 Good afternoon everyone. My name is Dave Ripplinger, economics specialist with NDSU Extension and host moderator of our monthly agricultural market situation outlook webinar. Welcome you all back this month, February 2023. We do have a few changes in our in our usual programming. Again, it's meeting season for us. So quite a few of us are traveling. We're actually going to start with a recording by Frank Olson. Frank isn't able to make it today, but of course he's always available if you want to reach out otherwise. But we'll go and start with Frank and then move on with the program. If you have any questions, we ask that you use the Q&A tool or the chat and we'll get to those at the end of the program. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Frank if you can give me just one second. Hello, I'm Frank Olson, crop economist and marketing specialist with NDSU Extension. Once again, unfortunately, I'm not able to visit with you live today, but I am recording on February 9th. I just have a conflict over the noon hour. I won't be able to get back to my office and participate in the webinar live in time. So here's my contact information. If there is something that you have questions later on that you want to visit about or something that I can do to try and follow up on, please feel free to contact me. So let's go through what we learned in the February WASDE report, the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates. Actually, there's a very quiet report. So when we look at ending stocks looking internally at the United States, what was going on, the blue line on the row on the very top is the average trade estimate. These are the numbers that the private analysts or traders were expecting to see in the report towards the bottom. If you look in highlighted black, those are the numbers that we got in January 12th for the last month. And then of course, the highlighted ones on the very bottom of the numbers that we got this month. So when we look first at wheat, actually, it'll just a little bit of tweaking around the edges, basically rounding air, no substantial shifts or adjustments in the consumption part. So right now we know the production numbers. It's just all about how fast we're burning through or using up our inventories. Middle column in corn, if you look at what we had last month versus the ending stocks this month, we did have an increase. But as you noted, that increase was expected. So if you compare the blue number with the red number, you'll notice that they're almost identical. So there was a slight reduction in ethanol consumption or the forecast for total ethanol use about a $25 million, $25 million bushel reduction. And that's really where the difference came. So everything else stayed about the same in the corn. The export level stayed the same. The feed and residual stayed the same. We did take the ethanol number down just a little bit. And again, we get weekly updates from Department of Energy on how much ethanol is being produced. So it's relatively simple or straightforward to be able to track that and follow it and say, well, what does that mean for totally yearly consumption? On the far right hand side on the soybean column, again, if you look at what the trade was expecting, about the same number come on average as what we had last month. But we did get actually a slight increase in ending stocks. And that was due to about a 15 million bushel cut in crushing. So about the last two months, the crushing numbers have still been very strong. They've been very good. It's just the domestic crush numbers have not been quite as aggressive as we thought they would be earlier on in the year. And so again, not major adjustments, but we continue to tweak and adjust that ending stocks number for soybeans. But please remember the ending stocks number as a percentage is still very, very tight for soybeans. So we're going to continue to see quite a bit of volatility and concerns about the soybean numbers. Shifting globally now, I guess the other thing that we're really focusing on in the marketplace, the thing you're probably going to hear the most about over the next several weeks is going to be the size of the crop in Argentina. And I'm going to go into that a little bit more detail during this session. So I'd first like to start on the far right hand side with Brazil. Please just note that there was really no changes or updates. We're still looking for a very strong production number for corn, looking at an exceptionally strong number for soybean production. These are numbers that have already been built into the marketplace. This is something we have talked about before. So let's shift back into the Argentina numbers. So what I'd really like to do is first compare the blue numbers to the red numbers. So what was the trade expecting to see versus what we actually got within the February report? Again, a slightly smaller number for total production for both corn and soybeans than what the trade is expecting. Now, I want to be very careful when we look at the black numbers versus the red numbers, there was a pretty substantial decrease. But again, most of the private analysts were expecting this reduction. In fact, there's some now private analysts, given the weather conditions that we're seeing in Argentina and the forecast for continued hot, dry weather in the growing region. There are some private analysts now saying that for soybeans in particular, that we may get something in the mid to upper 30 million metric ton range. So this reduction in estimated production, particularly for soybeans, but also for corn, may continue for the next couple months. And it is something, again, that the market is watching. For the corn crop, that is pretty significant because Argentina is a major corn exporter. It does compete with the United States and the international markets. On the soybean side, again, I want to remind everybody, most of the soybeans that Argentina produces get crushed first. So they don't export a lot of whole soybeans, but they do export a lot of oil and a lot of meal. And so some of this, when it comes to impact on US markets, will really be through the soybean oil and soybean meal futures, not directly into the soybean market. So just be a little cautious and understand the challenge, again, on the whole soy side, the whole soybean is really the very large soybean crop out of Brazil. So let's look at a few more statistics and more numbers to give you an idea and perspective of kind of what is happening in Argentina and the size of the problem. And recognizing now Argentina is really on their third consecutive year of drought and really severe drought. When we look at the production zones, and this is actually from the USDA Secretary of Agriculture, their briefing report. So when the WASI report comes out, the Secretary of Agriculture does get a briefing on what the information on the number is going to be. So this provides some really nice summary information that I'm going to lean on for right now. So on the left hand side is where Argentina, the corn producing region. On the far right hand side is their core soybean producing region. So the darker the green, the more bushels or metric ton are produced. If you notice on the very bottom, this is kind of the average crop calendar. Again, on the left hand side, the crop calendar for corn. On the right hand side, the crop calendar for soybeans. And notice where we are now in February. For corn, it's kind of towards the tail end of silking and kind of beginning stages of filling. And then on the soybean side, kind of the tail end of flowering and the beginning of the filling stages. Now, this is kind of average time periods. And just please recognize that the planting progress in Argentina, because it was so incredibly dry, the planting progress is actually relatively slow. There was a lot of farmers that were waiting to get some rain showers to be able to seed their crop to try and get enough moisture to be able to even get it emerged and growing and out of the ground. And so based on what we normally see this time of year versus what we're seeing this year, this crop calendar, the crop calendar we have right now is a little bit delayed, because the planting progress is a little bit delayed. So really, when you look at these, think about, again, tail end of silking, first part of filling, but it's probably more in that January timeframe than it would be in the typical February timeframe. So there's still quite a bit of growing season left. We're reaching those really key reproductive stages agronomically for both corn and soybeans. So we need to keep that in mind as we move forward. So again, that's why the markets are becoming more sensitive to the information coming out of Argentina. The other thing that was in the briefing report just to give you accumulated precipitation. So think about these these graphics in particular the red one as every time that Argentina, the major growing region gets more precipitation, we add it to the pile of precipitation. So in a normal year, which is the black line, you'd see that precipitation kind of be almost at a 45 degree line. It's really nice and even and spread out. The green line is last year's numbers. And notice that we the Brazil's crop early on started out relatively good, but then it wasn't until this late January into February that things started getting dry and the market did respond. So 2021-22 was not a great year. It wasn't a total burn up, but it wasn't a great year. Now look at what's going on in 2022-23. This crop started out very dry and it's continued to be dry throughout the rest of the growing season. So the concern is that that red line as far as precipitation is going to continue to be well below average, which again puts a lot of stress on the crop as it's moving into that reproductive stage. This is another visualization just to give you an idea. So just for for for spatial orientation, of course, here's Argentina, here's Uruguay. Notice that this is from crop explorer. This is the average for the week of January 17th through the 24th. They should be updating that shortly, but it does give you this NDVI, the vegetative index. So how does the the crop condition of the what the kind of greenness of the crop right now compare to average? And again, I want to to remind everybody that the core growing region is kind of in this area right here. So there are parts of the growing region in Argentina, especially in that southwest corner that are having average to slightly above average growing conditions, but please recognize that that's relatively small. Okay, that's kind of on that fringe area. Those core areas, notice how deep red this is right by the Panana River, which is a lot where a lot of the processing and the ocean vessels are loaded. So a big portion of this Argentine crop for both corn and soybeans is really very poor crop condition right now. If we look at Brazil in contrast, I just want so here's Argentina, here's Uruguay. Southern part of Brazil is having some issues. Real ground to soil is also one of those areas that's got extended into this dry zone. But if you look at the crop condition ratings and what the NDVI that's vegetative index is for most of the crop land in Argentina, it's averaged to slightly above average for production. And I just want to show that contrast very quickly. Now one of the other things that can happen is with soil moisture. I know I've showed this map before. This is for February 6th. Again, here is Uruguay down here. So the major corn and soybean producing region in Argentina is right in this region. Now this is the soil zone map. This would be for the root zone. So we're looking it's not the soil like the drought monitor map we have in the United States. This is really the top three feet or about the top meter of soil. Yes, it's computer generated, but it does give us an idea. This is put together by a joint venture between NASA as well as USDA. And they've been doing this for quite a while. So I think they've got it dialed in reasonably well. My point in bringing this up is that Argentina in particular is really living from rain shower to rain shower. They have very little soil moisture conditions. The crop is in poor condition right now in general. So if they need to have if they get a good crop or it's the crop is able to recover a little bit, it's going to be because of rain showers. Now the current forecast for this that core growing region in Argentina, at least for the next week or so, is for a few rain showers to come through nothing from a precipitation stuff standpoint enough to really change the drought conditions or might be up to an inch to an inch and a half in some places over the next week or so, but it's also going to be very hot during that time frame. So one of those things that we need to be watching very closely. So with that, I'm going to stop my recording here. And again, if there are any questions that you have later on, I'd be happy to try and answer those. Please feel free to reach out. Thank you very much. Great. So a virtual thank you to frame. And again, if you have any questions for frame, feel free to to reach out by phone or email on with that will will transition over to livestock markets in Tim Petrie. Good afternoon, everybody. Tim Petrie, livestock marketing economist. My contact information as always is there. Well, last time we looked ahead and said that the USDA inventory reports for cattle and sheep were going to come out. So we had a preview of that if you were on the call last time. And we knew that the numbers in the US was going to go down. We just didn't know how much. And so on January 31st, the USDA did release the annual cattle January 1st cattle inventory report and also the sheep report that I'll get to the sheep in a minute. So again, like I said, we were expecting the fourth straight year of liquidation on cattle. And I said back a month ago that we were likely going to be down to where we were in 2014. And that's what happened. So we we went down again. Last year, 2022. So on January 1st, 2023, we had 28.92 million beef cows. And go across the chart then just even just a little bit 40,000 head below what we were in 2014. And again, that was expected by just about everybody. So obviously that's supportive to prices. It's unfortunate. You know, the reason the main reason it happened is because of drought and we'll get to that in a minute. But kind of interesting when you look at the cattle cycle, last time starting there in 2010 down to 14 when we had our own numbers, you know, where we just now in this cycle paralleled that again, each time going down about two and a half million heads. So we're just parallel, paralleling that. I'll go down in the bottom and in North Dakota, we actually peaked out there in 2020, unlike 2019 up from the US numbers. And so we ended up now this is the third year of going down. I think last time I told you, I wasn't really sure how we do in North Dakota, we could be down a little better, or the same or whatever. So I was somewhat surprised that we went down as much as we did in North Dakota. The last two years we went down about 30,000 head and then this past year, 2022 by January 1st year, we went actually down 59,000 heads. So we had quite a severe reduction back down close to 2012 numbers there. We were 862 in 2012. So, you know, after a number of years of going up and had quite a bit there again due to drought. So the big question then, you know, certainly supportive to cattle prices, the big question is then what's going to happen this year in 2023? If you look back on top, let's just go to USDA, then 2014 was the low, that was, you know, four years down. And so then we went up in 2015. So are we going to go up this year or go down more is the big question. So get to that now. Obviously, it all depends on weather. And, you know, it started pouring rain there. And by the end of 2013 and 14, and that, you know, allowed some rebuilding. So here's the drought monitor that just came out this morning. And if you look down from the top of the chart there to, you know, just go down on the east side of North Dakota, South Dakota, on down through Texas and go west, still the western US where a lot of the cattle are dry is very dry, particularly very, very dry from Nebraska on down. And so, you know, we're going to rebuild the herd go down to the bottom left hand corner again USDA after the drought monitor comes out tells us how many cows are in drought. And the dark green is the, or the most cattle are the most density of cattle are the light green less density. And then the red dashed lines are drought. And so way down on the bottom left, you see as of Tuesday of this week, still over half the beef cows are in an area drought. So that doesn't bode very well for rebuilding. And again, going on up Texas is the largest beef cow state Oklahoma second and Missouri Kansas on up or the ninth largest. And so we're a lot of the cattle are it's still very dry. So it's going to have to rain significantly for us to, you know, think about rebuilding our hay stocks are particularly down in that area or record low. And in fact, why we went down so much is over on the right hand side, we've improved moisture has improved in the US on the right hand side back on November 1st, three forces of the beef cow herd was in drought. But now going back left there, you see much of the eastern state, there's a lot of cattle in Texas, or in, in Tennessee and, and Kentucky, and they were very dry and that aided it into the US numbers going down. But they're fine there now no drought much of the Eastern US. And so, you know, there could be some starter rebuilding there, but in the big cattle country here in the northern and southern plains, still very, very dry. And so here's the change last year where it occurred. And no surprise is where you see the drought right from Texas right on up through North Dakota. These are the amount of cattle that we lost again, we lost over a million had a million 65,000 in total in the US and right up through the country where it's still dry over there. You see that Tennessee and Kentucky there did lose, lose some last year as well. And, but, but anyway, still very, very dry going to have neat significant rains in the northern and southern plains. Another thing adding into that is here's the number of beef cow replacement heifers we have on the top side is the US and we're relatively low there on replacement heifers about 5.16 million on January 1st. And that's just virtually the same as it was at the low numbers back in 2011. So we don't have a lot of heifers. These would be both heifers that are bred to have a calf this year and then those that were saved from last year's calf crop that we bred this summer. But anyway, we're at low numbers there. So, you know, that would not help in any rebuilding North Dakota numbers on the bottom. Then we went down again for, you know, this is the second year. And, and we've talked more about this on replacement heifers here in previous webinars that we've had. We had changed into and didn't follow US numbers quite closely and develop and keep a lot of replacement heifers up here more than we need. And, you know, looking at the 10 years, the last 10 years, not this year, six out of the last 10 years were top 10 ever number replacement heifers. But now we, because it was dry here, last couple of years, we backed off there again. So, you know, it's, it's, even if when it does rain in the southern plains and northern plains, there'll be interest. Certainly, cow slaughter would be the first thing to go down. Our cow slaughter was very, very high this past year, up almost 13% over the previous year, which was also up because of drought. So, cow slaughter would drop off. But we don't have a lot of replacement heifers, although, you know, the unbred heifer selling at sales here in North Dakota now that our replacement quality are showing nice premiums, almost bringing steer prices. So, you know, there's, there is some interest in them. So, you know, again, it's supported to prices. Here's the 550 to 6 pound calf prices in North Dakota, you know, and after bad years back there in 2020 and 2021 in the bottom of the chart there, you know, last year we were up $30 just throughout the year at calves again due to the lower supply. And then starting off this year, now we're up another $20 over last year. And, and it looks like they're going to be higher again this week as the red line on the top. So, we're expecting calf prices to really respond to those lower numbers. Again, this is the fourth year and have, you know, close maybe to a million headless calves to sell this year. So, that's supported to prices and, and, and, you know, have to have to see one thing that would really, really spark these lighter weight calf prices is if we did get significant rains in the southern plains, it's already trying to green up down in Texas and that moves right on up through Oklahoma and, you know, western Kansas and up through the sandhills in Nebraska and on up here as we get to spring. And so a lot of rain there would even spark these calf prices more and kind of being held back by the drought. Now, but we expect higher prices for all market cyclically higher prices for all market classes of calves this year. And for, you know, it all depends on when herd rebuilding starts and when will we get more. But that looks like it's several years off of higher prices. Go to the sheep and lambs then and the top is the January 1st U numbers in the U.S. And again, they've been going down here at least since about 2010 about 1% a year. And that was the same this year. Again, it's dry and sheep country will see that in a minute. And we're right about at 2.87 million head there. And in North Dakota, we had kind of turned it around and, you know, we had that down to that low of 36,000 head there in 2019. And then the last several years, we bucked the U.S. trend and went up to 43 last year. But again, then we came off a little bit back down again on January 1st of this year. And this sheep story is the same as on the cattle side. It's dry. There on the left hand side, you know, 46% of the sheep inventory is still in drought. And, and although we have seen some improvement in the kind of the western states here in western Colorado and Wyoming and up there where it was dry earlier on the right hand side is the August 30th numbers where 57% of the sheep. And that's another reason why we went down there. So we've seen improvement. But anyway, the bottom line for cattle and for sheep is it's got to rain. We've still got a lot of drought where we raise these animals. And in order for any herd or flock rebuilding to take place, it's going to have to rain and, and for us to see any increase. So anyway, with that, I'll turn it over to Ron. Ron Hogan extension farm management with NDSU. And I want to talk about a couple farm programs here that we're, that we're in the middle of right now through FSA. The first one is the emergency relief program, the ERP. And we dealt with some of that back in 2020, 2022. That was the phase one part of it. And as a refresher, on the phase one, there was quite a bit of money paid out. There was almost seven, seven billion dollars paid out 279,000 applications throughout the throughout the country. And corn, of course, got the biggest percentage of it. And you can see there this ERP was mainly just for the crops. And the ERP for livestock had already been paid out previously. And what's the big states that got the money as usual, the states where the disasters usually happen, North Dakota and Texas. And if you zoom in on North Dakota, about 22,000 applications and about a billion dollars went to North Dakota, most of that was for corn and soybeans and wheat, almost a third each there for that program. Now, phase, there's a phase two that was everyone was wondering about. And we've gotten to that point right now. And as you recall, some of the disaster programs like WIP and WIP and WIP plus, they were, they were kind of an administrative nightmare. But there was a lot of money that was put out through there. And so this is kind of a continuation on that. There's a few changes in the ERP phase two, that is different from the WIP. And the ERP phase two is a little different than phase one. And there was some contention that it spoke, it was supposed to look somewhat like it, but it doesn't really look like it much at all. And let's get into what it's supposed to do. It's supposed to fill in the gaps that for people that were missed on the phase one. But I still would encourage everybody, even if they got a good phase one payment to apply for that, because, because there could maybe could be some potential for some payment there. In general, phase two is the difference between the gross revenue between the benchmark year and the disaster year. And phase two is ongoing. It started on the 23rd of January that goes to June 2nd of this year. Phase two, it utilizes the benchmark years of 2018 and 2019. And it compares it to the disaster years of 2020 and 2021. And there's a percentage that is paid. There is a higher percentage for the underserved, the limited resource, beginning farmers and veterans. Now, you're going to be using your tax returns on this program. And you need to pluck numbers off the schedule F for the ERP phase two. You need off schedule F. If you have both crops and livestock, you need to only take the sales from crops. And then any other taxable amount of co-op distributions, any other program payments, 1099G, any other CCC loans, if you report them as income, that comes on the 1099A, any other crop insurance proceeds or federal crop disaster payments, and any other farm income, basically the total of your gross income. What are the disaster things that can happen or that would be eligible, I should say, almost anything that can happen, excessive winds, silt and debris, wind, storm surges, tornadoes, tropical storms, blizzards, almost anything. Also, if you're in a drought, if you're in the drought monitor D2 or D3, D2 for eight weeks or D3 or higher, you would qualify as well. And here is the basics of how it's done. The ERP factor of 70% is multiplied by the producer's benchmark year, the gross revenue. And you take off the disaster year gross minus any phase one payments for the years. Also, you take off any CFAP payments, any WIP plus payments, quality loss payments, you take off any other thing that you would have collected, and you multiply it by the percentage to get the value. Okay, and that's the basics of it. There is no information for ERP phase two for livestock yet. We're still waiting on that from USDA in Washington. Another program that's going on parallel to the ERP2 is the PARP, the Pandemic Assistance Revenue Program. And basically, that's, it's calculated somewhat the same way. You need your tax return. Okay, and how are they done? That's done on a whole farm basis. Okay, but you're just comparing either 18 or 19 to two, the pandemic year of 2020. Okay, once again, is on the bottom there, it says the application period was open from the 23rd, and it goes to June 2. FSA will use the revenue from 18 or 19 and 20 in some specific circumstances minus all of the gross revenue for 20 to calculate the PARP payments. The factors will be 90% for the special producers, beginning farmers, limited resource, socially disadvantaged and veterans, 80% to all other producers. The calculations, FSA will subtract any pandemic assistance, CFAP1, CFAP2, the hog program, and any other ERP payments. So here's the formula. Expected PARP payment is the allowable gross from either 18 or 19 times 80% or 90% depending on your factor. Less CFAP1, CFAP2, the hog program, or any other ERP payments. They are issued after June 2 after everyone has applied. There's a limitation of 125,000. This is funded through the Consolidation Appropriations Act that was passed by Congress at the end of the year. It's not part of the Farm Bill. Now, everyone's wondering, well, do I have to bring my tax returns to the IRS? I don't want to do that. That's my private information. Well, you don't actually have to bring your tax returns to the IRS. For both of these, you can have your accountant or your tax repairer or yourself can certify numbers from your tax return and certify that, sign it, but you are subject to spot check. You will have to produce your tax return if you get spot checked. You do not have to bring your returns to the IRS. They have a form to fill out. Now, for producers that have added land, subtracted land, and so their gross income is different, you wouldn't be comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. There is, FSA will have some adjustments that you can do, so it's a proper comparison. These two programs are ongoing at this time. We're just getting into it right now, and I will entertain any questions at the end about those two programs. And with that, I will turn it over to Dave. Great. Thanks, Ron. Yeah, so Dave Rippling, your Bioproducts Bioenergy Economic Specialist with NDSU Extension. I just want to share some recent observations of things that are going on in the biofuels industry that are really quite important to all of U.S. agriculture, and especially North Dakota. It actually revolves around what's going on in diesel markets in California, and I'll translate that back a bit to agriculture and our state. So quick review, I know I've talked about this quite a bit before, just understanding what biomass-based diesel is. So really in that pot is two different products, biodiesel and renewable or green diesel. So biodiesel is a product that we've been making across the Midwest for quite some time by using a process called transesterification. But vegetable oil, fats or grease, really it's been primarily soybean oil or canola oil to make biodiesel. And then renewable diesel is really where the action's been in the last few years and where there's a tremendous amount of growth currently underway. And again, that's made by hydrotreating those same materials that you might make biodiesel with, but it's different. And those differences are important. Again, biodiesel has its own spec. Renewable or green diesel has its own specification, but that specification is actually that of diesel. So green diesel, renewable diesel is a drop in fuel. You don't, because it's chemically equivalent to diesel, you can put in the same pipe, the same tank, the same engine, it operates the same, it gives it a lot of advantages. And really those advantages and some activities by petroleum marketers in California are what's driving my talk or my main point here today. I've also visited about California's low carbon fuel standard. So California Air Resources Board, which you can think of as California EPA, they're in charge of overseeing this program, their LCFS. And what it does is it requires that the carbon footprint of transportation fuel gets smaller every year, on average, it doesn't tell anyone exactly how they have to do that. It just says, if you're a refiner, you have to figure out a way to shrink that carbon footprint and really puts the ball there for. So this chart is from California Air Resources Board. And what I want to get across is how those red bubbles kind of look like the dark blue bubbles below them. So that that first line is renewable diesel, the next line is biodiesel. And as you go from left to right on your screen, it's the size of the carbon footprint. So from small to large, so that 10 to 100. It's measured in grams of CO2 equivalent per megajoule, not particularly important. But one of the things you can see those black dots at about 90, that's the level that needs to be attained. And you can do this by blending biofuels, primarily by blending low carbon biofuels with with gasoline or diesel. And so what I want to get across is how both renewable diesel and biodiesel have dots that are really kind of far to the left. That is, they have a smaller carbon footprint than ethanol and ethanol's carbon footprint is substantially less than gasoline. And then the other thing to notice between those two lines is that the renewable diesel bubbles, the size of that bubble is their volume. So there's a lot more renewable diesel being used in California than biodiesel. And that's really an interesting phenomenon. Again, the takeaways in this low carbon fuels, renewable diesel similar to biodiesel. But again, remember that they're different. They're not perfect substitutes. I have management issues with biodiesel that I don't have with renewable diesel. And then what I want to share and what kind of got me to this was a picture that one of my colleagues in Southern California took for me after he mentioned that this is what a gas pump looks like in Southern California. So if you can see it happens, if you look at the little blue end down in the lower left hand corner, this is a Chevron pump in Orange County. And it's got actually got, you know, two pumps, it's got a diesel pump and gas. And so on the right hand side, we have gas in different formulations. And then on the left, it's what's labeled as renewable biodiesel B20. And so this is, and I'm not advertising for Chevron, but this is a Chevron specific product sold throughout California. And this diesel blend is 80% renewable diesel, 20% biodiesel, 100% biomass based diesel. And why this is really interesting is because this type of marketing is really taking over in that state. That is, you're going to find it more and more difficult to go to retail stations and buy petroleum based diesel at all. And again, if you think about the implications for that, you know, obviously growing market opportunities, growing market for, for those products. Also somewhat interesting too, is the relative spread between that renewable biodiesel B20 and the gasoline products. It's not, it's not necessarily extremely large. And even in some respects, if I looked at that price of renewable biodiesel B20, it's actually, you know, it's all relative, it's somewhat reasonable in the space considering what it does in terms of carbon reduction. It's not, it's not $7 or $8 diesel compared to $5 gasoline. So kind of talking about this more, so this is, this is, I built this chart using data from CARB. And what this is, is diesel biodiesel and renewable diesel volumes by quarter, not by year, but by quarter, since 2011 through the third quarter of last year. That's as far as they report. What I want you to see, and again, I made a stack chart. And so the nice thing about a stack chart is that top line is the total of all three. So if we kind of look across that just that top line, we see, gosh, you know, the amount of diesel in California for transportation really hasn't changed much. There's this natural annual seasonal behavior, right? But it hasn't declined. But what we see is, you know, two things. One is we see that biodiesel, which is not very large. And we see that dramatic increase in renewable diesel. And if you look at it today, and especially if we extend it, if we get extended into the last quarter, we're at a point where renewable diesel and biodiesel are half of the diesel blend sold in California today, more than half probably now as we enter February. You know, this is really interesting, presents unique opportunity and challenge for agriculture, because there's a tremendous amount of vegetable oil, fat or grease that we need to make these products. And the expectation is driven by this policy in California, we're seeing a number of new facilities, renewable diesel facilities come online to serve this need. And it's entirely possible that most if not all of that petroleum based diesel will be displaced in California. And if you look at the math of how much vegetable oil we need to do that, it's really quite astonishing. If we look at that renewable diesel number of, you know, in this case, it was under 400 million gallons a quarter. So let's just say it's 1.6 billion gallons per year. You know, you need about a billion bushels of soybean oil of soybeans, excuse me, to produce that much. So if you can think they want all of the oil from a billion bushels of soybean in North Dakota, we had a 198 million bushel crop last year. So you need all the bushels from five North Dakotas to meet that current production. And the expectation is it's going to end up pushing out that diesel. So we need that much more soon. Again, to say nothing of other policies in Oregon, in Washington state and Canada and other countries. But and something I just want to share with you. And again, to me, this is really reminiscent of what happened with gasoline. Now, we may think of it and maybe we don't. You know, most gasoline sold in the United States is E10, 10% ethanol by blend, not for fuel but for octane. In California, at the retail level, diesel, as people know it, the diesel blend that folks may know is that renewable B20, something that would be really transformational. And we'll see how this kind of builds out in the coming months and years and then also expands geographically. And so those were my comments. And I think that officially ends the formal presentation that we had from our speakers today. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have, you know, again, using the Q&A or chat tool. We don't have any yet, but we'll give you a minute to think of any that you might have. Again, Frank wasn't able to make it today in person. Brian is also on the road, so he wasn't able to make it. But if you want to reach out to frame or any of us, feel free to do so. The other thing I mentioned too is our next webinar is four weeks from today. Works out pretty, the math is easy for February, so March 9th will be our next webinar, where it will present crop, livestock and other updates. So I'm not seeing any questions that any of the presenters have anything they want to add or comments for other presenters. Well, just say it, Ron, when you were saying you don't have to bring your tax return to IRS, you meant FSA. You don't have to bring your tax return to the FSA. You can fill out a form that they require. Well, if there's no question, oh, we do have one. I think we should get bonus points for people who sneak in that question. Ron, it looks like it's for you. I'll read it to you. What was the percentage factor on the ERP calculation, not the 70%? I guess I'm a little confused. Let me see here. Let me see if I can look that up real quick here. I am not sure are you talking about, I guess I don't know, I guess I'm not sure if that meat, are they talking about the one for veterans? We'll see if they can clarify here. Yeah. Can you bring up your... Yeah, I'm looking at my slides here and I couldn't seem to find that real quick. It's 70% multiplied by the benchmark, but I think it's a higher rate and I don't know what... I guess I didn't have that in my slides, what the higher rate was for the ERP2. For the other program, it's 80% and 90%, but for ERP, it's 70% and probably 80% or 90% there for the veterans and underserved. I'm just guessing on that one. I hope I answered you. Thanks, Ron. Well, it doesn't look like there's any other questions. So with that, I'd like to thank the other presenters and all of you who are able to join us here today. Recording of this talk will be uploaded shortly to the webpage. So feel free to go back to or to share a link to that with your colleagues if you'd like. And with that, we'll see you next month. Thanks.