Latest / AG Bull / AG Squawk with Davis Michaelsen | MARKETS MONDAY | Tom Leffler

Transcript

AG Squawk with Davis Michaelsen | MARKETS MONDAY | Tom Leffler · AG Bull

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of a tough start for the grains to the week.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Beans took it especially hard.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Cattle quietly grazed higher.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hogs wallowed below unchanged.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's Markets Monday, and my guest and I will get you set up for the upcoming week.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: From behind the big blue, bodacious microphone of Ag Bull, your pal Davis Michelson, the handsome newsman for Ag Squawk in the afternoon.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Glad to have you along on this Monday.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: What is it, October 26th already?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hope you've got the candy, or at least, you know what?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: To be honest, we we're we're a bit curmudgeonly around here.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: We just flip off the front porch light and uh and we stay inside.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's the end of that.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's how we celebrate Halloween.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, come to think of it, uh, speaking of celebrate, I've let's just jump right into this because the combine cab queens, no, the regular kind, the combine cab queens send a special shout out to me and you.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Can we uh can we roll that uh that long distance combine dedication quick?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, Davis, and everybody watching as you like them apples.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's not bad, huh?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's my old pal Julie and her royal hemis making an appearance there.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm hoping to get uh April on before too long here, but she's uh as you can see, busy harvesting.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: But we we thank the gals for for the little shout out there.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for thinking of us, ladies.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: We we appreciate you.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Today I've got Tom Leffler from Leffler Commodities.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's a markets Monday, so we're gonna talk markets, and I've got a few other things that I'd like to discuss if there's time.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Let me mention AgBull.com.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: If you are not an AgBull subscriber, I would urge you to check out all the uh premium services that we offer there.
• 2:12
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• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: There's a code for Weismeyer.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Weismeyer has Wiesmeyer has gone premium, but it's separate from the AgBull stuff.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: We've got market stuff and we've got Wiesmeyer stuff sort of separately.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: So if things get get confused in the transition there, we're not good at this, but we want to be.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: So just be patient with us.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Check all of that out.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: You can get more information on that over at Agbol.com as well.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: He gets, I mean, Wiesmeyer gave it away free for like 18 months.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: He's giving it away free.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: And uh at eggbol.com, you know, he he decided, huh?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I wonder, uh, yeah, yeah, I've got I've got to go premium with this rather than then just always giving it away.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: He gives too much of himself for it to be free because for the producer, free ain't free.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's not much, it's not it's it's not a ton.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: We're not asking for much, but uh check out Weiss Meyer's stuff over there.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,$199 a year,$200 a year for uh Weiss Meyer's commentary.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And as you know, if you've been following Weiss Meyer's stuff, he is prolific with a capital LIFIC.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I know you won't be disappointed with his coverage there.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And uh Agbol.com, of course, the premium side always available to you there.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: We'd love to have you.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: We've still got some of the Bluetooth speakers left.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Still still got a couple.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: So if you hurry, subscribe for one full year for$250.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: You can have uh one of these, uh, one of these tokens of our esteem, a token of our thanks for subscribing.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: So uh go to Agbull.com, won't you?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get into export inspections.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: 10% below week ago for corn, and nearly half what they were the same week last year at 625,000 metric tons.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's in today's export inspections report.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Soybeans look sharp at 2.476 million metric tons, 20% above last week, 113% above the same week last year.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Wheat export inspections super low at just 184,000 metric tons.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: The buyer's mix didn't change much.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: We had China leading the way in the soybeans, and then Mexico took the top spot, if I'm not mistaken, in both the wheat and the corn export inspections.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: But good to see China in there on the soybeans.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about the tail of the ticker now.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Corn futures were down a nickel in early trade.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Soybeans trading around 25 cents lower.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Winter wheat futures were six to seven cents lower shortly after the opening bell.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: The cattle complex was mildly higher, but lean hog futures were under light selling pressure in the first hour of trade this morning.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Rounding into the lunch hour, corn paired losses while soybeans continued to press lower.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Wheat futures held steady around six to seven cents lower.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: The cattle complex still holding on to those mild gains with lean hogs under pressure around lunchtime.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Let me uh get over to the settlements here.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Click on the settlements page.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Here we go.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: I've got December corn down a whole penny today.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: It could have been feels like it could have been worse.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: We're at 455 now.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: 455.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Let that sink in.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: I want to talk to Tom about that number specifically.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: I've got November soybean futures settling at 1241 and a quarter.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's down 15 and one quarter cents.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Soybean meal was lower.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Soybean oil was slightly higher on the day.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: To the winter wheats, your Chicago down nine cents all told at 616 even.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Your Kansas City hard Kansas City wheat down uh five and one half at six fifty-niner down a nickel and and a half six fifty-nine on your KC weed.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking for my tab here.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's the live stocks.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: November feeder cattle.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like I said, just sort of grazed higher.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think of what was that old book, Ferdinand?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Just kind of sitting on the sitting on the hilltop, smelling the flowers.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: No big deal.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Up 42 and a half cents in the December feeders today, 348.55 over to the December fat cattle, 231.20 at settlement.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: That makes a seven and one half cent gain on the day.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Sniffing the flowers today.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: And here's your December lean hog features down 90 cents at 64.67 and one half.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: The February contract down 60 cents was the Feb hog contract.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: 67.02 and one half.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Let me uh quickly say thank you to our sponsor plus 500, my squad.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I love using plus 500 T4 software every single day for real-time quotes, futures, options, a host of dandy features.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Plus 500, thanks, plus 500, trust plus 500.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: And with that.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: Some of you will recognize today's guest from our premium side every other week.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: Our own Jed Sidwell features a conversation with Tom.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought I'd bring him over here to talk markets with us on our markets Monday.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Won't you join me in welcoming Tom Leffler from Leffler Commodities?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Tom, welcome to the welcome to the A uh the PM side.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: I know you've often been on the on with Jed, who does the AM side for us, but uh welcome here.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: We're glad to have you.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: How's everything on this Monday so far?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's been a busy day today, Davis.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Has it?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, everything from what took place last night in our green markets to seeing our cattle actually take advantage of a positive cattle and feed report.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was very active.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds like we've got a fair amount to talk about today.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Start me with uh with Leffler Commodities just a little bit.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's Lefflercom.com, if I'm not mistaken.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: What do you folks do over there?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we trade commodities, futures, and options.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: We mainly deal with hedgers.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: We do have spec accounts.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: We also work with Nesvik on their manage money accounts for some of our clientele.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we've been doing this since 1991, so I've got a few years behind me and still got quite a few ahead of me, too, Davis.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Let's all hope so.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Let's hope so.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: We're all better for it, Tom.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: You uh, as I understand, also have a little bit of mud in the traction of your boots there.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Talk to me about your home home spread there.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we've got a cattle and farming operation up in the Line County, Chase County, Morris County area.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: My brother runs that operation up there.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was a part of it, a third generation part of it, up till 1989 when I left and started doing this business here.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh right now they are busy at uh trying to wrap up uh combinding the soybeans up there.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't get you don't get roped into to any of that, maybe maybe driving pickup or something, bringing sandwiches out at least.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing, nothing at all.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, considering I'm about a good hour away, it's a little difficult for me.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I am very busy in what I do, and I'd love to go up there and help out more.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I do a couple of years ago, I spent a weekend up there over wheat harvest driving semis, and and my wife, she also helps out and went along moving equipment around and stuff.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: This year it just hasn't worked out for me to get up there, and sometimes the weather makes it next impossible to you know try to coordinate two different schedules.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: You got one of them farm wives that can move equipment and everything.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's admirable, sir.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when we're talking about moving equipment, we're talking mainly about trucks and pickups.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: We'll count it.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: We'll absolutely count it.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Back when we were still on the farm, she pulled in hydrus tanks for me and stuff.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: And uh now she runs my office here.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: She's sounds like she's the uh she's the red real deal.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: All right, let's get into these markets here.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: I want to I want to start with the soybeans, if possible.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: Here, I quoted them just a little bit earlier.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna pop this up here one more time just just so I've got my head around it.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: But we're I mean, we're looking at 12 to 15 cent losses on the soybeans here.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: The November contract now down around 1241 or so, call it 1240 area.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: What got into them beaners today, Tom?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we all know what happened.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Got a big surprise down in Brazil as we saw the re-election of their per president Danner Lula, I presume that's how you pronounce it.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not real good at these not common names like Jones and Smith.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: But he got tricky.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: He got re-elected to his fourth term down there, and it was a major upset because all the polls, which we all still know polls don't mean much, was showing he was going to lose by a lot.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And he ended up getting about 52% of the vote.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's already been talk about corruption in the voting down there, leaving some of the uh voting polls open later than they were supposed to and stuff.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And what this done, this was a negative for Brazil.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: It devalued the real today.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: It made their soybeans much more competitive in the world market than what ours are.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the worst things about it is it continues that relationship that he has with the Chinese, which is not good either.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting when you look at, you know, a president like him.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is his fourth term, his terms are four years long.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: But look at some of the people he works with.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Putin, he's in his fifth term, they're six-year long terms, and G is in his third term and they're five-year terms.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a bad situation.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, they claim they have elections, but you wonder how honest their elections are.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: And uh not to not to drag us down this path here, but do I recall, and maybe I'm incorrect here, I I have some weird nightmares sometimes while I'm sleeping, but I was thinking that both Mr.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Putin and Mr.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: G had declared themselves presidents for life.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Am I remembering that correctly?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way I remember it too.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: And at the moment, they're heading that direction.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: So let me let me bring it closer to home just a little bit here and just lob this out here and give you a chance to riff on this.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Were we fairly valued when we were in the air in the November contract above$13?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: And can we just sort of consider the pressure that we've seen?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Take the Brazil news out of it.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Can we consider it maybe par for the course here at Harvest?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think to some extent, yes.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: I felt the majority of this year our soybeans have been more than high price, considering what was going on.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: We had a lot of what if China steps in and does stuff?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, China did agree, it sounds like to 25 million metric tons soybeans.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: So supposedly so far they're over halfway on buying that.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, when you take that in consideration, you see all the flash sales we saw here a week or so ago, and we didn't see the price of soybeans go up because it was doing what it was supposed to do.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: They was buying the beans, and now we're looking at possibly in the November report, USDA increasing the soybean production more and raising that yield because we're hearing some very good yields out there.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if this continues like what happened overnight here with Brazil's real crashing, looks like he's frozen up on us just a little bit.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: Brazil's real crashing, and of course, uh increased competition for U.S.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: soybeans.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: That being the case, we'll uh we'll get Tom Leffler back here in just a moment.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: I am absolutely certain.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, we can take some comfort in the pressure that we're seeing on soybeans.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: I do believe.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now we've got Tom back.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Brazilian real crashing, and then you froze up on us just a little bit, if you can remember and complete your thought.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that crashing is not gonna be good for us down the road here because the real will bounce back some, but they're gonna continue to be more price competitive in the world market.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And on top of that, it's gonna be tougher for us to compete against them.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's also gonna be tougher to get China to buy our beans for what they're worth.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: China will just buy what they need to to politically look correct.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, at least they're willing to do that much, you know.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: There I guess we can hang our head on that and feel okay.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Could be worse.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Could be worse.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: It could be a lot worse.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, we had some great opportunities in the soybeans.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the January contract, which is our front month now, you know, we traded at$13.5 at one time.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're over a dollar below that.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: All of our markets, including soybeans, we had great opportunities to price if we didn't get greedy and we took advantage of it.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: This this question uh I kind of wanted to ask it from the corn side, but but maybe we can sort of ask it from both the corn and the soybeans here, because I've had markets Monday conversations where folks come marching through here and they say, Okay, yes, we're under pressure here.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just let's just wait here and let the market kind of bottom out on us just a little bit, and it may actually give us a little bit of opportunity to capture some upside once it's done going down.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder if you favor a wait and see approach here.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Is that kind of what I'm hearing?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't panic in here, Davis.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you know, end users ought to be looking at this corn as an opportunity, you know, for livestock operations, you know.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think anyone, oh I know I didn't see this much downside coming, and I think it's an opportunity.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: I do think we have better times ahead of us, and I do think that, you know, if you've got stuff you want to sell down the road, whether it's corn, soybeans, or wheat, be a little patient, wait for a market to come back because they never go the same direction forever.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and those those end users, you know, let's let's think of the ethanol market.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Let's think of, I don't know, Coca-Cola, who whoever might need corn from from that end of the supply chain there, they've probably been waiting for this.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: They're they got to be jumping up and down, they got to be pretty happy about this.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: That that finally they've got an opportunity to get in and and buy at some profitable levels.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I feel like for us it's it's good news too, even though the arrow is pointed downward in corn and soybeans.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: If they all hop in here, it feels like a good base of support for us would probably emerge.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Is that fair?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think so.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And on top of that, you got to realize, you know, we're getting very close to wrapping up harvest.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're probably close to 80% done on soybeans, maybe 60, 70% done on the corn out there.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna get that behind this harvest pressure behind it.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're not seeing a lot of selling right now coming out of the field because of the price levels we're at.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And like we said earlier, it is an opportunity to step in and take advantage of the upside.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: The next thing you wonder is we've seen a lot of net long liquidation by managed money, especially in the corn.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: We start to see it now in the soybeans.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: We've been seeing it for some time in Chicago wheat.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Somewhere along the line, they're gonna look at this being a price level to take advantage of.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: You take our wheat market, Davis.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: We do not have any war premium built in there anymore.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: We paid so much attention to what's going on in the Black Sea, and right now they're talking about peace.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I put my money on the fact that that's not gonna happen.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we need to put some war premium back into that because that situation does not look like it's gonna come to a peaceful term.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think those headlines kind of wore out their welcome, I don't know, several months ago.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think they've worn out their welcome, I would argue, a couple of different times in the wheat market there because there have been opportunities along the way.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And oh, yeah, what oh, okay, there's you know, uh various different things have been said, and the fact remains, uh peace seems like just sort of, you know, well, like you said, you know, with uh with with China buying soybeans, it's it's just to make it look good on paper, basically.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's just to keep relations uh tidy, you might say, with with the United States of America, and I think that's what's going on over there.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: What uh what do we what would be the dream scenario for the wheat market for the Russia-Ukraine conflict?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Have you thought through that?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: The dream.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: No, we don't know our dream, or we're looking at their dream.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, our dream would just to see them blow each other off the face of the map, but uh their dream is to see peace finally come where they could start exporting out of there, which would help a lot of countries over there in Europe and stuff that depended on their wheat.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we haven't been able to take advantage of that because our wheat's been just too high priced, especially when you put the shipping into it.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we just have not been able to take advantage of it.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you saw today in the export inspections, we're running 30-something percent behind year to date on moving any of our wheat out of the country.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think we just saw the second lowest wheat inspection of the marketing year.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: That would be that would that would sound right.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: I I wondered about that too.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: And what was that number?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: I've got it printed right up here somewhere at let's see, yeah, 184,000 metric tons of wheat inspected for export.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's uh that's a little sad.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: So do you you're out there in Kansas.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Do you keep your ear to the ground on on cash basis as well?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Are the wheat folks getting any help from the basis side at all?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, not at all.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the biggest thing's going on right now is trying to get the wheat in the ground.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And there's problems on that because some of our dry areas finally got rain.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Some of those areas got way too much rain.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna be some replanting of wheat in some of those areas.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the people I've talked to in the northern part of Oklahoma has talked about how some of the wheat they've got coming up does not look that good.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're having trouble getting the ground in the right shape they want.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: They're looking at the fact that this ground's really fluffy.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're having to run harrels over it to try to get it a little bit more stable.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the other problem we're gonna see, and this ain't gonna help the price any, we're gonna see additional acres.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Could be anywhere between three and four million more acres being planted this year.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Keep in mind our crop insurance is set at eight dollars and eleven cents.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: That gives you a reason to put wheat in the ground, even if you don't think it's worth fertilizing, you put the wheat in the ground because you might collect crop insurance off of it if it doesn't make it.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: That uh, you know, I've I've tried to get other wheat folks to adopt the term success turf as opposed to poverty grass.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: Given the uh given the high crop insurance rate, are you willing to call it success turf?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: Will you go down that road with me?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I tell you what, I think you see two great things happen there.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: You've got the great crop insurance, and we're getting the feeder cattle back up price-wise.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we see some money made on grazing out the wheat this year, not grazing out, but grazing the wheat, and also being able to cut a wheat crop off of it too.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: That is the best thing there is for anybody in the southern part of our country.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Very good.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Take us back to that fund lengthened corn.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: We we got on it, and then we we kind of beboped away from it just a little bit.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of like you know, the the plus 13 print on November beans, the plus five dollar print on December corn futures.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: It it felt a little tenuous to me, and then we hit a record long, we got record length among the funds in the corn several weeks back, and it just sort of has steadily been been trickling out.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Some of that length has.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: What's our risk here that rather than finding opportunity at lower prices, the funds say, you know what, maybe it's time to short this corn?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's always a concern out there because last week's the commitment traders showed that we eliminated another 84,620 contracts in the corn futures and options.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're down to now just a little bit over 146,000 contracts.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, will they push it lower?
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think we're see the last three days of last week show it will go lower.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to say if they're going to go negative on us or whether they're gonna look at This and say this is an opportunity to buy out here.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not going to change subject on you too much, but I just want to bring up the fact that it looks like we're going to see something positive happen with the CFTC in their commitment traders report.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: As it looks like sometime in December, we're going to start seeing two a week.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: That would be nice.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of folks have been have been looking for that, looking for some better transparency on that.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: I uh I get the sense that you you're behind that move as well.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's ridiculous that we're using on a Friday afternoon after the markets have closed, we're using Tuesday's data, and we don't get a trade until Sunday night or Monday morning.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: So now we're going to be looking at Monday's data coming out on a Wednesday, Wednesday's data coming out on a Friday.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, it will be a lot more insightful to us on what's really going on out there.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that would be great.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: That'd be absolutely great because it has such an impact on the way these futures trade.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: Let's let's get back to to the wheat just a little bit.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: The success turf there were in the midst of planting, not quite going as as well as maybe some would like it to in certain areas.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Is is there a strategy that you favor for wheat at the present time?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: At the present time, really no, because at these price levels, it's really not advantageous to step in there and do anything, especially when we're looking at some very good crop insurance protection out there.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Give this thing a little time, look for a bounce in the market.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Don't go looking for it to get back to where we were.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: I do not see us getting back to those levels again.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we had the Kansas City July up there about$8.60.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see us going back over$8 unless we have some kind of a serious problem out there.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you know it's one thing about these markets, you never know what's going to happen.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you want to be prepared and you don't want to let greed to take over.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we saw happen during the latter part of this summer when we had that run-up in the wheat market.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: We saw greed take everybody over, and they kept thinking this Black Sea situation was going to continue to support the market.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: We was just going to keep on going higher, just like we did when Russia originally invaded the Ukraine.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't happen.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's the old giving up a nickel, waiting on a dime routine, isn't it?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: So what I'm I think what I'm hearing you say, buddy, if I'm looking at my my notes here, we're gonna wait on corn for a little bit and not panic.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna wait on beans a little bit and not panic, we're gonna wait on the wheat market and not panic.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: If I if I is that a fair summary of where we're at on all three, you pretty well summed it up.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it's you know, you hate seeing farmers panic down at the bottom of a market.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, it's like they throw in the last towel, you know, that hey, there's nothing gonna get better, and they sell down there and then they watch the market come back up.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've got to you know pay off some bills and stuff, you gotta sell some corn, you gotta sell some soybeans, and you want to you know take advantage of the market going back up down the road, you either step in and buy the board or you buy some calls.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I know.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna ask you about this.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: You you may or may not have a have opinions on this.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Do we need to spend any time on NASA's corrections to the Kansas and Nebraska numbers from the September report?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: Are you up on this?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think the least amount of time spent on it, the better.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: My God, I'm gonna tell you what, you want to find a topic that social media went crazy on.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: I this whole weekend, you know, they took up more space on social media than the NFL talk did.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to talk about the NFL.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: The Chiefs I don't either.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: The Chiefs got whooped, absolutely whooped by Seattle, a three-and-three Seattle team.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, and uh the five and oh Chiefs go down 20 to 3.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: Are you kidding me?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: I hate to say it, they got what they deserved.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: They might have.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: They might have.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Little little comeuppings, little, you know, but but that sort of thing can uh can get you to sharpen up just a little bit.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yes.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: You take a little whooping and you think, you know, well, you know, maybe maybe we could tighten up a little bit.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know maybe we need to look for a new field goal kicker.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and here's the thing: it it goes back to my days as as a youth in central Iowa as an Iowa Hawkeye fan.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm convinced that any team that I support is is gonna look good at first and then just completely fall off a cliff when it when it really, really counts.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I hope I hope I'm not the one causing this for the Chiefs because I do love Kansas City.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: I love Kansas City as a as a as a municipality, I couldn't be happier with being in Kansas City, but doggone it, that was hard to watch.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, back to your question about what NAS done.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, I think it was great they came back and admitted they made a mistake in September.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's still a lot of people after asking questions.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: They need to know more details of what happened in Nebraska and Kansas.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: The bottom line is the September did not really have any effect on October.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: October is still in the same place it was, and I get a kick out of it because there was a lot of laughing about Stonex when they put out 182.1 bushels per acre before the report.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Guess who was the closest?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Stone X was.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and they was right on track last year, also.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I tell you what, I don't think you're gonna see any pullback in the November report, but hey, that's kind of sticking your neck out there because you don't know what NAS might come up with.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, I got a feeling that you know this corn crop wasn't as poor as what some people want.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you ever notice out on social media we want to talk about all the worst case scenarios.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody wants to brag about their great yields.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's true.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: You if if you if a guy can has a good year and can afford a brand new pickup truck, well, he's he's a little chagrin to drive it and park it down on Main Street at the coffee shop, isn't he?
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Especially when we keep seeing our government keep giving us more aid out there.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're gonna get eight billion dollars for our red diesel out there and stuff, and that doesn't help the situation any.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I when I do meetings out there, I talk to my audience about that because we talk about the debt we have here in this country, and I said, you know, we as farmers are also part of the problem.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and that's that's a tricky one.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: It is because it I mean it it it may be decent stopgap measures, getting that check from the government, but that's not what farmers want to farm for.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's not what ranchers are ranching for.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: They want to ranch and and farm within a free market that rewards effort, that rewards hard work, and that that that rewards the success in growing a crop or a or or decent livestock.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And they're willing to take their ups and downs too, but you know, I think we would find it a lot better if we didn't have all these programs, but you know, these programs have been around as long as I've been around.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: It goes back to the Johnson administration.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: I can remember back that far.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, wow, that's a ways back there.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm not exactly a young man anymore.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know about that.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: You should you sure seem so.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: You seem so very spry, very spry.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: Tom Leffler is my guest today on on AgSquawk.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, you we've we've talked about the real just a little bit.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: We don't mention the dollar nearly enough.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm out of touch with the dollar.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: The real clearly having an impact on trade.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: D do you keep an eye on the dollar at all?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: What can you give us a status report?
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the dollar's been doing good for the last few weeks here.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we've been trading up as high as$102 out there.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: And today I'd have to look to see exactly where we are right now.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're at$101.81.5 cents, and we continue to see it hold on the strong side.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's another problem we have with our exports out there because it does make our exports more expensive, and it also makes like importing beef into our country more profitable for the people exporting it to us.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: Did we have a did we have a catalog feed report on Friday?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: You bet we did.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: Did that speaker by radar?
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea what it told us.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Give it to us.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, on feed came in at 99.6% of a year ago.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: They was looking for 100.2 percent.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Placements were 87.9 percent.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: They was looking for 91.7, and the marketing is 93.4%, just a little bit above what they was looking for at 92.7.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: That placement number, the lowest in the last 31 years.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: We saw Nebraska, they was down 95,000 head.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Texas was down 60,000, Kansas 45,000, Colorado 25,000 less.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: And we also saw heifer retention not showing up quite as strong as we thought it was going to.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: 37.8% of the total.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now a year ago it was 38.1%.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: We are seeing retention out there, but not as big as what some are wanting to see out there.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also a little hard to get a handle on how much retention we are actually seeing out there.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: It will be interesting when the January report rolls around and we see what USDA comes up with on that.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: But it was a very friendly cattle on feed report.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: It helped our cattle market today.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: Most contracts took out the highs that we made last Wednesday.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: We couldn't close on those highs, but we had a positive close.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: One of the biggest concerns was we only saw in the five-area fee charts 22,000 head of cattle sold in the cash market last week.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: That was 40,000 less than the week before.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here in the southern plains, where we can't find out what the cash is, we supposedly had 230 cash.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: With placement numbers like that, Tom, that and the and the heifer retention, that doesn't sound at all like herd rebuilding mode whatsoever here.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: What's going on?
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the placement number is gonna have an effect in our feed yards down the road here.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be very price-friendly as the less cattle we place in there, the less we have on feed.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the retention, it's a little hard to get a handle on exactly what's going on out there, but we're never gonna get back to the levels that we used to have in our cow herd, and we don't need to get back to those levels, but we do need to see more retention taking place, and we've got to realize well, everybody in the cattle business realized it takes time to build that cow herd back up.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like chickens or pigs.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: What's it take 18, 18 months, 24 months to uh to to get one sent to sent up the river, I guess you might call it?
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all right.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we still have problems in parts of the western part of our country with dry weather that limits their grazing abilities too.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like there's a whole lot of features that are that are complicating the cattle market.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: What about young cattle producers out there?
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't feel like there's a whole lot of whole lot of room for succession planning.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: If I mean I I was talking to somebody this morning off off air, you might say, I was talking on the phone to a friend of mine, you know, just talking about well, what incentive is there for for young producers, grain producers or cattle producers, hog producers, you know, to to get into this business here.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's just getting tougher and tougher.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: At some point, doesn't the worm have to turn, Tom?
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think it's tough for young people to get into any part of agriculture at now, whether we're talking about livestock or we're talking about farming, it's very pricey.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a lot of resources and it takes some help too from the outside.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, talking about getting into cattle market, the last couple of years, me doing meetings, one thing that comes up quite often from the older gentlemen that have cow herds, they said we can't find nobody who wants to come and take them over.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want to put the work in.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot more work running a cow herd than it does a feeder or a feed yard operation.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the younger guys don't want to put that kind of dedication into a cow herd.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of guys have told me, you know, we're liquidating our cow herd because we have no one to take it over.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that is one of the other problems in rebuilding our herds out there.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and then people complain, and because I hear about it on the uh on the row crop side too.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's there's too many big farms, there's too much consolidation, there's there's just there the the individual farms are getting too big and the small farmers being run out of business.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, somebody's got to drive those combines, Tom.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody's somebody's got to feed them cattle, and if there's nobody willing to do it, I I don't see any other way for the industry to go.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I always ask people, tell me what's a big farm and what's a small farm, because I know a lot of big farms, they're family operations.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, they employ some other people besides their family members, but they're looked upon as big corporate farms when they're nothing more than a family farm.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I look at a lot of small farms, and a lot of these small farms are only existing because that operator has a job in town, or him and his wife both have a job in town.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: And quite honestly, a lot of them, if they looked at their bottom line, they're not making a living out there farming, they're taking that hard-earned money in town, putting it out there in something they feel they really enjoy doing.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of things that you can talk about out there as you know, who's big, who's little, and who's crowding who out.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've seen quite often these people with these out-of-town jobs helping bid up prices on land because they have that outside income.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're not making it off of just the farming operation.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's that's interesting.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: There's you know, and I've I've had conversations about young people staying on the farm and taking over the operation.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's a whole lot of new stuff coming down the pike, and that's that's already in place here.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's all kinds of ways to stay in agriculture without without actually you know feeding cattle or or growing crops, and uh, you know, those those jobs are just as necessary as as actually farming, aren't they?
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes, they are because I mean there's a lot of services out there, everything from you know working for an equipment dealer, because it's not so much just turning wrenches anymore, it's running a laptop to work on a lot of the modern equipment.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got other services such as you know, going out testing soil and giving advice on you know agronomics out there.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: There is a lot of different avenues that you can explore into this, and just look at what Jed's doing, you know.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: He's still in agriculture, but he's got a different avenue here.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, yep, that's right.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you any good with computers?
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: If it sounds I don't know, I haven't tried to drive a tractor.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: The last tractor that I think I drove was was maybe an old M, a farm all, or maybe about a 58 Massey Ferguson with a bucket on the front end of it.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't gotten any more modern than that.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: That was all pretty much, you know, you you got your clutch and don't pop it, or you're going over backwards type of deal.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you're you're exactly right though.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: You got to know how to use computers, you've got to be up on the technology, and you know, farmers who use it every day, I'm sure they're fine with it, but that's just the way things are, and I don't imagine that's gonna change.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: No, and you don't have no choice.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't change, you're not gonna move down the road, and you're just gonna find yourself going out of business because everything has changed.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I go back to my grandfather, he saw following a horse, following a mule through the fields to when my grandfather died back in 1984.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: We were in four-heal drive tractors, and you know, that's quite a change for somebody to see in their lifetime.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, in just such a short time.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: Although there are those who would who would argue, you know, that's that's the best way that farming should be done is with with oxen, you know, and then they're afraid of cow farts.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: Don't get me started.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't think my grandfather felt that way.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was amazing.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: He would brag to his old friends about, you know, look how many acres they can cover with that tractor now.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you talked about the good old days, you know, going through the depression.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: He said there wasn't nothing good about those.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I can remember the day when uh so I was I was young.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: We lived on the home farm, and granddad still still ran the farming operation, but he had well cattle were a little before my time, but he had cattle, he had hogs, he was raising his own hay, he was raising corn and soybeans, and he milled the feed and walked his most of his corn crop and his soybean crop off the farm on four legs, and you just don't see that anymore.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: No, not like you used to, and you can classify those people as farmer feeders.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: We just don't have those like we used to.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's still a fair amount of them up in the corn belt, but you know, they're just don't exist like they used to.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: I can go back to our area and just show you the number of places that don't feed cattle anymore.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: Or hogs.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna we're gonna start heading toward the exit here, Tom.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: You've been really generous with your time.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: But uh another Tom that we know, Mr.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: Tommy Grasafi, mentioned that that you got your hands in canola just a little bit.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder can you talk a little canola for us?
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know what questions ask about canola, but he said, Oh, make sure and ask him about canola.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm asking you about canola.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: Is there something there?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not as well versed on it as some of my clients are.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: I got invited to using canola as far as trading on the futures market here a year ago.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: I got a couple clients that raise canola in the southeast part of Kansas, and it's a winter crop, but in the ground, similar to what wheat is.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it also, from what I understand, has a good rotation from you know canola back to wheat and vice versa.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, our only problem is uh we don't have anywhere close by to market it, so it kind of goes to the northwest corner of our state to market it.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, we're seeing more canola all the time, not only here in the southern part of Kansas, but on down into Oklahoma.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you got to remember canola is traded in Canada.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: It well, actually, it's on the ice, it's on the intercontinental exchange, but it is a Canadian uh crop that you've got to convert Canadian dollars to US dollars.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: And here a while back, I showed how we could do that when I'd done a podcast with Jed.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds awful complicated.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: You'd probably want to bring in some professional help to get that done, wouldn't you?
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: I had to do a lot of learning when I started working with some clients on that, but it worked out very well.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: We was able to take advantage of some upside in the canola market and watched it come down and we had protection on.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: Leffler Commodities, Leeffler com.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's L-E-F-F-L-E-R com dot com.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: Tom Leffler is my guest today.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: Tom, I just want to give you just one more second before we move on here to make sure that we've covered everything.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a is there a singular message that you want to make sure and get out there, even if it's something that we've already talked about?
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a priority that you would like to stress to folks who might be watching us right now, sir?
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: The biggest thing I'd like to stress to people is to get more involved and more interested in marketing.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: I still think it's a big problem we have as far as long as we have came in agriculture, we're still not doing a great job of marketing.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's something the majority of the people I talk to say they don't enjoy.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: No more than they enjoy anything with bookkeeping either.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: They'd rather be out in the tractor in the combine.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we need to see a lot more interest put into it.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: And also be willing to pay somebody to help you if you're marketing.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: You pay, you know, somebody to come out and soil test for you, somebody to work on your tractors with their laptops, and uh you treat marketing a little bit too much, hands-off, and you just don't want to do it.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: But also you look back and say, how come I missed that price?
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you were busy out there planting, you was busy harvesting, you weren't watching the market, and it just slipped by you.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I do think that's one thing that we could really see a big improvement on is getting more people to take a serious interest in marketing.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: And don't be afraid to ask questions.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's another thing I've learned over the years.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of them are afraid to ask questions because they feel like you know they're looking stupid.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, we all start somewhere and we learn from it.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I do think there's a lot more learning out there to be done on how to do a better job.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_01: I've learned a whole lot more from asking stupid questions and being willing to look stupid than I have when I've tried to look smart and tried to try to ask smart questions.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: The stupid questions pay off better.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a bigger payoff if you ask me.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the biggest thing about it, if you're in a meeting room, if you ask that question, there's probably 10 or 12 other people.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, my god, at least he asked it.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have to.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: Be that guy who's not afraid to know.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think you've hit it on the head here.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: A good thing for us to focus as we're moving into this week through Harvest because we're gonna be talking about you know, redoing some financing, doing some financing for next year.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: And if you've got a decent marketing plan and have have your ducks in a row, I was talking to Scott Sarter last week about all the different things that you need to pull together to show your banker, your financier, hey, this is my plan, this is how this component's gonna work, this is how all this is gonna work.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: They need all that stuff.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: If if you know, if if you're leaving something out there, you may be missing out on on opportunities.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's exactly right, Davis.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you one other thing.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: I hear people say, Well, I'm scared to death of you know, margin calls using the futures market.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, You ever talk to your banker about it?
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of them will say, No, in all my years of doing this, and I've been doing it since 91.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: I've not ever had a bank tell a client we will not make your margin call.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: Huh.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's a nugget right there.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: It really is because you know.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of banks out there that you know specialize in eggs.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: Some don't specialize in ag, but everybody I've ever worked with have never been turned down to have a margin call made.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think with that we're gonna we're gonna head toward the exit just quickly.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: You said you're in southern Kansas there.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm in I'm in Kansas City, right in Kansas City, Missouri, proper.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: We call it Missouri over here.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's proper or not.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm an Iowa boy.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just trying to fit in, Tom.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: But uh if you look out your window right now at uh what is it, three o'clock in the afternoon.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: What's the weather like?
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: How's the weather over there?
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: Sunny, sunny and cool, just like a fall afternoon is supposed to be.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds nice.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: And good weather for harvesting.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we'd have noticed that wide open harvest window.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm curious how that I don't want to send us down a rabbit trail here.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we should talk again sometime how the wide harvest window might impact fertilizer decisions coming up post-harvest for the uh the corn and soybean folks.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go to the National Weather Service.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: An upper level trough over the Pacific Northwest will shepherd a front moving eastward to the northern and central plains and trailing into the Great Basin by Wednesday.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: Snow! Yes, I'm gonna use the S-word.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, the National Weather Service used the S-word.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: Snow may develop over parts of the northern plains today.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: You can see that blue blob there.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that's uh that's probably what they're talking about.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: Tom, let me throw some items of mild interest at you, and then uh then I'll cut you loose.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: This day in history, it's October 2026.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, we can do a little quiz with this one.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: You might know this.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: 1826, the Erie Canal was completed, ran from the Hudson River to uh to Lake Erie.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there's a song about a mule and the Erie Canal, and I just wonder, does that ring any bells to you?
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know the song I'm talking about.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: It does ring a bell, but I can't think of it because that was all hand dug.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: It goes, I got a mule, and her name was something 15 years on the Erie Canal.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: You've got me.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: Does that jar loose?
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: You've got me.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: I can't think of it.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: I got a mule, and her name is Sal.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: 15 years on the Erie Canal.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: Some people sing it 15 miles and they're completely wrong.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: 1881.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: Smile when you say that.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's the gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's a little, I think this is probably a uh a later, later rendition of it.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, country music fans, it's the birthday of Keith Urban, 1967, New Zealand American singer-songwriter.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: He's a four-time Grammy winner and has been named the CMA's entertainer of the year twice.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: Tom Leffler, uh, it's great to meet you, brother.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: I hope that uh that we can bend your ear another time or two here uh in the not too distant future.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: Lefflercom.com over at Leffler Commodities.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Tom Leffler.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to meet you, pal.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: Davis, the easiest way to remember how to get a hold of us is 866 go to tom.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: That gets you on our website, it gets you on our phone, and it gets you on X.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: 866 go to Tom.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: 866 go to Tom.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: Tom Leffler for you, everybody.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let me take a moment and thank our uh sponsor, TradeThe News, for a look behind the news that's moving the markets.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: Trust TradeTheNews.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: News.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: You can actually use TradeTheNews for useful news.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: Use trade the news.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: And might I also direct you once more to AgBull.com.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: You can dig deeper with AgBull Intel.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: Take the markets by the hoes with AgBull.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: Visit AgBull.com or call 855-737 Farm for the details.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for being here with us, everybody.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: Jed's back first thing in the morning to start your Tuesday, and then I'll be talking with Kentucky farmer Neil Denton.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'll see you tomorrow afternoon for more Ag Squawk.