 My name is Dave Ripplinger, a Bioenergy Economic Specialist with NDSU Extension. Welcome to our December edition of the Agricultural Market Situation Outlook webinar. Again, we've been doing this monthly since COVID-19 hit in March of 2020. I have a series of presentations that actually have quite a few today. One thing to note, Frayn Olson will have to leave us. So if you have any questions for Frayn, please share them as he's talking and we'll try to get to those before he has to leave us. But with that, I'd like to turn it over to Brian Parman, our first speaker for today. Hey, thank you, Dave. And, yeah, I guess this is going to be our last presentation of the year of these Situation and Outlook webinars. So thanks for everyone for joining us. And I know there's a lot of stuff going on as far as production costs. And I've covered those in previous webinars quite a bit. And I'll hit those again as we kick off 2022 and see where we kind of sit with that. But today I kind of wanted to talk a bit more about some of the macro data that's come out recently specifically like today's jobs reports and the inflation data that we're seeing. And, of course, inflation is probably going to have somewhat of an impact on production costs as well. So my first slide shows that inflation number that just came out last month from the previous month. And this number basically says there was a, for all prices or all goods, 6.2% inflation over the 12-month period ending in October, ending at the end of October. So information coming out after that. And all items except food or energy rose 4.6%, which is the largest increase, the largest price increase since August of 1991. So almost 30 years. So one of the biggest 12-month period of inflation in about 30 years. And speaking of food and energy, my next slide shows what food prices actually did for that 12-month period. And they were up 5.3%, which is a fairly high jump, but actually lower than the overall inflation rate, which was a 6.2%. And my next slide shows why that is, and that's because energy prices. Energy prices over that 12-month period were up 30%. So, again, overall inflation, 6.2%, core inflation, as they call it, was 4.6%, which excludes food and energy because of the volatility in those two items. But energy prices have just been really high over that period. And as well as other items, it's just energy at 30% kind of dwarfs everything else. So that's been the key driver of some of the inflation. And I think everyone's well aware of that. But the fact is it's just been a long year as far as prices and their march upward. And I'll be talking probably later on at the beginning of the year or January-February timeframe on perhaps some inflationary impacts on production costs. The other report that came out, and this came out just this morning, is initial jobless claims down to 184,000. And so I'm showing this chart from the St. Louis Federal Reserve. And what it shows is initial jobless claims. And those typically had hung around historically 200, 250,000 on the low end. But 184,000 is the lowest it's been since the 1960s, actually. So a very low initial jobless claims report. And when you consider that when the pandemic hit, it was close to 6, 7 million initial jobless claims in a week, that's a very low number. And then my next slide, you know, shows the continuous jobless claims. So you got initial jobless claims, which are newly filing for unemployment. Continuous claims are people who are having trouble finding a job for several weeks and they continue applying for it. And that's right around 1.9 million people, which is just just above pre-pandemic levels, which were, you know, closer to 1.7, 1.8. So that's getting back down to where it was pre-pandemic as well. And unemployment overall has fallen to about 4.2 percent, according to the BLS. That's the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is approaching that pre-pandemic level of just below 4 percent, it was around 3.8 or so. So as far as the metrics of employment and unemployment, those numbers are basically reflecting where we were prior to COVID, that those numbers most folks are pretty satisfied with. Well, my next slide kind of puts all, brings into focus exactly what we're thinking about and concerned about. And I know that consumers are concerned about is, how long is this inflation situation that we're in going to linger? I mean, because it basically has for a year. And, you know, the question is, will the Fed need to take action? And I put in parentheses the word sooner because they already have said they're going to be tapering and maybe accelerate the tapering of the quantitative easing that they've been doing. But if this inflation rate persists, if we just keep seeing these inflation numbers hang around, is the Fed going to take action? Or are they kind of laying it at the feet of supply chain issues, driving higher prices up? Or do they think monetary policy is going to be necessary? And then the other question, when you think about interest rates, okay? Inflation, a lot of times, if you think about interest, it has to stay higher than the rate of inflation in order for anyone doing any lending to actually make any money outside of the fees. I mean, you got the fees, but then you have the interest rate as well. And if inflation, let's say is 7, 8, 9% per year and the interest rates 2% per year by the end of a 10-year loan, I'm paying back with dollars that are worth significantly less than I borrowed them for at an interest rate below the inflation rate. So I guess that's a question going into this. Is there going to be any changes in interest rates? Because right now, they stay fairly low. And is the Fed going to take any action? And then the other question is on the employer side. Because we just saw that unemployment is very low. So we've got all these open jobs right now. But for the most part, folks have filled them, who wanted them, with this low unemployment rate. So how are employers going to adjust to this great resignation as it's been termed where folks exited the workforce and are maybe not likely to return? Even as wages keep creeping up, are they unlikely to return? I did a talk about this, I believe a few sessions ago, a few webinars ago, on discussing has there been a permanent shift in the labor force? And I think that there has. We had some folks retire who maybe weren't planning to retire due to COVID. And they're not coming back. They figured out how to make it work. And then other folks who went down to single income and exited the workforce to deal with uncertainty of childcare and things like that. And are they coming back? You still go around the city of Fargo, other cities around the nation. In other states, a lot of businesses having trouble filling open jobs. You drive by a lot of the hospitality and food service establishments. And they all say, we're hiring jobs available here, competitive benefits, etc., etc. Doing all they can to incentivize people to apply and it's been slow. And with the unemployment rate fairly low, it begs the question, are there enough workers out there to actually fill these needs? Or are employers going to have to adjust and figure something else out? So those are the questions as far as the macro economy goes that are on my mind headed into 2022 and how essentially just kind of trying to figure out how we're going to basically deal with those two situations is going to be key. So with that, I'll go ahead and turn it over to Frayn Olson, who is our next speaker. So thank you. All right, thank you, Brian. Again, I apologize. I do have another session going on and I'm going to have to leave a little bit early from this one. So as I'm going through, if there are some questions, please feel free to type them into the chat box or the Q&A function and we'll try and get those answered. If not, please here's my contact information. I'd be happy to try and visit with you or send an email and I'll try and answer your questions best I can. So my first slide is just a summary of the supply and demand estimates from today's report. It was actually released at 11 o'clock today. I wanted to compare the results from the report relative to what the trade was expecting. Typically the December report doesn't have a lot of surprises in it. This is also one of those cases where it was a very neutral, I guess on wheat, slightly negative report. So the row on the very top is the average trade estimate from the private analysts and traders that do forecasting. What their average expectation was for the USDA report today. So news agencies like Reuters and Bloomberg will survey these analysts and ask them what do you expect the numbers to be. So we kind of use that as a benchmark to measure against what we actually got. So if we look at the top row highlighted in black, that's what the trade was expecting to see. If you look in the highlighted row on the very bottom in red, that's the numbers we got today. So very little changes. The corn and soybean numbers were unchanged. Basically the left unchanged from the November report. The wheat number, the ending stocks did increase slightly. But again, that was spread out across several different classes of wheat. So not major changes, not major adjustments, but some small refinements. Next slide is actually the same information summarized for the South American production estimates. So as we move forward in time now as we get our US crop kind of in the bin and figure out how many bushels we have. Now attention is really shifting to weather and yield forecasts and production estimates coming out of South America. That combined obviously with the Chinese buying just because they are such large buyers of both US corn and as well as US soybeans. So if we look at what is the trade expecting for yields and more importantly total production coming out of South America, both Argentina and Brazil. The highlighted black row on top provides what the trade was expecting to see. So again, these are private analysts putting together their own information. On the very bottom highlighted in red is the current USDA forecast for South American production. So as you see, you compare the top one with the bottom one. Relatively small changes, no big shifts. Again, this is not a surprising number. The reason I'm going to go through this is as we move forward in time, especially as we get into January and February, these numbers are going to become critically important to price movements for not only corn, but also for soybeans. So a couple notes, a couple of things to remember and I'll show you some maps in just a moment. But Brazil has had a very early planting progress. They started the planting season earlier than normal this year and they've had a very rapid planting progress. Okay, so right now most of the most of the private analysts are saying Brazil is basically done planting soybeans. The last report I had was 98, 99% planted. So Brazil is essentially done with their soybeans and their first crop corn. I'll show you some graphics in just a moment. Brazil is about half, I mean Argentina, excuse me, is about halfway through their corn and soybean planting progress. So again, we're a little bit ahead of normal planting, which tends to lead towards expectations of above average yields. As we start looking forward in time, the other numbers I want you to compare would be the blue numbers, the highlighted blue numbers, which was the estimate for last year's production and all of this is in a million metric ton versus the red. So now let's compare the blue versus the red. So last year's production for Argentina as well as Brazilian corn and soybeans were lower than this year's expectation. So both Argentina and Brazil are expected to increase the total available supplies of corn and beans for a couple of different reasons. In Argentina, they had some very heavy drought conditions last year. Their average yields were below normal. Today, the numbers you see out of Argentina are basically using a trend line yield. So they're assuming that we're going to look at the change or shift in planted acreage, apply a trend line yield and what do we think the total production will be. So you can start to compare first Argentina and now more importantly Brazil. And I really want you to look at the Brazilian numbers for corn at about 86 million metric ton last year versus 118 million metric ton this year. Very substantial increase from last year. Again, last year's Brazil corn crop was impacted negatively impacted by some drought conditions later on in the in the season in the growing season, which again reduced their supplies. Well, if Brazil has the kind of crop that people are expecting today, those corn supplies and again a large portion of the Brazilian corn crop is exported and competes against US exports is going to have an impact on the timing and potentially pricing of corn in the global markets. I also want you to focus in and zero in on the production numbers for soybeans. Last year, Brazil had a record soybean crop of 138 million metric ton. The USDA is forecasting 144 million metric ton. Most of the trade analysts that I've read at least looking forward are really projecting between a 140 or a 145. To put that in perspective, this year's crop out of the US, which was basically a record, we tied our old record or slightly exceeded it, was that about 120 or 121 million metric ton. So when you start looking at a six million metric ton increase just out of Brazil alone, and then we add in about another 3 million metric ton increase from Argentina on the soybean side, the globe is going to have plenty of soybeans available if these crops and the crop potential actually is fulfilled. So these numbers, I want to review them quickly, but I want you to start thinking about these numbers and listening as you're listening to the kind of the market analysts and you're listening to the radio reports or reading articles. These are the numbers we're going to be spending a lot of time talking about over the next several months. So my next slide is just provides a map of where our soybeans produced in Brazil. I've shown this before. I just want to refresh your memories. And the reason this becomes important is because as we start talking about weather and weather conditions and soil moisture conditions, we have to realize Brazil is a very large country, just like the United States. So you can have a drought in one area and you can have surplus moisture or flooding in another area and you can have fantastic yields in another area. So think about what happened here in the U.S. where the Western Corn Belt was on the dry side. The Eastern Corn Belt had a fantastic year. We came out with basically an average crop. So you can't just throw the entire Brazilian crop into one big bucket and say, well, this is where we're at. You do have to think about the different growing regions and the different zones. So the darker the green, the more bushels or more tons of soybeans that are produced. You can see kind of in the upper left-hand corner there, Mato Grosso, that's obviously that great big soybean producing state. We spend a lot of time talking about that region. However, the growing region for soybean in Brazil is much larger than that. And what happens in central and southern Brazil is equally as important to what happens in Mato Grosso. So we can't get too focused on one particular area. All right, so on this map, I just want you to geographically notice on the right-hand side, we have that little bubble or bulge out on the side that goes into the Atlantic Ocean. So I want as a reference point, if you take kind of the lower part of that bulge and go straight across, that's kind of the northern end of the growing region for soybeans. Now my next slide shows the exact same thing only for corn. Next slide, please. There we go, that one. So if you look on the right-hand side, if you look at the map on the right-hand side, that's where corn is produced in Brazil. Now that is what's called the second crop or safrina crop of corn. Notice that the corn area and the soybean area I just showed you are very, very similar. So what's happened now in the northern growing regions, they plant soybeans right now, after the harvest of soybeans, they come back and start planting corn. So the increase in corn acreage has primarily been to try and break up some disease problems because of almost growing continuous soybeans for so long. But that's called the second crop or safrina crop. That's not going to be planted until we get into this January, February time period, as the soybeans are being harvested in northern Brazil. So the safrina crop, the second crop, or what they call the winter crop, is about 75% of their total production. So that's really the big crop in volume. If we look on the left-hand side, the map on the left-hand side shows what's called the first crop corn. So this would be like Iowa corn soybeans. You're planting corn and soybeans at the same time and you've got this rotation from year to year to year. Notice that on the first crop, which is about 25% of the production, is towards the southern end of the growing region. So Mata Grosso doesn't have a lot of first crop corn because they're planting soybeans. The reason I'm going through this is the first crop season will be starting harvest about in that January, February time period. So about the time that the corn harvest starts in the south, the corn planting will start in the north. So corn in Brazil is a little more complex. When we think about the corn export season, the ability of Brazil to be able to export corn into the global market, we have these two seasons. And the southern part of Brazil is also where they have these short-line railroads where the feeder system from the farm into an export terminal is relatively short and pretty efficient. So a lot of the first crop corn is harvested and is exported into the international market. The second crop, the map on the right, in particular like in Mata Grosso, a lot of that corn in the northern region stays domestically. That's the corn that's used for internally in the country for their livestock sector and some of their ethanol. So the exports of corn and the corn volumes available are typically in the southern part of Brazil. So we have a first crop where we tend to get a lot of exports. We have the second crop where, again, we can extend that export season a little bit longer because of the corn grown in the south. The corn grown in Mata Grosso typically does not hit an export market just because of the distance that has to be transported. So coming back to weather, when we think about what's going on not only in soybeans, but now also in corn, we have to be very careful about listening to where, what's happening in different parts of the country and how is this going to impact both corn and soybeans? So my next slide is a soil moisture map. Now this is again, satellite imagery taken by NASA. And again, they've tried to ground truth this process that the imagery given the information we have in your US and they extend it to other countries. So the NASA's got satellites that are flying over. They do the satellite imagery for not only rainfall, but also we've Apple transpiration. They make some estimates or calculations of what is the soil moisture for this graphic in the top three meters or top one meter, which is about three feet of soil. So think of that as kind of the root zone. So this is a photo of kind of the entire South America. On my next slide, what I've tried to do is highlight with this little triangle, that black triangle, the major growing region for corn and soybeans in Brazil. So when we, again, talking about weather conditions and about soil moisture conditions, and in particular now about La Nina. So La Nina is the dry spell that we tend to see impacting negatively impacting Southern Brazil and Argentina. If you look at where the red zones are now in Southern Brazil and into Argentina growing region, which I'll show you in a moment, those areas are starting to be on the dry side, but for soybean planting and for corn planting, at least first crop, realize those red zones are areas that are just being seeded or completed seeding. So the growing season really is very, very early. As you all know, from agriculture up here, this is gonna be rainfall through the key reproductive stages later on that's gonna really dictate final yield potential. But this, as we talk about La Nina, the weather conditions and the amount of rain that might come both in Brazil, which is this map, and then the next map, which it would be Argentina, those that I've tried to circle kind of the core growing region in Argentina. We have this mixed bag. There are areas that are starting to turn very dry. People are getting really concerned about emergence and about what this means longer term, but it's only selected regions of their production zone. Some of the core production regions like the North for Montegrosso in Brazil, as well as the Southern regions, as you get closer to the Atlantic Ocean, can help offset some of these drier conditions. So right now, yield expectations have not changed a lot, but the weather and the weather patterns are being watched very, very closely. So with that, I'll finish off and hand things off to Tim, unless there's any questions that come in the next couple of minutes. Okay, good afternoon, everybody. And if there is a question, just go ahead and take a frame, but we go ahead and get going with my presentation on the first slide here. Since I last talked to you a month ago, we've seen really nice improvement in feeder cattle prices and not unexpected because you have to go to the right hand side of that chart you see last year's in purple and then 2019 in green. We have those V's usually in mid-October. And then after mid-October, we see some improvement. And this year, no exception, we hit our lows there in mid-October. And then we are going, you know, moving back up. In fact, when I talked to you last time, the previous weekly average was 166 on these 550 to six weight calves. And last week was 180, 44. So they've just been going up seasonally. And a number of reasons for that right away there, but, you know, by mid-October, all of a sudden the big runs hit, the PG checking kind of get over and the calves go to town and they're typically not weaned and all of a sudden big bunches come in. And then the further out we go, then the more they might be weaned and have a little more time away from being a balling calf. And so on many other things, the winter wheat crop, you know, comes on. And so there's winter wheat grazing. So that stimulates demand, particularly in the Southern Plains, but it affects prices all over. And another big thing is that later on here, after the corn belt, I'm talking Iowa and Southern Minnesota feedlots, you know, they grow a lot of corn and they wait to buy calves until they get the combining done. So when the combining gets done by mid-October late in there, they come in and they really, really spark the market particularly in Eastern markets here. West Fargo is closed now, but we'd see that every year, but you go down to Aberdeen and in there, when those farmer feeders hit the seats, the year-round cattle buyers that are buying for the Colorado and Nebraska lots, they kind of have to sit on their hands because those farmer feeders down there are aggressive. They like high quality cattle and they bid. So we saw that, you know, the harvest wrapped up and they're back on the seats, that sparked the market. And yeah, and some bigger things that we're gonna talk about now is that we have fewer numbers. The calf crop has went down for three years and I've got some Canadian issues I'm gonna talk about. And then, you know, the other market classes above them, you know, feeder cattle can go higher if a backgrounded cattle go higher and backgrounded cattle can go higher if the fed cattle. So we're gonna talk about that, but a little bit longer than going to the left-hand side of the chart, you see, we're already up to where we started there in 2018 and we expect better prices, you know, up there throughout the year, better than the last, actually four years that are on the chart now. So, you know, barring some emergency, you know, Frayn talked about corn and the DEAS 22 corn futures are 35 cent below the current DEAS contract and, you know, good crops in the south there that he talked about and so on. So again, our corn crop is gonna be a big thing and that fits into calf prices and change corn 10 cents a bushel, change calf price a dollar in the opposite direction. So like he said, you know, comes as we get closer to spring, things are gonna get volatile on the corn side and the same thing is gonna be on the feeder cattle side, but, you know, it looks like now we'll have even a better year next year. So go to the next slide. Then, you know, calf prices have went up and so how does that fit into backgrounding? And anyway, we've got higher feed than we had last year and we're short of feed. And so maybe some still making the backgrounding decision. So five of us went ahead and put together a backgrounding series of videos and just the website is showing up there. Easiest, I think, just to background, just to Google egg hub, end issue egg hub backgrounding or something and not put in the whole thing. But Brian that just got through talking to, he did budgeting for steers and heifers, different gains. And Jerry Stucker talked about health issues. I did the outlook and some risk management and what LRP is doing and Carl Hoppe did. This year, of course, we're short of hay and but we did have a lot of silage and corn is high price. So Carl talked about other, how do we have a silage ration? For instance, maybe use some DDGs or something and some non-traditional backgrounding and then Zach finished up with a ration. So let's move ahead to the next slide here. Again, on the right hand side, you see now our calf crop has been down three years. So that's supporting prices and into the next year's calf crop, the cow herd has continued to go down with the drought. So we're gonna have fewer calves next year. That's all supportive to prices. So go to the next slide. Another thing that's happening is kind of an interesting for us up here in North Dakota is following Canada because for many years in the fall of the year, some producers were concerned because feeder cattle came down from Canada and competing with our cattle and went to feedlots and so on. But now the cow herd in Canada has continued to go down. Go to the bottom chart there. The dark blue is the US. So yeah, we took numbers quite down for eight years into 2014, but then we expanded back up. And so by 2019, we were the same as 10 years ago on the cycle there in numbers, but the gray is Canada. And you see they were down into 2014, 15 as well. And they just kept on going down. So they got fewer cattle. So now the tide is turned and we're sending feeder cattle up to Canada, 40,000 or more a month and compared to very, very few years ago. And so that's sparking the market here as well because they're buying them at our Northern market. So go to the next slide. Here are the heavier weight cattle. And again, when those prices go up, remember I told you a month ago when I talked to you the average 550 weight prices, there were 166, but now those spring futures, those March, April futures are up there about 170. So for eight weight cattle, so that's actually higher than calf prices were back a month ago. So that helps spark the calf market as well because from our backgrounding then we can actually, we can do a 170 LRP, livestock risk protection or you can do an option or futures, whatever you want to into those months. And so those higher prices brought the calves right along. And then again, longer term, by the time we get to next fall at this time and into the November futures and stuff for next year up there at 180, compared to our 162.35 right now. So we look for better times ahead in the cattle complex. And the thing that's driving these higher 758 prices are fed cattle that we'll go to next then, fed cattle prices are sparking as well. And that means that feedlots can pay more for given keeping corn constant, they can pay more for feeder cattle. And so there again, you've seen these before, but that red line is this year's fed cattle cash price. It's just continued to inch up. We did have a backlog that we had to get through, but they're about a little over a month ago, almost two months ago now, then we got the backlog down and the packers had to get out and get after cattle again and get more aggressive. So you see that spark there from down there, 122, 123 to last week, we're over averaging over 140. And so what's important, depends on those heavier weight 800 pound steers are gonna finish in April or so. And so you see April futures there, those orange squares were up there at 142. So that's why we had the prices that we do for those 800 pounders and, you know, fed cattle futures for the entire year until right at the end of the next year, similar to what they are now, but significantly above last year. And so that's, you know, what feedlots can do to lock in prices for fed cattle coming out. So that helps the feeder cattle as well. And then even go on the left-hand top there, we even have 2023 futures up there in the mid-40s for mid-140s for fed cattle. So it looks like every year going up. So some of the things, we can go to the next slide, but the things that are helping fed cattle are what Brian just talked about. This is in the macro, the unemployment is going down to levels, people are working, beef is relatively high price. So people have to have jobs, but the market there is positive. And so our domestic demand is strong. And then the other thing is, again, we're doing record export demand. The new numbers for October just came out yesterday. We set an all-time record high for beef and also our competing that I don't have a chart for, but we've got record exports of chicken, pork and beef. And, you know, for the competing meats, if we export them, we don't have to eat it here. So that's all positive. Just so we're going to do record high exports this year on the bottom. One of the reasons for that is the big amount of meat that we're sending into China. And they've went to nothing in the first couple of months of 2020 until we, phase one agreement went in and now there are our third best customer. A lot of reasons for that. And I do have to move along. And there, you know, there are issues there. One of the reasons why we've gotten so much into China is because of the BSE cases in Brazil and they trying to cut them off. And Argentina that frame talks about had high inflation on beef. And so they restricted him exports. And so, you know, this isn't a guarantee that it's going to continue, but that's really helped us out. And anyway, we're going to do record exports. And the prediction for next year is that we will continue to do record exports. But, you know, China just kind of a big drill in the room. And right now the Olympics are coming up and we've decided not to send diplomats. We are going to let the athletes go over there. And so China isn't too happy about that as long with some other countries. And they're strong, arming Taiwan and we're siding with Taiwan. And so, you know, politics are always a concern here that that wouldn't, and of course we're sending lots of corn and beans to China too. So those are a concern. But as of now, the fed, the cattle market fed cattle on down to calves is, is sparking and doing better. And our expectations giving some catastrophic event is that to continue for the next several years. So with that, we'll go to Ron and talk about some crop insurance. Oh, yeah, there we go. Okay, thank you, Tim. Good afternoon. I just wanted to update you on a few crop insurance changes that came down the pike here just recently. And so my first slide then, basically it's the hanging and grazing area. The USDA RMA is making it permanent this new provision. Now it's permanent until it's changed again, but it's permanent as of now, that allows producers to hay grazer chop cover crops and still receive a prevented planting payment. So the next slide. Now, if you remember last July during the drought, it was concerns that they wanted to, hay or graze some of the prevent plant acres that had cover crops. And in July then, they announced that they could actually do that and still receive 100% of the prevent plant payment. Previously, the old rule was, you could not do anything until after November 1st. Otherwise you got penalized 65% of your prevent plant payment, which was a big blow. So people really, it kind of prevented people from even doing anything. So this is a permanent change now. They're reacting from the producers. So next slide. It's also recalled that there was a pandemic cover crop program that helped maintain cover crop systems. I think it was a $5 payment. And that was implemented through the RMA, through the crop insurance. Another change, next slide, is the prevent plant four in one requirement. Back in 2020, RMA implemented a policy that land eligible for PP prevent plant, the acreage must have been planted, insured or harvested at least one of the four most recent crop years. They've kind of narrowed that down. There was always some controversy, but they put it in writing a four in one requirement. Now there's some more flexibilities added to that to recognize different farming practices. So the next slide, these are the new flexibilities. So that includes the, if you have annual growth of an insured perennial crop, such as alfalfa or red clover, that would be considered planted. Also, if you have a nap, if you have a crop that's covered under nap, the non-insured crop disaster assistance program, that will meet the eligibility requirement. And also, if neither crop insurance nor nap was available for this crop, but you prove that it was planted and harvested using proper practices for two out of the last four years, then that would meet your requirement. Okay, the last change now then it deals with organics. And there was always some controversy on the different terms being used. So they tried to be consistent and get that terminology right. So there was no confusion within the various programs, organic programs and labeling with USDA. So with that then, also there's a couple of changes. RMA is providing an option for producers to delay measurement of their farm-stored production for 180 days. Okay, they also added earlage and snaplage as an acceptable measurement. If you remember back during that drench show, I think it's always pronounced that big wave of rain that hit Iowa. A lot of people salvage their corn crops by earlage or snaplage. And that was a way of, they allow that as a measurement now. And lastly, I want you to make sure and contact, if you have questions regarding this, make sure and contact your crop insurance agent or FSA to get the further details. So with that, I will turn it over to David. Great, thanks, Ron. Just some brief comments about some developments in the last two days regarding the RFS, again, which mandates biofuel use in the United States. There was an announcement from EPA regarding what the renewable volume obligations for 2020, 2021 and 2022 would be. Those numbers are important because they tell us how much total biofuel needs to be used by different categories. Corresponding with that, there was also an announcement regarding small refinery waivers, which I've talked about recently, and just a little bit of detail. So this is kind of different than what, or the same as Ron had mentioned. So on Tuesday, EPA finalized the numbers for 21 and 22 and revised the final numbers from 2020. So it makes you wonder how final they were. And then it also was raising a question for the industry, are any numbers ever final? 22 has long passed and those numbers were finalized and in the books for quite some time. So the question is, how might those change in the future? I just looking at some of the numbers and the real focus in this is on the corn ethanol numbers. And what we saw was a reduction in 2020, the math you have to do by taking the difference between the total amount of fuel, a total renewable fuel in the advanced biofuel to calculate the conventional biofuel numbers. That's essentially the corn ethanol number. Although there's no mandate, and this is really important, there is no mandate, there's never been a mandate to use corn ethanol in the United States. There's a spot that works relatively well for corn ethanol, but it's not manned by any extent. Anyways, that conventional biofuel pot which corn ethanol typically dominates was reduced from the number of 15 billion gallons which is the same number in the original law, now to 12 and a half billion gallons. So if you think about that, that's a significant number of gallons that won't have to be used or at least have RINs generated for that year. Going forward, the number for this year is less than the mandated or the number in statute that 15 billion. And then going into next year, it does rise back up. This is interesting and kind of continues this practice that we've seen with EPA which is adjusting those numbers to actual use. Again, last year we had COVID, this year we have COVID transportation fuel use, gasoline use went down. And so here we're adjusting those numbers. So you know, I've mentioned it before, often in the last decade is different administrations have tinkered with the policy. The law itself says that you can only change numbers because of economic harm or inadequate supply and supply is not demand. So more liberties taken by EPA this time under the new administration. The good news, there's actually two pieces of good news in this, at the same time as the announcement was made in terms of those numbers being shrunk, the EPA did deny 65 applications for small refinery waivers. So those are waivers by smaller refineries to not have to participate in the program at all based on hardship. There was a number of gallons, you know, billion gallons plus that were part of those potential exemptions. And so this might be a trade between getting rid of those exemptions but also just getting rid of that total requirement. At the same time, USDA did announce that they are awarding $800 million to the industry, to the corn ethanol industry because of COVID-19. This is something that was actually part of the March stimulus bill. And it finally came out, you know, the checks will be out shortly, again, responding to those losses. And then finally, we're ready for some questions. Again, if you'd like to use the chat feature or the Q and A feature, that would be great. And I actually have a question for Tim. You may not know Tim, but there's a new Guinness, Book of World Records record. The largest vegan burger ever was cooked in Ireland, in Northern Ireland this week. And so my question for you is, what did they do with the ham, with the burger, not hamburger, a vegan burger? What did they do with it when they were done? They threw it out. No, they gave it to homeless people who they threw it out. Interesting. All right, it looks like we do have, oh, it's just a thank you for the information, which is appreciated as well. Are there any questions for any of the panelists? I would mention one thing too, with Brian's talk, we're actually interviewing for a new macro economist to serve on the faculty in our department. And I had a conversation with one of the candidates earlier today. He happens to be from another country originally. And I just asked him about inflation, what do you thought could happen? One of the things he didn't bring up that could happen is that we may just have new expectations for what inflation is. So a lot of the thought is it's gonna go back to what it was some day, somehow. The other possibility is that inflation, just the expected rate of inflation becomes 4%. I thought that was an interesting comment. As it appears, there's no questions that any of the other panelists have any questions or comments for anyone else. If not, I wanna thank everybody for joining. We'll be back next month after the next WASDE report. So I hope you can join us then. You should be able to find a recording of this webinar and the slides on the URL on the screen, as well as those from previous webinars. With that, I wanna wish everybody happy holidays and I hope you have a safe, enjoyable Christmas season. Thanks.