Chicago Close: Grain Futures Surge on Weather and Demand Optimism

Jul 03, 2025

Grain and oilseed futures rallied on Tuesday, buoyed by firmer crude oil prices, improved technical sentiment, and supportive weather outlooks. Corn and soybeans led the gains, while wheat also posted solid advances across all three exchanges.

Crude oil extended its recovery, helping lift soybean oil and related products. After recent weakness tied to geopolitical calm in the Middle East, the energy market rebounded amid signs of tightening inventories and firmer gasoline demand. This strength filtered into the grain complex, bolstering biofuel-linked commodities like soybeans.

In addition, weather models suggest warmer conditions returning to parts of the Corn Belt, triggering renewed attention on pollination-stage crops. Corn and soybean traders also reacted to early positioning ahead of the holiday-shortened trading week, with managed money showing fresh interest.

September corn jumped 12 cents to $4.18, and December climbed 11 ½ cents to $4.33 ½.
August soybeans surged 23 ¾ cents to $10.53 ½, while November gained 20 ¾ cents to $10.48.

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Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.