 The wheat markets have declined in recent weeks. My guest is Frank Olson, an extension economist at North Dakota State University. And Frank, since we last talked, there's been a lot of activity that has been influencing the markets. Yeah, there certainly has been, Doug. The couple of things that have come out. First is some of the information from USDA, updated information, primarily on the corn side, which is really one of the driving forces in the wheat market right now as well. First, there was some changes in the acreage report as well as quarterly stocks report. It turns out that we had more corn acres planted this year than people had expected. And that high prices that we've seen the last several months have really done their job in trying to pull back the demand portion, which means that the stocks that we have available going into the rest of the year have been higher than expected. And that, the combination of those two things, have put quite a bit of pressure on not only the corn markets, but also the wheat market. In the production side, though, with winter wheat as the harvest has moved north, yields have been a little better than expected. And that has been one of the bright spots for the farmers' end of things. As we started in Texas and moved into Oklahoma, that was the heart of the drought area, those are the areas that were most heavily hit and had very, very poor yields. But as we moved into southern Kansas and then on into northern Kansas, yields started to improve and now as we're moving into southern Nebraska, reports are coming back that yields are actually a little bit better than they had expected. They're still below average, but again, better than people had expected. And part of that is because of the quality. We're getting very high-quality grain coming off and the test weights have actually been higher than expected, which again has helped on the yield side. But related back to your previous comment, you're expecting corn, to continue to be the leader here for the next month or two. That's correct. For right now, the corn stocks are the tightest and corn, to a lesser degree, soybeans are really the price leader in the market right now and wheat is kind of having a follower position. And part of that is, of course, is because of the potential linkage between wheat feeding and corn needs. But as you look ahead for the next crop report, what do you expect from that given the conditions that you have in the northern plain? Yeah, in the August 11th reports, which the combination of the world supply demand estimates being updated as well as an update on the crop production, are going to be very key for the wheat market because when the acreage report was taken or the survey was taken for that, the North Dakota and northern plains region was still well behind in their planting progress. And USDA is going to resurvey North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Minnesota to try and get a better handle on how many acres of wheat actually got planted. The results from that survey are going to come out in that production report. And so that will be an additional adjustment. And in my opinion, the reports that we've seen so far have really not accounted for the production problems and the planting progress that we made up here. We're going to have a much more drastic cutback in spring wheat acres than I think most people expect. What about on a global situation? What's the supply and demand look like there? OK, on the global side, again, we've got to understand that about 50% of our wheat gets sold overseas. And so the international market is very critical for the wheat complex. One of the things that's a very quick update, the European community is going to have an OK year this year, not a banner year, but the drought conditions were moderated earlier on. The Black Sea region is having some mixed problems. There's part of the Ukrainian area that's had too much rain, so there's concern about quality issues. And now there's some drier conditions showing up in one of the key growing regions in the Russian production area. So we're going to have to watch those as we move forward in time also. So what's Russia's stance right now? Well, so far Russia has been very aggressive in their export market, in their export bids. They're trying very desperately to buy back some of the business that they lost because of their export ban last fall. And right now they're being very, very price competitive. So we'll, again, have to watch to see how much of their old crop sales as well as how much of their expected production are they going to try and sell at these low prices. So in terms of general strategies, is it sort of a wait-and-see situation? For right now, I believe it is. Now, some of that will depend upon the situation the farmer's in. If you're in an area where you need to move some wheat out of storage to be able to make room for corn harvest, I think the mid to late August time period would be a good time to try and get some of that done. For those that have additional storage space, if you're in a cash flow position to be able to hold it for a while, I think there'll be some additional opportunities as we move into fall. I'm afraid a very interesting market will keep eye on it thanks for sharing with us, and we'll talk to you next month. All right, thank you, Dr.