 Well, good afternoon and welcome to today's Agricultural Market Situation and Outlook webinar brought to you by Andes to Extension Agribusiness. We'll follow the same format as we have since we started a series of presentations by a few Extension economic specialists and then the Q&A at the end. If you'd like to ask questions, you can either enter them via the Q&A or the chat box and we'll save those for the end. If you have any other technical issues, you can put them in the chat and we'll see if we can't troubleshoot for you. But with that, we're going to go ahead and hand it over to Brian Parman. Hey, thanks, Dave. So again, it's been a couple of weeks since the last one of these and so I always try to do sort of a macro update on the biggest story, one of the biggest stories through all this COVID stuff, the rampant unemployment that has been unprecedented unemployment, basically at least since the Depression era. And so my first slide, it kind of shows the weekly initial jobless claims that as a reminder, this chart ends at Saturday last week, so they update it Thursday morning every Thursday and the data reporting period is the Saturday of the week prior. And last week, for the first time, not last Saturday, but the one before, was the first time that initial jobless claims had dropped below one million new jobless claims. You can see that dip there at the right end of the graph. You see how it trended down and it was around 900,000. And then today, they thought the projection was that this most recent report was going to be around that same 900,000 mark, and it increased over almost to 1.1 million. So we had an increase from last reporting period to this reporting period, not huge by the standards that we've established since April or actually March of this year, but an increase nonetheless. And again, I always like to say that under normal circumstances, 900,000 a million, that would be a record for new unemployment filings. But when you compare it to the 6 million that had happened before, it's obviously a lot less. And it has been trending in the right direction. But we can see this kind of flattening out. And these initial jobless claims have been hovering around that million mark every single week for about the last month or so. So my next chart, and again, these charts are put out by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis who tracks heavily this data, shows continuous jobless claim. And that's been trending downwards. There was a slight uptick there around the end of July, early August. But so far, it's been trending downwards and getting closer to that 12 million mark, which it spiked up there well over 24 million in May during the height of the surge and new unemployment filers it's trended down since. And it's been kind of moving in a steady direction, which basically implies that jobs have been coming back faster than new layoffs have been occurring. So more jobs are being created week over week or at least coming back than the million folks who are filing for new unemployment. And then my other Federal Reserve chart on unemployment just shows the unemployment rate. The last one they put out for June was around 11, just over 11 percent. So it's dropped a percent. It's down to 10 percent. And this is still high. This is higher than it was during the financial crisis, this 10.2 percent. It's still well above that. But it is trending in the right direction. Things are improving in terms of with the reopenings and everything else, we're seeing a lower unemployment rate. But keeping in mind that there's a very narrow definition of unemployment that is utilized by the federal government and the Federal Reserve when they report this, people who have what's called discouraged workers, people who've given up looking for a job or people who have, they're considered exiting the labor force and they're not counted here. So frustrated workers and then you have underemployed, also not counted here. If you were a structural engineer and you lost your job somehow and you wound up taking whatever job you could find at a much lower salary, also would not be included in this. And that did happen. So I'm going to shift gears on the next one and talk a little bit about the stock market. And one of the reasons is, as I've spoken with my colleagues, most people in the U.S. have two big stores of wealth. They have their investments in stocks and bonds and those kind of things and then they're home. So I'm going to, I kind of want to talk about those two things real quick. And if we look at the stock market, the lowest point occurred in March of 2020, March 23rd to be exact, where the Dow was down to about, I'm going to use the Dow Jones, the S&P and the Dow typically follow each other. The NAS deck may or may not because they have a compilation of different businesses. But I just want to use the Dow because it's a standard industry standard that a lot of folks see a lot of and understand very well. But the low point was March 23rd at 18,592. And the high point was up around almost 29,000 or just over 29,000. I believe it was around 29,000 or so, which occurred back toward the middle of February. That was the record high. And we can see it pretty much dropped off pretty dramatically after that as the pandemic took hold. And ever since then it's been a slog, but it's been moving upwards at a pretty rapid rate, obviously not as fast as it fell, but it has been moving forward. And if you look at my next slide, folks talked about a V shape recovery. And a while back, I thought I didn't think it would be like a true V, just like a super ball hitting the ground and bouncing back up really quickly, that there would be a quick increase followed by a much slower, more gradual increase back to we get back to where somewhat close to where the market was. And when you look at this graph here with that black V, we can see that that's basically what's taken place is that we've moved, it's been slowly increasing, closed around 27,500. Yesterday, last time I looked, which is about 30 minutes ago, it was dead even today. Now, there's been some ups and downs as different reports come out and whatever else, but at the same time, it has been a fairly steady recovery. And some might even say that 27,28,000 is basically recovered, that just because we're not back to that record high yet, that we recovered a lot of this. And it's pretty interesting that this has happened in spite of the massive unemployment numbers that continue till now. Granted, things have improved a lot from where it was, but just how bad things were, the fact that 10.1 or 10.5% unemployment is a big improvement, just tells you exactly where we were. And it's been eye-opening for a lot of folks that the equities market, the stock market has somehow managed to regain a lot of what was lost in a fairly short amount of time, given how bad, how dire things were and how dire things still continue to be as far as unemployment goes. If we were at, this is a bit of speculation on my part, but if we were at a record high and all of a sudden we went to 10% unemployment, I can't imagine we would only drop from 29.5,000 to 27.5,000 in the Dow. It would be a much more dramatic drop. So I guess it's all in what you said is your benchmark as far as how bad things really are. Now, the next story well, like I was talking about was new house, home values. And at the beginning of the year, right after the pandemic hit, you look to the right of that chart, new housing starts. So these are new single family construction, new homes, new single family homes being constructed, dropped dramatically and rebounded just about as dramatically as well toward the middle of the summer. And some people in the real estate, the residential real estate market have basically said all that really happened was, and this includes buying of existing homes, it just shifted the peak buying period for people from the spring, which is normally the peak peak sales and purchase timeframe for residential homes. It just shifted it into the summer, more like instead of being March, April, May, and possibly June, it became May, June, July, and possibly August, it just shifted everything to the right on the calendar. And that's kind of what's being shown here that the rebound of new housing starts was pretty dramatic, not quite to the peak. And this is showing a if you go back, it'll show 10 years. And the big late later part of 2019 was a was a was a record for that period. And so it's almost recovered back to that and still much higher than 2018 and 2019. So my next slide shows what's happened with home prices. And they're up pretty dramatically this this year, up 6.8% annualized over the last three months. And whereas this happening, the Midwest had the highest as a region for home home price appreciation, Northeast the lowest and most other regions six and a half to eight and a half percent, six and a half to 7.8%. And the big reason a lot of that reason for that is tighter supply. Yes, we had these new housing starts coming back. But there are a lot of people looking to purchase a home, get out of apartments and those kind of things. And as a result, with with supplied, and then you have the supply side where some folks are just not looking to move or upgrade and sell their home. So you have this tight supply situation where former renters or current renters are looking to buy a home, some some spot of their own. And several people in the industry are attributing attributing that to what's gone on with the pandemic lockdowns, those kind of things spurring people on and not only that, but extremely low interest rates, historically low, making the purchase of a home or or the acquisition of money cheap, relatively cheap. And if you look at my next slide, though, there there is a there are areas where this isn't the case. Manhattan, for instance, there's there's been news articles in New York City about how rents have dropped remarkably condos, those kind of things because of the fact that folks are moving out of these wanting to leave these large cities. And then, you know, same thing in San Francisco, a place where median home values have been just had gone crazy, some media being over over a million. And a bunch of folks are fleeing these big urban areas. And there's another part to that too, is that telecommuting is becoming more and more widely accepted. Some of these companies in San Francisco have said they may do indefinite telecommuting like Google and whatnot. And so you don't have to live in the city to work there anymore. And so people are leaving and looking for less costly and less crowded places to live. And so it's not widespread. It's not everywhere that that property values are increasing. There is some decrease as people look to the suburbs a little bit more. Now, the final portion of my presentation, I want to talk about a little bit about some farm finance stuff. And there was a report that came out not too long ago from the Kansas City Federal Reserve. That's where the 10th district is that includes, you know, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, portions of Missouri, Colorado, etc. And they do a lot of surveying. And what you'll find a lot of times though North Dakota doesn't go one for one with the Southern Plains and that kind of area, they do tend to move in a similar direction. And what they found with their surveys is the farm loan repayment. So the chart on the left, the expectation for farm loan repayment rates in the next three months is extremely low, about 50% of where it was to the benchmark, which is 100. So so very low, maybe lower than the previous lowest point was 2016, the actual rate of loan repayment. And some folks are thinking that 2020 will be lower than that. So over the last 10 years, 2016 was roughly the worst. And that's pretty much true here in North Dakota as well. And a lot of bankers surveyed think 2020 is going to be as bad or possibly worse. And then the degree of repayment problems, that's the bar chart on the right. And what you see here is that minor repayment problems have increased, but major and severe. So pretty much across the board have increased the green, the sort of lighter green is severe repayment problems going from, you know, maybe 1% or so in 2015 to approximately three. And then major repayment problems going from maybe about 4% three, up to more like seven, seven and a half. So basically doubling. And then and then other people feeling the stress and minor repayment problems has also increased. So then my next slide shows what's called the diffusion index. And this is loan demand, repayment rates, basically, and then renewals or extensions. And if you look to the right, that sort of brown colored line, big increase in 2020. And a lot of that renewals or extensions coming issues from 2019 problems with cash flow and net farming comes from 2019 carrying into 2020. And then of course, you have a pandemic. So renewals or extensions, which is where you basically have to go in and either renew the loan or, or choose a new finance, new repayment plan due to the fact that you're having trouble making payments. You know, that that that increase now if you look at loan demand, which is the green sort of the lime green colored line, that actually went down. And the hypothesis from the Casey Fed on that is that CFAP and PPP loans basically diminished the expected the what would have normally been ag lender loan growth. So if you had renewals or extensions increasing, if you look at that chart, typically, they move together loan demand and renewals or extensions tend to go up together. Well, in this case, loan demand went down because they think that these other two sources, CFAP payments and PPP loans basically reduced demand from traditional your typical ag lender. My next slide, fund availability and deposits. Fund availability up really high, a lot of that due to the actions of the Fed, as well as if you look to the right, you see high, an extremely high rate of deposits in 2020. So if you're getting things like CFAP payments and those things, you're going to deposit into the bank so that the deposits goes up significantly. And so deposits at banks also affects fund availability as well as actions that the Fed takes such as lending money to banks so that they can then lend it to farmers or consumers or whoever the case may be. They can also mess with the required reserve ratio, which they haven't done, but they have made it a they have increased the amount of liquidity in the system to make loans more easily readily available and easy to get. And as in one part of that too is deposits increasing. And then finally, just real quick, I want to here's what interest rates have done. We've seen it in our area too. But you look there 20 last part of 2019 when the Fed started reducing interest rates due to issues with trade, and then they continued to decrease even further. And you've got real estate interest rates barely at five barely above 5% machinery and equipment and operating loans also dramatically lower off of the most recent high, which was that tail end of 2018. And obviously far lower than what you what we saw, you know, 15 years ago, where those interest rates were well above 8, 9% right prior to the financial crisis. In fact, all the actions taken and by the Federal Reserve, during and after the financial crisis still did not get interest rates as low as they are right now. And that just should give you an idea of how historically low these interest rates are right now that we're and that's been a big help, obviously, for anyone doing those renewals or extensions or those kind of things. So with that, that concludes my presentation for the day. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot them over to me. And I'll go ahead and turn over my turn it over to Dr. Franolson. Thank you. Alright, thank you, Brian. For this session, I guess I'd like to do a brief review of the USDA yield updates that came last week, as well as a little bit of a review of the impact of the Durasho storms that went through Iowa. So on my first slide, I just want to give you a background of what does USDA look at when they're, or how do they calculate or come up with these August yield updates? And the real focus is on corn and soybeans. Again, in today's session, I don't have time to go through all of this. But I did want to provide an update on the corn and soybeans, because those are the two numbers that really have the greatest impact on pricing in the short term. So up until this point, up until this August report, USDA has been using the trend line yield as as the reference point or the benchmark the starting point for for discussion purposes, all right, for their calculations. Well, in August is the first time that they conduct an operator survey. So the numbers that you're seeing coming out of of the report on in last week was a combination of operator survey, which was really the dominant source of information. And then a cross check they use some what they call remote sensing or satellite imagery to try and make some estimates of yield and yield potential as well. So on the operator survey side, there's about 20,350 farmers across the United States that are surveyed. So this is not USDA sitting back in their offices trying to do the math and calculate all of this. This is the really the yield estimates that we got last week, were primarily from farmer based surveys. The survey was conducted at the late July, the last couple days of July, as well as into the first part of August. And I've got August 6 highlighted there, because the Doracho storms that came through Iowa at occurred on August 10. So the impact of the storm and the potential the potential damage we're seeing has not been captured in this August report. Now for the remote sensing, again, these are satellite imagery. So this is a time series, meaning that USDA has been doing this imaging for many, many, many years, 20 to 25 years, I forget the exact number. And they use one of the satellites, the modus satellite, and they get the resolution about as tight and high as they can. So it's 250 meter resolution, which, you know, would be about 750 yards. 750 feet. So one pixel represents a very, very small plot of land. So the resolution is very high. On the next slide, I provided just a quick summary of the USDA supply demand estimates. This is the that supply demand table that we've gone through before, the the newest information, the August report is on the far right hand side. Again, I don't have time to go through all of that information today. But on my next slide, I just wanted to highlight and point out that this 181.5, which was the updated yield forecast is up about 1.7% from that trend line estimate. So going into this during the July report, the corn, the kind of the estimated or average corn yield was 178.5. The survey from farmers gave it a nationwide average about 181.5, again, about a 1.7% increase. On the next slide, I just wanted to give you an update also then on this comparison. So how far above trend line is this? So the gray line you see running through the middle of the graph is the trend line. So think about that as the average yield of corn that's been adjusted for technology, for better farming practices, for better varieties for precision egg, you know, the science of agriculture is just getting better. So you can see compared to average, this 181.5 is a little bit above average, but not dramatically, even though that is a record high national average yield in absolute terms. But if you think about it from a change from the average, it is a little above average, but not dramatically above average. And that's one of the things that I want to emphasize, because I do hear periodically some reports in the news media saying, oh, you know, this is a record corn yield. And technically, that's right. But I, in a marketing sense, I much prefer to think about it on how much above or below average or how much above or below the trend line are we with respect to the historical relationships. On the next slide, I tried to give you an idea. This is a picture. This is the actual kind of radar. I'm not radar. This is the satellite imagery. This is information that usually comes out in the secretary's briefing. So before the report is released, the people that put all this information together have a short briefing session for USDA secretary. And so this is some of the information they include that several years ago, they started releasing this to the general public. So you can kind of see the information that the Secretary of Agriculture is seeing. So what this is, is this is a satellite imagery. And it's a variation on the NDVI or the vegetative index information that's being collected. What this really represents, though, is the yield estimates. So they've taken the information from the satellite imagery, compiled it and tried to forecast or estimate yield. So this is the cross check number that USDA uses a satellite imagery relative to what farmers are telling them, you know, as far as field observations and what farmers feel their actual yields are going to be. So we get this relative sense of what areas are above average or below average, what are kind of the yield expectations. Now I want to be very careful the color gradation. And I know it's a little bit difficult probably to see on your screen. But the darker the color just means that the average corn yield is higher. So this isn't some kind of deviation from normal. This is just a an absolute calculation saying, what do we expect the corn yield to be? So the darker the green or the darker the blue, a higher yield, as you get into the yellows and browns, it's, it will be a lower average yield. But it's not necessarily based on history. It's just in an absolute term. How can we compare, for example, Iowa to say Western Kansas. And I'll come back to this photo in just a little bit, or re re re discuss this in just a little bit. But you can see where corn is produced. And also, where are those those those really high yielding regions of the country right now looks like Illinois has got a very good yield potential. A large portion of Iowa has a very good yield potential, especially into that northwest corner of the state. And in drifting into the southern Minnesota, the current forecast for southern Minnesota is a very very strong yield. And even into eastern Nebraska, there's some very, very high yield potentials as we get into eastern Nebraska. So on the next slide, I wanted to talk a little bit about this Doracho corn storm storm damage that was in Iowa. So to definition, Doracho is a Spanish term, it really reflects or talks about a very strong straight line movement. And so this is the storm that has that name is really it's a widespread storm, it's long lived. It's not just a short burst. It's a straight line wind. So there's no swirling or twisting like our tornado. And it's associated with a very fast moving group with thunderstorms that's essentially what happened in Iowa and eastern Illinois on August 10. So again, just after the surveys were taken by farmers, USDA was compiling all the data, the storm came through and all of a sudden gave a lot more uncertainty into what was happening in the marketplace. There has been a report I want to be a little cautious about how we use this, but it is some numbers that have been floating around in the press. There was a briefing that USDA risk management agency or RMA, that's the division of USDA that handles the crop insurance, where they had apparently a conference call and the Iowa Soybean Association was on that call. And what they were reporting was that USDA had estimated there was 8.18 about 8.2 million acres of corn and 5.6 million acres of soybeans in Iowa that had been impacted by this storm. So again, this is a very substantial storm that went through the middle of Iowa. I'll show you a picture or graphic here in just a minute to try and explain it. So we are starting to get some general idea of the size of the potential damage or size of the area that was impacted. But of course, on my next slide, I talk a little bit about the damage. Total damage is still unknown. And there's two pieces to this. Part of it is how many acres will be unharvestable. Corn was the one that was most heavily impacted because we're getting the the cob has been developed, the cob is now filling. And of course, just biologically, that cob is relatively high up on the plant. You get very, very, very strong winds. And if that corn stock lodges over, it's very possible that because of the weight of the cob and the corn swinging back and forth, if that breaks over, you know, and lays down, it's very, very difficult to harvest or get into the combine, as most of you will know. Now there were some a lot of fields that were that had lodged, they've been bent over, but that stock had not broken. And obviously, some of that will start to come back up again. But there's going to be a yield drag. We've already taken off some of the top end yielding the crop is the plant is going to use some energy, trying to straighten itself up and be able to continue to grow. And so there will be some yield loss on this. But again, we just don't know, it's a little bit early to find out exactly what's going to go on. Now NAS, the National Ag Statistics Service, the folks that do the surveys of farmers, said they would officially would resurvey the farmers in Iowa to try and adjust this corn and soybean yield estimates. So after the storm, they're going to go back and resurvey Iowa, and say, Okay, given what the damage that you see on your farm, on your fields, what do you expect that new yield potential to be? Now the date of the release of that information is unknown. If I were to guess right now, I suspect it would come out in September about the time that we have that September was the report. I suspect they're going to do the surveys later on in August now, try and have that information compiled to be able to release it in September. Now that's just my personal suspicion. I haven't gotten any word or any official news from USDA yet. There have been a few private estimates. There's been a few companies that have gone out based on a combination of satellite imagery and some discussions with farmers to try and estimate what, how many bushels have we lost? What's the potential yield loss nationally? And the numbers are ranging quite wide. And of course, nobody really knows for sure. But the current estimates, the rough back of the envelope stuff is anywhere from 200 to 500 million bushels of corn. And again, that's fairly substantial. And it is a very big number. But when you think about the new updated WASDE forecast was for 15.2, a little over 15.2 billion bushels, you know, we took up, you know, 200 to 500 million off of that. So we're essentially back to the yield potential. I mean, excuse me, the total production levels very similar to what we saw in the July WASDE report. So the increase that we got in in a bump in yield looks like we may have taken some of the way due to this storm damage. For soybeans, most of the consensus right now, at least the thought in the marketplace is that losses for the soybean crop, we're not going to be as large. Even though there are, I'm sure you saw some pictures within the social media world and on the web of soybean fields are laid flat. The area of damage for soybean is going to be much less than it will be for corn simply because it is lower the ground. And those high winds didn't do as much damage whipping it back and forth. The next slide I try and provide a very, it's kind of a satellite image that the National Weather Service came out with. Again, you may or may not be able to see this very well. This is literally a satellite picture and you can actually see the lighter shades of green in there where the crop has actually physically been damaged. And they tried to circle the areas or those parts of the state that were most heavily impacted. Just for reference for scale, on the far left hand side, you'll probably see the little notations for the highways, the interstate highways. On the left hand side, bottom left hand corner is Omaha, Nebraska. On the far right hand side where you see interstate 280 and 74 and 88, that's the Quad Cities. So that really shows a map of the entire state of Iowa, the eastern border, being the Quad Cities, and that 281, or yeah, Highway Interstate 280, 74 intersection. And on the west side, the Omaha intersection. So this is a very, very large piece of Iowa that had been had been damaged and impacted. On my next slide, I tried to, this is something that I did, I drew in that red circle. So this is not scientific by any ways, any, you know, any means here, but I did try and kind of circle and highlight the areas of Iowa that have been most heavily impacted. And the reason I wanted to superimpose it on this map was just to give you an idea of the potential bushels that might be lost. So if you're a farmer that lives in this area and your, your fields are flat right now, you're certainly feeling the pain. And I understand that. And I'm, I'm very sensitive to that. However, if you look at the US corn crop nationally, if you look at it in a bigger picture sense. Yes, there was going to be some lost in bushels in corn. But it's not going to, it's not going to be as large as a lot of people are leading you to believe. So I just want to be very, very careful about looking at the reports and all the pictures and images that you see in particular on social media, but also on on some of the news reports, and suddenly extrapolating that out and saying, Oh my God, the whole city, I mean, the whole state of Iowa and half of Illinois are going to be, you know, laid flat and they're not going to be able to harvest everything. That's an exaggeration. So I want to put this in context. We have seen a market bump. We saw a nice little rally in the corn and soybean markets after this storm hit. And a lot of that, in my view, has is really going to risk premium being put back in the marketplace because of the uncertainty about how much loss we actually have. You know, so, you know, the first initial reports we saw was it was going to be very, you know, a lot of damage. And I think some of those reports now are coming back and saying, Well, it's going to hurt. It's going to take the top end off of yield potential, but it's not necessarily going to be as totally devastating to the corn crop as we first expected. On my next slide, I just wanted to show another photo that's been circulated around. This is the Heartland Co-op Elevator in Luther, Iowa. One of the other things that has shown up is not only their crop damage, but also damage to grain storage or grain handling facilities, both at the farm level as well as at the commercial level. Now I get several I've had several questions over the last week or so and saying, Well, you know, is the loss of storage greater than the loss in crop or is it the other way around? And to be honest, we really don't know. I do know some of the bin companies have been have been saying they're going to come in and rebuild these as quickly as possible with the hopes of having them reconstructed by the time that harvest is ready. And obviously, if you still have that concrete pad, you know, you're going to have to strip away all of the all of the metalwork, but at least the concrete is there and cured. So if you can reconstruct it and be able to get some of the storage capacity back online, based on my kind of my personal back of the envelope calculations, the numbers I came up with that looks like the crop loss will be larger than the loss in bins. Although again, that that storage capacity number is a very shaky number. So I don't want to put a lot of weight on that. But I did want to point out that there's going to be some very important logistical problems also occurring in in those those regions that were impacted by the storm. On the next slide, I just want to shift gears a little bit and kick into soybeans. This is the supply demand table for soybeans. Again, the far right hand side is the August report. So those are the numbers that were updated. On my next slide, I just wanted to highlight one more time that the the yield was the part that changed those the yield forecast for soybeans was up pretty substantially actually a lot more than I think most traders and analysts were expecting. The trend line yield and I'll show you a graph of the graph of that in a moment before in the July report, the trend line yield that we were using was 49.8 bushels. This 53.3 that was reported in the in the in the was your report was actually a 7% increase above trend. And for soybeans, that's a pretty substantial increase in in one month. So if you look at the next slide, which shows the trend line, you can see is again, how far above or below average, are we okay, and I'm using trend line is that average reference point. So this is a not only a record potential yield in absolute bushels, but it's also a very, very high deviation or change from the average. We have seen back in 1994, we saw another very large spike in production. So it is possible to get these kinds of yields. But again, we're going to have to have a very nice fall to be able to have that that soybean crop fill out and the pods filled to actually I think in my opinion, give the yield and yield potential that everybody's talking about. So my last slide is just again this yield modeling system, the satellite yield modeling modeling system that USDA uses, again, the darker the green, the higher the yield and yield potential is. As we get into the lighter of yellows or browns, it's a little bit lower yield. It doesn't mean that they're they're lower relative to average, just it means they're lower in absolute bushels. So you can see again, Iowa looks like it's it's going to have a very good soybean crop. Illinois is going to have a very good soybean year again, the yields that they're coming at the yield forecast coming out of Illinois and Iowa were very, very strong. Some of that will be taken down a little bit because of the storm damage in Iowa. But again, as I said earlier, the damage to the soybean crop is not expected to be as large as the damage to the corn crop. So with that, I will I will stop here. I'm looking forward to your questions and I'll hand things over to Ron Hogan. Well, good afternoon. I wanted to update you a little bit on some of the farm program enrollment. I haven't I haven't presented this information for a while. So I thought you'd probably be interested in this. So my first slide, I'm going to talk about the the CFAP sign up. And I wanted to mention that at this point, only 63% of North Dakota producers have signed up for this. And and and I I would guess that almost most producers in the state would qualify and and would it be eligible for some kind of payments on that. So so the USDA did extend the deadline on a national basis. The numbers is somewhat less than that. But I wouldn't expect all producers in the in the nation would be signing up for it. But but quite a few. USDA did make some changes to the eligible list. And most notably notably, they added eggs. And they changed the sheep to all sheep. Previously, there was only sheep that was two years two years old or less. They extended the deadline from August 28 to September 11. We also heard now that you are we are going to be getting the 20% payment that was held back. Previous people previously the people that have signed up got 80%. You don't need to do anything. If you've already been signed up, you'll get that 20% automatically. For those that signed up now, they'll get the 100%. So the the next slide shows just talks about how easy it is to apply for this contact your FSA office. It's very streamlined online. You don't need to furnish any documentation. There's the website I have listed there farmers.gov slash CFAP. And Brian mentioned earlier that that PPP loans and CFAP payments could help some of the cash flow situations. But but but there's still a lot of producers that can sign up. So we're kind of still waiting for that the full data to show on how much it will help, I guess. So the next slide. I wanted to talk about the ARC PLC enrollment. And this spring, I was taking a lot of calls at the office on helping helping with it with our ARC PLC calculator and how to sign up. And and just from just from the informal survey that I that I did just by the calls I received, it kind of worked out about that way that most people went into PLC and and kind of did and didn't go into the ARC County. And also that ARC I see the the individual coverage would be increased from the previous farm bill. And as we all know, when they signed up for this time for the farm bill, it's only for the first two years. Last time for the 14 farm bill, when you signed up, you were locked in for the life of the farm bill. You could go back there, Dave, on the US numbers there, 70% you see signed up for PLC and 26% for the ARC County. Okay, the next slide then shows corn. And this is this is on a US basis. And the red numbers there are are are comparing to the 14 farm bill. So you can see the there was 72 million acres of corn signed up 75.5%. The last farm bill only 7%. So there was a monumental change there. Our County 17 million acres in last farm bill 92%. The ARC I see 5.9% were last farm bill, very minutely, just a less than less than a percent. So the next slide shows soybean soybeans from a US perspective. And this is kind of what we what most people projected based on the on the benchmark for soybeans, that more people went into our County for soybeans. Last, last farm bill was 96%. And it was down a little bit of 79% PLC was 14%. Last time was 4%. And also what's indicated there too, is the ARC individual cover coverage increased. But the reason that increased was the situation was just right for for certain producers that had had some prevent planting, they could really take advantage of the ARC individual individual coverage. And it's a it's a little more paperwork and a little more record keeping to be in that in that program. But it was worth it for the people that signed up. And my last slide shows the US wheat. And in this is everyone most people went into PLC 93% versus 44% from the last farm bill, our County was only only six, about 6% versus 54%. And then the ARC I see was about the same at 2%. And the biggest thing for corn and wheat, the reason most producers went into PLC was was the favorable reference prices compared to the market prices. So it's kind of a no brainer to sign up. And and then as I mentioned before, the benchmark look that looked look good for the soybeans. So the producers really did their homework this time, because they were familiar with the program from the last farm bill, and they really did their homework and sign and signed up. And this is going to be very interesting now when you can opt out and change your election every year for the rest of the farm bill, all things will all play out. But I wanted to present those numbers for you for for reference. So with that, I'll turn it over to Tim. Good afternoon, everybody, Tim Petrie, and you see extension livestock marketing comes go to the first. Yeah, you know, I'm going to follow up some of the things that Brian said, and also particularly what Frank said. Last time that we visited two weeks ago, I used the top chart saying, you know, that feeder cattle futures had for our fall feeder cattle futures had increased. This is the November feeder cattle futures that increased back up to pre COVID levels, which was, you know, quite interesting, given all the problems we had that we could come back and, you know, Brian talked about the V shaped with the gradual tail going up. And so we see that happening in the futures market, just like happened in the stock market. But I left off last time saying, you know, yeah, prices are for fall or adder above what they were last year. But the big one of the biggest reasons that they are were higher is because of corn prices declining, and the biggest risk to not having the similar prices in the fall would be for corn to go up. But then you see on the top slide when I left you last time, corn futures or these corn futures were contract close. And now we're all wondering, okay, there's that opposite relationship, a lot of times change corn 10 cents change, fall feeder cattle price is $1 opposite direction. How did the Doracho impact? And so on the bottom slide, then the green on the bottom right hand slide, circled in red. There you see that corn has freeing. So very well documented corn futures did go back up. But interestingly enough, we didn't see it quite as dramatic as maybe we would expected decline in feeder cattle futures. Yeah, they were up there about 150 and went down to 146. And then bounced back the last couple of days. And so now down just a couple dollars probably from the previous highs. And so, you know, it could have been worse. And what's really helping the market out is on the fed cattle site. So we go to the next slide. These are April 2021 live cattle futures. And then the green that's in black and in the green is the fed steer price. And so again, looking at the April contract April 2021 next year's April contract is what buyers of feeder catalyst fall will be using to to look at their break even and how much they can pay for feeder cattle you see is up there. 117 118 again, back to pre COVID levels and that V with the longer tail going up that Brian talked about is quite evident there. And and so the you know, the stock market and other things and obviously, other factors are getting I'll show you in a minute, but slaughter capacity getting back and in so on we're all factors there. So fed cattle April futures are back to where they were pre COVID and that's also helping on the feeder cattle site. So go to the next slide. Here are the actual cash prices in North Dakota, then that we've talked about almost every time since we started this webinar many months ago back in March. And the red line is what prices have done this year. And then the red squares are the fall feeder cattle futures, you know, right there on the August, September, October, right lockstep into last year's prices and the cash price you see even last week was just a hair above where they were last year, although when I talked more about it later, it's you know, we they had fallen off some because of the Tyson fire and then we go to the November futures up at 2018 even better than last year's prices. So again, that's quite an achievement given all the problems with COVID and so on. And then one other thing I've added now is the 2021 futures, the gold squares there on the left hand side of the chart. And so you see the January futures now, yesterday trading right at the last two years and, and above what they were this year, more like last year into the other spring months, we're trading through May and May, the last gold bar, gold square there is just lockstep on 2018 prices and again, it's a long ways out. We can even do better than that a fed cattle do better and we the pandemic does not get worse or whatever. And and also we got corn issues to deal with too. But that's what futures say now. So go to the next slide. The red line this is slaughter steer prices and again, the red line is this year and we've rebounded back to last year's prices at this time. Although I give a little disclaimer there, prices had been going down the last couple weeks, because last year you see the Tyson fire there on August 9 affected prices and they fell and continue to fall for the next several weeks. While we've been increasing fed cattle, and it looks like they might be up another dollar or two this week. And so the red squares there are the futures market for you know, trading August here and then in October and December are the red saying we're going to continue to see some improvement. And by October about, you know, up to right last year and by December may be off a little bit as further off. And then I added the 2021 futures in purple air showing you that for most of the year, the expectation is to do better than than this year. But by, you know, August in particular in October and December, showing about the same this year. But again, a long, long ways off. So go to the next slide. You know, looking in the left hand side, steer slaughter has recovered very nicely better than what most people thought would have been possible with all the issues at packing plants. And we have the OSHA and the Center for Disease Things, we have to do social distancing and and keep people apart and all that steer slaughter in most of July and August has been running even above last year and above the average. So man, you know, the packing industries really came through there and and doing a good job given the restrictions that they do have. So we're doing pretty well on steer slaughter. And then on the right hand side, although dressed weights are still high from an historic standpoint, that line is narrowing to the red line and last year, although still above. But we started off the year before we had the pandemic with higher slaughter weights, about as high, higher than they were then. And so, you know, that's why we have, you know, the improvement there is why we have better fed cattle price. So go to the next slide. And Ron, these are just some some updates. Most of you are aware of this, I'm not going to spend a lot of time the top one there. Ron already mentioned that CFAP applications have now been extended. And if you're livestock producer, and had livestock and back in the spring there years, you qualify in particular, you talked about the sheep have been added. The other thing, as I think most of you are aware, but you know, we have three counties eligible for CRP emergency hanging and grazing. And the good thing now about that, we used to have to apply on a county basis. And through the secretary and get a designation all that to get a county approval for emergency grazing. But now it's tied right to the drought monitor. And when we hit D two status, it automatically triggers hanging and grain after the hanging and grazing after the primary nesting season for us in North Dakota August 1. So that's been going on. We were at D two a month or more ago, and then we had some improvement. And now we're back. This is the most recent drought monitor on the left that came out this morning shows were back in D two status there in Burley, Morton and Oliver, but we'd already triggered emergency grazing. And then the other thing announced this week that commodity groups are really, really been pushing hard for is the ability to hang and graze PPP cover crops early. And initially, that was not allowed, but it just announced that now we will be able to do that on September 1 rather than November 1, which is a big help to us in North Dakota, because, you know, by November 1, there could be I hope not, but there could be snow on the ground. So, you know, there's the county's list. They're mainly Eastern counties that had more than 15% prevent plant, but that's a big help to so go to the my last slide just want to mention tomorrow at two o'clock is our monthly cattle and feed report. Again, these are for how many cattle were placed and marketed in July and the number of cattle and feed in August 1. And the expectation was that we placed quite a few more cattle there in July than last year, which is another signal that we're helping to get back to normal because we had a backlog of cattle feeder cattle waiting to get into feedlots, as well as cattle moving out of feedlots. And so again, that will be out tomorrow and see what happens. So with that, move back to Dave. Great. Thanks, Tim. Just a quick wrap up wrap up. Obviously you have some time for questions. A reminder that we're getting towards the end of summer and some of your minds summer might already be over. Our last scheduled webinar of the summer is September 3 at 1230. Again, the Thursday two weeks from today. Moving on to questions that there are any there aren't any up in the box right now, but feel free to use the question and answer tool. We can moderate using that or with the chat if you're more familiar, more comfortable using that. After the webinar, when you close your last window, you should be invited to complete a short survey. We appreciate if you did. I will have a recording of this webinar, hopefully up, you know, by the end of the day, as well as a copy of the PowerPoint at the two URLs on on the screen. I don't see any questions. I'll turn it back ask the panels if they had any other thoughts as others were presenting or things they'd like to add. And if not, we do have our first that we have our first question. Early indications on the quality of spring wheat and barley. I haven't had a chance to talk to a lot of people yet. So the sample size is pretty small. But I have talked to a few folks. On the barley side. I talked to one or two farmers in Western North Dakota, that it were we're kind of cleaning up their barley crop. Even though it had been very, very dry out there most of the growing season. barley yields were actually surprisingly good. They're there. I think the the sense that I got was they would be average yields what a farmer would consider an average yield. So they weren't really great. But they weren't necessarily horrible either. I think they were a bit surprised when they finally got the combines in instead of running because the the height of the crop was relatively short. quality was very good. It was making multi grade. I haven't heard anything yet out of kind of that north central region of the state up in the Minot area. I just again, I haven't had a lot of reports on the barley side. For wheat kind of a similar story. The Western North Dakota guys the ones they were really concerned because the wheat crop looked really short. And and they were concerned about the yields. Again, I think they were a bit surprised at the yields that were coming off the fields. Again, they're not fantastic by any means, but they weren't nearly as bad as they had expected. So I guess in in trying to filter that out and put an assessment to it, I would say that in most cases, I think in Western North Dakota, the quality reports so far had been pretty good. I think there was a few pockets that had some test weight issues, some some lighter thinner kernels that just didn't quite make it. But the actual average yields were were kind of typical for the area. Again, I haven't heard a lot of reports were only partway into the wheat harvest now. I haven't heard a lot of ports yet from the eastern portion of the state. But I don't know if anybody else has any comments, but that's kind of what I've heard so far. Thanks, Ryan. Give everybody just a few seconds. We want to ask a last question that we get to. If not, and it doesn't look look like anything's coming in, want to thank you for joining us today. Thank the panelists for presenting. And we'll see you in two weeks. Thanks.