Today is the addition of back roads of Illinois. We were bringing you lasted for farming sources and information sponsored by AgriGold, IMC's or Delgado, I am your host of today's program. We were glad you were here on today. We were talking about the crop tech
Career Magazine for Foreign Progress. We'll see what's new with technology on agronomy with Tom Beckman from Career Magazine for Foreign Progress. Then we were talking about the commodities markets with Joe Camp for Comstock. We were watching the tariffs for Canada and Mexico.
Yeah, I just see my tariffs wars in Colombia over the weekend about the immigration issue. We will be talking about that with Joe. Otherwise, this is your rural news sponsored by Agri Gold. This correspondence to the farm bill for this year.
The American farm bureau or top issue is the farm bill for this Congress in Washington DC. This farm bill is due to the bipartisan challenges in Washington. This winter is very concerning about the soil in the Midwest, especially in Central Illinois, probably because there is drought concern
Wisconsin, Minnesota. This was a mild winter and midwest. The National Cattle and Beef Convention will be held in San Antonio, Texas. There are many equipments for livestock and educational events in the convention in San Antonio. This has been your rural news for this afternoon.
This is your commodities markets, but this afternoon sponsored by cloudbumps studies, your commodity broker from Allendale Inc. will that the grains markets are up for today. Corn futures is up at 5 to 10 cents. Soybean futures is up at 3 to 6 cents. Chicago wheat is up at 4 to 6 cents.
Let's take a look for the livestock markets. Cattle is up at four to five cents. Feeder cattle is up at nine to six cents. Lean hogs is up at four to six. This has been your commodity markets for this afternoon. We were talking about the crop technology.
earlier magazine for foreign progress. Hey, Tom, how are you today? Well, I'm just fine. The harvest season in the Eastern Koon Belt. Could you tell us about that? Yes, it was on the dry side over here. So the harvest went out pretty early because it was also
The growing degree days ran ahead all year last year. So soybeans were actually got really too dry. But a lot of corn went out with that, having to be dried. And yield was not quite as good as 2023.
depending on where you were, was still pretty good. In Indiana, Tarspot hit a lot harder than in Illinois, and guys that didn't spray, that decided to, they didn't wanna vest anymore in the crop, especially in central, in South Central Indiana, a lot of them really got hit hard. Up to 30, 40 bushel, you'll lost to the Tarspot.
How was the growing days in Indiana? Tom. They ran the growing degree days ran ahead of schedule about all year, except for July was a little just slightly cooler than normal. And I think that really helped pollination. So I mean, we had some we had some 250 to 270 bushel corn guys that
either didn't weren't in a real bad tar spot area or that sprayed. But the growing degree days then came back in August, September. So that's what happened. Great to hear that.
I was the yield with corn and beans in Illinois in Deanna, Ohio. As the best I know, we'll start. I've already kind of said for Indiana, corn was above average, not quite as good as what the USDA expected. I think that's why the, and I was, I was not surprised when they dropped the final numbers because
itself hit a pretty big area in Indiana. In Ohio they got on the dry side by mid-July and southeastern Ohio went extremely dry drought. That's not their bigger crop area though but even in central west central Ohio it was drier than normal and knocked back
knockback soybean yields, especially. In Illinois, I think they had less problems with tar spot in general. I still think maybe corn wasn't quite up to what they might have thought at one time there in the mid-July, but overall, I think yields were pretty decent in most places.
Can you repeat that one for me? How about box damages for Indiana? If you're talking about insects and stuff, that kind of surprising one last year was that corn aphid, it's usually not a problem in conventional commercial corn.
It can be a problem in seed corn in the mbrads that have trouble, more trouble pollinating anyway. They're ready to spray for it. But in commercial corn, they got, they took off and it, some of the entomologists said they'd go away in some place that did, but in some places,
they persisted long enough that it did cause some yield loss. Some of the retailers, and especially in North Central Indiana and in Illinois, I thought that there were some places that were the aphids hurt. So whether they'll be back or not, there remains to be seen on the weather conditions this next year, and it'll be something they'll at least be aware of.
I'll repeat that one for me, see there. How about a corn lover worm? I think what you're asking about corn rootworm and stuff. I know that the Illinois endomologist and exciter has talked about pretty mild year for rootworms and there are very low numbers in most of Illinois.
There are places, especially in North, very far, Northern Illinois, where there's a lot of continuous corn and they've developed resistance to the traits. And there are, there are issues, but other than, you know, if you, if you're in an area where you know we have issues, you definitely need to pay attention to it. And most of the rest of the Illinois and Indiana,
It's been kind of low time for root worms and they don't seem to be causing a lot of problems. There are, you know, no way you do get still, you can get either Northern corn rootworm or the Western. So especially in the northern part of the state, it's something to still pay attention to.
Is there anything else that would you like to talk to our audience on spring planning season like this year? Well, another thing I can say and there's a. For it's again, it's the time to get those planners checked out and there's some. Farm shows coming up.
big one at Louisville. There's some others that'll have, you know, some of the newer technology. It might be a time, make sure your equipment's ready to go. Quite a bit of interest in some of the new sprayer systems that can do target spraying. John DRC and spray, but there are other precision plantings bringing out their vision, symphony vision systems.
This year on limited basis and they're using cameras and AI and and mechanical learning to machine learning to Spray they can spray green on green and select the weeds and There's more people starting to look at that It's kind of just kind of starting to get noticed But thank you'll be hearing quite about quite a bit about that this year and seeing those some of those in the field now and
Do you have any final thoughts on the hybrid for this year? No, I think you just need to look at your past results, see what your seeds are saying. I had a chance to visit the seed testing lab.
here recently and doing cold tests. And really, the companies do a good job of testing out and putting lots of seed where they belong. And I think you can probably better spend your time making sure every row of the planter is planting at the right depth than maybe worrying about whether like doing cold tests on seed. There are labs that do it. There's a couple in South Dakota, but I think maybe putting your time into
Other areas might be more beneficial. Thanks, Tom. I enjoyed our conversation for today. Thank you. Thanks for asking me and hope everybody stays warm. This is Tom Bachman from barrier magazine for foreign progress on back roads of Illinois.
We were talking about what's impact on the corn markets for tariffs for right now. Otherwise, we were talking about that with Joe Kim. He is a commodity broker from Comstock.
Good question. And we had a taste of that talk again over this last weekend. The latest was regarding Columbia, which came as a bit of a surprise, but it makes sense. It's there linked closely to these changes in immigration policy. There was a back and forth over Saturday and Sunday. It seemed like the threat of some tariffs being charged against the US, which would proportionally
have a greater impact potentially on the corn market of US and Columbia are really close trading partners for agricultural exports and the corn number one. And that includes Columbia, you know, recent years being as much as a top five buyer of US corn. And this year, having stacked up some big commitment totals as well. So that's just a preview, though, of what could still be ahead. I know
President Trump has mentioned February 1st is the next deadline for what can be new tariff announcements that could include China, Canada, Mexico. But more and more talk about there being maybe a broad-based universal type tariff on all goods coming into the country. And so when you think about AG exports, tariffs don't necessarily apply when you have US tariffs levied on goods coming from other countries.
what we learned from the first time around with President Trump was that where you come into a potentially negative ramification for ag markets is that these countries that we tariff put retaliatory tariffs back on our goods. And that was the case with China and also Canada, Mexico, other countries, whether steel tariffs, those were in the news again today, just a lot of moving parts. And it sets us up for another
big weekend on political developments in a wait and see type approach. But of course, more of this week to go before then. And it's already been a lot of action down to start and then up here on Tuesday for Grand Futures. Because the numbers to that very Joe. I'm sorry. That was the question about imports.
What is the important numbers to that point, Mary? Joe? You've got a ton of important data on exports that could change in a hurry. And I actually read the Comstock report about this Friday, an export update, just generally talking about where we are in terms of the sales pace, corn, soybeans, and wheat. And it's a big deal.
to one factor at Columbia, but of course also China as well, even with the Chinese demand weakened compared to what we've been used to. They still account for over half of the soybean sales that we have on the books today. In general, both corn and soybeans, though, the sales pace since the beginning of the year, they're both running well ahead of where we need to be the
to meet the USDA targets. And so that's one point, you know, I'm looking for in future USDA updates would be the higher usage on exports potentially being another source of cut to the carryout figures. So it's something to watch out for for sure, especially when you talk about these big buyers of our ag products. We mentioned Columbia, US, Mexico, Canada, but also
Japan and a whole host of others Well, we will see that for next few weeks Joe for sure Yeah, that's something that won't go away anytime soon this uncertainty or eventual reaction to changes in trade policy and You know everything else that's politically related
What is the technical aspects on soybean futures? Could you tell us? Sure. Soybeans have an interesting look. They've been in an uptrend. It still has to be called largely corrective in nature, given that we've been under this long standing downtrend from the 2022 highs. We did make a first
Stab higher at breaking that trend recently by getting above the September highs and now, you know, there's just a few spots up above the market that would form some positive Markets what going on with the feeder cattle Yeah, wow seems like only going up although we did have
taste of a potential turnaround yesterday, the sharply higher start that eventually turned around to a lower close for those feeders that you asked about. The feeders, the leader, I mean, they had been up to this point, really skyrocketing. We're in a bit of a different scenario this week, and we've been looking ahead to this week for the reason that Thursday is going to be the 30th
for cash settlement for January feeder cattle futures. And so if you look at where the January board closed just under 282 that has all or maybe now more than caught up with the real-time feeder index that we're tracking. And so this issue of convergence that futures do as they approach expiration or delivery
which we should talk about for February live cattle, well, that could take some steam out of the market. But up to this point, and it's still the case now for February live cattle futures, that the cast trade has been just so far above and away stronger than the board. And so why sell the board, even at record levels, why for the speculators that are now record net long across the cattle complex,
What's the reason to take profit or to head for the exit if you don't see that there's any cracking the cash, at least for now. And the strong cash continues to be just a simple reflection of the short-fed cattle supply. But also, I'd say really resilient demand. We've got other issues like feed for feeder cattle. Those Mexican imports still shut off. No real development on that, even after we thought that the border would be reopened.
at the first of the year. You have a lot of moving parts here, but it's all mostly bullish. We'll see if we get to a point, though, where again, the January feeders are expired. The February contract, if they can catch up to the cash and get into the delivery period now coming up on February 10th, it could then look like a much different market. But for now, you know, record all-time highs, record strength all around.
Do you have any concerns about these prices in the feeder side, Joe? I do, yeah, from the sense that, you know, we think about profitability and the way that the feeders have stretched such a historic gain over the live cattle,
then that's hard to cancel out for producers. And there's another aspect of it, and that's packer margins where we won't necessarily cry for the backers, but at the same time, it's something to watch for ahead if we get these margins so far in the red that eventually those cattle buyers have to slow things down and do beef plants eventually start to shut down or slow down for one.
to respond to these prices that are less than profitable at the moment or and or is there going to be an impact on immigration policy and the changes that could affect beef plant workers down the road as well. So those are potential cracks in the market. But again, that downturn or that give up, we haven't observed yet.
Do you have any final thoughts on the corn markets for right now? Yeah, I mean, whether it's corn or soybeans, wheat, cattle, I think all the same here, it's nice we could talk like we just have about the fundamentals, about demand, certainly exports and the political influences is a little bit different.
You think about weather in South America and the impact there, talked about just generally short supplies and what we observed like on the cattle on feed report last week, placements down, just over 3%. They're down for a fourth straight December, almost on absolute levels of 10 year low. These are the fundamental aspects and it's still fundamental, but at the same time it's almost
unknown what the reaction is going to be on outside financial markets and the potential spillover support or
pressure that we could get starting tomorrow afternoon as soon as given that we're going to react to the next federal reserve meeting. So that's what I'd bring up is just to preview what's ahead the rest of this week will be a response to what the central bank does with interest rates. They're not likely to cut rates this month, but they will provide guidance on policy ahead. And what that does to
Certainly the stock market and interest rates themselves and the metals crude oil is important but definitely for the dollar index which you know up until these last couple of days was showing some signs that it was leveling off and maybe starting to turn a broader top and that's really crucial when you get back to the export potential for one but also just generally
the investment sentiment across the commodity space. Is that again, something that provides a tailwind for us to continue higher in these markets after halfway through this week? Or will it be a turnaround point because of overall risk off, sell everything type of worry? We'll see again starting tomorrow afternoon. Thanks, Joe.
Thank you. Always happy to join you. I like what you're doing out there, so appreciate being included. This is Joe Camp for Comstock on back roads of Illinois.
Thanks to Tom Bachman and Joe Cap for Comstock. This has been back roads of Illinois. I am Cesar Delgado. You have a great day.