 ready. And we are going to start the agricultural market situation and outlook webinar. Thanks for joining us. I'd like to give you just a little reminder. Microphones and cameras off please. That'll just help everything go a lot smoother. And you can use the chat for questions which we'll probably do near the end after the presentations. And also I use the feedback link you see there. If you want to write that down, when we're all done, we'd really appreciate it. If you could, it's just three quick questions. We need some feedback so we can keep doing this or change what we do according to what your response is. All right, Brian, it's all yours. All right. I think I got my camera and mic going. All right. So I'm just I'm kind of going to cover some of the macro portion of this. Just basically what's going on in the general economy and kind of tie it back to ag in generally speaking. So the first slide of my presentation basically shows the current states that are at have stay at home orders or nonessential business closures. And for the most part about half of the country is in some form of ordered stay at home. And I got to confess I got this from a magazine business insider, but basically about half of America is under some kind of stay at home order. And you've got some states like Texas, for instance, that doesn't have a statewide sort of order going on right now, but they'll have municipalities like Dallas and Houston, which are which have directives of, you know, stay at home and nonessential personnel getting restrictions. And the same the same is true possibly for portions of Florida. So as we move on to the next piece, this is kind of showing what's going on with the equities market. And it's really the last reference point we have for what's going on is 1929, which is the year of the largest stock market crash on record right before the Great Depression. And if you look, you can see, you know, March, and this is just for March. There were three of the top 15 largest daily losses of all time. And keep in mind the stock market goes back well over 100, 120 years, and two of the largest daily increases of all time in the in the top 15 there. And even though yesterday we had in the day before some pretty strong rallies that didn't didn't crack the the top 15. And then today, the market appears down so far right around 7800 points. Part of that being maybe some anxiety about the house passing the current stimulus bill, other parts about how we're going to handle the debt. And then there's probably some profit taking going on for what's happened in the last few days. But as it stands right now, it's getting to the point where four and 5% swings are becoming normal. And we're becoming somewhat numb to them, which historically has not been the case. So next, I want to talk a little bit about unemployment. So maybe you guys were paying attention to watching some of what's going on in the news. Okay, so what this chart shows is daily weekly filings of unemployment. Okay, so new filings for unemployment insurance in each state. And the if I adjust for population growth, the previous record was about 1982, where 900,000 people in one week filed for unemployment. This is what happened at as of Thursday, there were 3.28 million people filing for unemployment based and it goes back to the way this report works is it's this one expired November, or I'm sorry, November March 21. So March 21 was the cutoff for it. And so in the week ending March 21, there were 3.28 million new filers for unemployment, which swamps the record from 1982 at 900,000. Some of the expectations going forward is that the next one, which doesn't expire until this Saturday, so that report will come out, including data up through tomorrow might even be quite a bit higher than this 3.28 million. So that just puts into perspective what this has done. Some of these lockdown measures and shelter in place has done for unemployment across the country and why you're seeing markets move the way they're moving. All right, so let's talk about unemployment real quick. This is information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And when you see the unemployment rate numbers come out generally these these come out monthly. Okay, so the next one will come out the first part of April for March. And the March 6 report, which was from February listed about 5.8 million people as unemployed. And there's a specific definition for who constitutes unemployed. For better for worse, it has a consistent definition that we use and that rate was about three and a half percent. Now even taking into account job growth in March, which will not probably not exceed the 193,000. So there probably were some new jobs created. But a quick back of the envelope calculation would say that just last week's unemployment filings will have increased the unemployment rate from three and a half to five and a half percent, which you might see in the April BLS report. And that's the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So what does that mean? What are some of the projections for how big this contraction is going to be? That's a question on a lot of people's mind. And we have, you know, kind of the good, the bad, and the ugly, as has been said in other presentations. But the more conservative estimate or the better estimate for the second quarter is a 14 percent contraction in the second quarter, which was is being forecasted by JPMorgan Chase and Company. Morgan Stanley is saying about 30 percent in the second quarter with inflation or unemployment increasing to 12.8 percent. Goldman Sachs is saying 24 percent in the second quarter with a 9 percent unemployment rate. And also a contraction in the first quarter from what's happened in March, what's already happened of minus 6 percent, which yes, this would be by definition a recession with a humongous decrease in GDP. Okay. They're also saying that there may be a growth of a fairly big bounce in the third and fourth quarters, but I guess that remains to be seen. And a lot of these projections are in heavy flux. Bank of America tends to agree with Goldman Sachs at about a 25 percent contraction in the second quarter. Now here's the dire projection and this is from the Federal Reserve President of St. Louis saying a 50 percent reduction in GDP in the second quarter and up to 30 percent unemployment. The Great Depression was estimated to be around 21 to 25 percent that there wasn't really good figures kept back then. So that's the best estimation we have, but that just puts into perspective 30 percent unemployment would be quite a bit worse than the Great Depression ever was. So my next slide I want to talk about is the issue with visas and labor. And part of this stimulus package that's being put forward is this $600 per week basically kick up from the federal government on top of state unemployment benefits. So as you know, as of March 20, all visas, I-129s and I-140s, which would be HB1s and whatever else or H1Bs, I'm sorry, have been suspended. And so even when those are potentially reenacted, there's going to be a pretty big time lag to process all of those. So I mean, you got to plan this out months in advance. So even if they were brought back online in a month or two, it's going to be several months before that's ever resolved. And so anybody who's looking for temporary or part-time labor going into this summer, one of the things that's been talked about in the news is this $600 kicker, federal government kicker on top of state unemployment benefits. So I did the math and basically to be indifferent on North Dakota state unemployment and the federal kicker, somebody would have to make $22 an hour, which receives about $880 a week in terms of wages, which is pretty much the same as somebody staying at home and collecting the unemployment benefits who had previously made $22 an hour with the state plus the federal. So when you're thinking about what labor or temporary labor or hired labor or hiring some of these individuals would have to be, you know, $22 an hour right now as a benchmark. And that's been, that was red flagged by some of our politicians saying that, you know, that's a problem that we're disincentivizing work because somebody who would have made $15 an hour is actually going to get paid more on unemployment than they would working at $15 an hour. The explanation for it basically being that state unemployment, computer systems and processing centers do not have the capacity or power to do some sort of prorated reduction on that $600 federal kicker. So as a result, they just make it a blanket payment so that they can get it out quickly. And they acknowledge that this moral hazard exists with the idea being that, but they still need to get, they still want to get this money into their hands. And so you can kind of do it quickly or you can do it accurately. But right now we can't do both. So quickly was what was opted on. So the next portion, I just have a few slides on the exact language for the agricultural portion of this. And I'm only having them displayed for a few seconds each. So if you want to go back and read the bill's exact language, here it is. It can be a little bit confusing for exactly what it means. And if you're used to reading this legally stuff goes round and round and round. But pretty much in summary, what's going on is that there is going to be a $14 billion increase in payment for the increase in the commodity credit corporation account. If we can move on to the next one, which shows back up, I'm sorry. And then the other one is about nine and a half billion dollars going to livestock and specialty crops, which was put in there. So if you recall with the MFP beef cattle production and some of the other livestock enterprises, sheep and whatnot, were not included in those. And then there were some specialty crops that came out and said, you know, we were impacted and left out. Well, this new bill sets aside nine and a half billion for that. And then $14 billion going to the triple C, so that it can potentially be dispersed as kind of like the MFP was dispersed in two years ago and then last year. So that's kind of what's going into it for ag, as far as funds being available for helping out with what's going on with the COVID-19 outbreak. And with that, I'll go ahead and move it on to Fray and Olson. All right. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Fray and Olson, the crop economist and marketing specialist with NDSU Extension. This week, I'm going to talk a little bit about the supply chain issues. So if you want to go to the next slide, I've been having some questions about, you know, what is the supply train risk here in the United States? I thought I would start with kind of a quick update on what's happening internationally, in particular on our some of our competitors. In Argentina, there's more than 70 municipalities that have enforced anti coronavirus measures to try and that's influencing the grain movements. As of this morning, there was some additional information that came out that the Argentine port workers are asking the government to suspend grain as well as all export operations in the ports for 15 days. There's also a report out early this morning that an estimate that soybean supplies coming into their crushing industry, which is the largest use for Argentine soybeans, has been cut in half. So the movement restrictions to try and control coronavirus is now impacting the grain flows, especially in Argentina. In Brazil, even though there was not a port workers strike, the farm organizations are warning the government the grain, coffee, and sugarcane growers, facing some challenges not only with freight, getting the movement from their farm into the port facilities, but also harvest labor and then farm equipment maintenance. Because of this restriction on movement or the restriction on people moving within the country, they're having problems trying to keep the system moving or keep the system going. Current port movements when you look at vessel movements out of the Brazilian ports has been normal, but there are now some concerns showing up that some of the soybean shipments moving into China have been delayed or at least their rival has been delayed because of issues going on at the port levels. Next slide please. If we look at what's happening in the US because the question is well is this going to happen in the US? Is this something we need to be concerned about? And obviously everybody's trying to watch that very, very closely. In the United States, the Homeland Security has come out with a definition of what they consider essential and critical infrastructure workers. Food and agriculture is part of that. I have that circled as well as a transportation system. I have that circled. So in the United States at least when we put these shelter-in-place orders as the map that Brian put forward, there is still a safety valve allowing the movement of food and agricultural products as well as again transportation systems to be able to function. Next slide please. Within the food and agricultural area, this includes food manufacturing. It includes farm and agriculture, farm and animal ag workers. The employees and firms supporting food, feed, and beverage distribution. So again, here's a distribution issue. Employees and firms in the production of chemicals, medicines, vaccines, basically all of the inputs needed into the agricultural system, as well as the employees and firms in the manufacturing and the maintenance of the equipment and the infrastructure needed for ag production and distribution. So from the agricultural world, it gives us a lot of flexibility even though the orders are maybe very restrictive for people movement. Given the coronavirus outbreak, agriculture is one of those protected industries. We have a lot more flexibility to be able to get our jobs done. If you move to the next slide, the same rules apply for transportation and logistics. So again, employees and firms that provide logistical services within the US are still allowed to go to work. They're considered essential employees as well as the firms that allow this transportation to function. For example, dispatchers, maintenance and repair technicians, warehouse workers, maintenance and inspection infrastructure to make sure, again, everything is working smoothly. As well as when we get to the export markets, if you look at the maritime transportation workers, they're allowed to go to work, which includes the port workers, the mariners and the salves, equipment operators, again, to be able to load and unload the vessels. So the moral of the story is the infrastructure we have in the United States is still open for business. We may have to do business a little bit differently than in the past, but the flow of products, the flow of materials should be left open even though we have the shelter in place orders. So next slide, please. Now, agricultural industries may be impacted not necessarily by these, again, this restriction of travel, but we may have some issues for the companies that are actually doing business. These could be both import and export facilities, and I want to point to some of the issues now going on in New Orleans. It looks as though New Orleans because the Mardi Gras is going to be the next area that explodes with coronavirus issues. Obviously, the PN, I mean, the Gulf of Mexico and the New Orleans ports are going to be impacted by that. And if you looked at Brian's map, going back to Washington and Oregon State, again, the PNW ports that we rely on in this region for grain movements are in part of that area. So we do have to be concerned about individuals getting sick or companies starting putting restrictions on the movement of their employees that may have an influence later on in the flow of product. The same could be said for some of a processing infrastructure, wheat mills, oil seed crushing plants, ethanol manufacturing plants, slaughter plants, even locally, more locally, grain elevators, fertilizer plants, chemical warehouses, the railroad system, the trucking system. So even though we are allowed to travel, that doesn't mean in agriculture is one of those protective industries or critical industries, it doesn't mean that we may not have some kind of supply disruptions depending upon how this plays out. So each company is responsible for setting their own protocols, not only with employee interactions, whether they can work at home or not. And again, in a lot of these businesses, the employees do have to report for work to get their job done. But also the steps that they're taking to try and sanitize the facilities, there's been adjustments in how they interact with customers. And again, for some farmers that are delivering directly to some of these processing plants, they may notice a difference in the process or the steps they need to be able to go through and get weighed and unload their trucks and move on back home. And again, the work at home restrictions or requirements in some cases that some companies are now putting into place. So when we look inside the companies, and I just want to bring this up because a lot of people don't think about, they look at what's happening outside the company and are the products that I need going to show up in time. And a lot of that will then again, depend upon how the companies internally deal with this. So the two biggest things that when you talk to the people in the industry or talk to company leaders saying, how are you dealing with this? Are we going to have problems? Are we going to have disruptions? A lot of it comes down to the spread of the COVID-19 between employees and customers. So again, obviously, you don't want to have any kind of transmittal between customers and employees and vice versa. So the receiving, the shipping, the handling systems have been changed. The processing within the organizations or these companies are shifting to try and reduce the likelihood somebody will get sick. Also then the spread within the company. And one of the big concerns right now is employee absenteeism, where people will will either feel sick and they say, all right, I'm going to stay home, whether they're able to get tested or not. But all of a sudden that employee isn't at work. And how do we try and backfill that position, whether it be short term or long term? So in kind of an extreme case, some companies are actually going to skeleton crews to try and keep some workers in reserve that will be able to carry on essential operations if there was an outbreak within kind of the A team, if you are an A team and a B team of workers. So if the one shift gets sick, or if you have key personnel within the company getting sick, at least you have somebody in reserve that you can bring in within your existing infrastructure to be able to replace that. Because anybody that's worked with temporary employees knows that there's quite a learning curve or training curve to be able to get new people and onto line. Next slide is for Tim. So I will hold my questions until later. So Tim, you're up. Good afternoon, everybody. Tim Petrie, extension livestock marketing economist. If you were on Monday, I told you this, but I'm just going to talk about cattle. So if you have questions about other livestock, you can leave them to the end. And or we are taking suggestions and go to the next slide that we are taking suggestions on what to talk about next time. And so the some of the couple of suggestions last time where they wanted to see you wanted to see more futures market charts. And, and, well, this didn't get like I wanted, but anyway, we'll go with it. This is the April feeder cattle futures chart. And then the, which is the high low and closes the black line there and then the CME feeder cattle index chart is the green line. And so again, some of you maybe aren't real interested in the futures, but this was a request. So just a couple of comments on the futures market. Again, we've seen extreme volatility. And the futures have been much more volatile than the cash market. On this chart, you see that, you know, we go way to the left hand side, the futures we start back in May. And then we're ending up there with yesterday's close and today's close is going to be right now. It's down the limit. It's been coming off a little bit of that, but about down another 450. But anyway, just a glance at the chart, you see that the black lines of the futures show much more volatility than the cash market. In fact, the futures market is went was as high as 157 on the left hand side. And here in the last couple of weeks down to 133 or 157 and down to 107. So that's a $50 range. While the range in the green line, the CME cash settlement index has been half that just $25. What the CME cash index is, is again, last time I talked about that we have USDA market reporters at four markets in North Dakota. And so we take the information from all seven to 899 pound steers from North Dakota, South Dakota, all the way down Texas, all the other markets. And this is all transparent on the CME website, it lists the market, how many are sold that day. And then we come up with one average price for the day, which is the average price for us. Okay, that's the green line. So that's varied about $25. And so again, we had some events occur early on we on the left hand side of the chart. We went down last spring, about $20 because of the corn planting issues that we had and corn went up a dollar or so. But then corn fell back down as after we got more corn in that originally thought. And so then, you know, our markets went up here, go to August 9. And excuse me there, August 9, we had the Tyson fire, which at the time we thought was the most catastrophic event we were going to have for the year. And that's very benign into what's happened lately. Again, we went down about $10 there. We knew that that would be a relatively short run event and was easier to predict because it's just one packing plan only affects the livestock industry. So in less than two months, we were back up with the futures and cash market above what they were on August 9 by October 1. And then we were sailing along really, really well there into the beginning of the year. And again, we're up there at 150 on feeder cattle futures in the cash market right there to the green line. And then the Coronavirus hit. And then we've had the big plunge since we went from 150 down to 110 on the futures and now came back to about 130. But there's all that extreme volatility and certainly when the market goes down, then, you know, everybody wants to short the market and the funds were long in the market because it was going up. And so they start bailing out and then people want to more people want to hedge on the short side. So, you know, it just crashed down. And so right now, then we have extreme volatility, impossible to trade. In fact, on the CME website, there was a they put some brokers every day what's happening in the market and one broker said do not trade cattle. And for brokers to say that that's their living. And so that's somewhat drastic. Eight out of the last 12 days, we've had limit movements. And now we add in today and I'm looking we're down the limits. That'll be nine out of the last 13 days limit movements. And, you know, hard for me to show here. But on Wednesday, which is just the second line from the right there, the bar, we had a $10 trading range 124 125 to 135. And that day, Brian and I were watching and it was up $5 and then crashed down 10 to close down five so a $10 trading. And so about impossible to trade. And, you know, there are a number of reasons why we have volatility even without the corona virus. And, and, you know, one of them is feeder cattle is just a thinly traded market. Our open interest yesterday was less than 35,000 contracts contrast that to corn where yesterday we had 1.4 million open interest in in corn. So we could have lost all the open interest in feeder cattle 35,000 corn that wouldn't even have been a glitch. But here, you know, a few thousand trades in it. It's, it's, it's quite drastic. So again, the limit on feeder cattle is 450 up or down from the previous days closed, benefit goes the limit, it goes to 675 limit up or down. And, you know, we almost did that entire thing on Wednesday. So the take home message from this is we've got an extremely volatile market. And, you know, there were other issues that caused volatility throughout the year. And that's what we're faced with now in the new norm. So go to the next slide, if you would is whoops, there we go, is, you know, I think we're going to have to be better marketers and do more price risk management, particularly on the margin, like if you're summer grazing, or if you're buying cattle, or if it's backgrounding, or if it's for sure feeding to slaughter weight, more difficult to use some of these if you're a cow calf producer in it for the long call. But, you know, just so much risk now and so many things as you can see happen. So again, a wide, not a wide variety, but a number of price risk management tools that you can use. And I'm not going to go in detail through all these, but we can forward contract with video and internet options, the CME futures that I just talked about are along with it, the options. Again, the CME futures is difficult for cow calf producers to use because it's based on 800 pound cattle, which have a different seasonal price pattern and so on. And, and you have a 50,000 pound contract. And, but a cash forward contract might be easier or whatever. Another thing that we've been doing education on is the newest one tool and that's livestock risk protection that's underwritten by a USDA risk management agency and sold by crop insurance agents. And so some advantages with LRP is that you can do a small number. One is the minimum you can do a one time and you can do under 600 pound feeder steers and or a different one for heifers and over 600 pound feeder steers and heifers. And again, it's whatever you are familiar with and want to do, but I think we're going to have to do a better job there. So go to the next slide. If you would, just a couple comments about LRP. I know, you know, it's an insurance product, so you have to pay a premium and that has been a sticking point for some producers when they look at the premium, it has been subsidized 13% for ever since it started a few years ago, but just recently this summer USDA raised the subsidy levels and the minimum now is a 20% subsidy from what you see on the screen when you log in. And then if you go to some of the lower coverage levels for sometimes in backgrounding, you might want to just cover your break even price and and for protection from a catastrophic event or go down, you'd even get a bigger one. One thing I've gotten several calls here in the last week is why is an LRP up? There's no LRP today. Why is that? And the reason why is because LRP is not offered. If the futures move the limit, which has been now nine out of the last 13 days, including today, if it stays limit down, looks like a will there won't be LRP for today. So go to the next slide. This is this week's USDA reported three markets in North Dakota, Dickinson, Mandan and Napoleon. And so these are just the average prices. You see USDA there under USDA. There's a synopsis compared to last week. Of course, we had quite a bit higher feeder cattle market in some cases as much as $20 higher. But the fed cattle market was up $20 as well from 110 up to 120. And so a feeder cattle came along with it. And, you know, so there's the prices down there again, kind of hard for me to show for the steers on the left hand side. But if you would, last week, and I'll just show you a quick update again, or last Monday, I should say we showed you the 750 to eight weight calves. And I, you know, that's across their several down averaged 138.25. And so that was a pretty good price compared to all the stuff that's going on. And so the guys that sold this week, I think that was a good thing. And it might be an indication that, you know, there's a lot of downward price risk in the next few weeks as the as all the things that Brian talked come to fruition with unemployment and everything else. And then everybody gets their freezer stocked. And so maybe meat slows down at the retail level from where it is. So you know, we're doing as about as good as we can, right now. And might if you've got cattle to sell here in the next couple of three weeks, I'm a month, I'm thinking now is the time get in and see your, if you're going to do that and you haven't already get in and see your auction market and make sure that you aren't getting overwhelmed with a bunch of cattle or whatever, but talk to them, they know what the buyers are saying and so on. But probably sooner is the better there over on the heifer side. Again, there's got to hand it to the livestock producers. They're still optimism out there. Replacement heifers are selling pretty well considering the situation. If you go up one, two, three, four, 13 head of 844 pound heifers brought 133 if you go over to the comparable steers for to the 8 to 850 brought 130 so those heifers sold better than the steers. And if you have replacement heifers to sell again, you know, something to consider there. So go to the next slide. Yeah, this is the slide I showed you last time. And so I'm not going to go through all the detail last time I only had two slides, but you see that red line going across there is the this year's price and you see we were up $8 this week. And the little squares again are the futures market the March feeder cattle futures closed at 130 50. But we did North Dakota prices were usually right on the futures when it closed and we were above that up at 138 25, you know, to go back a little further on that red line to the January futures again the close in January again that red line was right on. So that's just kind of another indication when our cash market is the March future cattle closed yesterday. So now we're looking at the April futures. That's another indication that the market is wanting cattle now. You know, the feed lots in Nebraska have a lot of corn high moisture corn and bunkers and there's only one thing they can do with it and that's feed it to feeder cattle. And and the last cattle and feed report that came out Friday our placements last month were down 8% and our marketing's were up 6%. So the feed lots were needing some cattle. And so just again, another reason why, you know, moving might be a good thing. So I that's the end for my talk. And I'm going to turn you over to Dave to give you some energy. Thanks, Tim. Dave Ripplinger, Bioenergy Economic Specialist with NDSU Extension. Next slide. So a lot of things have been happening the last week as we kind of get a handle on the ethanol market and the broader fuel markets. Earlier this week, Renewable Fuels Association, RFA gave their projection that they expect 2 billion gallons of capacity shut down in short order, actually off of the highs, we weren't actually down a bit. And we're down before coronavirus really came to maturity here. Poet had numbers relatively close to mine in terms of what they expect in terms of a decline in use. So they're there a billion, excuse me, just under a billion gallons of use down through the end of May, which I think is pretty significant. So that would be roughly a 30% drop in gasoline consumption and use if all of those gallons were the state of the United States. And this equates to about 2% of the of the US corn crop from last year. So I mean, it's already going to be a sizable dent in use. And we're seeing that impacting the corn markets as well. Talking a little bit more specifically, Valero, which is a large oil company, which does have an interest in ethanol, they have declared force majeure act of God on two of their plants, saying that it's not possible for them to either to reasonably accept or deliver, accept corn or deliver distiller's grains. And so they're working, they're using that to void out the contracts that they have at two plants already. skipping down a little bit just talking about other plants. So right now, so far, what we have kind of total is is five plants have closed in the last week and a half or so and another four are going to be down for maintenance, relatively scheduled maintenance, but but down and we actually saw another plant that was supposed to come back up that was shut down as the current market kind of materialized jumping back to hand sanitizer. It's actually a really interesting issue. The the demand for hand sanitizer with the virus is obviously extremely high. The relative price of ethanol relative to rubbing alcohol isopropyl alcohol is actually significantly less. One of the challenges that the industry faces that most are not permitted to produce that type of material. It requires a special permitting by EPA Chippewa Valley ethanol, which is not too far on the Minnesota side of the river, you know, they're they're getting into that market. They've also been at that the alcohol beverage market for quite some time. You know, that also the note to on isopropyl alcohol market, you know, it's actually not extremely large, about 250 million to 300 million gallons each year, which is something that the you know, the ethanol question is exactly how much that go the price of isopropyl alcohol is is almost doubled in the last three weeks to around four and a half dollars a gallon, which is significant. That's that's Gulf prices. Some things to look kind of forward to in the future is we're going to have an issue with storage. We saw this in the 2014 through 16 oil experience when we had extremely low prices. It is possible that we will essentially run out of out of storage for oil and other fuels. We got really close to that in the last five years. We didn't do it. But if and when that happens, the price for fuel is going to get very, very low. And so there's concern about that. Finally, one thing to consider is we even even though the United States is obviously going through this downturn, rapid change in our economic situation, our dollars still relatively strong, including to some of our export partners or markets for ethanol, expecting those to likely to disappear, including on the Brazilian side, which is our number one market. Next slide. This slide presents the crush that that we have. So crush is just a industry term for profitability. What I present here isn't isn't the full crush. It's just a simple calculation based on the price of corn, the price of distillers grains and the price of ethanol. And so we can see in all of those charts within the last few weeks, a rapid decline. First, an ethanol, which has been been more pronounced than it has been in corn. And that really comes across when we look at that simple crush chart at them. And see that even even though things have not been going great for ethanol for the last year or so, they were covering operating costs, they were above that middle line. But below the $1.40 thing to cover all of their other costs. And now in the last week and a half, we've seen it plummet below that operating cost level. And again, that's one reason why we're expecting to see shutdowns. The data, especially for that self code ethanol price, that's a weekly price, but it's it's a relatively regional closer price for us. And that's why I included it. We've seen just a small bit of a rebound in in ethanol futures. But of course, we're all kind of sitting here wondering what what's going to happen. The ethanol numbers come out essentially weekly. They came out on Wednesday for last Friday, we'll see this week's numbers next Wednesday, not not sure exactly what to see other than the client in production. And we'll, I guess, we'll just have to wait and see exactly how big that is. Next slide. Just talking briefly about the oil market. Things are even worse in fossil fuels and crude. And we've seen that, you know, through the rapid decline and WTI, other oil prices. Last time I talked a little bit about gasoline and our Bob plummeting. Looking at this, and this kind of is a North Dakota flavor to it, that the yellow line is, excuse me, the green line is the Bakken spot. And the two horizontal lines are the break evens either for a new well in the Bakken or for an existing while the Bakken is $51 or $28, respectively. And if you see right now that the current price, which is in the teens is significantly lower than the price needed to to profitably put a new well in. And it's actually below that number where you'd actually make any money on existing well. The question is now how close do we have to get to actually capping it? And that's that's not yet known and usually kept a little bit quiet. The other thing I heard on Tuesday, Governor Burgum was reporting kind of kind of midweek or midperiod unemployment numbers for the state. As of Tuesday, they had received claims of about just under 10,000 jobless claims and about half of those were from the from the energy industry. So they're getting hit pretty quick and pretty hard. All right, thanks, guys. Let's do what we did last time. And what you heard from maybe your other colleagues, does that strike up any comments that you guys have before questions start to flow in? And that's what I had. So, Bruce or Scott, if you want to start managing questions. Right now, we don't have any questions, but they should come soon. Yeah, I didn't I didn't cover it. But I just got I just saw in the news that the House voted yay on the phase three stimulus they managed to get it get a quorum and get it through. So that that has passed and is headed to Trump's desk as we speak and should be I would be surprised if it isn't signed very soon. And again, I didn't cover portions of the stimulus, the payments to individuals that's coming and things like that, because you we get a lot of that in the news. If you have any questions over the stimulus package in general, I can be happy to take those two. We have a question would red trail energy close? It's certainly possible. There they currently have a cash bid today, which is just under three bucks, which to me would say that they're definitely in it in the short run. The economics again, if there's if there's two or three billion gallons of capacity, they have to come off offline. You know, we do definitely start looking at at at shutdowns and possible closures. But for right now for red trail, they are they're buying corn, they're not accepting delivery. Middle of this week late this week, but you know, they're still kicking. Yeah, and the same for blue flint and spirit wood. It's certainly a possibility. You know, and we did see, you know, kind of rapidly, you know, Valero make their announcement, the Andersons, which is a group based in the Eastern Corn Belt, make their announcements. And really, it's a question of how quick do other ethanol refineries come offline? Because again, we just have a significant over capacity. And if we continue to produce, if folks don't, don't shut down, at least for some period of time, we're going to see stocks rapidly build. And you know, that'll, that will compete with oil and gas storage and lead to an even worse situation in the upcoming weeks. I guess if I could do a couple of follow up comments to some of my stuff, the couple of the questions that I beginning. One of them would be the supply chain for, let's say fertilizer and chemicals this spring. Is there with, again, the lockdowns that are going on? Is there going to be a problem there? And in the short answers, in the short term, no. Because most of the fertilizer that is going to be needed for springs works already in the warehouse, a lot of the chemicals, pre plant chemicals as well as the chemicals would be spraying for weed control this summer, are most of that is already in the inventory as well. And again, agricultural and transportation are essential services. So the things that are in in route right now should make it. The other question I've been getting as well, what about product flow between the United States, Canada and Mexico? Because again, they've basically closed the borders. The closing of the borders again was trying to prevent the movement of people. Because agricultural products are again essential services, not only in the United States, but also declared in Canada and Mexico. Agricultural products have the freedom to move across borders and to be able to use the check points. Again, still have to have the paperwork. You still have to have the proof. But there should not be any restriction of flow of product between at least in the Northern Hemisphere here between US, Canada and Mexico. So which is which is a good thing because Mexico is a big buyer of a lot of our grains and meat products. Looks like we have one more question here. How will low oil price influence the North Dakota state budget? Yeah, and I'll touch on this. I know Frank spoke on it a bit on Monday. You know, there's a couple of different effects of oil prices on state tax revenues, especially, you know, first and foremost, you know, we do receive a significant amount of royalties, which are put primarily in the legacy fund and other trust funds for the state. So that's probably the biggest immediate impact. In addition to those, a lot of sales tax revenue in the western part of the state is driven by oil activity directly. And so that'll be a hit. And then you also have these other reverberations through the general economy, which would end up hitting sales tax. And so, I mean, I think it's to think that things will at least be as bad as they were from 14 through 1718. That would be the first reference point. But again, it really depends on how long things persist. And this really isn't, and I didn't speak about it today. This is somewhat driven by coronavirus and the economy and how it's doing generally, which has a relationship with fuel use. But even more broadly, as we have a stalemate or an issue with other oil producing countries who have essentially decided that they're going to overproduce to, you know, damage, hurt to create certain desired outcomes. And so if they stick to that, so OPEC country, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the OPEC plus folks, you know, if they stick to that, you know, we can see these these low prices for a number of years, essentially until the bigger players realize that it's not in their best interest to keep their foot on the pedal in terms of supply. And again, as they do that, again, kind of throw economics to the wind, you know, other folks are going to shut down and that will likely be US shale. While we're waiting for a potentially another question, just want to remind people about that the feedback we'd really appreciate you giving us some kind of feedback on this so we know how to curtail future webinars. And particularly subjects that you want us to cover next time. I guess if we're waiting for one more question to come in, I do have one more comment, I guess, on on Tuesday next week, March 31, there's going to be two USDA reports that will be released. One of them is the planting intentions report. The other one is a quarterly stocks report. So again, of the two, obviously the prospective plan or the planting intentions report is going to be the most important. We do have some estimates, private estimates now coming out on what they expect to see. The current thought is the industry average estimate for corn plantings is 94.1 million acres compared to about just under 90 million acres last year. Soybeans at 85 million acres again last year was 76 million planted for soybeans. But of course there was a huge, huge prevent plant. All wheat last year was was 45.2 the current forecast for wheat this year is 45 even. And for spring wheat specifically, spring wheat plantings are basically forecast to be unchanged. So we'll wait to see what the USDA says. Again, emphasizing that USDA report on Tuesday is going to be a summary of farmer, farmer surveys. So really all USDA's we're doing is reporting back what farmers intentions are. So again, this is not a USDA forecast per se. This is USDA surveying farmers and saying what do you intend to plant knowing that it will likely change as we move forward. So just one more comment, I guess, for upcoming information next week. Yeah, and just and I wanted to make just two quick plugs while I'm thinking about it. First of all, those unemployment figures that I showed from last week. Again, those ended on Saturday, which was right before or right after a lot of these states had implemented these shelter in place and non essential personnel travel measures. So the one that comes out next week will include, you know, New York essentially shutting down on Sunday and some of these other states after that, like Michigan and whatnot. So it'll be important to look at what the new filings are next Thursday when the weekly report comes out and seeing just how how many people are being affected and if we wind up topping this last week, which again was a record by about four fold of new unemployment filings. That's the first thing. The second thing is there's been talk of I've heard folks mention it about lower interest rates because of the actions the Fed the Fed have taken essentially dropping the federal funds rate to zero. And, you know, you have the prime rate, which is the federal funds rate plus 3 percent and then any risk premium on top of that. And what we have seen is not a decrease in interest rates. The spread between the risk free rate and the rates being offered, for instance, on AAA bonds has actually increased. It's actually gone up. And I just looked this morning by about 150 basis points because again, you have a risk free rate, which is basically the T bill rate plus 3 percent for prime and then any risk premium that the lender wants to build into the to the interest rate and it appears as though they're very concerned about risk and therefore these rates are actually have actually gone up while the federal funds rate has gone down and T bill rates have gone down. So that spread is actually increased. So, you know, when we're thinking about what interest rates are going to be like heading into this year, depending on how the reaction is among those who are calculating risk and trying to offset that with the rates being offered, they could be quite a bit higher, despite having the lowest federal funds rate we can possibly have right now. I misspoke. We could go negative, but I don't think we're going to. So what I think will be the lowest. Yeah. And just doing some quick math, the state, the governor himself actually unveiled this week's unemployment numbers. So we lost 14,000 jobs in the last week. We had 2.2 percent unemployment at the end of February, and this would push us to about five and a half, which actually would be right in line with about the national average. Well, it looks like that might be all the questions. Thank you so much, guys, for the great information. And thanks for people who tuned in and just a reminder that we do have this. This is recorded so you can share it or if you like to see it again, as well as that remind you about that feedback. So thank you so much. And we look forward to this again next week, maybe the same time, right, guys? Correct. All right. Thank you.