Latest / AG Bull / AG Squawk with Davis Michaelsen | Brad Downing | Beans In The Teens

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AG Squawk with Davis Michaelsen | Brad Downing | Beans In The Teens · AG Bull

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Beans in the teens, people.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Beans in the teens.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: From behind the big blue, bodacious microphone of Ag Bo, your pal, Davis Michelson, the handsome newsman.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: So glad you've chosen to spend some time with us this afternoon, the first of September.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: We're already done with August.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Here we are into September.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Glad you're along.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a really interesting conversation set up today.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: A returning guest who agreed to come back on the show after having been on a few weeks ago.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Brad Downing from Cross Creek Ag joins us.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: One of the points of conversation just ahead of our taping here was yeah, yeah, looks looks pretty good from the road, but you might want to get a little drone footage to really understand fully what's going on out in the fields there because the Eros don't tell the tale from what I'm hearing.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get more on that.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: We'll find out what he's been up to.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Cross Creek Ag will he they do all sorts of stuff over there.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I have a specific question about Cross Creek just as sort of an intro for us.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So before we get to all of that, a few things that we need to check in on.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a ton of notes here.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna go on and on and on for a little while.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with this.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Private exporters reported sales of 136,000 metric tons of beans to China for the 26-27 marketing year.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk crop conditions.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Crop condition report.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yesterday, crop corn crop conditions came in at the high end of pre-report expectations, unchanged from the prior week at 57% good to excellent, but 12 points below the same week last year.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Soybeans rated good to excellent came in at the low end of expectations, two points below week ago at 58% good to excellent, and below the same week last year.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Maturity for both corn and soybeans are ahead of schedule.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: I've got another question for Brad about that very item coming up in just a moment.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Springweed harvest sprang higher, now five percent ahead of the same week last year.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about, and I think I've got a graphic here for I think I've got two of them.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sentiments.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about Purdue University's most recent ag economy barometer because sentiments had begun to lag just a little bit, but they've perked up.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: The index of current conditions up a point, but the index of future expectations gained 11 points.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Rodrigo.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you can see the green line there on your screen.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's the index of future expectations.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And down below in the uh the tan there, the taupe, the beige, if you like, up just a little bit from last month's survey.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: The report notes quote, for the first time since June 2025, a higher proportion of respondents expect their operation to be better off financially than worse off a year from now.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's your future expectations.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: All told, the overall sentiment indicator rose nine points month on month.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now they ask all kinds of questions in these these the survey here from Purdue, and it's a it's a good one.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but one from this report asked about the skills respondents believe their operation needs the most improvement on.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: The skills on which their operation they believe need the most you know what I mean.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Of five categories offered, the largest percentage said strategic planning was their greatest need.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, financial management and analysis came in a close fourth place out of five.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: It gets a little tight down in there places one through four, but it it's it's my belief that financial management and strategic planning have to go hand in hand.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And let me just preach at you for a second here.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: I preached it before, but marketing is tough.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: I totally get it.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's confusing.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's a lot to get your head around.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Hard to get your head around it.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: You need a professional to help you make strategic financial decisions that can help you weather whatever the markets might decide to throw at you.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: My advice, first of all, choose that professional help carefully and go with the right firm for you.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: It it just so happens, you know.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I might I might be a little partial to Agbull, who can uh help you manage a strategic marketing plan.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: End of commercial, AgBull.com.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Won't you at least give us a look and you know talk to one of our guys?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: We've we've got the phone number and I've got it here somewhere, and I don't want to say it wrong because now I'm thinking about it too much.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: But reach out, AgBull.com or you know, whoever feels right for your operation.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's a commercial for not just for Agbull, but also that you've that you find someone who you trust, who you can work with, and who can help you ease some of these strategic decisions both on the uh financial and the operational sides.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: There, that's the end of the commercial.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go to the tail of the ticker.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Corn and wheat futures posted moderate gains out of the opening gate, but soybeans couldn't go high enough, fast enough.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: November futures vaulted above 13 bucks in early session trade.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Livestock futures mostly lower, with only far deferred lean hog contracts posting light gains.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Cattle futures, meanwhile, rejected early session lows, but remained in negative territory.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: This has scattered lean hog contracts flipped to positive for a mixed performance around noon.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Through the lunch hour, corn, soybeans, and wheat were just a few ticks off session highs, but still posting impressive gains.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get to the settlements today, let me mention plus 500 T4 software.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Me and my whole crew use plus 500 T4 software for up to the minute quotes, futures and options, and a host of awesome features.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Plus 500, that's plus five hundred.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go over to December Corn.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Heck of a day.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, not to be outshined by beans.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Corn up eight and a quarter cents on the day.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: The December contract at 546 all told.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Novi Beans.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: It gives me great joy to say this.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: 13, 17, and three quarters.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Up 29 and three quarter cents on the day.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if now we talked with uh uh Brian Hoops yesterday, Midwest Market Solutions, uh talked about how corn might be just a a little tricky here at these current levels.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: We're up eight cents and now soybeans at 1317 on the November contract.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely prices to to look at and to consider what maybe a good strategy would it would notice these prices here.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Meal was higher, soybean oil was higher.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I wonder if in the in the corn and beans there might not be some upside left.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: The things I we'll get to it with Brad.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get to it.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting ahead of myself.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm all over the place.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited by the$13 beans.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: December Chicago wheat futures,$7.82.5.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's up eight and a half cents on the day.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Respectable.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got Casey December wheat$8.45.25, up 7 1 quarter.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Different story on the livestocks.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: October feeder cattle,$3.15.40 at settlement.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Down a buck 62 and a half.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: December fat cattle at$213.37.5.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's down to buck 20 on the day.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the lean hogs, they tried to flip at least to mixed around the noon hour, as I said.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: October ended up at uh 83.65, down two and a half cents.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we maybe we could call that a wide unchanged.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Out to the December, we're down 15 at 74 bucks even.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: All right, and with that, I'm pleased to welcome him back, Brad Downing from Cross Creek Ag, CrossCreekAg.com.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Brad, I'm all excited over here, buddy boy.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: How are you doing?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Good, man.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: I thought you were going to start singing some Marvin Gay.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: There ain't no mountain high enough ripping beans in the teens, buddy.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh Hallelujah!
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, you remember we were on here a couple weeks ago and I said we need to rip a$12 handle on beans to feel better about it.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we blew through that.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: So Yeah, yeah.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, and and here's the thing, I w we'll get into it, but I I do, you know, spoiler alert, I think there, at least in beans, there might be some ups left, especially given the observations that you've seen through some drone footage and and the like.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get to that as we work our way through the conversation, but but first I I do want to ask you a question.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was over at, and let me make sure I get it right, crosscreekag.com, if I'm not mistaken, crosscreekag.com.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And there was something on there mentioned called the dirt book.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is that ring a bell?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: The dirt book.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: What what is the dirt book?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's allegedly, yeah.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: So dirt.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that's something uh we started a couple years ago.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: We we've been doing research really since back in 2017, but a lot of the replicated research on our own farm over time was just kind of getting so robust and so big that we kind of looked at what we're doing.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: And long story short, we kind of had to come up with an acronym.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: So DERT's dynamic, intensive, replicated testing.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so we started that company and started our putting our research into that company.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Company actually now holds some of our products that are our own products that we've created on our own.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we actually just launched that a week ago, our own product line.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we've always had product lines that we've been doing in manufacturing and distribution from other companies, but starting now, we've actually got to add to that, we've got our own product line that we're formulating too.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you'll get to hear more, hear more about what's happening in dirt.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: But right now, Dirt is just our research company, and that's what holds all the research that we do on our farm here at Cross Creek Farms, Inc.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's outstanding.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I think one of the one of the the big zingers from the last time that we spoke is is research in order to be valid must be replicable.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Replicatable, replicable, something like that.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, big word there.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: The the cool part about, you know, there's a lot of people that do replicated research out there and a lot of great companies that do it.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, a lot of it's small plot work where you got four rows, 40 feet, or you know, six rows, 100 feet, and it's replicated.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: We decided to take it to a whole different level to where we said we want to on farm in our farm, and we farm in five different counties here in north central Indiana.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Anything from sands all the way to the black, there's dirt, you can farm here in Tipton County.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing we wanted to do is we wanted full field research.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, the smallest subsets we have are 60 foot long by quarter mile long fields, and they're replicated anywhere from two to three times across that field, and they may be in other counties too.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's certain, you know, certain trials we do that are just not in one area, they're in you know two or three different counties.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we can take the average of that.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: So when the guy calls and says, Hey, hey, I farm clay, you know, you guys don't have that, you got the best dirt in the world.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, no, we actually have some research in clay or in sand or you know, that kind of thing.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a little bit better of aggregate material and aggregate data to be able to work with guys better to understand, you know, what things are gonna happen what kind of things are gonna happen in certain situations.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: We just don't want to get surprised.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is understanding, I was talking about strategy earlier on, and I kind of preached a little bit about you know strategic marketing and and having a plan and getting someone to help you out with that.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: But strategy really doesn't involve just the financial side, it also involves the operational side, which I imagine you would probably contend contains at least an element of agronomy.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Fair?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, very fair.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, the financial piece of what we all do here is you know, whether it be marketing to, you know, working with the bank or anything we do, those those are the the fundamentals of how we get this done.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: The agronomy piece has been, you know, farming since the very beginning days when the good good Lord created and one of the longest professions we have out there.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: But the agronomy has just gotten better and smarter.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we have over time, and you know, I've only been in the industries for, well, I got to date myself here now, but I started back in 01 when I graduated Purdue, so that puts us at 25 years.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, for 25 years, the things that we've seen that have happened, just the advancements in agronomy have been just massive, let alone the things that we're doing here at Cross Creek just in the last five years, how much we've advanced it.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's crazy.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's a very large part of the puzzle, and it's probably one of the most dynamic pieces.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of why we talk about dirt as dynamic, because it's never finite.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Chemistry is pretty well finite, right?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Math is finite.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: When you deal with biology and you deal with agronomy, those kind of things are very dynamic, so they change.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I can't predict the weather.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what's going to happen next year.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what's going to happen a month from now.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: But the fact of the matter is it's dynamic, so you have to learn how to deal with it and change and be able to drop an ears here, but figure out how to you know change and go from there.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: But that's why we really, really struggle and really work hard to figure out that puzzle of agronomy and be very dynamic in our approach.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and I'm a big fan of kind of narrowing the field of variables.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, once you get your hand on maybe, okay, input costs are high.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, maybe we lock some of that in.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: So now we've sort of narrowed that variable.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: And there are ways in which you can approach your operation agronomically, in which you can at least narrow some of those variables, aren't there?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, the real fact, we talk about it with our staff and we discuss it a lot with the customers we work with all across the country.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's some things like predictive analytics.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: You there's some things you can do to help predict.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, it's kind of not hard to figure out.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've we've talked about in the industry for years, you know, soil testing.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's one of the fundamental pieces.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then you look at tissue sampling, you know, it's kind of I can put a car together all day long, I can figure out what engine I need in there, I can figure out transmission, but if I'm not putting the fuel in there, that thing ain't going nowhere.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we've learned, you know, there's some predictive analytics that have happened in agronomy that we can look at a guy's operation and say, okay, this is what kind of engine you've got.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is a car or this is a chassis, this is the transmission that you're dealing with.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: These are the tires you picked out.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now, how do we put the right fuel in there?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we have the right driver in to win that race?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where we come into play and saying, okay, we got to figure out this puzzle for you and help keep building that car so it wins the race.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, either you cheated and 3D printed some ears of corn there, or you must have spent like half a day looking for, I mean, those are some fine-looking ears of corn.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: What do you got there, buddy?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: You brought digital aids.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is actually some Beck 6216 we pulled out of one of our research plots just over here, about a half mile away.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: We were looking at it.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: I brought it, I one for just, you know, show and tell, right?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: We're going back to kinder, kindergarten, show and tell time, right?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want to bring out the milk and cookies later, we'll start eating.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, the fact of it, this is what I was kind of trying to say is from the road, you know, you look, you get out on the very ends of the research side of things, and you look, these look phenomenal.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're talking 285 to 315 dry averages.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Things look phenomenal.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: But the truth of the matter is you get in the field and all of a sudden things change.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: And you you brought it up about the drone footage, and we we had some stuff, we had some technical difficulties getting those pictures in that video to you.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's my fault.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: I barely know how to turn on my computer, Brad.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, there's we're just lucky to be here.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's a reason why they don't let me do the technology.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: We got Spencer and Alyssa around here.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Alyssa's sitting here behind the screen, just shaking her head, going, You don't know anything, and she's right.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: So well, props to our props to our technical crew, but uh, a couple of guys who know how to play guitar have left some brain cells and in that pursuit.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: But but uh paint us a a word picture, maybe, about about what what you were were talking about with the drone footage and what what does it show you?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: How do you interpret what you've seen?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, when we're talking about that, we're talking about something pretty local as far as what you observe visually firsthand with the drones, but I I don't think you're alone in in what you've seen.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us about it.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so if you know, I'm gonna come from a backyard itis type perspective for a second because I'm gonna I'm gonna speak for North Central, East Central, Eastern Indiana, you know, western Ohio.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: That was all part of that three weeks ago, where we had anywhere from, you know, currently right here, we were at 15 to 18 inches of rain we had during basically about a three-day time period, a four-day time period.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then you go south of us, you know, Muncie area, Anderson area, Indiana area, you know, those guys are approaching over 24, 25 inches of rain.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's the most amount of water that I've seen in my lifetime, obviously.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that they said, you know, a thousand-year flood.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how in the world they've had a data on a thousand years, but sure, whatever.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, we're we're talking biblical type flooding situation we had here.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you talk about that area alone, there's a tremendous amount of water that we just couldn't get away.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: So this crop set in it.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: There are areas, and we didn't know it until we took the drone up, you know, like I said over a week ago, we started looking and said, okay, we know there's some down corn out there, how bad is it?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: We started looking, flying over our fields, flying over some neighbors' fields.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: We also went farther south, down.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at the Arcadia to, oh, we'll say, oh, we'll go over towards Muncie area.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's thousands upon thousands upon thousands of acres.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: You can drive, you know, a five-mile stretch, and there's just it's completely flat.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so you just can't have that much water in that short of time.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then on top of that, if you look at how it loosened the soil aggregate, I mean, these plants aren't snapping off of the stock.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a stock rot issue, it's not a disease issue.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's literally, it looks like a bunch of pine trees that got their roots up-ended and they just completely came out of the ground.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: The roots just pulled out of the ground because the top foot to 18 inches of ground and soil was so loose, it's like soup.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so driving around the countryside where corn's standing, I was like, oh, I feel pretty good.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're okay, but we need to get up the top and take a look.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: And we started taking a look, and it's like, uh oh, we got some problems out here, and it's just not small areas.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can see where wind vanes have come through and they've blown it down.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: The next problem is it's probably more concerning than anything else.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Even some guys like, we don't have down corn.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Some of our fields look great.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't disagree.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: We saw from the air there's some fields that look great.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: What we are seeing is those fields have had saturated soil conditions for way too long.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: We went out to those areas, they're prematurely dying.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: So you're seeing the crop that is just basically hasn't had enough oxygen, you know, anaerobic soil conditions, roots can't live.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, let's be honest, the earthworms are either five feet in the ground or they're completely dead because they ain't breathing either.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the biggest concern I have right now is the plants are going to prematurely die.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I pulled these ears and they look really good, and you snap them, the kernel depth looks great.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: But while they were flying the drones, I went out there in ground truth and walked through some of those fields a week ago yesterday.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: And what we saw was kernel depth already being affected by almost 25, 30% less because those plants are dying or dead already.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: That ear is obviously not pulling any nutrients in to fill that kernel, where the plants that are still alive right next to it are obviously still filling.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a major issue going on there that I I really encourage.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't say everybody's got the problem, but guys need we need we need to get off the road, need to get out of the get out of the trucks, and we need to get into the field and really understand or or hire that kid, you know, from that's got a drone that loves to fly it around uh looking at your backyard.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you call the neighbor kid and say, hey, fly my fields for me?
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and the my thought is when you start, I mean, nobody would would do this, but you start counting, well, how many kernels is it gonna take to make a bushel?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you got smaller kernels, man, that that adds up quick, I would imagine.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you look at the real data, go back to I'll just take any seed company, but I'll take Bex for example because I'm familiar with them, more obviously a dealer form.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, hybrids can range anywhere from 65,000 kernels per bushel all the way up to 115,000 kernels per bushel.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's on a normal year.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's not issues with weather or anything else.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: They can range in size just all over the place, different hybrids, different genetics.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: So you got to take that into account.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: But when you start looking at areas that are diseased, you look at areas that have had water damage, you know, root issues and root rot because of the water stood on it, can't breathe.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: You start looking at we were dividing, I'll be honest, conservatively, we were dividing by 80 or 85 pretty much on all our fields before that rain happened.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Today, I don't know what the number is gonna be because it's all over the place.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you asked what's one word for this whole situation at the very top of this order, I said it's kind of like a riddle.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: If you can if you can make a good riddle up, this is what this crop's gonna be, because we just don't know what the final number is gonna be, because now there are so many variables that are just gonna change the entire landscape of what we're dealing with.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and when you're talking about two things.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, when you're talking about corn plants that have been not just knocked over, not just kind of goosenecking a little bit, I mean, pulled up out of the ground, uprooted, is what I'm envisioning from what you described.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Bro, there's no coming back from that.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's no, you know, going back and maybe setting your corn head a little lower for a second.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Pastor, the sending the neighbor kid out there to to pick it up.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I did some of that when I was a boy.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's just there's no coming back from that, is there?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, there's not.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's gonna there's gonna be a lot of all me including in some of our fields that we're gonna be running ahead so super low with the amount of trash we're gonna pull in trying to pick this up.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna be able to get all of it.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it's just a fact of matter.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, what makes this so weird is we've seen heavy rains, maybe not to this size, this quick, but we've seen heavy rains in the past where it's happened in June or you know, early July, where the crop had a chance to put down more brace roots and and you know, gooseneck up to where it can at least stand up to where we can get it.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't seen this kind of rainfall ever this much and this how do I say it this far into the season, where those plants don't have the ability to put new brace roots on and come back up.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Let me ask you about this.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe this isn't a thing with with the flip to September, uh, my head goes through to harvest, which is coming right up.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a little while yet, I imagine, but uh, I immediately start thinking safety and I start saying things like, Don't stick your hand in there.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're not fast enough.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Wherever it is, don't stick your hand in there because you're not fast enough.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: You think you are, but you're probably not.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: When you talk about running the corn head a little bit lower, I'm thinking, well, there's gonna be all kinds of stuff that wouldn't normally go through that combine that is gonna be going through this year.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, it almost feels like enhanced fire risk, dude.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: We talk you want to talk a little safety, a little combine safety for us with all this in mind.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm not the best fitted for that one because normally when something happens, I'm the first one to jump out and forget all that and go.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I will say this we are here at Cross Creek on our farm, we will have a pre-harvest safety meeting with all of our employees, all our seasonal help is, and probably more geared towards myself, running the combine most of the time is we're gonna have, you know, down corn where we're gonna have to, you know, it's gonna slug on the head, we're gonna have to shut things off, get on the head, kick it around, push it in, pull stuff out that's plugged.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're gonna be doing that more than what we've had in the past, obviously, for a long time.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: But that's where we're just gonna have to look at doing some things differently, maybe add some different equipment to the corn head to be able to feed better that that we're already pricing out and looking at.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Do we need to add it?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality is just don't be stupid.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's not worth, you know, I'm gonna be frustrated.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: I know because I'm a person who wants to keep going and go fast and let's get it done.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna have to learn how to, okay, slow down, relax, go out and fix the problem.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Don't try to just push through it and do something stupid.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's your life's not worth, you know, trying to speed up an extra 30 minutes.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm probably the one that needs to talk to more than anybody else.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and you know, spoil spoiler alert, just a a preview for next week's show.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: I had a conversation with a woman this morning whose whose dad survived, I'm just gonna speak in generalities, but survived a PTO uh incident that could have gone horribly, horribly bad.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, he he did thank God make it through the the incident itself, but it took him a year to get back up on his feet, and the ripples that it sent through the operation, through the rest of his family, through you know, the the locale are are definitely sobering and some to the something to think about.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Moving on.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Moving on.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Safety first, everybody.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Safety first, we love you.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Safety first.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: You you mentioned that some of the some of the plants had sort of just given up.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder so do they continue to does a corn plant continue to go through the stages normally just in an accelerated fashion?
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm looking at crop conditions, and you know, corn and the beans are are ahead of last year, not by a ton, but I wonder if some of that hasn't gotten into the crop condition report that makes corn especially appear to be a little bit ahead on maturity.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Have you observed anything like that?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'll kind of speak to that on corn and beans real quick on that.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll I'll try not to dive deep into detail.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: But the the case of the matter is, yeah, the heat units we've had have been pretty good.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously, we were a little cool here for the last three weeks due to rain and just, you know, with cloudy days and that kind of stuff going on.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: But the fact of the matter is, you know, we're we're picking up more heat right now.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And right now we're in this massive heat dome, right, for the next 10 days.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: And right now it's 92 degrees and humidity's high, you know, and we're supposed to be up in the high 90s here before long.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean, it's going to push this crop along faster.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: But really, what's going on is dilution of nutrients.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: And we had in our field show last week here at Cross Creek Ag, or our field day, we actually had a customer ask us, you know, are we lost nitrogen because of all this rain?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the short answer is yes.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've lost a lot of nutrients, but the corn plant, according to Fred Belo's data, University of Illinois, you know, you look at we're already at the place where, you know, we're at dent corn, we're at 90 to 95% of what the crop has already picked up.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: So losing what little ends out there is is not as big an issue.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: And same way with beans, right?
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're losing nitrogen because of nodules, they've died off of the roots, you know, they produce nitrogen, so they've died off because of anaerobic, you know, water conditions.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: The bigger concern we actually have here, and the things we've been talking about the last three weeks at Cross Creek is I'm concerned about potash, you know, potassium levels, K levels, because when you dilute that much potassium in the soil and in the plant, you start you look, well, potassium is a transport of nutrients, so it transports nitrogen, many other things in the plant.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: You start looking at stock rot issues, stock integrity issues.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: You look at plant integrity issues in beans, they can't move nutrients, can't move nitrogen, you can't produce enough chlorophyll.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, those are a lot of things that are happening right now.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: So the dilution of potassium in the plant is probably going to be a bigger, my opinion, a bigger thing to talk about and a bigger educational point of what's going on out there.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, you look at what's happening with beans right now, they look like they went from maybe on par to maybe slightly behind.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: And after this rain and now all this heat, I mean, beans look like they accelerated five weeks faster than what they should be.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so you look at what's happened is we've had major stress, major water, lack of oxygen, dilution of nutrients, and now heat following.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: You just sped that thing up to where the grain fill period of soybeans being that they need that 30, 45-day time frame to really slow down and fill the grain later, is getting rapidly accelerated with high amounts of stress.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why I'm dressed the way I am right now is I actually jumped out of the sprayer this morning.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: We were actually spraying our caveman K-blast, draft, field fuel, and different things we put on R4, which would have been two weeks ago.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's been pushed back.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: We're trying to put potassium, boron, zinc in late.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I had guys looking at me going down the road in 1st of September, here comes a sprayer in a field, and everybody calls me, What in the world are you spraying?
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: Are you going out there to kill weeds?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no, we're trying to feed this crop that's just trying to die because I don't want it to die early.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like we're we're coming right back to what you said earlier about soil testing being just you gotta do it.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it sounds like this year, if never before, get that soil tested and check the potassium.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: I you know, and you're right.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: My head goes straight to nitrogen.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's raining too much.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we're oh, we're gonna leach nitrogen.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, look out for the nitrogen.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: But but you're right, man, with the uh with the potassium deficiency there, something to keep an eye on.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if that I wonder if that excites a little a little potash demand.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: It could harvest.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: It could.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, potassium in the ground is not gonna change dramatically because you know, I won't get into details, but potassium is mobile and immobile, but what the dilution really is, is the dilution as a percentage in the plant because it can't access it because water has gotten so high in the plant and the roots, and then you kill it off.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: It just doesn't have the ability to pull as much potassium in, which doesn't allow it to translocate.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Talk about, you know, pushing nutrients like nitrogen, boron, zinc, I mean, certain amen down the road.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's a big issue that I think we all as an industry need to be looking at and talking at.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: And to your point, whether it's this fall or this spring, guys need to be doing serious amounts of soil testing and understanding what do they still have in their soil because there could be some losses if you're in those heavy rains of 20 inches plus.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: I I've never been through this before, so I don't know what we're gonna see after this.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know anybody else that that has been out spraying this this time of the season, like you were?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: I do know one other crazy person that follows exactly what we do, and they uh they actually were here yesterday and picked up some stuff.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so they're most everybody's like, we're putting the sprayers away, we're washing it, we're done, let's get the combines out, which historically has been the correct thing to do.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying yes or no.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: We've never sprayed this far into the bean crop in this kind of much stress, so I don't know what to expect, but I do know because we tissue sample every other week.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: I do know what things look like, and they have dramatically dropped off as we've had this much water.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm uh putting in my notes here for the next time that we talk, if we can coax you back one day.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Late sprayed a little vitamin K.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh all right, very good.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you mentioned uh an event that you had recently been back to.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: I want to to circle back on to some marketing and some things like that, and we got to talk about corn and soybean prices, but you were at an event or you help hosted an event.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Did I hear that right?
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we had our Cross Creek Ag actual field day.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: It had been two weeks ago, about 10 days ago.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: So we had that here and we had it locally.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is most of the time we were ho we were excited to be able to take people out to go do some, you know, tour and some visuals of small plot work that we are doing here just so people can see, touch, feel, smell, taste, whatever they want to do.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they want to act like a cow for today and they start chewing on corn.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever they want.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: But we didn't get to do that.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: We actually and I spent the two days prior actually going out in the field and we had mud up to our shins, and we were actually pulling plants, pulling ears, pulling soybean plants, and bringing all that into our facility here so we could actually talk about it and have people actually see what's going on.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: So a bit of a bummer.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: We did all that work and didn't get to do it.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was that was about 10 days ago.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then last week we were at Bexed for three days for their Becknology Day event.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: So had all our set all our staff there and serving our customers and you know, three long days, but three really good days.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: When I was when I was a teenager, did a little detasseling.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and my first year out, it was suggested that I go barefoot, which is fine until you hit a patch of thistles.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I found that one out the hard way, but there was there was some Philly there, you know, teenager teenage Davis.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's make an impression.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Hello.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I can go barefoot, sure.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: It almost sounds like you got feels it'd be it'd be smarter to go barefoot out there than to try and get a pair of muckin' boots up up.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's the upstep that gets you, isn't it?
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we had our cutoff t-shirts on.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: There was no sun and no girls.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what you were doing, but that wasn't where we were at.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: But no, I mean we'd been better off putting snowshoes on.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think that would have been wider footprint and actually made it across some fields better.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: But it was uh it was a healthy workout on some fields.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Your uh your quads and hip flexors were on fire.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, good.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: Doing the work, putting in the man hours.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you would you it might have helped if you had a little Brian Adams going too.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: I remember Brian Adams was was usually playing on this on the stereo for us when I was detassling.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's talk about these markets.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm all excited about beans in the teens.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: It earned itself a little trumpet toot right at the beginning of the show.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't do it for for just every market move, but uh beans up over 13.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing is, yesterday I left the program thinking, okay, well, you know, maybe we top out here, maybe uh maybe a little retracement, a little selling, make the market prove it.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: But if if things are gonna be rough in enough places the way that you describe, it almost feels like like we've got some ups left in corn and soybeans.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Would you would you care to wade into that?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so like I said, I I was bringing you kind of the backyard it is where we're at, but most of the time you talk about that, it's just in your local area.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: But this is pretty widespread, and you get outside of here, you know, there's other areas, you know, you towards western Indiana, northwest Indiana, you know, in into Illinois.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, those guys still had anywhere from six to ten inches of rain, depends on what you know area you're in.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: So there was quite a bit of a low ground that, in my opinion, you walk out in there just like us, we walk out of the low ground, and you know, stuff looked like this, you know, three weeks ago, and we were sitting there going, you know, those areas are gonna be like 330, 340 corn, maybe 100 bushel plus beans.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: And now those are the worst areas.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: So you look at those areas that I've had to deal with, you know, you talk about Iowa and eastern Iowa, the challenges there.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we've got a lot of customer base down in the Delta and the northern delta, tremendous yields there, but obviously they didn't plant as many acres of corn as what they usually do.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: So there was less acres there, and for the most part, their yields are coming in looking pretty good.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: But you look at Dakotas, you know, we got people up through there in Minnesota, and there's major challenges, right?
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: We've known that for quite a while.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the fringe areas that we talk about are really, I think, coming to fruition and what we've all kind of discussed.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're not going to carry the load to carry the the offset of where what the I states we'll call it, and the corn belt that's usually the high end.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think there's gonna be enough to carry the losses in there.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: And we're starting to wake up to the I states, the corn belt, where there is, whether it's corn or beans, there's probably more issues than what we expected.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I hate to use this word because everyone wants to talk about the the big T word, tar spot, and and disease pressure that's happening inside of corn.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's there, it didn't really blow up, but now that we're seeing this heat come on with all this water we had three weeks ago, I fully expect to see gray leaf spot, tar spot, northern, you know, some of those diseases we haven't talked about in a while, those are all going to show up because we've already seen them showing up in the lower canopy.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's right from the market standpoint.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think the market, in my opinion, is is real is realizing and actually reacting to.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: But the other thing is there's so many geopolitical things happening that are moving this in all different directions.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: And is it the perfect recipe?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: Is there am I am I all bulled up?
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Tommy can ask answer that question, but I was pretty bullish and I'm still pretty bullish, but I don't know to what height I'm that bullish.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and when you talk about the future, you mentioned acreage mixes, and I was just kind of digging into some of the Russia-Ukraine stuff, which just won't seem to fall out of the headlines.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they doggone it, they they're they're gonna keep at it.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like to me, and just about the time that I think, well, we're not trading headlines out of Ukraine and Russia anymore, something happens, and I've been reading the last couple days about Ukraine buying silo bags.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna put some of their crop into bags because their storage is full, the the port systems are super sketchy, they're having a heck of a time moving grain out of Ukraine, Russia looking for alternative means to move move grain around.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: They're talking about putting it on a on a train over to the Baltic, coming out some sort of different way.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: I geographically, I'm already lost.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know what I'm talking about.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: But what it sounds like to me is they're gonna have trouble moving grain out, and that's the breadbasket of Europe, brother.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, does that continue to impact export?
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'd like to see some wheat export demand, I guess.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: At at some point, shouldn't shouldn't that hit home here?
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, do you feel like the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, you're pointing this way and this way, and you don't know which way everything's going?
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was kind of seeing that picture in my mind, but the fact of the matter is, yeah, I mean, you look at all the things that are moving there.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: And let's be honest, anytime we've ever seen anybody, even domestically, store grain, bags, you know, ground piles, whatever.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, 100% of that's good quality crop and good quality grain, you know, a year from now when they finally can move it, right?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's all perfectly fine.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we yeah, yeah, I think we're a little off on that.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, the spoilage issue is what we I gotta worry about the spoilage issue and what's going on there.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: But for sure.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, I mean, I I I'm not a geopolitical, you know, I'm not a technical guru on any way, shape, or form.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: But the fact of the matter is, and until we see those ports open up and grain flow, and this may be the perfect storm where if demand is high and continues to remain high, and we obviously see supply dwindling or being pushed back and hold back, what's our window here and how much does the market actually continue to bowl up?
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: And where does, you know, as the trend goes up, where are the peaks and valleys going to be at?
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know, but I'm trying to ride the wave just like everybody else.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: My concern is a 700 or a seven-handle on Chicago, an eight-handle on KC wheat, no importer is gonna view that as inexpensive.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then you add the float charge to that to get it across, you know, whatever ocean you you like there, even with a decently negative, well, a decently with a wide negative basis, you're you're still looking at expensive wheat.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if it's uh you know, it's it's priced for demand rationing when we don't need demand rationing right now.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: Is that fair?
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's extremely fair.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's it's it's a weird paradigm.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you go back 60 days ago, do you think we'd be talking this?
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was completely different.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: So absolutely.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: So with all that in mind, and I would uh well, I'm gonna let you answer the question.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I know what I'm thinking, but uh do you see, especially in the southern states who have who have really uh reported on growing corn, growing some soybeans in some areas, you know, to the degree that we haven't seen historically, Mississippi, Arkansas, you know, even Alabama to some degree, Louisiana, they're looking sharp down there on the corn production, the soybean production.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think uh elsewhere in the nation more acres go to wheat if we can get a little demand going?
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's an interesting conversation because currently, right now, the conversations we're having with growers, there has been more inquiry about wheat and there's been more inquisitive asking, like, hey, if we get to a point, do you have the wheat supply to supply what acres we're gonna need?
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: And right now, I mean, that that's a kind of a question of who's gonna come to the table first and get their wheat, because I think there will be a shortage on wheat if we see a massive shift of acres go that way.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: But my question back to them is okay, if if you're gonna, if you're somebody only raised, let's say, let's say you're farming 10,000 plus acres and you raised a thousand acres of wheat last year, are you gonna go to four or five thousand acres of wheat?
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: And if you are, are you gonna market it or are you just gonna wait to let this thing ride for a while?
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because my opinion is you better retake the chips on the table as they are and let's run with it if you're gonna put that much money into the table.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: So that's my big question is what are they gonna do and how are they gonna shift their crop mix?
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's yet to be seen.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's just a lot of conversation happening.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: But you you talk about those areas in the northern delta.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: Do I particularly see the wheat acres going up there?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I do.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think that we're gonna see wheat acres go up where that's gonna come from, probably gonna be cotton and rice, to be honest with you.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think corn acres will probably increase.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: Beans may stay high, corn may go up, wheat may go up, and cotton and rice may come back down.
• 41:40
  unknown: Yeah.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let me ask you a personal question.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: And just just let me know if this gets too personal.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: But uh if I walk out, it's okay.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we'll know.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: We'll know.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: No hard feelings, buddy.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: No hard feelings.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: It got weird.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: When do you start thinking about price in 2027 for your stuff?
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, historically, I already have.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: Normally about June, July time frame, but where we're at in June, July, I was like, hey, this is you know, we're we're at break even to slightly less than that for 27.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: We're there now.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we're at the place.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: If I look at you know, profit management and what we're doing on our farm, we're there.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: We need to be locking in 10, maybe 15% for 27, maybe even more, or at least, you know, putting HTAs and and you know, possibly buying some puts on the back end just to protect the downside.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: But my opinion is we're there.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: Barring an unforeseen crazy thing happening in the fertilizer market.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: If that if that doesn't go crazy and we stay, you know, standard status quo as we were this year, you know, are we gonna get rich?
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: Are we gonna walk lock in a profit for the first time in a couple of years?
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we are.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: So it it's probably time to start locking in some 27.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: Has your and you don't have to tell me what the number is here.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: Again, just just get up and walk out.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you need to throw some some water in my face, that's fine.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: But that's what I brought the big ear for, okay?
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's good.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: Just wing it on over.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: Wing it on over.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, has has we've been talking about 475 on corn as kind of that's that's rough average break-even for most folks.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I I feel like if anything, fertilizer kind of has has taken a hump higher, diesel is higher.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: How has that maybe maybe you can talk on a percentage basis, how has that impacted just just the the break-even price?
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: Are we still talking 475 to be farming again next year, or does that number need to come up?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's going to be very unique to everybody, so I don't want to tell you you know what everybody should or shouldn't do, but for us and where we're at, I mean, 475 is still on the break even to close to a little bit of profit.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, not a whole lot.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: It needs to be obviously more than that because if you look at the percentage of, like you talked about diesel, we're seeing fertilizer prices start to creep up.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Equipment value is what's interesting, you know, as high as they got for a long time, they've kind of leveled out, but now we're starting to see them use values you know starting to creep up a little.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: bit in the last few months what they're worth.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the biggest thing is you look at seed, chemical fertilizer, or you know, for us on bionutrients, those things are pretty well flat.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just concerned with, you know, as we get into this year, where are we at from a cost standpoint of, you know, everybody has different costs to land.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: And we know land contribution is dramatically different for every single farm, but we look at land ownership and what it costs to actually buy ground these days with the elevated price of what land is, that has to be creeping up on everybody's budget line item of looking what your land contribution cost is and how does that affect your breakeven number.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the it's it's kind of a whole separate conversation, but in some ways it it really isn't.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was uh explaining to my wife who didn't didn't need me to explain it to her, but of course I was more than happy to go on for like 15 20 minutes on how how a rising tide uh raises all ships.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: But we were talking about you mentioned land and I I think about the young producer.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think about keeping the next generation on the farm on the ranch in production and and keeping it going from one generation on to the next and and the wife and I just over lunch were talking about well how does anybody if if they want to go to college and go that track and then they they want to get out and start a family.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know you used to talk about a starter home and I don't feel like people are talking about starter homes anymore because the what used to be a starter home is now almost if not already out of reach for people trying to get started here.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's a real financial conundrum going on right now where whether it's I want to start farming I'm a I'm a young dude a young lady whatever I want to start farming or I want to buy a house and start a family affordability man it's a bummer right now.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: It is it really is and you and you're you're dead nuts on I mean it's it's exactly what you said.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: But the interesting thing is everybody talks about well I mean farmers are buying ground or farmers are buying this and they and they've made money and you know it's almost like a negative quantitative index people talking about well farmers have gained this but if you look back at history a healthy productive farm that has profitability is the lifeblood of a local community.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look at when farmers make money farmers give back farmers give to their community they buy you know whole goods they buy trucks you know they go to the dealership they're donating to churches whatever it may be and everybody that's where I think we have to be very cautious as as a as a nation there's been that quantitative index that's you know oh farmers making too much money or they made enough or they're getting government subsidies all this stuff.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: The truth of the matter is the farmer needs to make money we need to be able to fuel the farm economy because the farm economy fuels the local economy and without that we you know we just have a struggling local economy to your point starter homes and you know value of everything just gets to the point where we can't afford it.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: So you know my opinion and maybe I'm very biased because I'm in this industry but I'm also a farmer as well and I'm also a sixth generation farm by name but Cross Creek is a first generation farm.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: My wife and I started from scratch you know I understand what it takes to build from nothing.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: I get that.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: So in that it's it's almost impossible if I wouldn't have had the background and the career I had and some of the knowledge I had grown up in a farm family there's no way I could have started from scratch.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: But the truth of the matter is it's almost impossible if you know if if I had some kids come to me that didn't have anything farming they're like hey we want to start farming how do we do it I'm like you can't I mean and I'm not saying you couldn't do it on learn how to do it.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: The bank's never going to let you do it unless you have somebody come in and help you but that's that's almost nearly impossible today.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah absolutely that was a sort of a heavy heavy thing to ask of you I appreciate your your being forthcoming with us on that you mentioned I'll get hate mail that'll be all right I'll get hate mail.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay that they'll filter it through me that's fine.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: Send it to uh davis doth at love backslash hate at hate dot com.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: That'll be fine.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'll uh be sure to look for it you mentioned the sprayer demand is uh is that because you think people are gonna catch on hey over at Cross Creek they're spraying in the fall maybe we can get a sprayer for a good deal we better get out there too is that what you're implying I'm gonna put that in my notes to check sprayer demand after I talk to you if you can call deer and let them know to get some sponsorship with us I'm all ears okay we'll do we'll we'll spray in October if you want us to all right check sprayer demand all right give us some give us some final thoughts before we move on to a little bit of nonsense and then I'm gonna cut you loose what uh observations general thoughts on on the world what uh what do you want to what do you want to tell the good folks watching Ag Squawk today?
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah I mean whether you're obviously I'll just say from the Ag community and farm side I mean get out of the truck get in the field grab a drone do whatever you got to do figure out what you're dealing with in your crop right now and and really understand at a deeper level and maybe than what you even thought you did where you're at because there's chips on the table there's money on the table to be had get the plan put together and get ready for you know if you're not harvesting already obviously you get ready for harvest but you know and start thinking 27 27 is definitely already here we just haven't got through 26 yet so yeah that's part of that outside of that you know everybody else we're all in this crazy world together and good lord's gonna take us home one day but you know check on everybody else you know check on your community you know other people that listen to this that don't have anything to do with farming check on your farms I mean sometimes it's a depressional type situation out here going through you know what you thought was the best crop year you're ever gonna have and then you have you know this rain and all of a sudden you you you feel like you just got kicked in the teeth and you don't know how to get back up yet and you're kind of looking around like okay what do we have so that's why I I think from a community standpoint and other people outside of Ag that are listening to this check on your local farms check on the people you know the farm just be like hey how's life you know love to come out and just ride in the combine with you just to you know talk and just talk life and I think that's something a lot of people are missing today is that you know we're uh we're all connected through social media but we all don't have a great relationship with each other.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well and I'm really glad that you brought that up I'm gonna prolong this conversation just a little bit and then I'm gonna get to some nonsense and cut you loose Brad but just just talking you know farmers bear can bear a very heavy weight on their shoulders alone especially like you said and I've talked to others from around the country who said oh you know just south of me they thought they had the greatest crop they were going to have in years and then this happened and then it got hot and dry or or something happened and that that weight on the shoulders just it presses down.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: And when Brad talks about you know check on your neighbors check on don't expect them to say well actually I'm depressed because life is really overwhelming because this and this and this and look if you need if you feel like you need to talk to somebody don't open with that you don't have to go and spill your guts and analyze yourself and just be around people.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: Put on some Leonard Skinner and hang out for a while.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know free bird you don't need to go and announce I'm depressed and I'd like to talk to you that's a creepy thing to say like I'd be like really dude wow not that there's anything wrong with being depressed and needing to talk but I I don't want you to feel like you have to start there in order to have a conversation that makes you that lightens the load a little bit that makes you feel like oh well he's kind of he's kind of struggling too oh she's she's having a hard time too it's not just me it's not just you I guarantee that whoever you may be watching this it's not uh just you so uh yeah talk to somebody and if you see somebody that seems like they need talking to you know don't pry don't be weird but uh you know put on some skinner play a little freebird and uh and see what comes out uh Brad Downing from Cross Creek Ag you mentioned uh 92 degrees and about as humid as it can be over there in Indiana we're 99 not to not to be a one upper but here in KC we're at 99 well it's three o'clock now in the afternoon and it says we're still headed for a high of 100 degrees the overnight temperatures have been a killer just the last couple days it's going to last for for at least another week I'm pretty sure let's talk about the National Weather Service tropical tropical storm Edward will bring tropical storms to hurricane conditions heavy rainfall flash and some river flooding and storm surge to portions of upper Texas and southwestern Louisiana coast into Wednesday severe thunderstorms possible in the central plains of mid-Atlantic hot and humid conditions will expand from the Central Plains into the Ohio Valley and mid-Atlantic the weather woes continue and uh it seems like they're going to at least at least for a little while until they don't so hang in there everybody let's get to some items of mild interest in uh 1854 today is September 1st it's the birthday of Engelbert Humperdink German playwright and composer and I think I have an image there.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: Did Jed leave us there we go Engelbert Humperdinck and really I just bring it up because uh it's just really fun to say Engelbert Humperdinck.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know if you're feeling low just think about Engelbert Humperdinck for a little bit and actually uh Brad do you know which Humperdink this is that's displayed on the screen right now can you see?
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: Are you familiar I do not inconceivable that's the dude from uh Princess Bride oh I uh see in uh 1946 it's the uh the birthday of Barry Gibb well you can't hear him by the way I'll hear my house English singer I do know that and songwriter from the Bee Gees oh and get this in 1982 the United States Air Force Space Command was founded I didn't realize it went that far back it was kind of updated and revamped in 2019 and finally um I thought maybe you would have Kyle with you and I was pretty sure that he would know the answer to this question but uh I'm gonna throw this at you and uh just just see how we end up here.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna play a little finish that song lyric before I let you go.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay uh a number one hit from September 1st 2012 and the lyric goes like this just finish out the lyric for me if you can okay the lyric goes we are never ever getting back together getting back together Taylor Swift never ever getting back together the number one hit on September 1st 2012 you know I wonder since now that she and uh Travis Kelsey are married if she's gonna keep coming to Chiefs games it was a big thing here in KC everybody's talking she was at all the games and up in the box and high fiving and whatever they're married now like I you think we'll see less of her I don't know I don't know I wonder got to find how that Mahomes relationship's going on and what's going on there whether she's gonna be in the press box with her or not so oh I know I know it's the beh it's the behind the uh behind the sidelines action I think that's gonna be hot this year for the Chiefs the Chiefs marketing will take care of that for them they'll they'll make that up they know just what to do with that absolutely well maybe Travis can finally start paying attention to the game again that'd be great might be a football player again maybe who it'd be outstanding if that were the case Brad Downing from Cross Creekag CrossCreekag.com dude you've been very forthright it's been a terrific conversation I appreciate you speaking frankly with me and sharing a little bit about you know a little behind the curtain of what you're thinking about stuff I really appreciate it brother be well yeah appreciate thanks Davis you bet that's Brad Downing CrossCreekag.com may I direct you to agbull.com where you can dig deeper with AgBull Intel take your marketing by the horns with Agbol visit agbol dot com or call 8557 Farm 855737 Farm for more details or just to talk just to talk Jed Sidwell will have the morning calls bright and early tomorrow morning and I'll talk to Chris Hubush from Minnesota.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be an interesting conversation I hope you'll come back tomorrow for more egg squawking