 My name is Dave Ripplinger, Bioproducts Bioenergy Economic Specialist within the ASU Extension. It's my pleasure to help moderate this month's webinar, Agricultural Market Situation Outlook. We have four presentations today and we'll save discussion for the end. We ask that you use the Q&A tool or the chat tool and we'll get to your questions at the end of the presentation. And with that, I'll hand it over to Brian. Hey, thanks, Dave. So I had to go with a, I went with a black and white screen today because the lighting in my room's a little funny so it kind of makes me look strange. So, but today I'm just gonna talk about farm fertilizer prices in the trajectory. And so my first slide just kind of shows some of the headlines that were taken that I took here in the last couple of days as far as fertilizer prices goes. And one of them from BTN is that nitrogen fertilizer prices shattered records as anhydrous nationally, the national average hit $1,100 a ton. There was obviously higher prices than that recorded in other areas but that's the highest average of all time. Then there was an article headline from about a month ago about wholesale fertilizer prices and the expectations that they're gonna continue to rise into next year FarmDoc Daily which comes out of the University of Illinois has had a University of Illinois had a headline the other day, rising fertilizer prices which they think will affect the Brazil's largest corn crop. They don't think the planted acres will go down but they do think the amount of fertilizer applied will decline there by affecting their overall yield. Then on and on high cost short supply of fertilizers altering 2022 planning intentions that's coming out of Iowa and then nitrogen fertilizer shortage threatens to cut global crop yields. So that's a Reuters article from kind of quoting CF industries. So my next slide just shows what fertilizer prices have done over the last couple of years and what you'll see here is the starting of the year that's that right there by at the bottom you see February of 21. So just before that's January. So to start the year prices relatively low about as low as they'd been in the last 10 years and price per ton for anhydrous urea a little bit higher but still relatively low. And then in the months since it's been just a pretty much a persistent march upwards with everything heading straight north. And this is in price per cost per pound of N. Anhydrous typically while it's often the most expensive product for a ton of anhydrous it has the most nitrogen in it. So therefore the cost per pound of N tends to be the lowest because there really isn't many other products within anhydrous ammonia just being nitrogen fertilizer whereas urea and UAN have other chemicals added to them to change the form. My next slide shows a potash prices and those have basically more than doubled in the last year. You look back to January and it was around $360 a ton. Now it's approaching $760 per ton. I will say before I forget that this is the one fertilizer product that may actually decline in price heading into the spring as a bunch of companies and suppliers try really hard to increase North American production of potash. That particular item may see some relief in the coming months or quarters but the rest probably not as we move forward phosphorus prices. So I show our two biggest... My next slide shows the two biggest phosphorus products typically that are sold map and DAP. Those have trended upward as well with basically some areas not able to even get a map quote before 2021. And they're saying some of the reports are that DAP is going to be in short supply as well in the coming months but you can't get a map quote before 2022. That there just isn't any hardly to be had or found in a lot of areas. So my next slide shows urea and urea prices which had more than doubled the five year average. And I put that up there especially which it's most important for North Dakota as that's the kind of the most common nitrogen fertilizer product applied up here. That is just trended upward pretty remarkably especially in the last few months. And that one also is expected to potentially increase even further probably not gonna see a lot of decline in urea headed headed into the end of the spring either. So it's it's it along with the other nitrogen fertilizer products have just increased remarkably. So my next slide just shows 1034 prices. You know, you're getting a common theme here if it is that pretty much across the board all of our nutrient costs have gone up and are expected to continue to rise for a while. They're with the exception of potash which may and this is a might see some relief in the spring with the others. Anything dealing with nitrogen or phosphorus those are going to continue upward for the foreseeable future. And not only is price going to potentially be a problem but the continued worry about shortages is very real and likely to happen especially in some spots. And one of the biggest problems I see for our producers here in North Dakota is we're one of the last to plant and some of the last who are going to apply and therefore if somebody is going to be shorted you wonder if it's going to be us if the situation isn't hopefully you're somewhat remedied before that time. But again, but the biggest thing to remember is that a lot of what's going on now is not something that's going to be quickly resolved. Okay, so as we move into January and February if the situation persists it is certainly going to affect us as well because it takes many months before the supply chain is able to catch up with the demand. And so I personally see that 2022 planting is going to be a real challenge for those planting crops who use a lot of nitrogen or who are going to need to apply a lot of phosphorus. So my next slide just shows kind of a table and this is from DTN and they don't have one for North Dakota right now because we're not applying a lot because they have to have enough observations to show which of these products are being sold in the state. And so two states that were kind of surround us and close enough in proximity to get an idea. For instance, if you look at South Dakota there's no anhydrous quote because there just wasn't enough sales to formulate an average but for Urea $875 a ton on average in South Dakota or that was the high, I'm sorry the average is $826 per ton. And then in Minnesota the average for anhydrous was almost $1,250 per ton. Now in Iowa that's over $1,300 probably a demand situation since Iowa does a lot of anhydrous application in the fall, a lot of fall application but then you don't see Urea. And then you look at for instance, Potash up to $826 a ton in Minnesota and almost $775 per ton in South Dakota. And then MAP in South Dakota, $867 and MAP in Minnesota, $948. So that's what's being quoted now or those are the prices that as of last week the actual sales prices. So just around our area some of these prices are quite high. I think a lot of producers are going to see some sticker shock heading into 2022 as far as what their nutrient costs are gonna be. I know I've heard of some who say, well, I'm just going to wait these prices are way too high to do any pre-pricing then you have dealers, co-ops who are reluctant to even quote a price for spring or a quantity because they just don't know if it's going to be available. And so that's kind of the situation we find ourselves in right now. It's a hot topic. It's something everybody's aware of something a lot of folks are concerned about and rightfully so. And there really isn't a lot of there's a lot of uncertainty about this and in not only the availability and what the prices are going to be and how that's going to affect our the cropping decisions and the overall yields coming out of next year because one of the as I showed with the headline before coming out of farm doc is a lot of South America is now saying basically that we're gonna plant as much corn as we were going to plant before but we're just not going to fertilize it and therefore we're not gonna be able to maximize yields. That's kind of what they're saying coming out of there and maybe Frane who's coming up soon will be a better person to ask on what that looks like but that's sort of the reports that we're getting right now. So this is definitely something that as a as the state's egg finance specialist and as an economist I'm going to watch closely and try to put out as much information as I can when it comes in but again there's a lot of uncertainty associated with this. So with that, I will go ahead and turn it over to Dr. Olson who's coming up next and thank you. All right, thank you, Brian. So good afternoon everybody. Here's my contact information. Once again, we'd really encourage questions Q&A during the session here. I think we'll have some time today to be able to do that. But if there are some things that you think about later that you need to, if you want to reach out and contact us here's my contact information. So again, don't hesitate to email or call if you have something. I'll do my best to respond as quickly as possible. So on my first slide, just wanted to provide a really quick update on the information that came out of the WASDE report yesterday. So WASDE is the World Agricultural Supply Demand Estimates. Once again, that's USDA's forecasts and projections for both the supply side as well as the demand side for the major grains and meat products that we have in the United States. And every month when these numbers come out there's always a survey of the private analysts and the forecasters, the private forecasters saying, well, what do you expect to see in the reports? So this table is not only a summary of the pre-report industry estimates that survey information that the private analysts put together, which is on the top portion but also on the bottom with the actual USDA numbers came out of yesterday's report. And I apologize, I have the old dates on there. I apologize for the, I'll correct those before you post them up. So it should be October 12th, the numbers are correct but the dates are wrong on the left-hand side, my error. The moral of the story, if you could go back please. The moral of the story is the trade was expecting to see a slight increase in both corn and soybean yields which then would translate into larger production or total bushels produced. For corn, we did get that small increase. Again, as we move through harvest we're getting better field reports. USDA does pretty extensive work to try and survey farmers as well as doing some what they call objective yield surveys where they actually go out in the field and do their own survey work. So we're starting to get some refinements on what the final yield might look like. We won't get the official numbers until January but I do think that these numbers are becoming pretty much finalized. On the soybean ledger, they were, yep, there we go. On the soybean side, again, they were, most of the trade analysts were expecting an increase in the national average yield. We actually got a slight decrease. That was the main reason we saw a rally in soybeans yesterday which then again pulled up corn and wheat with it. So even though we're looking at some pretty good yield forecasts, yield projections, the total production numbers for both corn and soybeans, if these are correct will be the second largest crops in history. So I wanna emphasize to everybody, we're not short of corn or soybeans in the US when we look at the whole US. We do have an issue on distribution. Where are those bushels located? Now how does the cash market work to try and get the bushels from where they have been harvested to where they need to be utilized and processed, whether it be international markets or domestic market. So we're seeing some differences coming up in the Eastern Corn Belt versus the Western Corn Belt. And as I end up my session today, I'll talk a little bit about what's going on in local basis levels and some of the implications as we move forward in time. Okay, so now we can move to the next slide. This is a summary of the information for the ending stocks. So the first portion was really just talking about the production. I don't have time today to go through all of the usage and kind of the adjustments and changes that were made on the utilization side. There were some small adjustments that were made on usage by commodity, but they were relatively small. So then if you take total production or total supplies, excuse me, minus the total usage, we come up with an ending stocks. Again, an estimate of how many bushels do we expect to see in the pipeline just before harvest of next year. So again, this combines both the supply and the demand information together. So if we look at all wheat corn as well as soybeans, the top row is what the trade was expecting to see. The bottom row in red was what we actually got from this November report. And as you can see, if you start flipping back and forth between what was expected versus what we actually saw in ending stocks numbers, they're relatively close, well within the range of what the trade was expecting. On the corn side, wheat was almost identical. Corn was a little bit higher than what the trade was expecting. Again, because of some adjustments on the utilization side. For soybeans, there was actually, they were expecting an increase, but the increase wasn't as large as what the average trade guess was. Again, mainly because we took the average yield down just a little bit instead of increasing it. So the numbers that we're seeing out of that were basically considered positive for soybeans and probably neutral for both corn and wheat. On my next slide, I just wanna talk about what are the implications as we move forward? So I've started to get some questions about, should we be thinking about forward contracting some of our bushels for 2022? You know, is it too early to be thinking about that or should we be more aggressive given the things that are going on? And I wanna go through a series of slides. These are the futures market prices for different contracts for corn, soybeans and wheat. And I wanna go through these sequentially and try and explain what's going on in the market psychology. And what I want people to realize is we really do need to separate what's happening in the old crop, the crop that's being harvested right now versus the new crop pricing or that pricing for the planting and harvesting of 2022. So if we compare the chart today, which is this is December 21 soybean Chicago corn futures. And I pulled these prices at about 12 o'clock noon today. So again, prices, I wasn't able to get everything done before the close of the markets. But so this is as about 12 o'clock today, the futures market for old crop corn, this would be the futures market price the local elevators are using for pricing corn delivered right now was about 568 a bushel, which is that black, the black bar on the far right hand side. The blue lines that I've drawn those in, those are support and resistance levels. Again, I'm just picking some of the highs and some of the lows as reference points for where will be some psychological barriers in price movements. Now, as you notice, what have we seen within this December 21 Chicago corn contract? Well, obviously during the early spring and to May and June, we had quite a bit of volatility, a lot of unexpected or uncertainty regarding not only planted acreage, but also more importantly, the yields. We've had these, the cycling of prices going on throughout the summer. And now as the harvest is coming in, if we could go back one slide, please. As the harvest is now coming in, we're getting better read on yields for 2021. I do think we're gonna be in kind of a trading range for old crop corn for the next several months because the market is gonna be watching very closely what happens, not only in US export sales. And I know Dave is gonna talk in a few minutes about some of the things happening in ethanol, but also as we're looking at South American production primarily coming out of Brazil, but also Argentina, we're gonna be watching the weather down there very carefully that will also have an impact both on old crop and new crop. My point is if we look at the numbers coming from old crop, I do think we're gonna be in this trading range and we'll start to see a little bit of stabilization. We're seeing a little bit of a rally here the last couple of days because of the WASDE report. On the next slide, we're looking at the same information but for 2022. So this would be the futures market that we're gonna use to contract for planting and delivery next harvest. So if we're looking at forward pricing some of our corn, this is the contract months that we would be looking at. Now, notice that we're at about 547 or 548, okay? There's a relatively small price differential, a slight discount for 2022 corn relative to 2021 corn, but right now the way I'm interpreting that is that the market is expecting given the information today that we'll probably have about the same amount of ending stocks, the production and the consumption levels if we use a trend line yield will be very similar about 12 months from now versus what we see today. But also notice that we didn't get those great big rallies back in the mid-summer. So psychologically as a farmer, when you're trying to pick those pricing points to saying, well, when would be a good time to try and price some 2022 production, you need to be looking at the right futures market contracting, looking historically at what's going on within that contract. So please recognize that we're only a few cents off about 10 cents off the highs, the contract highs that we've seen for December 2022. And I know it gets to be really hard to separate what you see in the marketplace today for cash prices versus what the prices might be going forward, but this year in particular, we're gonna start to see, in my opinion, this differential between old crop and new crop starting to spread, starting to pull themselves apart, where I do expect as we get into probably January and maybe even to February of 2022, we might see some softening of both corn and soybean prices depending upon what happens in South America. So I do think we have a window to be able to price some corn and soybeans for 2022, but you need to be looking at the correct futures contract. Don't get sucked into this old crop pricing and what's happening in old crop numbers and I'll automatically assume that's gonna translate into new crop pricing. And again, I'll have a table at the very end to try and help pull all this together. So on the next slide, it's the same basic information. Now this is for January 2022 soybeans. And again, right now January is the month that most local elevators are using to price soybean deliveries today. And notice we've had this downward movement in prices for most of the summer as we realize that the soybean crop, even though there were some areas like North Dakota and South Dakota that had some issues with production and production yield potential because of drought, that the Eastern Corn Belt was increasingly looked like they were gonna have a very, very good year. So as those numbers and expectations for higher crop production numbers started rolling in, we saw a reducing or a drifting lower of those price movements. Now, again, given the information we got yesterday and we always have new information every day, the market is responding, trading at about noon today was about $12.16 a bushel. Now that's well off the highs that we saw earlier this summer, but it's still a very good price based on historical values. Now the next slide, if you flip, here's what's going on in November 2022. So this would be the pricing, the contract that's used to price new crop soybeans going into the 2022 harvest basically 12 months from now. Notice that we haven't had, we've had price volatility but we haven't had that rapid drop-off in prices. So earlier this summer, we had a very, very large price discrepancy between the crop that was in the field versus the crop we expect to plant next year. So psychologically these two, even though there's a connection, even though what happens in the current cropping year spills over into the next cropping year, the expectations for next cropping year 2022 have remained relatively stable since mid-summer. Okay, so what are some of the things that might impact 2022 prices? Again, the two biggest that we're following obviously is export sales to China and what the Chinese demand base looks like given some contraction in their livestock sector but then also what's going on in South America. Right now, the 2022 futures has a very, very large South American in particular Brazilian soybean crop built into their expectations. Another record year. So all of the numbers, all of the trading right now is assuming we're gonna have this big, big crop coming out of Brazil. Now, weather is gonna be critically important as we move especially into that January, February time period when the Brazilian crop starts getting into its key reproductive stages. So again, I think we're gonna have some, a trading range developing in both old crop and new crop soybeans. I do think you're gonna have some opportunities as we get into the new year, into January to start pricing some 2022 soybeans at a little bit higher levels than we see today but don't get greedy. Cause right now the expectation again is we're gonna have a very, very large crop of soybeans coming out of Brazil. All right, next slide. This is March 2022 Minneapolis grain. So this is Minneapolis spring wheat, excuse me. Now the current elevators that are buying spring wheat are pricing off the March contract. And there's a lot of reasons for that. It gets a little bit complicated. It's gonna be too long to explain in this session but just please understand, we're looking at the March contract for most of the elevators pricing their spring wheat today. So this would be for old crop, stuff that's in the bin right now. And again, notice we've had this really nice rally in hard red spring wheat after harvest. And part of that is a realization that yes, the US spring wheat crop was smaller than expected but also the Canadian crop was smaller than we had expected. So that's putting a lift or some upward movement into the old crop wheat. Now these are with the exception of what happened in 2008 which really was an anomaly. That was a very, very strange set of events that led to the prices we saw in 08. If you exclude those, these are near record highs for spring wheat. So for old crop wheat, I'm just asking farmers when they call in and say, what should I do? I'm just asking them point blank, what are you waiting for? Cause we're having near record highs on the futures market. We've got exceptionally tight basis levels for old crop wheat. I just don't see a lot of additional upside lift into the soybean or into the spring wheat market beyond what we have right now. So look at the 1035, which again was the trading as of about noon today. On the next slide, notice what's happening in new crop wheat. This will be the spring wheat we're gonna plant this spring and then harvest in September, August, August and September of next year. A very, very big price differential. So we're looking at well over $10 on the March futures versus about 885 on the September of 2022. So this would be the futures market contract. The elevators are using to price new crop deliveries for harvest in August to September of 2022. Again, also notice that yes, these two markets are linked. The one thing I will say about hard red spring wheat, in particular this September contract, I've done some really quick back the envelope calculations on profit margins and in particular, given the much higher input costs that Brian was just talking about. Again, these are just very subjective numbers that I threw in just to see how do these different crops compare across the spectrum for profitability. And given what we see today, spring wheat is still from a profitability standpoint, lagging a bit behind some of the other crops that we have in our portfolio. So my opinion, and this is an opinion, is that I do think for September spring wheat, for 2022, I think we will start to continue to see some upward lifting in the spring wheat market for next year's crop to try and incentivize and make sure that we have enough spring wheat acres planted to make sure that we have our needs covered because we're coming into the year with some very, very tight supplies. All right, so my last slide, let's pull all this stuff together. I just wanna start making comparisons between old crop and new crop cash prices. So the row across the top is the futures market prices I just showed you. And again, this is as of about noon today. So for corn, I have both the current price as well as the harvest contract price, same for soybeans and spring wheat. So we have the futures market contract, I listed the specific contract month below it. So we have a reference point. I also looked at a kind of a composite of different elevators from across the state. And I tried to put in both the current spot market basis levels versus the basis levels for 2022 harvest. And so yes, for corn and for soybeans, old crop and new crop futures are very, very close to each other. But when we look at the bottom and we start subtracting off basis levels, it tells a very different story. So if we look at the basis levels that the local elevators are currently booking in for 2022 crop, they have gone back to kind of historical relationships saying, well, I don't know what the actual cash market is going to be. So we're going to plug in basically a historical average for any kind of forward pricing contract that you'd want to sign. Versus today, given the very tight supplies that we have, especially here in the Northern Plains, the cash market's working very, very hard to try and maintain some cash deliveries, to maintain that flow of grain. So we're seeing a very narrow basis levels or very strong basis levels for corn, soybeans and spring wheat right now, meaning that the difference between futures market and cash markets is very small. And then you look at the harvest basis levels and they're much more normal. So by the time we take futures minus the basis, we say, okay, what does the cash price look like? We're looking at about a 60 cent price spread between old crop and new crop corn, about a 42 cent per bushel price spread between old crop and new crop soybeans and a dollar 80 a bushel between old crop and new crop spring wheat. So what this is signaling to me is that there are differences and we have to recognize the differences between the dynamics in the old crop market versus the dynamics in the new crop market. So just because we are following the new crop prices, or excuse me, you're following the spot market prices as farmers and farm managers, you need to be thinking about what happens in the new crop might be at a different level, even though the general movements are up and down at the same up and down together, there could be very much different rates of change. So as we're thinking about planning and marketing plans, I really this year in particular want you to separate the plan you're putting in place for old crop from the plan you're putting in place in new crop. Okay, with that, hopefully that made some sense. I'll hand it over now to Tim Petrie. He'll go through some of the livestock issues. I will be happy to try and answer any questions at the end. Good afternoon, everybody. Tim Petrie, an issue extension livestock marketing economist. If we go to my first slide today, I'm gonna talk a little bit in general about cattle prices to begin with, but then hone in on possibilities for backgrounding. So I'll show you the long-term cattle price cycle here. And thankfully going to the right-hand side of the chart in 2020 of the price cycle bottom, and we'll see in a minute, prices are doing quite a bit better this year up to 2018 prices. And we expect, I've got only through 2023 here, but we expect higher prices the next two years and maybe even three, four years because we've decreased the cow herd already two years and it's gonna go down again this year with the drought and so on. And once we put those wheels in motion, it's hard to turn around. So our expectations are for better prices. That's important. Let's go to the next slide. And this time of the year, typically producers are deciding whether to background or whether to wean the calves on diesel smoke and send them to the auction market. This year, unfortunately, because of the weather, that decision has been made for a lot of producers were short of forage, but remembering the previous slide, it's very important that we keep a good base cow herd in as much as we can given the forage situation because prices are going to be better. So I know that's a limiting factor in backgrounding. Frane showed you the corn prices and so on. I'll talk more about that later. Yes, feed costs are high, but just because feed costs are high doesn't mean that backgrounding is not profitable. So for those of you that have access to feed and would like to background, I encourage you to consider that. There certainly looks like opportunities as of now, but we have to look at your costs and so on that we will do in a minute. We are Brian and Zach Carlson, Carl Hoppe, Jerry Stucca, and myself are going to do a backgrounding program. We're not going to do it by Zoom. We're going to record some voiceover power points this week and it'll probably be available next week and watch the news media for a release of when that's available. So I'll talk about some of the things I'm talking about today and Brian's going to do budgeting and alternate feeds by Carl and so on. So keep that in mind. So go to the next slide. Here are what are calf prices worth now and then what are our expectations for spring are important in the backgrounding decision. I've been showing you this slide most months over the past. And so here's our 550 to six weight calves at the three markets reported in North Dakota, Napoleon, Mandan and Dickinson. So you see the red line there is this year and the blue line is 2018. The green line is 2019 and the purple line 2020. So we started off about the same as last year but below the last couple of years to begin with but we've seen steady improvements throughout the year. So by mid-year we got above the last three years some and then lately here this fall during the calf marketing season we've been following 2018 just about exactly. And the good news there is that it's higher than the last two years in mid-October when we were down there under $150 and now we're $15 or so higher than that. And I expect us to continue to follow that blue line last week, $566 more on that in a minute as well. So I think we'll follow that blue line into spring and then after spring, the way the fed cattle futures look and we'll have fewer calves again next year and with strong domestic and export demand for fed cattle I think we'll do better than the last four years here by the time we get past April. So let's move along then and look at the heavier weight cattle here's what we would sell the market we would sell in if we background the cattle into January, February or March and again, looking at the cash market prices there the same scenario started out below the last several years but we ended up in mid-summer there just on or above 2018 and again have been following 2018 prices I think again we'll continue there the November futures today closed at 1.5665 this was early this morning when I put this on but the futures are indicating we'll even do better than 2018 here through the rest of the year but what we're interested in then is what our price is gonna be next spring when these backgrounded cattle might be ready so the orange squares are 2022 futures were down about $1.50 today I put these on right away at the early this morning and corn went up 15 cents today and feeder cattle went down $1.50 just exactly back to my old adage change corn 10 cents, change feeder cattle a buck in the opposite direction so up 15 and down a buck 50 is about exact but so anyway January futures closed today at a little over 1.58 in March up there at 1.58 57 and so just to hear down from what you're seeing here and by April then we're up into the 160 so futures market now seeing significantly better prices than even in 2018 and I agree with this again fed cattle and by April we're up to $140 on the fed cattle live cattle futures and things looking optimistic there so let's move to the next slide here's the market report for the last week and again when we're talking about backgrounding in particular I could probably spend a half an hour more just talking about the market here don't have time to do that but I do wanna hit a couple of highlights steers on the left, heifers on the right again this is the three markets last week so start off on the purple line on the top there showing the big disparity between steer prices and heifer prices so 430 pound steers averaged 199 and 430 pound heifers averaged 161 and so this time of the year we see a big, big discount on heifers and because of that we do background a lot of heifers in North Dakota just a lot of them in fact we had the fifth largest number of heifers ever on January 1st and the reason why is because they're discounted and you know would be a good opportunity for backgrounding because every 50 pounds that heifers gain they gain on steer price till you get down to the bottom the purple arrow down there when they get down to 950 pounds are the same price so go to the top back up to the top that disparity between heifers and steers is $38 a hundred weight or it's $163 ahead but you get down to the bottom sell those 950s for the same price as steers but you got $163 more to work with I realize heifers are needing a little bit more management or might be a little bit more a little bit inefficient but you got 163 bucks more to work with there so we do background a lot of heifers I certainly encourage you to think about that let's go back up to the middle of the steers there and you know I said where that purple circle is I said last week the average 165 and 166 average 165.90 but again look at the wide range of the same weight and grade of calves at the same markets 147 on the low side to 180 on the top side again that's a $33 per hundred weight or $190 per head from the low to the high so if you're considering backgrounding and talk more about it in a minute but if you're considering backgrounding some prefer to go down towards the bottom and pick up some of those unweaned unvaccinated calves and do some management on them and pick up some money that way the average will work as we'll see in a minute when you get up to the 180 calves you've got some expensive calves there and so they gotta come out at a pretty good price to make it there. The other thing I just wanna mention here is the green they're circled on the bottom because of the high corn prices and feed prices more on that in a minute as well the feed lots prefer to buy heavier weight cattle so usually every 50 pounds we see a big discount or I've got a big but you know maybe a $10 discount or whatever each 50 to 100 pounds we increase but this year they're all about the same because you know you look there at those 625 pounders at 161 and there's even some fancy 800 pounders down there at 163.50 or you know the 875 pounders at 157 compared to 670 pounders at 157, 158. So the feed lots are paying up for cattle that have weight on them and they don't have to feed a $5 corn or whatever too. So that you know is something that means that backgrounding me if you can have the feed and encourage you to look at alternative feeds so we're gonna talk about that in our webinars is maybe there's something other than corn that you could feed. So go to the next slide. This is a typical economist slide way too much stuff on here but I just wanted to cram a whole bunch of things in one. I've got a budget that I look at and so I just said let's take a look at those 550 steers and take them up to 750 pounds at about 277 pounds a day. And so I used the 165 steer in again there's a wide range like showing up there at the top left 147 to 180 but I just said let's do 165 steers in and then across the top there as Frane said there's a wide range in corn prices across North Dakota he had a 20 cent negative basis of 548 but I just checked red trail out in Richardson this morning is 50 over at 613 Hazelton elevator 544 I've got some friends up at Macville the background and actually background heifers Macville elevator paying 538 and you got to haul it in there. So I've got a kind of a sensitivity analysis across the top here starting with five buck corn all the way up to 625 corn and basically what that shows is every 25 cents that you add onto corn you add about $5 a hundred weight onto your break even then on the left hand side I've got a range in 750 sale price 750 steers out starting at 145 up to 170 on the bottom then like I said January and March feeder cattle futures are today about 159 160 again, the average North Dakota prices 153 kind of hard to see there in the bottom of the chart the CME feeder cattle index is about 155 today that's all seven to nine weight steers sold at markets where USDA reports and that's what the futures are closed out at the end. So anyway, I just threw in then you see my red line maybe 155 is a price there that we could use that's below what the futures are now but it's a little bit above what the cash price is now but again, the expectation is for cash prices to be a little higher. I picked then 550 corn again, it's cheaper than that in places and if you're out West it's more expensive so plug in whatever your corn price is and so about a $50 bill at 550 corn and 155 if that's what you can get for cattle coming out putting 165 in. If you put 147 cattle in using the same scenario you would make $144 on them. However, if you put 180 steers, 550 steers in that same 550 scenario you lose $34. So again, it all depends on how you price the steers in whether you have them or whether you buy them and what your corn price is. But again, at 155 you could lock in at least that we have about a right along I-94 about an even power basis with the futures up along highway two maybe $2 to $4 off and then on the bottom right hand side livestock risk protection has been improved a lot by USDA here last year greatly raised the subsidies on premiums and you don't have to pay the premium till the end. So again, there'll be a new LRP out this afternoon but yesterday if you wanna lock in your 155 you could buy a 155.84 coverage price and it would have cost you 262 a hundred weight. The break even on my budget up there using 550 corn and 165 calves and one is the break even actually was is 148 because you make $50 there. So you're over the break even there at but 148 break even the LRP yesterday you could have locked in 149.84 over a buck above your break even and your premium would only been $1.26 a hundred weight. So I encourage producers looking at LRP and what your risk level is to look at the different prices offered and if you know talk to your lender but if you just wanna lock in your break even you can get a little over a dollar premium to do that. So with that again, I know a lot of you don't have the feed and are gonna have to sell calves but just because feed prices are high if you are considering it there looks like there could be some potential. So with that, let's move on to Dave. Great, thanks Tim. Dave Rippling or Bioproducts, Bioenergy Economic Specialists just have some relatively brief comments about corn ethanol and inflation. Cut to the chase right now, corn ethanol margins are probably really close if not at record highs for many of the refineries in the country. There's a bit of a regional variation as there always is but given high ethanol prices especially in the Western Corn Belt it's a very good time to be in the corn ethanol business really being driven by unexpected high levels of use especially this late in the year. Again, we're past Labor Day, past the end of that summer driving season and yet passenger travel, gasoline use and consequently ethanol use are still quite firm. And this is seen again in the chart that we have above as you see that production take a jump. And if you look at that days in storage again, cause use is solid. We're really not building up stocks as might be expected especially at this time of year. Again, with harvest typically we do see corn ethanol refineries running at a pretty steady clip maybe having some downtime just prior to harvest. We saw in the last few weeks is that some of the folks who were shut down doing maintenance took longer to come back online and it's paid off well for those who are able to produce right now. Obviously, as I mentioned moving in tandem with gasoline so this is referred to as gasoline supply. It's basically gasoline that's leaving refineries and blenders going that next step in the supply chain typically to a retail station. As again, if we look at that number and that uptake thinking about, I mean, we're at a really high level especially for the fall of the year. Here looking at margins. So just grab these numbers. These are South Dakota numbers. Again, USD-8 is not reporting North Dakota numbers for corn ethanol refineries. So this is the average of their weekly survey that they do of corn ethanol refineries. Ethanol 320 a gallon. Haven't seen anything close to that. Almost a dollar higher than what was really kind of the historic highs. Even recently and actually the nearby futures contract is a 220. If you go back to 2014 when prices were quite high in 12, 13, 14, you know, it was around 225 and we're significantly above that. Corn prices paid for by ethanol refineries in South Dakota 550. Corn oil at 60 cents. Again, almost double what it was a year ago in large part because of renewable diesel use taking up a lot of the vegetable oil that's out there. And finally, distillers grains are pretty strong at 212. Again, it's a price of ethanol that's really driving this. I'm just looking at that simple margin on a bushel basis. Ethanol refineries are making almost $6 a bushel for every bushel they're pushing through on almost $2 for every gallon of ethanol that they push through. Again, that would be taking income from the ethanol, the distillers grains and the corn oil, you know, tremendous. Going to be short lived, I'm sure to some extent but to enjoy it at the time while we can. Last thing I just want to talk about the fork came out this morning. Extremely high levels of inflation. That top line number of 6.2. So that top row in the far right hand column that 6.2% unadjusted 12 months ending in October 6.2% for everything. You know, a lot of that has been in food and energy which we deducted to have what we call the core inflation rate. But if we look at what's happened to energy prices and again, focusing primarily at gasoline, you know, it's up by 50% over last year and it really doesn't show science that it's plateauing with any respect, you know, really negative. If we also go down to that utility gas service, so natural gas prices again are significantly higher and with the possibility of a tremendous increase this winter, if we have a colder winter, if you're past the colder winter, I think we're going to see, you know, extremely high natural gas prices in the United States, probably not at the level that they were 15 years ago. Now there's a short period where they were in excess of $13 per MMBTU, but it'll be high. And again, that impacts all parts of the economy. One of the reasons I think it's important to talk about inflation, you know, it might be good news for those folks who are selling the energy. And again, in North Dakota, we're an energy state. So typically is indicative of how oil and gas activity is going in the state and possibly state revenues. But you know, it really makes me somewhat concerned about the ability of, you know, certain households, especially to be able to make the consumer purchases we expect them to be the energy or otherwise. And we're really at a point where that inflation rate really to me is making me wonder how much longer we can go without, you know, some serious changes in behavior. And again, inflation is the price level. So it's thick looking at all prices. And then of course, when we're talking about gasoline, that's an individual price, you know, typically when we see energy prices rise, it will pull up all prices because we use energy in so many parts of our economy. But it is really quite concerning. You know, right now I think we're right at that level where, you know, a continued increase in gasoline prices will impact travel behavior significantly. Again, things have been significantly disrupted by COVID, folks don't travel as much. There's a lot of folks who are no longer in the labor force. But, you know, I think that something is gonna have to give. And so I just wanted to touch on that a little bit. With that, we'll open it up for questions. Be happy to answer any questions you might have for any of the panelists who've been on today. Again, Brian talked about fertilizer. Brian Frame gave the crops outlook, you know, based on what's going on with the WASDE report. And then finally, Tim was looking at livestock. So any questions you might have, also turn it back to the presenters themselves. Is there anything that you'd like to bring up any points that you'd like to cover or reiterate or some thoughts that might have come up while others were speaking? And Frank, I had to apologize. I have just a little bit of a twitch in my finger. And it got me today. That's all right, no worries, no worries. And surprisingly, it's not extra coffee. I'm like three cups behind. And so I'm going through withdrawals. I want to thank everybody for joining us, the panelists for their presentations and those of you who are able to participate in real time. Again, we will have our next webinar. We'll be returning to the Thursday after the WASDE report so that we had a unique day today with the Veterans Day holiday tomorrow. But we'll be back on December 9th at one o'clock central time. And again, if you want to see the slides or recording of this or previous webinars, you can visit the webpage that contains them with the URL on the screen. But with that, I want to thank everybody and hope you guys have a great Veterans Day. I thank you to all the people who served and talk to you guys in about a month. Thanks.