 My name is Dave Ripplinger, Extension Specialist with NDSU Extension and moderator of our monthly Egg Market Situation Outlook webinar series. Like to welcome you to our March edition, which may be a bit abbreviated in length, just because of the nature of the markets, but we'll have our standard practice. We'll have a few presentations and then Q&A at the end. Feel free to use the Q&A tool or the chat feature and we'll get to your questions after we close with our arranged or original remarks. I don't know, Frayn, if you're going to go first. I certainly can. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. Frayn Olson, I'm the crop economist, marketing specialist here at NDSU. I'm going to be talking a little bit about what happened in the March WASDE report that World Agricultural Supply Demand Estimates, which to be very honest with you, we're very, very quiet. That's why, unlike most times, I'm going to be a little more abbreviated today. So here's my contact information. If you do have any questions or anything that you want to visit about kind of offline, I'd be happy to do that. I would much prefer to try and answer and address any kind of questions you might have as we're on the meeting today. So I will go through some comments, some observations, and then we'll open things up and shift it onto Tim. All right, so let me get my, there we go. So kind of the key market movers right now. So as you'll see in just a few minutes, the WASDE report was relatively neutral for corn, soybeans, and wheat. There wasn't a lot of new information. There was a few minor tweaks and updates that we made, but there really wasn't a lot of shock value to this, to this month's WASDE. Now, as we get to the end of the month, that will all change. Okay, so out of the report that we got last week, relatively neutral, relatively benign. We are still watching export sales very, very closely to get a read. This morning, we did have an additional export sale of corn to Mexico, which is very helpful for kind of stabilizing and saying, yes, the US green prices are competitive in the international market. Unfortunately, over the last, probably week, almost week and a half now, there have been some cancellations of Chinese purchases, previous purchases of soft red winter wheat. So if you heard me talk a while ago, a couple of months ago about exports and export sales and basically some surprise purchases that China made for US soft red wheat. Some of those purchases now are being canceled. Now, just on a sidebar, I get this question a lot. So I want people to understand, in the international world, international trade, the contracts for international trade are slightly different than what you see with, say, a production contract or something that we have here at the local level. So at the international stage, what happens is they'll sign a contract, sign an agreement, they'll lock in basically the price, the delivery location, the quantity, the timing of delivery, et cetera. Well, those contracts are often agreed upon many, many months into the future. So because of the logistical system and the time it takes to get from the farmer's field or from a storage facility into the import, importing the port at the import country, there's usually at least a two-month, if not a three-month lag between that. So what happens is they do have a cancellation clause in those international trade agreements or international contracts. There's a penalty for that. So there is a penalty fee that either the buyer or the seller has to pay if they decide to cancel the contract. And that fee is part of the negotiation that goes on in the contract. Most of the contracts have that provision, but what is the fee for canceling? Well, obviously, if the fee for cancellation is relatively small and we get a relatively large decrease or increase in prices, that can shift the incentives to say, well, let's cancel this contract, wait a little bit, and repurchase later. And so there's a lot of that that goes on in the marketplace. Sometimes we hear about it. Sometimes we do not. Any time that China does anything, it hits the markets and, excuse me, hits the news very, very quickly. So I do want to caution everybody. We have had some cancellations. They're all on soft red winter wheat purchases that were made earlier. So far, that hasn't had a big negative effect in the wheat markets. But cumulatively, if this continues to happen, if we see some more of these cancellations, we might start seeing some more kind of negative tone turn into the wheat market. What about Brazilian and soybean production? Again, the production estimates remain unclear. We're getting a wide variation of production estimates, even to this date. And it's relatively late in their harvest season now to have this wide of variation in what the private analysts and what some of the government agencies out of Brazil as well as what USDA is saying. And I'll talk about that in just a moment. And then I'm going to finish up today's discussion with just a brief overview and some things to think about for our 2024 planted acreage. So the discussions around that are now happening. Right now, USDA is in the process of sending out the surveys of farmers to say, what are your planting intentions, knowing that you can change your plans as we move forward in time. But these are the surveys that go out and say, well, what are your planting intentions as of today? So on March 31, circle that date, on March 31, we're going to have that perspective plantings report, which is the summary of that. So far now today, we're starting to get some private analysts as well as some news age ag news agencies that are doing their own surveys of farmers and seed dealers and saying, well, what kind of seed sales have you seen? What are you hearing in the marketplace or what are farmers saying? But to be very honest, and they're kind of setting some expectations. But to be very honest, it's that March 31 perspective plantings report that really will have the impact on the marketplace because it is by far the largest survey of individual farmers. They have the broadest reach. They cover not only just the corn belt states, but also those transition states like here in North Dakota or in, let's say, Missouri or Kansas, where we have a lot of corn and soybeans, but we can switch acres back and forth. So it's the largest from a sample size of number of farmers. It's also the largest in geographic area because it covers essentially the entire US. So a lot of the private numbers you're going to be hearing coming out soon will be somewhat different, but they will set some expectations. And I am going to kind of conclude with some of those comments as we end up today's conversation. So let's talk a little bit about what happened and what came out in the WISD report or the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates. And I usually go through this summary stuff and compare what does the industry expect to see versus what we actually saw. So the blue row on the very top is what the average trade estimate is. And this is the average of about 20 or 25 different entities that will submit their reports in to either, in this case, it was Reuters or Bloomberg, or I know there's some other news agencies that do their own surveys. Okay, so the blue line on top is what the average trade estimate was. We say, well, what is the highest trade estimate, the lowest trade estimate? The highlighted black line in the middle is the numbers we got last month. So you can see what the change from last month to this month is. And then the very bottom line, red is the actual number we received. So I just want to remind everybody one more time that when we think about market response, does the market go up or down based on this new information? It's always referencing back to what we expect to see. So even though, for example, in one case, we may say, well, we expect to see the wheat numbers, the wheat ending stocks increase. Well, so the average trade estimate will reflect that. Now the question is, how does today's numbers, the numbers that are released compare to that industry expectation? Because that expectation is already built into the marketplace. All right, so what does it mean? What are the takeaways? Well, we did see a slight increase in ending stocks for wheat, for all wheat. And that's primarily because of a slight decrease in exports numbers. And that slight decrease in exports was because of these Chinese cancellations. So some of this was expected. If you notice that the trade really wasn't expecting any changes. Some were expecting a slight decrease or increase in ending stocks, decrease in exports, and that's what we got. It wasn't necessarily a lot of shock value to that, but it was something that we have to pay attention to. Now when we go to corn and soybeans, very different story. Basically, USDA left those both the production as well as the consumption numbers unchanged. So if you look at the numbers from February versus the numbers from March, right on target just exactly the same. And when you look at the blue row on very top, yep, we weren't expecting big adjustments and we didn't get any adjustments. So now let's go kind of shift gears into what's going on in South America. And this is where there is some disagreement between kind of what USDA is seeing and what their current forecasts are versus what the private traders and analysts and some of the both Brazilian and Argentine consulting companies. Okay, so we have Argentine corn and soybean production. We've got Brazilian corn and soybean production. Again, the blue on the very top is what the average trade guess was. This is what they expected to see. The black line towards the bottom highlighted is what we saw last month. And then we look at what is the current number. So turning to Argentina, USDA did increase the forecast for Argentine corn by a little bit. Again, weather conditions this year out of Argentina have been very favorable. They did have some hot weather earlier on or kind of in mid-season. But it has now cooled, they've been getting the rain showers. And in general, the growing conditions have been very favorable. And so the corn number went up just a little bit. The soybean number was essentially unchanged. Shifting to Brazil, again, I explained this before in some previous recordings. Brazil has two corn crops, one for first crop corn, which is now starting to be harvested. And then we have the second crop corn, which is just about done being planted. So this corn column represents all corn production in Brazil. So the first crop corn, the one that's just being harvested now, is about 25% of the production. Second crop corn, which is essentially just done planting and is starting to grow, is about 75% of the production. So very heavily weighted towards the second crop or safrina crop. Now right now, USDA, because that safrina crop is very young, it's very kind of slowly developing, didn't make any changes to the total corn output in Brazil. The one number on the far right hand column that most traders were watching closely was to see, well, will USDA bring the Brazilian soybean production now down? Okay, so when we look at the range of trade expectations, not only for this survey, but also for the private analysts, what they actually think is going to happen, we still have this very wide range. Now USDA did reduce their production forecast a tiny bit, but that was much smaller reduction than what most of the traders were expecting. The 152, 153 number was the most common number that I had seen. We got a 155. Now that's still down pretty substantially from last year's, which is closer to 160, actually probably 161. But so there is a kind of a smaller crop there, but that 155 is still very, very large. So again, just to wrap this on a bow, the range of private estimates for the soybean production out of Brazil is still exceptionally wide for this time period. The range that I have seen, the most recent one is about 156 on the high end. And the lowest I've seen so far is a 135, okay? And so there is this really still a lot of level of uncertainty on what is the size of this crop, which is again surprising given the fact at how far the Brazilians are through their soybean harvest. So let's shift gears a little bit. Just a couple of days ago, the Statistics Canada did their version of our USDA perspective plantings report. So they did a large survey of Canadian farmers and asked them what are you intending to plant in 2024? And so this table summarizes that information. So if you notice that the crop is listed on left-hand column projections. This is kind of the range that the private analysts and forecasters were expecting. We have the 2024 estimates towards the middle and we have last year's number 2023 as the reference point. Now, as I'm talking, you can visually go down and see that in general we're not expecting large shifts or adjustments in planted acreage on the Canadian side. And the reason I bring this up is because obviously for a lot of crops that we grow here in North Dakota, we have very similar, not only production factors, but very similar crops that we grow. So what happens in Canada can have a pretty substantial impact on prices in particular here in North Dakota. So as you go down the list here, I highlighted two crops, obviously canola and all wheat. Now all wheat would include spring wheat, a tiny bit of winter wheat, and then Durham. Now, we did split out the Durham numbers separately just for reporting purposes. So the two things that most everybody's watching, of course, number one is the canola number. And then number two, what about the all wheat number? Okay, so what does this all mean? Let's look at the canola first. We were expecting either kind of a flat or slightly down. So let's look at the range of estimates from the private analysts from 2021 to 22.7. Last year we had 22, a little bit over 22, this year a little bit over 21. And so there is an expectation that we'll see a slight decrease in canola acreage, which again is a little bit surprising given, I mean canola prices aren't great, but they're not horrible either. And I know I've had some conversations about, well, given the increase in crushing capacity going on in Canada right now, shouldn't they be planting more canola acres? And well, not necessarily because they are running at this rotation issues. And again, it's about relative profitability. So now let's drop down to the all wheat number. Pretty much a flat, basically a push from last year. Even though there was kind of a range of trade guesses, it was a pretty tight range. Now I do want to point to the Durham number on the very bottom. So if you look at Durham Acres specifically, a slight increase in Durham, which to me suggests that there will be a slight, potentially slight decrease in spring wheat acres. And now that's also consistent with kind of the discussions I've had with farmers in western North Dakota. It sounds like those guys that do both Durham and spring wheat are kind of leaning towards more of a Durham plantings. Slight increase in Durham acres, a slight decrease in spring wheat acres. So put this to kind of finalize my statements here to kind of put an end to my section. I did, on the Canadian planting standpoint, I did want to give you some historical perspective. So the little dots on the far right hand side is the information I just showed you in tabular form, only this is in graphical form. And so you can kind of see historically going back for about the last 20, 23 years, 22 years, what that looks like. Okay, so when we think about shifting of acres and volatility of acres and all that kind of thing that's going on. I did want to point out that the two largest crops would not a surprise in Canada are canola, which is the black line. And then the brown line is spring wheat. And so you can see that there was a slight decrease in the canola, basically a slight push to a slight decrease in the spring wheat numbers. Everything else is relatively stable. Some of those acres that are not going to go into canola will likely be shifted into the pulse crops. Because we did see a slight increase in the pulse crops. So with that, I will stop my portion. I'll stop sharing here. I will let Tim Petrie take over and talk about the livestock sector. Good afternoon, everybody. Tim Petrie here again with you and just going to quickly go through some kind of more on replacement heifers over what I did last time and look at the current markets and then even do a little bit on lamb since it's getting close to Easter. So move along here. I showed you both of these charts last time, but they were in a different context. They were really on the bottom of the beef cow slide to show you how the replacement heifers in the US and then the replacement heifers in North Dakota correspond with the beef cows. And so today more of my emphasis just going to be on replacement heifers. And because after all, when we go into major herd rebuilding in earnest, that's when we're going to have the highest cyclical prices. And we haven't really started that yet. And so that is the big question in the industry is when will beef herd rebuilding start in earnest? And one way we can do that is with replacement heifers. And the other, of course, we could kill less cows. But again, it's a somewhat slow process because a heifer calf hailed back this from, you know, now from this last year's calf crop might get bred this summer. Hopefully if it was replaced, maybe get bred this summer as a calf the next year, and that beef production doesn't show that until the next. So, you know, it takes a long time and beef production continues down when we're in the replacement mode because we're putting a less heifers in the feed on so on. Right now we have a record number of heifers still on feed that we're working through is why we have one of the reasons why we have more cattle on feed. But anyway, we're expecting kind of a big turnaround in that. And and we'll look at the potential then for for increasing heifers. Now, I'll just look at the charts here for a minute. Then I have some more comments on them on the top chart that I showed you last time, so I'm not going to explain that as much anyway. But you see on that chart, January, these are numbers as of January 1st, replacement heifers there at, you know, 4.8 million head is very historically low going back decades is that thing. And and kind of another thing, and I guess I did mention this last time, but last the last cycle, I'm getting questions from producers because they're saying, well, the highs didn't last very long in the last cycle. And so we're kind of worried they're up, you know, their record levels. Now, are they going to crash again like they did before? But there are some things right on this chart that kind of point that that might not be the case, because that blue arrow there 2014 isn't on the top chart. But in 2015 is. But that blue arrow there are the US replacement heifers that we had in 2014, and you see we had a lot more heifers on hand in 2014, 2014, just back when the last previous record high prices to start rebuilding the herd compared to, you know, we're down at 4.8 million in in 2024. The other thing that I did mention this last time and maybe more on it in a little bit is this replacement heifer category, both in the US. And then when we talk about North Dakota on the bottom are really two crops of replacement heifers. It's those 800 pound heifers now that we expect might go in with a bull this summer. And then it's also the heifers that were bred this past summer that are expected to start calving here sooner. We'll have here in the spring. So it's two sets, but the whole both categories are relatively low. However, the replacement heifers, these 800 pound heifers now that might go into the bull next summer, that is a very dynamic number because we do have a lot of heifers on January 1st that weren't. Producers said that they weren't replacement heifers. But again, what they do there is they put down what they're keeping for replacement heifers. There are a lot of heifers at the markets right now that are bringing premium prices. In fact, there are 800 pound heifers bringing steer prices because people are buying them to make replacement heifers out of them. So that category can change. And that really depends on two things. That's prices and expected prices for calves next fall and beyond. And then also moisture conditions. And so we know prices are record high and probably going to continue. The big question mark then is on weather that we'll talk about in a minute. So then let's go down and just again to give you an update on North Dakota. Although the US went down in a relatively no no numbers. North Dakota did increase heifers up about 6,000 head. We were at about 157,000 there last year and and you know, up to about 163 there. So we did see an increase there. And so that's kind of what I want to talk about a little more geographically other than North Dakota and then look at the weather. So you did not see this chart last time. And so this is the change in beef replacements year over year. January 1, 2023 to 2024. And the red is the states that had an increase in heifers. And the blue is the states that had a decline in heifers. And then the the white states, there were no change. So significantly on this chart is the Northern Plains is where most of the increase in replacement interest in in replacement heifers was, you know, Northern Plains right there in Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, that's the Northern Plains. Every state up here was high. And one of the reasons when we look at weather that we'll see is that we had better weather conditions than in the South, the Appalachian states there, you know, through Kentucky and Tennessee. And down into Arkansas and Mississippi and there we'll see in the chart in a minute and just want to show you the numbers here. When we get into the looking at the at the weather and the drought monitor, they were really suffering about the time when the survey was being taken and the decision of what to do with calves was made. So just keep in mind then that Northern Plains up there is where, you know, significant area region wise for the US of where replacement heifers kept, you know, we did get some rain down in Texas. And well, they're the biggest cowcalf state and the biggest state for replacement. So they had some down there, but but kind of less around them in Oklahoma even. So just just concentrate on the Northern Plains. So up here, then, I've got a whole variety of charts to show you. And so in the let's start in the upper right hand corner is back at the end of October of 2022, that was the height of the drought. And since then, the drought has been improving. But we had been getting worries. You know, it started getting dry in 2020. Then 2021 was really bad, particularly in North Dakota. And then into 2022 still dry here. And then drought really set in in the Southern Plains and all over California. Just see how dark that drought monitor chart is all the way from the Appalachian state, just the East Coast was was relatively drought free. Otherwise, pretty much the whole rest of the US was very, very dry. So on the bottom chart to that, then, is when the drought monitor comes out, USDA has a corresponding chart to show you beef cows and how drought is affecting them. So the dark green is where the major cow calf major beef cows are. And the lighter greener would be minor areas. And then the red dashed lines are drought corresponding to the chart above. So key to us there is circled in purple is at the end of October, 76 percent of our beef cows were in drought. That's why we had, you know, as of now, at least five straight years of liquidation was dry, no forage, and so a lot of liquidation of beef cows. But that was the epicenter of drought at the end of 22 throughout 2023. We did get improvement there. So then go over to the left hand side is I picked early in January there, the January 9th drought monitor. And you see a lot of improvement there in color on the top. The Appalachian states, like I mentioned before, had still had drought, worse drought than they had in 2022, in fact, and in New Mexico and so on. But up through where that major cattle area is a lot of white on the chart, North Dakota, South Dakota, in the Eastern Montana, down in Nebraska, those states that showed higher numbers of replacement have first saw improvement. And again, right here January 9th, that's when the producers were filling out their survey because the survey is sent out to 1st of January. And it says as of January 1st, what how many cattle did you have? And so going down to the bottom, then, by right at that time, January 9th, we had really improved and but still had 30 percent of our beef cow inventory. And that would be the Appalachian states in particular. Iowa was dry, Northern North Dakota was dry and through Kansas and drought in little Texas and so on. So still we had 30 percent of the cattle drop, but much improved. That's why we saw the Northern Plains states there, they're in white showing more replacement efforts because there is a lot of interest in rebuilding herd throughout the U.S. with obviously with record high prices, the way they are that we'll see. So then we dropped down here on the right hand side, then was February 20th. And that was when conditions were really the best in the U.S. And and a lot of white there, you know, by a lot of rain in the South and East and in California mudslides and so on. And so, you know, quite an improvement just from what we looked at in on January 9th. Go down, we have then by February 20th, only 15 percent of the beef cow herd was in drought. So again, that's what has been sparking these replacement heifer prices and for the even for the unbred ones that are selling for steer prices. And so keep that in mind. However, now we go to this morning's drought monitor on the left hand side. And unfortunately, you know, you're all aware of this, but up here in the Northern Plains in North Dakota, we are showing up with more drought monitor intensity up through Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana. Again, some in South Dakota isn't quite as bad off. But again, that's the area where there were those replacement heifers were. And it's getting dry there simply because it's a lack of snow and a very, very little snow. And so that is concerning. But however, some spring rains could remedy that. And we don't know if that's going to happen or not. And, you know, the snow that we, if we do have quite a bit of snow, a lot of that runs off anyway, so it's the spring rains that are important. But, you know, we are showing up dry in the area there that had really had the interest in replacement heifers and down on the bottom. Then we're starting to creep back up in the number of beef cows in the drought area back up to 18 percent. So weather is the big thing to watch, obviously, on when we will can really start herd real building and get more replacement heifers and so on. And in fact, sell less beef cows into slaughter as well. So then we'll just jump to the calf prices here. Here's our 550 to six weight calves in North Dakota. And again, you know, cyclically our last cyclical lows in 2020. And and starting here, the green line is 2021 and then purple 2022. The blue line was last year. Just cyclical improvement, really nice improvement last year. The two biggest, well, the three biggest things that affect feeder cattle prices. Number one supply and then it's fed cattle prices and then it's corn prices. And so supplies continued to decline and fed cattle prices moved up to record high levels up to, you know, up in the 180s, 180, five and so on. And, you know, that and and then the other big thing was the decline in corn prices that Frayn has talked about before, you know, in Omaha, where our cattle go to be fed out, you know, a year ago with $7 corn and now for and so change calf prices, 10 cents change or change corn, 10 cents, change calf prices, a buck in the opposite direction. So the three major things that can affect calf prices all came together on a positive note, all really good. So calf prices went up significantly last year. And, you know, trading $90 is a hundred weight higher in some cases. And now this year, starting off again right now, last week were $87 higher. And the average last week for five, 50 to six weight steers in North Dakota was up there at, you know, three, about three, 20, I guess, over three, 23, something like that. Almost $90 higher than last year. So we're continuing the march with low corn prices, record high fed cattle prices and an even lower supply of calves than we had last year. And so we're expecting good prices to continue on, you know, on on kind of the seasonal pattern that we've had before move to the heavyweight yearling prices, the same thing happening there, you know, cyclically up a really good improvement last year with corn going down in record high fed cattle prices and so on this year again, we're $65 higher last week than we were last year all time of record high prices. And there's the futures market there for, you know, our cash market now has been running higher than the future futures market anyway, by a few dollars. So going over there. But looking at the fall futures all up there, a little right around or a little above $270 and, you know, compared to 58, I guess, it was last week's prices. So again, cyclically higher prices expected again for those major things that are affecting feeder cattle prices and just a little bit on beef cattle, cow prices in again, they're soaring like they usually do in the spring and cyclically up and and and trading up there on my chart there at $108 last week. Again, as I explained this before, but just to reiterate, my chart here is really kind of the low end of calves because these are 90% lean cows, which would be a broken mouth cow that had a calf on all summer. And so would be, you know, on the thin side and lower body condition score and old cows, but there are a lot of cows just like calf prices now that have a, you know, are are 600 to 800 pound calves, 500 to 800, whatever you want. Or, you know, there's a $30, $40 range for the same weight and greater calves at the market for all the factors that affect them and kind of on the same side of the cows, we have younger cows, fleshier cows and so on, rather than than the thin, low body weight body score that my chart shows, you know, up on the upper right hand side, if you can see that, you know, we've got cows. Actually, we've got cows selling up to 140, but a lot of cows selling from that 115 up to 122 area too. So, you know, lower cow slaughter so far this year, as we expected, with the better weather and so on and the less cows to sell. And so really supported by lower supplies there. And then obviously a good demand for hamburger as well with some concerns about the economy. And so just kind of give you an update on on breadcows and heifers. And so I usually use Stockman's not favoring that over any other market. But the nice thing about Stockman's is they have a sale the same day every year and and have the information on the internet so you can go back to the same day, year after year and find out how we're how we're comparing. And so, you know, this Tuesday, March 12th was actually Tuesday, March 14th last year, as you see on the chart. But so young stock cows in the upper left hand portion there, the up some the top ones at thirty two seventy five down to nineteen seventy five. But an average there of twenty seven forty two. That compares to twenty twenty three at eighteen ninety seven. So they're up about eight hundred or up eight hundred and forty five dollars. So up eight hundred dollars or so as probably expected with cap prices up the way they are down at the bottom. Solid mouth stock cows again up about eight hundred dollars there. Seven ninety two over in the bread effort side, you know, up about nine hundred dollars in the short term cows, the broken mouth cows and so on. Still up about five hundred dollars. So, you know, that can be expected. They are selling for higher. There's expectation for even, you know, we saw what cap prices are. And expectations there. So that is funneling through and showing that there is interest in cows and interest in in herdery building. So a little bit now this, you know, the spring ethnic and religious holidays are coming up, you know, up in our part of the country here. We think about Easter, but there are a lot of other religious ethnic holidays that come at this same time with Passover and Ramadan and several others. So we call it the spring holiday season is a peak demand for lamb prices for that holiday season. And again, the lamb market has been really, really volatile the last few years. And, you know, just the purple line there in twenty twenty two is, you know, kind of when we had our previous historic highs there and Easter is early this year, March 31st, compared to sometimes in mid-April. So that kind of affects the market as well. But then a big decline in lamb prices there in twenty two for a variety of reasons. Well, you know, back due to COVID and stocks being bear and then then replenishing and some economic concerns and so on. But anyway, the red line there is this year's lamb prices again doing very well pre holiday as they usually do seasonally up there at, you know, around two twenty or so on an average. Again, there's a range in lamb prices as well, but but strong demand. And again, lamb is the highest price meat that we have. And so any economic concerns and so on could affect that. But again, one of the nice things for lamb demand is that that religious ethnic demand in the spring for those holidays is that a lot of those folks do pay up for the lambs because they you know, that's what they want to have for Easter. So again, the lamb market is is doing well too. After lots of gyrations in the last couple of years. So with that, I guess we can open it up for questions to for any of us on. Something's good. Thanks, Tim. And we do have a couple of questions already and we'll actually start with you, Frank, comment was made about a few large farms in Brazil declaring bankruptcy and potential implications on crop supply, corn and soybeans. So so first, the the the stories and the and the press releases from Brazil that there is some financial stress showing up at the farm gate is are real. Now, I don't know exactly how widespread that is. So we always hear about, you know, these these events and you start wondering, well, is this just a narrow pocket that's having some problems or is this something that's widespread across the entire country? Now, when it comes to Brazil, let me just explain really quickly why this this is occurring when we talk a lot about exchange rates and the value of the US dollar, etc. Well, when we'll compare the Brazilian real versus the US dollar, you know, the Brazilian real has been softening, meaning that there the value of their currency is not as as as high as ours. It really essentially means that their economy is not as robust as it is here in the US. Well, yes, that makes exporting things a lot easier because, again, you're exporting something that would that would generate more, you know, kind of more value. The challenge is when you try and buy something off of the international market, it gets much more expensive. OK, and that's really been the core challenge for Brazilian farmers is that they use and purchase a lot of their inputs, fertilizer, seed, a lot of the machinery, parts from the international market. And so those expenses have gone up very, very quickly in putting up a very kind of squeeze on the profitability levels. Now, my understanding is, yes, there are some exceptionally large farms in Brazil, but I I'm not hearing that those are large enough or that there's a large enough area that's actually causing kind of supply problems or production problems. So I don't note that this challenge is big enough and widespread enough to really expect and adjust the potential bushels produced, at least not yet. That's probably if it does happen, it'll be much more take a much bigger event and be something on a much larger scale. So to me, it doesn't surprise me at all that the production numbers have been adjusting downward slowly, but I don't think it's because of farm failures. I think it's much more because of of just poor weather and yield reports coming in below expectations. Yeah, maybe maybe I had some comments there. Frane, you've mentioned on this webinar before of, you know, there's increasing acres going into, I guess, particularly soybeans and corn, Brazil and so on, and that that it's not coming out of the forest, it's coming out of pasture land. Obviously, then that comes back to the cattle sector and the beef cattle sector has been increasing in Brazil up until recently, but now is not for the very same reason that you've been talking about is, you know, soybean prices up until recently and corn prices have been very good. And so that's why they are breaking up pasture land and why the beef cattle herd is kind of leveled out and going down because of those acres going into into cropland. Yep. Seriously. Yeah, I see that. And then there was another question about the Texas wildfires. And yeah, I guess I should have thought of that. And I know some of the television stations, KF wire and some of those picked up, but I'll mention that we're seeing the devastation in Texas. And for those producers hit, you know, it's just just terrible from a US, both a US cattle price standpoint and a on the other hand, some of the TV stations are talking about the consumer side and will that affect beef prices? Those Texas wildfires will have no impact on cattle prices in North Dakota or in the US, a matter of fact, and really no impact on beef prices. But it is devastating for that area, just like, you know, when we had our blizzard here a couple of years ago and lost cows and calves and devastating for those ranchers, but had no impact on the US, kind of the same thing. From the Texas standpoint, there's numbers still aren't in. They're saying maybe up there in the panhandle around 6,000 beef cows possibly being lost, even numbers as high as 8,000, maybe less than that, they're deciding, but that's up there in the panhandle. Texas is the largest beef cow state. They have four over four million beef cows. So even if they lost 6,000 head, that's, you know, a little over 1% of their beef cow herd. And then, you know, you go to the US where we have 28 million beef cows, 5,000, we slaughter about 12,000 beef cows and 12,000 dairy cows every day is would be a normal slaughter. So I'm not trying to downplay the importance of those producers that their whole ranch is wiped out, including hay and their cattle and fences. And in some cases, barns, even their houses is just devastating, very, very devastating. But from a US standpoint, again, we'll not have a major impact on prices. The one thing even that we could feel in effect of up here in North Dakota would be on the availability and the price of fencing supplies, because all of a sudden we've got thousands of miles of fence that are burned that need to be replaced. And so that means that fencing supplies are going to be funneled that way. So that is one thing on the on the input side that we could see some impact in North Dakota, but but not on cattle and or beef prices. Great. Thanks, Tim. So high tail at the TSC is what you're saying. Yeah, for sure. Unless you want to be benevolent and say, let them have them. And and we'll use some baling wire again. Sure. Sounds good. Well, I want to thank our presenters and the individuals who asked questions this month. I thought it went very well and we made it to almost 50 minutes. So even with just the two of you, you know, we had some high quality content or at least a lot of content. Don't turn up loose and tell us there's extra time because. And we'll be back next month on April 11th. Quick turnaround for Frayn with the WASDE being released that morning. But we'll we'll see you then with more information on what's happening in egg markets. Thanks. Thank you, everybody. Thanks, everybody.