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Aug 28 | Commodity Week · Commodity Week

• 0:00
  Todd Gleason: This is the August 28 edition of commodity week. Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. Well, welcome to commodity week. I am Todd Gleason. Our panelists for the day include Matt Bennett of agmarket.net.
• 0:16
  We're joined by Arlen Suderman with Stonex, and Colin Waters is here. He is with the Illinois Corn Growers Association. Our program comes to you today from the Farm Progress Show in Decatur, Illinois. Remember, you can always find commodity week online on demand anytime you'd like at willag.0rg. Arlen Suderman, let's begin with you for the day.
• 0:41
  You've spent three days here at the Farm Progress Show in Decatur. You and Matt and a few others have been in the varied industries tent, and I want Matt's take on this too. What have farmers been asking you most often?
• 0:55
  Arlan Suderman: Well, it all comes down to the size of the corn crop, the size of soybean crop, and whether we're gonna sell soybeans to China. I think those are the three big things, and, that's the focus. And when are we you know, how do we put the bottom in the market? That's what everybody wants to know.
• 1:12
  Todd Gleason: And, Matt Bennett, are they asking you the same question or something different?
• 1:16
  Matt Bennett: Yeah. They're asking when's the corn market gonna rally? I mean, that's the first question I get asked. So
• 1:21
  Todd Gleason: Do you tell them it already has a little bit?
• 1:24
  Matt Bennett: Yeah. I mean, I tell them whenever you take a report like the August 1, which is arguably one of the most bearish reports I've ever seen in my life, and you take these corn down on the week a quarter of a penny, that would be called a win in my book. And so there's various reasons that we can go into as to why I kind of feel like the market has acted like it has, but absolutely things could look worse than what they do right now.
• 1:50
  Todd Gleason: They could look worse. I do want to hear about a conversation I think both of you heard or talked with Scott Erwin, agricultural economist from the University of Illinois about. This has to do with farm policy, particularly coming out of Washington DC and the EPA. SREs or the small refinery exemptions aren't quite set, but it sounded to me, and I'll start here, Matt, with you on this, that Scott and we've heard this on the radio from him already on Thursday afternoon, but Scott really is pretty bullish to soybeans over time as it's related to biofuels and the crush. Can you tell me about that conversation you had with him?
• 2:36
  Matt Bennett: Yeah. And so I actually came to this, drove by the tent and saw Scott out. I said I better stop and talk to him. And after we talked about Illinois football and some other stuff, you know, in the
• 2:47
  Todd Gleason: fact I take it, Gary. Sniffke was sniffke was not there to talk about Ohio State.
• 2:51
  Matt Bennett: Are so high, which is very scary as an Illinois football fan.
• 2:55
  Todd Gleason: Before you get into the rest of the story, and maybe you will have made note of this too because you're a University of Illinois grad, this summer when I have been out at the state fair and farm progress show and all the other events, there are more University of Illinois Illini hats and shirts out than I have seen in decades, and it has to do with the sports teams.
• 3:16
  Matt Bennett: No. Absolutely. I mean, we've got good athletic programs all the way around. But as you know, Todd, the best thing for an Illini football team is low expectations because when they're high, it doesn't always pan out for us. But I'm a huge dilemma fan.
• 3:32
  Coach is he's doing a good job there. But, yeah, so I stopped talking to Scott, and we had a great conversation and I was getting ready to leave. He said woah, woah, woah. He said we need to talk. And I said about what?
• 3:45
  He said basically I'm bullish soybean I said yeah, I am too. He said no, I'm bullish soybean oil. And I said, yeah, I get it. So no doubt about it, when you look at the policy right now, clearly everything isn't set in stone, but everything we're getting is actually very friendly. And so bottom line, over the course of time, the build out of the crush industry is not going to happen overnight, but there will be reason for it.
• 4:12
  There will be profit margin. The crush margins are still good even today. They should get a lot better if soybean oil goes in the direction that we think it's going to go, which would be a fair amount higher than where we sit today. Bottom line is Scott is very friendly.
• 4:28
  Todd Gleason: From the Stonax side and you have deep roots into the industry from Stonak's, what do we know, understand about the policy and how it works, and and how do you see this playing out? Are you as bullish as Scott is, and how long of a horizon?
• 4:46
  Arlan Suderman: Yeah. Our edible oils team is is very friendly to soy oil demand. When we look at the policies that have been released so far, they've been very farmer friendly on the biofuel side. And I think a big reason for that is the Trump administration trying to find other areas to agriculture during the tariff war. When we look at what we know so far, the two big questions that have not yet been answered has been, the offsets for the SREs that were granted, the smaller refinery exemptions.
• 5:18
  How many of those will have to be made up by the larger refineries? And at this point, we believe that even if there are no offsets, that's still friendly for demand. The other piece of the equation is the 50% credit RIN credit for, foreign or from overseas feedstocks. And that's one that farmers obviously cheered when it went down to 50% to try to favor domestic feedstocks. The big oil really opposed that, and the reason is they're worried we don't have enough feedstock.
• 5:53
  And that may be one we have to give on because if we lose big oil support, they're very invested in this industry, that could end up hurting us. So I do think that we're tight on feedstock. That may be one that we see some change. Maybe it goes to 75%. Maybe it goes a 100%.
• 6:11
  I don't know. But right now, the two remaining things that are left, we still feel it's gonna be bullish for soy oil demand. The big problem is getting enough crush built. Right now, USDA has their crush number for the next marketing year about as high as it can be with the existing crush capacity. So we need to get more built.
• 6:34
  That's gonna take a year or two to do. But in the long run, this is gonna be very friendly, I think, for soybeans.
• 6:41
  Todd Gleason: Yesterday, I was talking to a producer from Mitchell, South Dakota. They are apparently putting a new crush plant up there, so capacity is still being It is. Brought on board. Do you think those, those crushing plants that were planned but that were paused or stopped. Will they come back on board quickly now?
• 7:02
  Arlan Suderman: Yeah. We do see most of those coming on board. It's it's just restarting, jump starting everything, and that's in the process now. It just takes that time to build it. And but at least they're that far along.
• 7:14
  So that'll make it quicker than if they had to start from scratch.
• 7:17
  Todd Gleason: Arlen Suderman, of course, is with Stonex. Colin Waters is here too. He's with the Illinois Corn Growers Association. I know you have these policy things in the back of your mind as they're related to corn. We've been talking about soybeans, but it's not the only part of this.
• 7:31
  The SREs, of course, are there. That has to do with ethanol. E 15 potentially as a year round function. What are the things that you've been watching, and what might they mean for demand?
• 7:43
  Collin Watters: So so I guess one of the things that we we tend to think about, and this actually gets back to some of the work that Scott has done in the past is, you know, the SREs, yes, is really, really important. It's really more important on the ethanol on the plant profitability side. Some of the work that he's done has basically shown that there really isn't correlation with the SREs and overall corn demand, right? Right. So from a farmer perspective, kind of keep that in mind.
• 8:10
  We tend to get wrapped around the axle on SREs and a lot of that policy. But, you know, E15 is definitely something that needs to be done. In the grand scheme of things, I'm not sure that, you know, even just kind of addressing kind of the patchwork issues that we have right now, if that will really generate true demand, like significant demand, right? I think there's kind of a misconception that, know, you go to E15, well, that'll just, you know, 50% more ethanol, right? Well, no, not really.
• 8:44
  Because in in some of these markets where E15 is still allowed and you don't need a waiver and all that, it it really hasn't penetrated as much as you would think. There's other impediments, right? So it's stuff like underground tank warranties and equipment
• 9:00
  Todd Gleason: Having to install the pump.
• 9:02
  Collin Watters: It's incredibly complicated, right? So it's not like you just flip a switch when you say E15 is all good, done and done, and we're going to have 50% more corn demand. That's not the case.
• 9:12
  Todd Gleason: And the big orange warning label that says e 15, I doubt is very helpful. Only because of the color of the darn Yeah.
• 9:19
  Collin Watters: And I and what's what's really interesting to me is that you're you're now seeing a lot of a a a lot of stations that are selling the 87 octane, but it's E15, right? And so if you need E10, you got to pay for the premium. You got to get 93, right, or 91. So there is there are some changes happening in the marketplace, but it's not an across the board thing. Anyways, think that right now the way that we're looking at it is that 2019 was really kind of the high watermark for ethanol demand in The United States.
• 9:52
  And we've kind of plateaued. It looks like we're going to probably absent any major policy change that we will see a slow erosion of domestic ethanol demand.
• 10:04
  Todd Gleason: Colin or Arlen, and I don't know who will be better at this, on the SREs going forward, It's not a completely done deal as it goes to policy just yet because it's not quite clear if they will be required to be picked up by the large producers, so there will be a reallocation of them. But if they are reallocated, that could, I believe, if I remember the conversation with Scott correctly, cause some kind of demand push.
• 10:39
  Arlan Suderman: Yeah. Certainly. So we expect that. And for what the EPA has ruled on so far, there's about 1,400,000,000 RINs that are affected that are up or are they gonna be reallocated, but that doesn't include the applications for 02/2025. So you add those two, and it gets to about 2,000,000,000 RINs that would be divided up among the various fuels and stuff.
• 11:02
  So we anticipate, the EPA to release several different options, that's at the OMB now or going to the OMB now, and then it'll come for public comment. Maybe a ruling by the October that may be squeezing the counter a little bit. That's the big thing now is when are we gonna have some certainty? We believe it's gonna be positive for demand, but, again, it's uncertain, and the market's kinda trading that uncertainty now until we know more, and it's gonna be another couple months probably before we really do.
• 11:34
  Todd Gleason: Okay, Matt. Back to what producers have been telling you here at the Farm Progress Show from across the Midwest as they've been walking through. Are they talking about the variability in the crop or are they simply telling you, you know, actually I have a really good crop?
• 11:49
  Matt Bennett: You know, I I would say the most common thing I'm hearing, and this is a multistate conversation, is that my crop was phenomenal, but now it's really good. We have not had a good finishing August. And so, you know, I've tried to tell people, hey, I'm not trying to get bullish on you. What I'm trying to impress upon you is that we started with incredible potential. And now, like for instance on my farm, my yard is brown.
• 12:22
  So what's that tell you? I didn't finish well. So clearly, whenever you have mid May planted corn that's already dented, you brought it along too quickly and you're not going to have that good finish you really want to see with big test weights and corn that weighs really good. Disease is certainly going to be a factor. A good friend of mine went through Iowa yesterday and had several stops and said he didn't have one stop without significant rust issues.
• 12:51
  And most of these fields were sprayed. Now, whether it's going to have a large yield impact depending upon a lot of that rust is below the ear in some places, so you don't know. I mean, it's lower in the plant if it's really going to affect things. But yeah, Todd, I think the most common thing I've heard is that, you know, I was looking at maybe a two sixty, two seventy type yield. Now it's probably twenty, thirty below that, which is still awfully good corn.
• 13:13
  And so there's a lot to be learned here still. I think that whenever you look at the crop size in total, I'm certainly well below the USDA's August number. But at the same time, I'm still in the camp that it's very likely to be a record crop, Something north of 180. I just don't know if it's as far north of 180 as what some people feel.
• 13:34
  Todd Gleason: Greenville, of course, is about light interception. So if it's below the the ear, less so than clearly if it is above the ear and how much photosynthesis is able to be done. What have you heard kind of the same thing as it's related to the size of this crop?
• 13:52
  Arlan Suderman: Yeah. Certainly so. And I think one of the things that I've noticed as I've been crisscrossing the Midwest here over the last few weeks is how many top leaves are burning, a lot of fields. That's never good to see that, burning starting from the top going down. And so we definitely are taking some of the top off.
• 14:09
  It's still a big crop. It's still gonna give us some storage issues, especially in the Western Midwest. The Dakotas have a record crop regardless, and they deserve having a crop good crop up there. But it it's not what it was, certainly.
• 14:25
  Todd Gleason: The man from the Mitchell, South Dakota told me 200 or better for his corn crop, and Mitchell's not exactly in the Eastern Side of South Dakota. And and or on the best of ground, I would think.
• 14:39
  Matt Bennett: Well, I mean, you you get in that Southeast Of Sioux Falls area East Of Sioux Falls, and that's just as good a dirt as what we're looking at around here. Lot of that, some of those guys have pulled off 240s and 250s in the last few years. But yeah, you
• 14:54
  Todd Gleason: go West Of Sioux Falls, it changes significantly. I was surprised and he was pretty straightforward honest about it. He was like, I have a good crop. I have a really good crop. Okay, Collin, he mentioned logistics.
• 15:10
  I want to hear about the logistics related to storing this crop. Soybeans not going out of North Dakota are a problem throughout the Midwest. Is that correct?
• 15:24
  Collin Watters: Sure. I mean, anything that will kind of upset the entire system. I think the logistics system in The U. S. Is like a balloon.
• 15:32
  You've got something you push on one end, it's got to go somewhere else, right? Yeah, I'm anticipating that there's going be ground piles you know, pretty much all over the place. Logistics wise, don't know, it kind of ties back into some of the questions that Arlen had brought up about China and the being demand and how much of that, you know, how much of that grain is going to be leaving the kind of the northern tier out the PNW, I don't know. I don't have a good answer for that honestly. But in overall, river transportation seems to be looking fairly good.
• 16:11
  The forecast at least it doesn't look like we're going have a low water situation. Hopefully fingers crossed. Rail seems to be working well with the exception of maybe some of the issues Mexico you know, Feromex getting cars and power back, you know, to The U. S. But I'm fairly optimistic, I guess, about our situation.
• 16:35
  That and that discounts, you know, everything else, all the global shipping issues. So we still have that, whether it's in the Red Sea or other, you know, other struggles. But, you know, I think I think we're going to have a lot of grain on the ground. But hopefully the hopefully the system works.
• 16:54
  Todd Gleason: So anticipated not it's not a problem moving the crop. It's about putting it on the ground and storing the crop.
• 17:01
  Collin Watters: Yeah. I mean, ultimately, that's I guess my bigger concern is that we if we continue to see kind of slack export demand and beans, not necessarily slack, but just off. And we have we've had a really great export program in corn, so hopefully hopefully that continues. I mean, really need to have those export markets, especially I mean, we're we're very competitively priced right now, so I would hope I would hope that that that continues.
• 17:28
  Todd Gleason: Matt, this is a conversation we've had many times in the last month and a half. This is going to be about the basis. You have experience, of course, in the elevator business. Putting a crop down on the ground, corn, is going to be an issue, particularly as it relates to storage space because farmers are gonna wanna sell their beans across the scale, and we're gonna talk about that in a second. But just basis is going to be an issue.
• 17:55
  And I think how do you see that developing?
• 17:58
  Matt Bennett: Yeah. I mean, I think one of my biggest concerns is a grower that, for instance, knows they've got forty, fifty thousand bushels that has to go to town that they cannot store. They don't know what they're going do with it yet. I would just as soon have a plan for it now is to wait until October fifteenth because if you're putting corn on the ground, from my own personal experience, putting it on the ground is a little easier than picking it back up And none of us enjoy doing it. And I can tell you, if you want to rain in Central Illinois, now start piling corn on the ground somewhere because that's when it starts raining.
• 18:32
  Okay? And then you've got quality issues. And so I've been telling guys don't get in a position where the elevator says you can deliver, but you're going to have to sell in order to deliver. And by the way, congratulations, there's a 50 under basis to go along with it. And I don't think that that number is going to be too far off.
• 18:52
  We've already got some folks at thirty five and forty under in our part of the world. And I think 50 under or worse could happen in the thick of harvest. And so I don't want to get caught
• 19:03
  Todd Gleason: in that.
• 19:03
  Matt Bennett: And so the way I'm looking at this, the grower is still very much under sold on new crop corn. And some of your originators have told me that they're still willing to have a little bit of wiggle room on basis. Of course, it's going to probably be for quantity. But if you called your guy and said, hey, you know what, I've got 25, thirty, fifty thousand bushels. Could you go from 3,500 to 25, 27 under?
• 19:29
  It has been happening. I know that. And so, you know, you at least have to take advantage in my opinion of having that ability to make that conversation happen right now because I don't think you're going to get to have it once you get harvest going in full earnest.
• 19:45
  Todd Gleason: So you are of a mind just off the quick calculation that basis depreciates somewhere between 1520%?
• 19:54
  Matt Bennett: Yeah. I mean, I think that if I'm just gonna put cents on it, I'm gonna say at least ten to fifteen cents. It could be 20. I think one thing that's going to maybe slow it from getting super wide is there's a whole lot of folks talking about bagging corn every year. More and more of them are bagging more and more corn.
• 20:12
  So if you're going to bag the corn, obviously it will take a little pressure off the system. I have had a few originators tell me that they feel like two things. The crops probably if it was a 188.8, Todd, I could have seen basis levels that would make your head explode. But you take that down just a little bit, it's going to take a little pressure off. And then of course guys find another home for that corn, in my opinion, is going to make the elevator maybe not near as horrific as what we thought it might have been originally.
• 20:42
  Todd Gleason: Arlen, I wanna talk about basis a little bit, but I also wanna talk about competition. The safrinha corn crop is coming out of Brazil. I think market it into just about now, it should be coming in in in making it to port there if I remember correctly. That's competition.
• 21:01
  Arlan Suderman: We are extremely competitive on the world market right now because Brazil farmers are not selling. They basically have finished harvesting the crop, but it's not moving. And, on the way here earlier this week, I was on the phone while driving, talking to one of our top brokers in the Mato Grosso area, and I said, Jonas, when is the farmer they're gonna sell? What's what's his target? He said, they're waiting for the rally.
• 21:29
  They're waiting for the
• 21:31
  Todd Gleason: Sounds familiar.
• 21:32
  Arlan Suderman: Rally in the board. I said, just like The US farmer then. And, so they're behind, and they're selling as well. And it's it's got their basis at extremely high levels because they're not selling, and that's why our exports are strong. The other reason our exports are strong, and I wanted to mention this, is a year ago, we had 30,000 head of feeder cattle a week coming across the border out of Mexico in The United States to be fed here.
• 21:58
  And the border's closed now because of the new world screwworm. So we're exporting the corn to Mexico so they can feed the cattle down there, slaughter them, send the beef up here. So USDA should have cut their their feed usage number in August on August 12, and instead, they bumped it another 250,000,000 bushels. The numbers don't add up. And so while there's a lot of positives out here, that's one you gotta be aware that as the crop gets smaller, demand is gonna get smaller as well.
• 22:36
  USDA fluffed up that feed usage number, and that's going to shrink as the crop gets smaller. I don't wanna be the the big bear here on that. But here I say, is the more basis falls at harvest time, the more it has the opportunity to recover and the person be able to capture it as long as they have a home for that corn that they planned ahead.
• 22:59
  Todd Gleason: Did Jonas also tell you that when you asked when they would sell it, it would be after they got back from the Farm Progress Show or about the same time that producers here are gonna be forced to sell across the scale?
• 23:11
  Arlan Suderman: Yeah. Absolutely. He's very familiar with the Farm Progress Show.
• 23:14
  Matt Bennett: Yeah. A couple of couple of things. Of course, Arlen and I have had a chance to talk together. Seems like almost every day here lately. But one thing, and I don't know if you saw this, Todd, but the Brazilian grower who made a lot of money in the last twenty years, they're on the struggle bus right now.
• 23:31
  And so I saw I read a column the other day that one of the larger lenders in Brazil, 600,000 clients, about 20,000 of them are currently in default. And so, you know, one thing I've told a lot of growers looking forward, is that this is a situation where if The U. S. Farmer is having a hard time making money planting corn due to high fertilizer costs, high input costs, we're not alone. We're not rowing in that boat alone.
• 23:59
  So whereas we know the grower is going to plant a lot of beans this year, the verdict is out on what their appetite is going to be to ramp up corn acreage significantly if input costs, we don't get some sort of relief. And right now from a fertilizer standpoint, you know, Arlen's buddy, Josh Glenville, agree with me on this because it's why I have the opinion I have because I talk to him all the time. I don't see a lot of relief on fertilizer. It's very concerning. So I just want to go back to you said what are growers asking me?
• 24:31
  They're saying what if I don't put my fertilizer on this fall? Can I expect it to be cheaper next spring? I'm very concerned with that mentality, Todd, and here's why. At some point, the focus, in my opinion, is going to shift to 26. And even without this big demand increase, you've got phenomenal world and US demand for corn.
• 24:54
  And so if you take acreage down significantly due to liquidity concerns, due to high input costs, due to the natural shift on corn to beans, beans to corn guys, all of a sudden people are going to take a look at the balance sheet and say we don't have the room to have a weather issue. So will we buy some acres? I don't know. Is it going to come from corn going up or beans going down? I don't know.
• 25:15
  But if you get a corn rally, I can assure you fertilizer is not going to come down. Last point, real quick, sorry. Five forty five million bushel increase in demand on this report. Okay? And so one thing Arlen and I have been trying to help people understand is that that's a big jump, you know?
• 25:35
  And that's the protocol. USDA typically, if they increase production, they raise demand as well. So if you go ahead and you take five, six bushel off this crop over the next two reports, you've got all the demand and then some to offset that if you want to. Now there's reasons to believe that we could leave exports the same, but I'm with Arlen. This feed and residual, it gives them some wiggle room, you know.
• 26:03
  I think that they're gonna have to dial that back. And so we've gotta be cautious as to assume, hey, this is a one eighty four and a half yield in September. I'm not saying that's what'll happen if it was. These guys are gonna say this is bullish. I'd be careful in that assumption on old crop.
• 26:18
  Todd Gleason: Yeah. Because you're you're suggesting then at that point at colander, what they're really suggesting is demand offsets whatever decrease in yield might come. So to make it easy, every bushel, but it drops a million a million.
• 26:37
  Matt Bennett: It probably won't be one for one, but good luck getting much under 2,000,000,000.
• 26:40
  Todd Gleason: Yeah. Yeah. So it it yes. Correct. So we don't change that very much.
• 26:45
  No. Do you see that are are you with them because this is what you do on the demand side being too heavy?
• 26:53
  Collin Watters: Well, obviously, these guys are the experts. Right? So I'm I feel like an interloper here, but my my best guess is that yes, well, do see opportunity in the export market, especially with how competitively priced The U. S. Origin is right now.
• 27:13
  That could certainly change, right? So it's really interesting in Brazil how the acreage is changing. They're increasing their demand for corn ethanol. They're building more and more corn ethanol plants. They're consuming a lot more of that corn right now.
• 27:31
  They'll be competing in the ethanol exports, distillers export markets as well. That dynamic is interesting to me. Also, South America and Argentina, policy changes that they're undertaking and reducing the export taxes and so forth. I am confident that we will see Argentina become a much stronger competitor in the world market coming on pretty soon. So that I know, it's a very mixed bag.
• 28:02
  And I honestly, I don't know that I have a really good answer, but I would defer to these guys. They know what they're talking about.
• 28:09
  Todd Gleason: Alright. We're gonna get a final word from each of you at this point. I will say that if you're interested in the numbers from Brazil, I have a difficult time sometimes looking at them in metric tons because they always come in that way. You can go to willag.0rg. There is a tab there that says USDA, and the supply and demand tables for both corn and soybeans are converted, the actual s and d tables, into bushels, and I find it easier to think about it in that way.
• 28:36
  Arlen Suderman from Stonex, let's start with your final thoughts for our program.
• 28:42
  Arlan Suderman: I'd just like to highlight, be talking. Be talking to your suppliers. Be talking to people who buy from you. Have the conversation so you can plan and don't get caught off guard.
• 28:53
  Todd Gleason: Colin Waters from the Illinois Corn Growers Association.
• 28:56
  Collin Watters: Yeah. I guess the only thing that I would just add is a little bit on the the input side of things. So the Illinois corn growers, we're just 100% focused on farmer profitability. We're working as hard as we can to help develop markets and expand markets. But we're also working on the input side, really trying to get as much relief as we possibly can.
• 29:16
  We're talking to the fertilizer companies, talking to the tech companies and everybody else because, you know, honestly, there's a lot of policy stuff that's going on right now that could help or hurt on some level, like the the $10,000,000,000, you know, emergency payment that came out last last December. I I don't know that that it was a Band Aid. Right? But I don't know if that I I have a feeling that that's structurally not helpful for farmers. Right?
• 29:45
  Because there's, you know, what what, input supplier, what landlord is going to say, oh, yeah. I can see you're really having a hard time here when you just got a government check. Right?
• 29:54
  Todd Gleason: Possibly built into the fertilizer price.
• 29:56
  Collin Watters: And it it will and so that until the structure until it fundamentally changes, I think we're gonna be struggling. But, we're we're working every day as hard as we can to help farmers.
• 30:06
  Todd Gleason: And Matt Bennett from agmarket.net, your final word for the day.
• 30:10
  Matt Bennett: I mean, there's no doubt this is a challenging environment. It's one of the most probably the most challenging environment for a lot of folks younger than me. And so, you know, for me, I think we have to look at a couple of different things and one of those is that we do have very strong corn demand. It's going to be a real feather in our cap moving forward. I think it's a very dynamic environment we've got with input costs.
• 30:37
  You know, we could see a bit of a pendulum swing over the next several months. And so I don't want to just put my head in the sand and do nothing here. If I have the ability to have a home for corn like Arlen was talking, I certainly think that it's probably a smart idea. Look at the carries in the market, what can we do with this crop, sell the carry, wait on basis to come back to you, handle it like a grain elevator does. I think it's something that that we that we we can have base hits and at least live to play another day because, it's not
• 31:09
  Todd Gleason: all lost. Commodity week, of course, is a production of Illinois Public Media. It's public radio for the farming world. You may find and listen to us on demand anytime you'd like at willag.org. That's willag.0rg.
• 31:23
  Our thanks go to our panelists today, Matt Bennett, Colin Waters, and Arlen Suderman. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleeson.