

ISA’s Soybean Production Concerns Survey has the respondents rate their interests in various general research areas — cover crops, disease and insect management, genetics and plant breeding, nutrient management and more.

The survey also asks which topics respondents believe need more research that would be helpful to their farming operation.

“We’ve had hundreds of people take this survey since the agronomy team formed,” Stephanie Porter, ISA outreach agronomist, said at the University of Illinois Extension’s annual Farm Assets Conference.

“When we did the survey last year, for example, the No. 1 thing people wanted to look at were no-till practices, cover crops, and that type thing.”

Herbicide-resistant weeds and weed management were second in the list of concerns by farmers who completed the survey.

“We’re also funding not only research on resistance, but also a lot of people like to plant soybeans early in Illinois, so how is that changing waterhemp,” Porter said.

In that research, Aaron Hager, U of I weed science professor, is

C

Stephanie Porter, Illinois Soybean Association outreach agronomist, shows a card with information on ISA’s Soybean Production Concerns Survey

looking at managing weeds in early-planted no-till soybeans. It includes evaluating the effectiveness of pre- and post-herbicide applications with and without cereal rye for weed control.

Insect and disease management are other hot topics among farmers surveyed.

“People are worried about whether pesticides are becoming resistant. They’re also very concerned about new and emerging pests and diseases. Why does Stephanie keep talking about red crown rot? That’s a hot topic. These are things that farmers are putting on their survey or they’re calling me up and asking me about, and they want researchers to work on soybean cyst nematode, of course,” Porter said.

“Double-crop soybeans is a big deal in Illinois, so we put forth research dollars towards that, as well as diversifying crop

systems within the state. I have an integrated pest management background, and when we start diversifying, we add more cover crop species, more wheat, that’s great, but what happens with the pests, too?”

“We’re also looking at different populations of double-crop soybeans.”

Other research examples are evaluating leaf nutrient tissue testing and its relation to soybean yields and evaluating different cover crops within a 40-acre farm plot.

Soybean checkoff-fu-nded research is conducted through onfarm trials, as well as at ISA’s Agronomy Farm near Heyworth in central Illinois, a new farmer-focused research farm with 98 tillable acres.

TRIAL CATEGORIES

ISA deploys and manages three categories of trials — legacy trials, action trials and demonstration trials — as part of its OnFarm Trial Network.

Action trials are flexible, replicated trials addressing relevant agronomics on topics ranging from pest management to planting rates. They report findings and actionable guidance as soon as possible.

The first Action trial carried out last year and will continue in 2026 was sulfur management in soybeans.

Legacy trials are long-term strip trials to evaluate the impact of cover crops and tillage on soil health.

Demonstration trials are less intensive and provide qualitative insights that provide an opportunity to highlight new products or practices.