Latest / Professional Ag Marketing Podcast / Grains Fall as we Prepare for the 2026 Crop Tour
Transcript
- 0:03SPEAKER_00: You're locked in to the Grain Market Talk Podcast.
- 0:06SPEAKER_00: Fast updates, market movers, and the grain news you need right now.
- 0:12SPEAKER_00: Trading commodity futures and options involve substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors.
- 0:21SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't know about you, Lucas, but the grain markets sure weren't locked in this week.
- 0:26SPEAKER_01: How's it going today?
- 0:28SPEAKER_02: Well, it's going good.
- 0:29SPEAKER_02: Uh, we can't let the little bit of a down market get us down on a Friday morning here, Mike.
- 0:34SPEAKER_02: Let's uh let's get jacked up as we get ready to kick off Mike Miner's 10th crop tour, right?
- 0:40SPEAKER_01: Okay, Lucas.
- 0:41SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm actually not going on the main tour.
- 0:44SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna I'm gonna host the podcast from this office while they travel the U.S.
- 0:50SPEAKER_01: all five of them.
- 0:51SPEAKER_01: Yeah, who's all who's all going this year?
- 0:53SPEAKER_01: Jaden and four interns.
- 0:54SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna have a full full vehicle there.
- 0:57SPEAKER_01: Um I rented them a Prius, it'll be fantastic.
- 1:00SPEAKER_01: And uh so they're gonna do their 20 some or 2,000-some mile road trip across the U.S.
- 1:06SPEAKER_01: I'll have Cade bring it up on the map here, showing the crop tour route.
- 1:10SPEAKER_01: And uh it should be an interesting tour this year.
- 1:13SPEAKER_01: Uh very wide range of yield expectations, probably compared to normal.
- 1:17SPEAKER_01: Yet you've got people at 188 and people at 175.
- 1:20SPEAKER_01: So wide range of expectations.
- 1:22SPEAKER_01: But if you go to our website, you can click on follow the tour, it'll be right at the top, right in the big uh center of the screen.
- 1:29SPEAKER_01: It'll take you to this.
- 1:30SPEAKER_01: This is just the crop tour map route.
- 1:33SPEAKER_01: The uh little targets there, pins are going to be each stop, basically.
- 1:38SPEAKER_01: It's gonna adjust a little bit by this podcast.
- 1:40SPEAKER_01: But what you're seeing is uh basically the red tour is the southern tour.
- 1:47SPEAKER_01: Uh, that's gonna be those five.
- 1:49SPEAKER_01: And then I'm gonna do a northern tour in this part of the world here, Lucas.
- 1:52SPEAKER_01: We're looking forward to it.
- 1:54SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be a great tour this year.
- 1:55SPEAKER_01: If you want to look at the yield calculator and see when we plug in state yields, you can mess with that right on that screen there.
- 2:02SPEAKER_01: You can plug in what yield you think Iowa's gonna be at, and it'll adjust the final yield down below for you given this situation.
- 2:10SPEAKER_01: So if you think you want to come up and give a yield guess as well, you can play around with that tool.
- 2:16SPEAKER_01: And we would love on the next tab for you all to take some field samples, take stand counts, count some ears, uh, send them in.
- 2:24SPEAKER_01: Let us know on your own farms what your little crop tours would suggest to us that you're seeing out there compared to normal.
- 2:32SPEAKER_01: We would love to hear the feedback on TikTok or Twitter, uh, email, etc.
- 2:36SPEAKER_01: We're all for it.
- 2:37SPEAKER_01: So we're really looking forward to this year's crop tour.
- 2:40SPEAKER_02: Yep, it is an exciting time.
- 2:42SPEAKER_02: Uh I went on the crop tour, well, the whole crop tour once and have done the kind of the northern route here for the last couple of years.
- 2:50SPEAKER_02: Um, it is a good time uh to get out.
- 2:52SPEAKER_02: And, you know, a lot of times we all live in our little bubble, right?
- 2:55SPEAKER_02: And we know what's going on locally, and we'll talk about that here in a little bit.
- 2:59SPEAKER_02: But uh, you know, when you get a nationwide perspective and you get in a car and you drive 2,500 miles, you generally know what the crop is going to look like, um, or what it's looking like so far, I should say, right?
- 3:12SPEAKER_02: Like we've we've done it in prior years, and then something's changed after uh that has affected the the overall yield, but most of the time by the first of August, you know, we're a month and a half away from harvest really kicking off.
- 3:24SPEAKER_02: Uh, so it gives us a pretty good idea.
- 3:26SPEAKER_02: Uh, excited for those uh those young guys that are going to go on the tour, and excited for you to go on the uh northern tour, Mike.
- 3:34SPEAKER_02: And I really like the fact that we put that final yield or field yield calculator on our website.
- 3:39SPEAKER_02: So hopefully some of our listeners uh can take part in their own crop tour.
- 3:43SPEAKER_02: And as they get out in the field and looking at stuff, grab some ears, do some counts, plug it in, and let us know what you're finding in your local area.
- 3:51SPEAKER_02: That uh that would just be even better.
- 3:53SPEAKER_01: And it's also a fun opportunity to connect with our customers because now we're gonna have a customer stop in each state.
- 3:59SPEAKER_01: Almost every stop we make is a customer stop, so it's gonna be really exciting from that perspective, too.
- 4:04SPEAKER_01: Lots of uh lots of data behind each one of our stops, APHs, rainfall history for the year, how you think you're sitting compared to normal plant dates, uh, getting a uh very much more in-depth, accurate perspective of of what the crop's looking like.
- 4:20SPEAKER_02: Yep, that sounds awesome.
- 4:21SPEAKER_01: Looking forward to the results, and we'll have a podcast every day next week as they uh roll through and and get some visuals on the Sunday through Thursday will be that, and then we'll come up with uh a final yield and everything on uh Friday, adjuster.
- 4:35SPEAKER_01: Next Friday, all right.
- 4:36SPEAKER_02: Next Friday.
- 4:37SPEAKER_02: I can't wait for for that one, but first, before we get to that, uh let's go back and talk about those uh markets that you wanted to bring us down right away with, Mike.
- 4:46SPEAKER_02: What was going on this week in the corn and beans?
- 4:48SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you what.
- 4:49SPEAKER_01: We went through going into the weekend last Friday we made new highs in November beans and December corn.
- 4:55SPEAKER_01: Uh November beans there we ran up and we tested uh 1256 and a half on Friday.
- 5:02SPEAKER_01: December corn was up to 492.
- 5:04SPEAKER_01: So really nice recoveries on the move, uh, really nice uh movement going towards the end of last week.
- 5:11SPEAKER_01: And then we went into the the weekend.
- 5:13SPEAKER_01: Now, uh most of the summer I've talked about the big three China buying, weather, and the Iran war.
- 5:19SPEAKER_01: We added the Russia-Ukraine war in recently, so we've got two that we've been working on, but all four of those items at the pretty much the same time through the weekend turned bearish.
- 5:28SPEAKER_01: Yep.
- 5:28SPEAKER_01: We had a weather forecast turned bearish in a pretty big way.
- 5:31SPEAKER_01: That controlled the markets in the biggest way, I would argue.
- 5:34SPEAKER_01: You had two wars that went into a ceasefire over the weekend, uh bearish, and then China maybe wasn't a huge fan of the fact that Trump bumped some tariffs from 10 to 25% globally.
- 5:48SPEAKER_01: Haven't heard China retaliate, haven't heard any news there.
- 5:51SPEAKER_01: They still made some purchases here, even as of last night.
- 5:54SPEAKER_01: But nonetheless, the market had some pretty good reasons to try to sell off through most this week, and that they did 60 cents lower pretty much from their highs on Friday to uh today's trade.
- 6:05SPEAKER_01: Uh corn again down six.
- 6:07SPEAKER_01: We're at 462 after, so we're 30 cents off on that one.
- 6:11SPEAKER_01: Uh here's what's going on.
- 6:13SPEAKER_01: When I look at the rainfall that we have had really mainly last night was the big rain.
- 6:19SPEAKER_01: Walk me through what you're seeing with recent rainfall, and then we can get into a little bit of the forecast just to show the big driver in the market right now is weather and why trade did what it did this week.
- 6:31SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you bet.
- 6:32SPEAKER_02: So, like you said, last last week everything was was trending pretty dry.
- 6:36SPEAKER_02: Um, and then this week, kind of well, Sunday night, Monday morning, we started getting some models that suggest the the driest areas of the corn belt were going to get the most rain this week.
- 6:47SPEAKER_02: Uh it probably I would say it did happen, right?
- 6:50SPEAKER_02: So I I think Kate, I we uh uh sent you the the uh 24-hour rainfall map.
- 6:56SPEAKER_02: There you go, that one.
- 6:57SPEAKER_02: Um some big rains across areas that needed it, which is good, but you also see a big hole, right?
- 7:04SPEAKER_02: So so this is the classic uh we're in that hole, Lucas.
- 7:07SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
- 7:08SPEAKER_02: So the forecast is showing uh you know this area of southeast South Dakota, southwest Minnesota, uh northwest Iowa that has been dry, that the drought monitor is creeping into and getting you know increasing in severity in those areas.
- 7:22SPEAKER_02: Uh, and everybody was looking at Thursday saying, here we go.
- 7:26SPEAKER_02: This is our our inch of rain we need, if not more.
- 7:28SPEAKER_02: I mean, there was excessive rainfall uh warnings or watches out, and then you can see uh we just got a tenth.
- 7:35SPEAKER_02: Yep, we got a tenth of an inch in Laverne at LaSueux Falls, Adrian.
- 7:39SPEAKER_02: Uh you took you name the spot, that's about what we got.
- 7:42SPEAKER_02: Now you go a little bit outside of that, and you go up uh along Highway 12 there, Aberdeen Wilmer angling down 94 towards the cities, Mancato area.
- 7:53SPEAKER_02: You're talking four to six plus inches.
- 7:56SPEAKER_02: Uh, and they don't want that either, right?
- 7:58SPEAKER_02: So um, and then south, uh, you know, into northwest Nebraska or northeast Nebraska uh actually got a nice inch to take rains uh kind of exactly what they needed.
- 8:09SPEAKER_02: So uh locally, I think we we all feel well, we don't feel very good this morning, right?
- 8:14SPEAKER_02: Like we were looking forward to it, it didn't show up, but from a market standpoint, they're gonna say, you know what, most of that area did get some decent rains, uh, so we'll see what happens there.
- 8:23SPEAKER_02: And then of course, as we looked uh further east, which we don't have a graphic, it just kept raining across eastern Iowa.
- 8:30SPEAKER_02: I I think uh, you know, our office over there by Cedar Rapids had roughly about two inches um and and kept going east, which is if you're getting that type of rain, end of July, the corn and soybean market isn't going to respond favorably, right?
- 8:45SPEAKER_02: And that's exactly what we're seeing.
- 8:46SPEAKER_02: So uh the other map I I I sent to Cade there is the the month to date uh rainfall.
- 8:53SPEAKER_02: Cape.
- 8:53SPEAKER_02: So and this is all out of an app, but uh the the month to date, and since we're at the last day of July, I thought that'd be a good day to look at that.
- 9:02SPEAKER_02: July is a pretty critical time for corn uh corn yield specifically, right, Mike?
- 9:08SPEAKER_02: Yep.
- 9:08SPEAKER_02: We've talked about pollination time periods and the heat we've had in July, and when you start looking at the map, and I know it's blowing out a little bit, but uh, you know, those greens are are an inch of rain or less, and the yellows are maybe creeping on two inches.
- 9:24SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of areas that got by July with these small amounts of precip.
- 9:30SPEAKER_02: The reds and things where you're getting four or five, six inches, and some of that happened last night, uh, are a little sparser on that map.
- 9:39SPEAKER_02: So, this is what I guess I'm curious when our guys and uh go on the crop tour.
- 9:44SPEAKER_02: Uh we we started off you know pretty dry, the crop got planted timely, no real big planting issues anywhere.
- 9:52SPEAKER_02: Um pretty good development.
- 9:54SPEAKER_02: We've had uh heat, especially in the uh in the north and uh western corn belt, lots of heat pushing the crop along.
- 10:02SPEAKER_02: Um now I think is when you're going to see those areas that had those rains show up as you're driving through, right?
- 10:09SPEAKER_02: Like you're you're not gonna see the drought stress versus you're gonna see significant drought stress depending on on that month to date map on where where you got the rains and where you didn't.
- 10:19SPEAKER_02: And then of course you start looking ahead.
- 10:21SPEAKER_02: And that's probably where your question is going is okay, so we didn't get the rain in July.
- 10:25SPEAKER_02: Locally, we didn't get the rain they forecasted last night.
- 10:28SPEAKER_02: What's that going to mean to our yield?
- 10:30SPEAKER_02: You know, the uh there's a lot of story right left to right, uh at least I hope there is, um, uh for the guys that didn't didn't get any rain.
- 10:38SPEAKER_02: But what you're gonna see is, you know, obviously we're through pollination.
- 10:42SPEAKER_02: If you guys are seeing some pollination issues out there, of you know, maybe we got a little too dry or too much heat during that critical time period.
- 10:49SPEAKER_02: But for the most part, the new genetics, the hybrids, they're bred to at least get pollinated during those stressful conditions, right?
- 10:58SPEAKER_02: Now it's gonna be about kernel fill and seed size.
- 11:01SPEAKER_02: So like I noticed on our uh our field calculator, we are defaulting to a 90,000 kernels per bushel.
- 11:09SPEAKER_02: Um, if you've gotten rain and you're you're got uh a decent ear size, you might have to shrink that down to 80 to 85,000 kernels per bushel because you're gonna have a good crop.
- 11:20SPEAKER_02: If you're in a drought-stressed environment and your ears are looking more like popcorn, you might need to bump that up to 100,000 kernels per bushel, and of course, yields gonna go down as well.
- 11:30SPEAKER_02: And all of that uh kernel development and size and fill has to be wrapped up before black layer, and we're running about eight to ten days ahead of normal in our local area, um, which is gonna put black layer most likely, uh, probably the third week of August would be my projections for a common hybrid around here.
- 11:53SPEAKER_02: So you got a month after that, basically.
- 11:55SPEAKER_02: Well, so you're you're gonna have them basically three weeks from now to get any beneficial rainfall to try to increase kernel size.
- 12:03SPEAKER_02: After black layer, you're done.
- 12:04SPEAKER_01: But then uh to harvest it's not a good thing.
- 12:06SPEAKER_01: To harvest, yep.
- 12:07SPEAKER_02: So you drop some moisture, so you'd be probably combining some of those fields, uh, mid to late September.
- 12:12SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be a little early.
- 12:13SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be early.
- 12:14SPEAKER_02: We kind of knew that the way it's looking.
- 12:16SPEAKER_02: Hopefully, we can pick up some rain and we can extend that that period.
- 12:19SPEAKER_02: We are gonna go into a little cooler stretch as well.
- 12:22SPEAKER_02: When you start looking at the local forecast, a lot of highs in the low 80s instead of last week when we were in the upper 90s.
- 12:28SPEAKER_02: So that will kind of slow some of our growth rates down as well.
- 12:31SPEAKER_02: But hopefully we can get uh a shot of rain.
- 12:34SPEAKER_02: Hopefully, a crop in your area is still uh green enough to get some ear fill and increase our yields by the end of it.
- 12:40SPEAKER_01: I love it.
- 12:41SPEAKER_01: Cade, pull up the map for June rainfall uh or July rainfall one over the that Lucas had there before.
- 12:49SPEAKER_01: I uh here's what I want to talk about.
- 12:51SPEAKER_01: You through the month of July saw a pretty dry Illinois, Indiana area in the eastern corn belt, and dry in the west through the month of July for the most part.
- 13:04SPEAKER_01: And surprisingly, most of South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, those are gonna actually end up pretty normal for July rainfall.
- 13:14SPEAKER_01: We happen to get all of the rain for the whole month in the first day of July and the last day of July, quite literally, but it ends up being normal.
- 13:22SPEAKER_01: So from that perspective, K.
- 13:24SPEAKER_01: But if I look at what rainfall has been from basically planted April 1st until now, you see a very wet Illinois, Indiana, uh, Ohio, kind of eastern Iowa, very, very wet.
- 13:38SPEAKER_01: Yep.
- 13:38SPEAKER_01: Uh we started the year off in early spring, getting a ton of rain through that eastern corn belt.
- 13:44SPEAKER_01: So I'm talking top 10 wettest years in some of those cases, year to date so far.
- 13:49SPEAKER_01: And then kind of in those areas backing off, had a dry July, which was fine for the most part.
- 13:55SPEAKER_01: Looks like now they're gonna get some nice rainfalls to kind of finish up, so it's not as bad as it could have been.
- 14:00SPEAKER_01: Um when you look in the west, I mean we are running, you know, 75th out of 130 driest.
- 14:07SPEAKER_01: Yep.
- 14:08SPEAKER_01: So drier than normal, but nothing a hundred plus, not crazy, crazy dry.
- 14:15SPEAKER_01: North Dakota, some super dry spots, Nebraska, some super dry spots, but we'll see how that all works out.
- 14:21SPEAKER_01: So one of the things I want to focus on is one, I know the crop's probably not as good in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska as it could be.
- 14:28SPEAKER_01: Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, probably pretty good from the thoughts of it.
- 14:33SPEAKER_01: Illinois, a little, I mean, it's hard to have a bad crop in Illinois, but wet early on, then they got dry, maybe they're getting some rains to help finish them off.
- 14:41SPEAKER_01: I think they'll be fine from the forecast look.
- 14:43SPEAKER_02: But generally, I mean, in your experience and my experience, that is a a not a great combination for record yields of start wet, finish dry.
- 14:54SPEAKER_02: And then you and then you have some excessive heat there uh kind of right during pollination, right?
- 14:59SPEAKER_02: So again, the overall moisture in the profile was probably okay.
- 15:03SPEAKER_02: Uh, but when you hit that stressful time, you usually don't have great root development.
- 15:08SPEAKER_02: You have all of those sins of wet planting or things that happen early in the season that they show up late in the season.
- 15:15SPEAKER_02: And maybe some rainfall, beneficial late rainfall kind of carries them through.
- 15:20SPEAKER_02: And I guess that's what we'll have to have our guys look for when they're cruising through Illinois.
- 15:24SPEAKER_01: I am curious to what they'll find for specifically tip back out there, the modern-day corn killer.
- 15:29SPEAKER_01: I want to know what that looks like out and about.
- 15:31SPEAKER_01: So uh you get an early indication probably on tip back at this time of the year.
- 15:36SPEAKER_01: It's a very early science stages of it, so I'm curious on that.
- 15:40SPEAKER_01: The uh the last thing we'll end with on weather is the forecast in the middle slide there, Cade.
- 15:46SPEAKER_01: Uh this did look yesterday like it was a lot more rain in the West as well, but obviously we got that rainfall last night, so it kind of pulled it out.
- 15:56SPEAKER_01: But when I look at the rainfall forecast, this tells the whole story of why the corn futures has sold off 30 cents and soybean 60 this week.
- 16:04SPEAKER_01: This was not there a week ago.
- 16:06SPEAKER_01: Longer-term yield expectations, if you looked out, had pretty big decreases in it.
- 16:12SPEAKER_01: Given the weather we've had, NDVI, satellite imagery, yield expectations and guesses, going into August Wazday, we are probably at a 187 to a 189 yield right now, given a lot of those uh yield expectations from looking at it due to those things.
- 16:30SPEAKER_01: If you looked at a 15-day forecast at the start of this week or at the end of the last week, that yield was supposed to be a 180 to a 183.
- 16:38SPEAKER_01: They're supposed to take off four to seven bushels this week and next week in weather.
- 16:43SPEAKER_01: Now, if you looked out 45 days, it was like 175 on those yield expectations.
- 16:49SPEAKER_01: Now, as we sit today, the 15-day forecast basically has us dropping, if anything, maybe one bushel.
- 16:56SPEAKER_01: So 186, 187.
- 16:58SPEAKER_01: And the longer term range now is still above trend.
- 17:01SPEAKER_01: So with that being the case, this forecast that came in looks like it should benefit the corn crop national yield average in a very, very big way.
- 17:11SPEAKER_01: And we've traded that pretty aggressively this week.
- 17:14SPEAKER_01: So far, I know we're sitting in a hole here as we speak, but the rains are kind of happening.
- 17:18SPEAKER_01: And it's a shorter term rainfall forecast.
- 17:20SPEAKER_01: Next week's supposed to be pretty damp most of the week.
- 17:24SPEAKER_01: I don't see anything huge, but at least there's still some rain in the forecast, right?
- 17:29SPEAKER_01: More than what we've had lately.
- 17:31SPEAKER_01: So nonetheless, the crop in a critical stage, which we would argue now, since pollination isn't as critical as it used to be, it's gonna do it anyways.
- 17:39SPEAKER_01: This grain kernel weight fill time frame is is very, very important to corn yield and good weather for it.
- 17:48SPEAKER_02: Like I said, the forecast today looks like good weather for it.
- 17:51SPEAKER_02: We all know forecast can change.
- 17:53SPEAKER_02: Um, and so that's that's interesting.
- 17:55SPEAKER_02: It seems like maybe we data ourselves to death a little bit nowadays of of looking at these hourly runs or six-hour runs.
- 18:02SPEAKER_02: But you're right, of how how all of a sudden this weather forecast showed up late last week and how it can, or at least the models predicting how it's going to change yield.
- 18:12SPEAKER_02: Uh I guess it's a good reminder to have a marketing plan in place and take advantage of those opportunities rather than think, well, it's dry, it'll be dry forever, and we'll sell our corn higher at harvest.
- 18:24SPEAKER_01: And and just money flow too.
- 18:25SPEAKER_01: We added a lot of long corn contracts, a lot of long soybean contracts.
- 18:29SPEAKER_01: It's end of the month.
- 18:31SPEAKER_01: We probably had some profit taking along here as well.
- 18:33SPEAKER_01: And and wheat has propped up a lot of this rally as well.
- 18:37SPEAKER_01: Huge pullback in wheat, even today, again.
- 18:40SPEAKER_01: And I think that's pulling corn down as we speak.
- 18:42SPEAKER_01: So sometimes it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with corn directly.
- 18:47SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's another grain that can impact that.
- 18:50SPEAKER_01: So uh one last thing, China, they're still buying soybeans from us for new crop.
- 18:56SPEAKER_01: They're on track really well.
- 18:57SPEAKER_01: Uh, basis, for example, for some of the folks I work with in North Dakota.
- 19:01SPEAKER_01: I saw their basis go from a buck under for new crop basis on soybeans in May to now they're 70 under for new crop posted bids on in in uh in new crop soybeans.
- 19:12SPEAKER_01: So it's improved a lot.
- 19:14SPEAKER_01: They have a better opportunity, they think, for maybe a subpar crop.
- 19:17SPEAKER_01: So they're gonna have to compete a little bit more, and the business of export is there.
- 19:22SPEAKER_01: But nonetheless, China's buying and that helps basis and the Western Corn Belt here specifically a lot.
- 19:27SPEAKER_02: Well, especially in the Northwest Corn Belt, right?
- 19:29SPEAKER_02: Because it's gonna go to the PNW to head to China, and that's it's good to have them back in the marketplace uh putting some sales in.
- 19:36SPEAKER_01: And a smaller crop up there, too, it looks like at this point.
- 19:39SPEAKER_01: So all right.
- 19:39SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you for tuning in.
- 19:41SPEAKER_01: Please, everyone, catch a hold of the crop tour next week.
- 19:44SPEAKER_01: Send us some of your results as well.
- 19:47SPEAKER_01: We really appreciate the listen today.
- 19:49SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining Lucas, and uh, we'll have you on next week.
- 19:52SPEAKER_01: That sounds good, Mike.