 Good afternoon everyone. My name is Dave Ripplinger. I'm an Extension Economist with NDSU Extension. My pleasure again this Friday to moderate our ongoing webinar series looking at the impacts of COVID and other things going on the egg markets. This webinar and all previous webinars as well as the corresponding presentations are available online. But with that I'd like to turn it over to Brian Parman. Hey thanks Dave. Alright so today's presentation is going to focus pretty heavily on employment or unemployment and I'm going to talk a little bit about North Dakota's tax situation and the unemployment. I'm going to talk about the national numbers like I have been doing but I'm also going to kind of look at some of the reports that have come out of North Dakota here recently. So my first slide this again shows those weekly initial jobless claims and we are trending in the right direction but this is still an extremely high number of people week over week filing for unemployment. Every single one of these bars to the right of the March 9th that you see on that chart would have been a record in and of itself including this yesterday's numbers would have been a record would have smashed records several times over. So while it is the number of initial claims has slowed down a lot there is still a historically high number of people filing for unemployment each week. And then if you look at my next chart chart from the Federal Reserve it also shows continuous claims and while we are off the peak and these remember continuous claims are people who filed for multiple weeks in a row so they're staying on unemployment it's not just a one week thing and then they go back to their job or even two weeks they're staying on it for an extended period of time and this is kind of stabilized which as the economy's begun to reopen some of these some jobs are returning but many of them have not yet and therefore we have this continuous jobless claims number that's basically holding holding steady in the enhanced unemployment benefits may be affecting that to some degree so some folks that that extra $600 per week that the federal government is kicking in could be making I believe it's every two weeks maybe making a big difference. So this is North Dakota's weekly new jobless claims and continuous claims is basically the same same data as the national numbers but for North Dakota specifically. Now what you see is it basically mimics the national numbers okay so initial jobless claims spiking very high right there in that first week of April and then trending down but still very high by North Dakota standards and the continuous jobless claims on the right being kind of sticky persistent basically kind of trended down off the highs but but staying for a state is actually setting a record so my next slide kind of illustrates this it's the our unemployment statistics and we look at April March and then April of 2019 for comparison labor force is about the same 405,000 in April of 20 401,401 and a half in 2019 April the unemployment rate very low beginning in March and staying at about two and a half percent in April of last year and we've exploded to 9.2 percent 37,311 unemployed individuals in North Dakota which is a record now our population is the highest it's ever been but still this is a very high number however our unemployment rate does is hovering well below the national rate so 9.2 percent in North Dakota in April the national unemployment rate back then was 14.7 almost 14 and a half so my next slide just shows a map of the unemployment rate by county and this is before COVID so very low in the majority of the state well below five percent for most places at or below five percent some places extremely low around one and two percent then my next slide shows the what's happened since COVID you see down here in the southeast by Richland County 15 percent double-digit unemployment some manufacturing down there that shut down areas like Fargo almost 10 percent Burley County just north of 10 percent and up in the northwest where a lot of oil and gas productions going on approaching or exceeding double-digit unemployment in that area as well for the state so if we want to look at what jobs were lost my next slides kind of do that so this is an area graph okay the bigger the box the more jobs that were lost so if we look at the week ending March 21st of 2020 North Dakota had almost 6,000 initial jobless claims and most of those came from accommodation and food services so these would be restaurant workers hotel workers those kind of folks they made up the bulk of it healthcare a little bit construction mining and gas to some degree retail and other areas rounding it out but again this accommodation and food service were the jobs that were initially hit in in our state now my next slide shows April which is the middle of it you know kind of the height when a lot of filings were happening then all of a sudden it hit manufacturing really hard and mining oil and gas it still had accommodation and food services being impacted as well as retail trade and healthcare and then the rest of these rounded out and we had 10,000 10 and a half thousand people apply for unemployment that week now if we come to the latest chart what you see is mining and gas as well as healthcare manufacturing and now educational services are seeing the largest amount of layoffs where accommodation and food service a much smaller percentage and that's just because the folks a lot of folks already lost their job or were laid off for load whatever the case may be in that sector initially and remain that way and I just point out in the lower right hand corner of the amount that were lost from ag forestry of fishing or hunting and that that's been a very low percentage this whole time but as far as direct workers in those industries there aren't that many relative to restaurant and workers in accommodation and food services as well as the gas and oil field so my next slide I want to show this graph on oil and gas tax revenue collected as well as forecasted tax and fees for the general fund okay so the top graph is oil and gas tax revenue the dotted line is the projection from the 2019 legislative revenue forecast and then the black line is the actual and you can see what may april and may looked like and may was particularly poor for tax tax collection in the oil and gas revenue area now april wasn't as bad it was below projection but may was particularly bad and then if you look at the general funds like sales tax and those other things we missed the mark in april but may again was a was a much worse month as far as taxes and fee collection versus versus april but you also notice in some of these in this chart that we have months that we exceeded our collection forecasts for instance last winter november and december 2019 quite a bit above the forecast september 2019 quite a bit above as well as july so my next slide shows a table of what these actually feed the what the fees actually were so this is from the june report for the 2020 general fund so the june report is referring to may what was collected in may so it's a month behind but you see at the bottom it says total general funds uh actually collected 152 million projected was 188 million so a shortfall in may of 36 million dollars for the general fund most of that coming from sales taxes not collected forecast was 77 million and the actual was 50 that's a that's a big number and then also individual income taxes were way down collected and motor vehicle excise taxes in terms of raw dollars so that that makes up the bulk of it but if you look to the right the the three columns to the right now near the bottom total general fund revenues the actual was 22.38 billion and the forecast was 2.36 billion so we actually still have an excess over the projection because of those periods i told you about last year when you looked at the line chart that we actually had better months several of them in 2019 and so so far we really don't have a big shortfall below the projections yet now this could this continues and obviously we will because we're basically right at projection but so far it hasn't been as it doesn't look as dire as maybe some thought it might be but but again we have to wait and see how things shake out going forward and then my my next slide shows the same thing for May oil and gas this one's May for April and actually I'm sorry this is the June report for May 2020 and you see that oil had a shortfall of a oil and gas tax collection of 108 million so very very significant but again the actual versus the forecast is pretty close we're only down about 2 percent over the projection 1.96 billion versus approximately a forecast of 2 billion so so far we were not facing a massive shortfall yet for the biennium we we did last month but we had some good months leading up to it that as a state has we're we're right on the forecast but looking looking forward again how long is this going to last I expect a oil and gas taxes may stay lower the collection of such for the next few months are we going to see a continued downward trend of sales taxes and those kind of things that we count on tremendously for the general fund we'll have to see but that's where we stand right now that we're basically right at projection and so going forward is going to be extremely important in how much commerce we have going on sales tax collections oil and gas taxes those kind of things but for now again we're we're basically right on where our forecasts were for the for this period in the biennium so with that I'd like to go ahead and turn it over to Dr. Frane Olson he's our next speaker and thank you guys for listening all right thank you Brian so this week I'd like to basically provide a brief update to the marketing plan discussion that that I did on May 29th so as we go through this I'd like to again periodically give some updates so on my first slide I just want to remind remind everybody as you're putting a marketing plan together there's several key pieces my my earlier discussion was really on setting these pricing objectives and timing objectives what I want to highlight today is a little bit about marketing managing or monitoring the the market conditions and again whenever you're looking at a marketing plan obviously we always have new information entering the marketplace people's attitudes and perspectives change as we move through time because we just have more information and more things have happened so just because you've put the marketing plan together doesn't mean you can just set it aside and say all right let's you know we're done with that let's move on to something else so on my next slide I identified in the previous discussion what are some of the key things that I'm going to be watching throughout the summer now that might change this market psychology what might change both buyers and sellers attitudes about what the future will bring and this week I just really want to focus in on the weather concerns and how that might be impacting yields and and also crop quality later on again we'll follow through in some of the for example export sales and if there are some questions about US-China relations we can certainly talk about that during the Q&A period so on my next slide I just want to remind everybody again that if you look back historically at kind of what's happening for the variability or the volatility of prices in particular for that harvest delivery month so for corn we kind of zero in on December of Chicago futures contract kind of use that as the as a pricing point that the local elevators will determine what the local actual cash price will be again this is information at updated as of last night as of the close of marketing yesterday or the market trading yesterday so the red line on the very bottom is where we're at today in the in today's futures market for the December contract I have that kind of middle range in this June July August time frame circle just to highlight the the high degree of volatility this big shifts in expectations that we have as we go through these summer growing months and again if there's going to be an opportunity or some kind of market scare that will put a lift into crop prices the most likely event will be a weather problem or some kind of concern about how many bushels we're actually going to produce so it'll be really a supply side response we can have rallies from the demand side but again it's really because of unexpected export sales that's the primary results or cause of that so this is for December corn futures if you look at the next slide it's the same chart only reflecting the November soybean contract and you can see again circled in the middle point portion there is that June July August time frame again we tend to have a lot of market variability a lot of shifting in prices and kind of expectations are how big the crop is going to be and then the the final slide in this sequence is for spring wheat and again I cheated a little bit and used the December contract rather than the September one simply because I wanted to have this this kind of consistent time frame between corn soybeans and wheat but again as you can see that June that really the July August time period is is probably that critical time time frame for the spring wheat market so again I just want to remind everybody where we're at right now on my next slide I want to talk a little bit about some of the new information that enters the marketplace that can change traders perspective and and we have to understand that not everybody trading futures market contracts have a real deep understanding of what goes on in production agriculture as as farmers or as as processors or buyers of grain people that are actively engaged in buying and selling cash grain we understand a lot of the these production issues but we do have folks in the in that are speculators in particular from the finance community that will start trading the the the grain futures markets that really don't have a solid understanding of kind of the production cycle and the production process and so some of the information that they where do they go to to get information about how things are going and again one of those pieces of information whether we agree with that or not is is the weekly USDA crop progress report and again this crop progress report in particular when we look at crop conditions I know a lot of farmers have kind of pointed that and say boy where do they get those numbers and how do they come up with that well to give you an idea there's about 3600 enumerators or respondents there's people that will every week will will usually at a county level drive around and report on what are the crop conditions within that region now a lot of times the people that are filling out these surveys are our county agents sometimes there are other fsa officials or people that will fill out the these weekly crop progress reports and please understand this is a very subjective opinion this is a subjective viewpoint of you know given the the conditions that i see in my area what percentage of the crop would be rated as a very poor fair condition good condition or excellent condition in and again USDA does have some basic guidelines for how you would try to quantify that from a from a so that we have some consistency so i don't want to put a lot of pressure on these numbers although the the trade and market analysts and market traders do spend a lot of time looking at this and studying it so this is the um the crop condition report it comes out every Monday this is for June 14 so this would be last Monday's report and it gives a breakdown not only for the nation the 18 primary states that grow corn and again if you notice on the very bottom it says these 18 states that are represented in this survey account for about 91 percent of the corn acreage at least in 19 2019 so we're picking up these the heart of the corn belt where the what states are are really core corn producing regions and and they do have an average across the state as well as again the blue bar that or the blue row that i've identified as the 18 state average now the way i like to use this and i think the way that most market analysts and most traders look at it is what are today's numbers relative to the previous week there are some analysts that will look at you know the numbers today versus the previous year again which is the very bottom row or they'll look at at a longer time series saying well if we look back historically what are these conditions relative to what we seen in the past and then trying to make some correlations or relationships what does that mean for our final yields my personal view and opinion is that's a bit dangerous in the those relationships there are relationships there but they're a bit fuzzy i mean i i'm not terribly confident to be able to look backwards and say well at this time last year or this time two years ago or five years ago the crop condition ratings were x and that means we have the yield potential of y i i just feel a little uncomfortable doing that but i do know there's a lot of traders will look at today's numbers or the most recent report relative to last week's numbers because then it'll give us an idea of what's happening to the change in conditions and if you notice on corn the the june 14th number versus the previous week of june 7th you know the good range was 56% rated good last this that on monday a week before it was 60% was rated good and so there's been a little bit of a slippage in in some of those those fields were rated good they may have now slipped into that fair category again noticing on the excellent we had about 15 percent of the crop was rated excellent last week as well as this week so when we're looking at what is happening and forming expectations about what we think the rest of the season will bring it's this change from week to week to week that a lot of the analysts and traders are looking at okay so if we next slide we move on to the same table but we're looking at the soybeans and again on a sidebar i want to i rank these according to the size of the total production so illinois is is typically the largest soybean producer in the u.s. then we go to iowa minnesota indiana nebraska and i did add north dakota in here just because you know it is interesting to follow what's going on in our state as well so i just chose the top five producers of of corn soybeans and wheat and then i included north dakota for reference if we look at the soybean condition again basically unchanged from last week um and i just also want to comment the previous year at this time last year there wasn't anything reported because the soybean planting progress was so far with so far delayed so again planting progress this year was well ahead of what we saw last year so again last year there wasn't even a report at this point because a lot of the the seed hadn't even come out of the ground yet so at early on in the season i don't want to again put a lot of weight or emphasis on these numbers but it's the change from week to week to week that is really important to follow and then on the next slide it's the same information for spring wheat um the spring wheat condition and i did list all of the six major crops producing spring wheat um and again when you look at this week's numbers versus last week's numbers we had a little bit of a slippage some of those those fields that were rated excellent previously from last week kind of slipped into that good category um this week so again not major shifts not major changes but so far even though it's early in the season crop condition and crop condition ratings seem to be coming along pretty well so on my next slide i wanted to talk a little bit about uh progress on the winter wheat harvest and again in this region um what happens in the winter wheat world obviously has an impact on the spring wheat information or spring wheat prices and every week uh the u.s. wheat associates uh tracks not only harvest progress but they also take samples of uh or samples of wheat are are submitted for testing uh from each state and then those are are summarized and reported so we get an average of kind of what's the crop quality as we start moving through harvest as well now there was a report this report was updated today but the update came just a few minutes ago and so i wasn't able to change my slides to accommodate it but um as of uh today's report june 19th report texas harvest was about 63 percent complete versus 49 last last week oklahoma is 92 complete versus 36 last week and kansas is at 22 percent uh complete this week versus one percent last week so the the core harvest of of winter wheat is now moving into southern kansas um we're getting some yield reports again yields have been all over the board recognizing that there was some freeze damage in in in parts of of the panhandle of texas and oklahoma and also into southern kansas there's also some areas that have been pretty dry for a while so yields are have been very extremely variable anywhere from 20 bushel per acre to over 60 bushel per acre as a reference point usd last year tracked the average winter wheat crop at about 53 almost 54 bushels per acre so it looks like yields are coming in at least right now similar although we're getting into again the heart of of kansas wheat country so we'll have to watch that from week to week on test weights the test weights have actually been very good test weights from 58 to 65 pounds per acre the average for the samples that had come in so far is about 62 pounds and again just recognizing a 60 pound per acre basis 60 pound per per bushel excuse me basis is kind of the standard so we're looking at at some some pretty good test weights whenever you have higher test weights that usually leads to somewhat lower protein content and that is starting to show up now again protein levels in the winter wheat crop hard red winter wheat crop specifically has been very considerably quite variable the range anywhere from nine percent to 14 percent with about 11 percent average and again that's a that's slightly below what we saw last year in 2019 and if you'll notice that the price differential that price spread between hard red spring wheat and the hard red winter wheats is starting to widen out again now so spring wheat is now starting to take a bit more of a premium over winter wheat in the futures market which is typically what happens when we have lower than average protein content on the next slide i want to shift into a little bit of the weather i'm not a weather forecaster i'm not pretending to be one but it is obviously something that the markets watch very closely most of the market analysts and traders again have a particular weather service or weather person that they follow very closely that they tend to rely on for information but i also wanted to give some reference points there's different places you can go to get an idea of well what are not only the current soil moisture conditions but then again some some information on crop conditions one of the places you can go that actually has some very nice high resolution maps that are updated about every week is uh not nasa actually there's a new program that they have that they're trying to follow soil moisture conditions and what they're doing at least this is one map of several that they have within their their their deck or their available available set and what's looking at this is the estimated again a computer-generated estimate of what is the root zone soil moisture relative to a long-term average and the long-term average is from 1948 through 2012 so this is a very very long time period and the different color shadings you're seeing is on a percentile basis so it's saying well if you go if you rank everything from zero to a hundred where where within that range would this fall so anything in the blue range is a high percentile it's showing that based on history there's a a larger level of soil moisture than than we've seen in the past and obviously anything in the in the yellows or browns or red would be below average i do want to comment really quickly if you notice kind of in that devil's lake area in north dakota i'll put kind of in that northeast corner there there's there's kind of a red spot and and i'm trying to figure exactly why that's showing up i think a large portion of it is because of the time frame and that there were several years in a row where that region in particular in the devil's lake basin had very very high soil moisture levels and so when you compare you average those in versus what we see today which is probably more normal we start to see that differential showing up so i do think there's some anomalies a little bit in the data set right now if you go to the next slide this is another way of of looking at again soil moisture conditions we've talked about this a little bit in the in the past this is much more hydrologically you know what do we see with soil moisture conditions it's not always based on crop and cropping stress but we use other indicators and so again there's a couple different ways that the market looks at weather information and where we're sitting right now is the crop under stress or not on the next slide these are the forecasts and i'm using the national weather service again these are typically for longer-range forecasting national weather service is commonly commented on or used as a reference point again a lot of market traders and analysts will use their own market or their own weather people that they follow for for information but again this becomes kind of the standard or the benchmark that a lot of folks use so if we look at the eight to 14 day forecast moving forward in time and understand what this is saying now again the green means that there's a high probability or an above average probability that will or there's a good strong probability there'll be rainfall where the precipitation that we're going to see moving into that eight to 14 day program time period will happen that the probability is very high that that that region will will receive some rainfall the gray areas where where it's basically a normal rainfall that they're saying there's there's equal chances of or 50 50 chance if you will of having average either above average or below average rainfall and again we get into the beiges and and reds it's it's the the probability there's a strong probability there'll be below average rainfall so if you look at this and you look at the the core corn belt that corn soybean producing area we're seeing that they're going to have there's a little above average probability of seasonal rainfall which is good for crop development so right now the combination of good soil moisture conditions and the the forecast for adequate rainfall the majority of the corn and soybean producing region looks like it's going to be in pretty good shape on the next slide we're going to look at the temperatures and again you read this very similar to what the what the rainfall probabilities are you know is it going to be a is there a strong probability of having above average temperatures versus below average temperatures and again you'll notice that in that core corn producing region you know get into Nebraska Iowa Illinois Indiana it's there's a good probability to be below average temperatures and i just want to remind everybody when we talk about below average temperatures in Missouri and Iowa it's actually reasonably comfortable it's not as their their average temperatures this time you're a much warmer than they are up here in North Dakota so again it's looking very favorable for crop development and for crop progress so right now there's really nothing on the horizon that would give us an indication we're going to be running into some major crop production problems yet obviously there's still a lot of the growing season remaining my next slide i wanted to remind everybody about these pricing targets so the blue lines are those psychological barriers we talked about previously kind of supporting resistance levels those blue lines in this set of charts are identical to what i did at the end of may or in the may 29th session so we'll we can see that so far at least on the corn market this is December corn again that we have been able to break through that first resistance level so we're now kind of in that that middle range we're kind of bouncing between the 340 and 355 range again there's there's got to be some reason some change in people's view of the future to help continue to lift prices as we move forward so it looks like we've now kind of broken through that first layer but we're still within this trading range of about 340 to 355 on the next slide this will be for September excuse me November soybean futures it's very similar thing happened we broke through that first core resistance level we've now moved into a slightly higher trading range between about 865 and let's say 890 and we've been bouncing within that range for for several days now again i pulled these graphics from the market close yesterday so it does not include today's market activity but it's based off of the closing yesterday and then my last slide which is for September hard red spring week futures again we broke through that 525 level if i were to redraw the support and resistance levels today i'd move that that top blue line up just a little bit to probably a 540 range so it looks like we're again trading within that boundary of about 525 to 540 i do think wheat has some spring wheat in particular has some possibility to move that through that 3 that 540 mark given some of the conditions now that are starting to appear drier conditions as we get into parts of western North Dakota and actually into Saskatchewan so again something to watch but we try and put these together for some pricing targets as a reference point so with that i'll close off my section and we'll hand things over to tim well good afternoon everybody great to be with you again on this friday afternoon if we go to my first slide a lot of interest of course in what calf prices are going to be this fall on effect and next week i've got several talks with that's the title but the two biggest factors that affect fall calf prices are corn prices and slaughter steer prices so corn was covered very well by frame and he showed you the chart and relatively historic low prices and good prospects there so unlike last year where we had all kinds of problems with getting the corn crop in and so on and corn went up a dollar and down that caused a lot of fluctuation in feeder cattle prices we're not seeing that now so the other half of the equation of slaughter steer prices for fall calf prices and so i show you that and again we've talked about this several times in this webinar a lot of volatility the red line is this year and the gold line is last year and so we started off the year about the same as we were a year ago in fact the last several years and actually some weakness already occurred before the coronavirus hit because we had a record number of cattle on feed and and slaughter weights and so on but then the coronavirus hit and and caused prices to go down and of course in april we really took prices down because the slaughter plants were closing and all that and just couldn't market them and kind of interesting there you know then when slaughter plants started opening up prices went back up so a direct relationship there and we'll see in a minute but now the you know couple weeks ago we were right on last year but last week we fell off from last year's levels and we're going to be down a couple more dollars this week so kind of below last year and so now we are going in an opposite direction on prices to the mount being slaughtered and I'll show you that chart in a minute but just want to focus on the futures prices these are yesterday's closed but the futures mark is virtually unchanged today waiting on a cattle on feed report out and about an hour and I'll talk about that in a minute so the you know while corn is supportive fed cattle futures at the present time are not supportive for for calf prices and would indicate some lower prices this fall so go to the next slide I you know just mentioned a cattle slaughter and we were going in the same direction but now moving an option opposite direction see cattle slaughter has recovered very very nicely not quite up to the peak where we were there before the covid hit but at the level similar to the beginning of the year and so you know that's good news you know the packing plants are operating and up near capacities that they had before and so we are able to move cattle through and go to the chart on the bottom there is you know you know slaughter was just off a little bit last week and and we'll get the new numbers on monday but I just followed a day by day and we're doing about same but actually beef production is higher than it was last year at this time so we are producing a lot of beef and if we go to the next slide we'll see the reasons for that and the biggest reason is of course is that our steer dressed weights contra seasonally have moved higher and are at quite high levels for this time of the year simply because of the backlog of cattle that we couldn't get moved and they had to stay in feed lots and so you go to the slide on the bottom the last cattle on feed report there that came out exactly a month ago showed that we had a lot more cattle that were on feed over 120 days and that leads into the higher weights and so the big question is you know now this month how are we doing on those heavyweight cattle and feedlots so we go to the next slide there is a cattle and feed report out today at two o'clock and so we'll be able to find that out just in a few minutes this is just the range of estimates that that the experts are asked to do before the report and again you know the average of estimates are forced to be just to have a fewer less on feed some lower placements and marketings to be down quite a bit I have to talk a little bit about some of the idiosyncrasies of these reports that probably miss the press and one is on both on that marketing level and placement level is that this year because of the Memorial Day holiday and the way the calendar falls there were two less business days two less business days to slaughter cattle and two less business days for marketing cattle so that would be one of the reasons why they're down alone but anyway you see a wide range in placement figures there about a 21 percent and you know there usually is a lot of variation there mainly depending on where the experts live and they in your frame has talked about your backyard and that's kind of the same thing here what's in my backyard and so you know that's all a consideration there but you know just wait an hour and we'll be able to see what happens there so move along to uh wanted to talk a little bit about some of the things that go back of what's affecting fed cattle prices and uh and and what's ahead um usga once a month puts out retail average retail beef prices and as expected they just soared into april and may with all the panning buying at grocery stores and so on and so uh we don't have the export figures for may yet but you know anecdotally our exports fell off in may and we've got to wait another almost a month to find that out because of high prices and you know people that buy from us buy from us because they not only like the product but the prices so certainly that that probably cuts some some exports back but the big question is you know you know fed cattle are going down and retail prices are high in a big spread there and so uh is that going to move around so go to the next slide is this is weekly then so this is what's happened in the last three weeks actually what has happened by the end of may and into June now and you see that meat prices are falling off drastically uh there's an old saying the cure for high prices is high prices and that's exactly what happened we had high prices there in may as we saw in the previous chart that cut exports back it also cut back buying at the retail level in the u.s and so then prices have fallen back to what you might consider and again this charts or these charts are distorted by how high they went there in may but we're right back to year ago levels and average levels and probably that's a good news that being if there is such thing as normal or average we're kind of back there and and volatility kind of behind us this is for chucks and rounds which were a big ticket item there and we ground a lot of them for hamburger and so on so go to the next slide kind of to continue on here uh frame mentioned the drought monitor and is getting dry particularly in western North Dakota as you see there in the left and you know really uh disappointing because not only of cattle producers have to have to deal with you know unprecedented pandemic and economic problems as Brian has mentioned and unprecedented social unrest and now we've really got a double edged sword hitting in that it's getting dry out west and pastures are dry and hay is is heading out prematurely and so on and so that's another thing to watch on prices again if we have abnormal movement earlier movement of cattle or whatever that mean that'll affect our seasonal price patterns and on the right gives us more of a perspective on a u.s basis particularly for the cattle industry the dark green there is major beef cow calf producing areas and then the red dash line is where there's drought and we aren't the only ones in western North Dakota cattle country experiencing dry weather you know the biggest North Dakota is the ninth largest cow calf state but Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas are the top four and so you see Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri in particular excuse me Kansas some struggling and so in the box up there uh you know 23 percent of the beef cows are now in an area experiencing drought so that's something for sure for us to watch in the upcoming weeks is does that worsen or hopefully that gets better and starts raining in all those areas or that could affect prices as well and so again we're early in the season you know Stockman's actually had a a cow calf pair sale yesterday because you know it is getting dry out there and we saw a number of dry cows coming to market in in some excess bulls and so on and so you know really need rain out there and something for us to watch for North Dakota but not only that for prices more so on a u.s basis so with that uh turn it over to Dave to wrap up on energy thanks Tim yeah I just have a few comments this week what's going on in the ethanol market and then some remarks about imports or excuse me exports uh another really good week for us corn ethanol uh saw an increase in production although slight in definitely continuing that trend and then use uh which the more mainstream fossil fuel guys called input or refinery input was also up and maybe within all of that too is you know that the days in storage went down we're burning through the supplies because there's export numbers uh you know that aren't here again so moving in the right direction uh clearly much better than than where things were and that you'd probably expect that same incremental growth through the rest of summer important to note there are still uh some refineries that are are are shuttering permanently there's announcement earlier this week from from the coke down which they're going to shut down a large corn ethanol refinery in Georgia so there's still some shaking out to do also the numbers aren't here but looking at where we are versus last June we're at about 85 percent of production versus what it was last year at this time which is good but remember the the industry a year ago was was still under stress because of small refinery exemptions and that that demand or that use that wasn't there but you know pretty close and then in terms of actual use domestically we're about 80 percent so the the poll here isn't as big but it's actually kind of a sign that there are there are good things going on in the export market which i'll talk about uh looking at margins things are looking much better uh just jump down to that simple crush per bushel for the for and they for for today's numbers of yesterday's collected numbers a dollar fifty a bushel is a really good number that is that is one where folks are certainly in the black and can and service debt to maybe get ahead on their debt so really nice numbers corn strength in a bit and again these are self-decoded numbers so you know a lot of variation across the the corn belt and what other refineries might be experiencing clearly a difference between that and the nearby futures contract uh ethanol is up as well so $1.22 my my rule of thumb recently is that you know $1.20 is about where they could break even but of course we have a lot cheaper corn now than we have uh in in much of the recent past and distillers grains the prices come back down again i think that there's a few things going on obviously there's more available with more crush and i think that they kind of price themselves out of some rations that that'll continue for a bit and then obviously folks just finding other feed that that can can serve their purposes but again you know that that crushes up to a dollar fifty a bushel you know plus 20 percent over over the two weeks is the last time that i reported these numbers uh last thing to talk about this this this slide's a little bit busy looking at us ethanol by destination and so report came out just earlier this month about the the april numbers and so obviously april would have included uh you know maybe that peak economic distress here in the united states or that that timer was worse than a number of regards but stepping back to realizing that china and a lot of east asia were were a month or two ahead of us but that's where these numbers come through so they they go all the way through april so all of those exports some things just to pick up on obviously brazil is our largest market that is the blue line canada is a close second most of the time and then it gets kind of jumbled you see china down there just hanging out at zero which is where they've been for a while you know that's that's obviously even true with the trade dispute and a little bit before that but honestly you know china has only been a major ethanol export destination uh in spurts over the last decade and a lot of the talk about china is just the potential knowing how large that that market is uh in terms of transportation fuel use the thing that one of the reasons i wanted to bring this up is looking at that that far right hand side of all these lines so that would be april is the movement in some smaller markets uh mexico increasing dramatically columbia increasing dramatically even south korea up uh you know to me that's some of that optimism there's been a lot of work done in the ethanol industry and moved to support of the corn folks to build those export markets and and you know mexico has probably been the number after china mexico has been a number one target columbia has definitely been up there as well and they made some you know since their large purchases and deliveries there in april so i mean that's really supportive and again this is you know 20 million gallons in a month is 250 in a year so i mean that's you know for each one of those you know mexico basically if they'd continue at that rate would have bought you know half of north dakota's production um just you know with with that rate with a relatively small buyer and again there's a lot on here there's a lot of other countries on here too that uh kind of have that same potential uh especially in southeast asia where if that work continues you know just working into the blend and obviously you know prices were low and for for for bargain hunters you know it was a time for for folks to pull the trigger and obviously with brazil you know just you know broader than us i mean they're they're they're in a really dire straits with regard to covid and what that's doing to their economy and to their uh their health system and i i think that's only going to get worse and i think that's going to have a long-term negative impact on fuel use and then ethanol imports as well and so that's what i had in terms of my comments i will turn it over for questions which i'm not seeing any quite yet but we'll give you guys a couple of seconds in case you do again uh you're welcome to enter them we prefer via the q1a tool i can also use chat um and giving you a second just to generate when you close your window you can complete a short survey and then also uh if you're looking for this recording uh or other the presentations or other information you can get them from the websites that are the urls that are listed on on the screen and i'm not seeing anything yet so dav can i make a real quick comment i guess you you brought up you had brought up china and and again you know there's there's potential optimism on the on the ethanol side um there were some reports that came out late yesterday and early this morning that um some of the us officials met with chinese officials in hawaii um there were some statements that hit the market this morning that caused a a little bit of a pop in the equity markets but um not so much in the grain markets and in some positive news i get some positive statements coming out that um again reiteration that china has every intention of following through on the phase one agreement and in particular in meeting the targets and goals set forth in their expectations for additional purchases not only of of agricultural products but also some of the energy products now that that again put a little bit of a lift into the equity markets but it hasn't impacted the grain markets much at least not as of yet today and and i wanted to comment a little about that it's positive news for sure it's just reinforcement that you know there are statements coming out that there isn't a you know the agreement in this place and we're going to keep moving forward however if if you look back historically there's been a lot of these kinds of statements that have come out in the two you know two-ish years that we've been involved with this us-china trade war and and the grain markets have become a bit callous to those kinds of statements what they're really looking for from the the grain marketing side is actual sales so you'll see much more of a positive market response when we actually have announced sales even of even if they're agreements the where there's a commitment to purchase the commitments in writing it has to be scored and reported through the usda reporting system those kinds of sales where there's actually commitments on the books are the ones that really causes the market traders to change their perspective so right now i know the equity markets are still paying a lot of attention to those kinds of news releases and reports but the grain markets really haven't they've become a little bit tired of hearing that and then no follow-through so i just want to comment that again i do think some of those are coming in some of the previous recordings we've done i commented on the seasonality of when china usually comes in and buys larger quantities of us ag products and it's typically not until we get closer to that harvest season so as we enter the harvest season for wheat they there tends to be a little bit more purchases of wheat as we enter the harvest season for corn and soybeans is when the chinese come in and be more aggressive in their purchases so i do think that's coming but we're just going to have to be patient and wait for it yeah okay i'm maybe i'll make a comment too we do plan to do this next friday and then i think our plans are to take july third off which is a friday but then we're deciding whether to continue these so any feedback that the participants could give us whether uh they think we should go on into july or not would be helpful for us in making that decision thanks and i'm not seeing anything else up on the board um so i just want to thank everybody for participating uh please if you have any comments including uh if we should continue having this as a regular series uh to share that with the survey and hope everybody has a great weekend thanks