Nov 05 | Commodity Week

cw261105

In the November 5 edition of Commodity Week, host Todd Gleason and panelists Brian Splitt, Dave Chatterton, and Ellen Dearden analyze post-harvest marketing strategies and geopolitical influences on agricultural markets. The panel discusses options for unpriced corn and soybeans currently in commercial storage or on delayed pricing, while emphasizing the critical importance of the upcoming December 11 deadline for the ARC/PLC farm program decision. Additionally, the experts evaluate technical market signals—such as the recent downturn in soybean futures—alongside South American weather patterns and the potential impact of recent U.S. elections and tariffs on China's future agricultural purchasing commitments.

Panelists
- Dave Chatterton, Strategic Farm Marketing
- Ellen Dearden, AgReview
- Brian Splitt, AgMarket

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Todd Gleason: This is the November 5 edition of Commodity Week.

announce: Todd Gleason services are made available to WILL by University of Illinois Extension. Well, welcome to Commodity Week. 

Todd Gleason: I am Todd Gleason. Our panelists for the day include Brian Splitt. He's at Ag Market out of Barrington, Illinois. Dave Chatterton is here from Strategic Farm Marketing in Champaign, Illinois. And Ellen Dearden joins us from Ag Review out of Morton, Illinois.

Commodity Week, of course, is a production of Illinois Public Media. It is public radio for the farming world, online on-demand at willag.org. That's w-i-l-l-a-g.org, where today you may register for the Illinois Farm Economic Summits to take place across the state in the month of December. We'll start on Monday the 14th in Mount Vernon and then move our way northward through Springfield, Peoria, and DeKalb on Thursday of that week. Register right now; the Ag Economist and I will be on the road, the FarmDoc team, in mid-December.

Now, let's turn our attention to the marketplace. Brian Splitt is here. He's with Ag Market again. Brian, thank you for being with us. We always get a set of things that we should discuss for the day. I know on my list for you is where you think we are technically and in the charts. What else should we discuss that's on your list?

Brian Splitt: Well, you know, we're into and through harvest for most producers. I think there's some decisions being made as far as bushels where there's not on-farm storage, and potentially what to do with those bushels. We are comparing locking in basis for a further delivery, and delivering the corn now, what that might look like versus selling it and taking your money and re-owning it on the board. We need to discuss the variables for those particular bushels.

Todd Gleason: Dave Chatterton from Strategic Farm Marketing in Champaign, what's on your list?

Dave Chatterton: Yeah, Todd, I think to go with what Brian said, obviously, top of mind for producers right now is, what do I do with these bushels? We're past harvest and if my bins are full, I may have some commercial storage or DP. What's the next step considering the bearishness of the markets that's been exhibited here of late?

Where do we go? I think there's a couple of other things that are happening here. Certainly, geopolitics are an influence not only on our markets but I think markets in general. With the results of the midterm election, what we can expect in terms of farm policy, ad hoc aid programs, crop insurance, and different things.

We've also got a pretty important ARC/PLC decision coming up. I think for many people in our part of the world, or at least Central Illinois and Central Indiana, where we had a few yield challenges, Todd, that deadline is December 11th. ARC-IC is going to be something that's talked about. If you're a producer who has some subpar yields or yields that are below your APH or historical averages on some of your farms, ARC-IC is probably something you need to consider. Unfortunately, it's not the cleanest of calculations, but it can be done, and it can result in some additional dollars there.

Todd Gleason: We will most definitely come back to that. Maybe to start the program in just a moment. Ellen Dearden from Ag Review in Morton, Illinois, what's on your list?

Ellen Dearden: I would mirror what the other two guests have said, but these geopolitical situations are certainly foremost in our minds, especially with a widespread sweep of Democrats in for the next Congress. It will be interesting to see how these war hawks or doves can answer some questions.

Todd Gleason: Okay, Dave, let's come back to you and talk about the ARC/PLC decision. To begin with, the producers will need to make that, again, by December the 11th. The FarmDoc team did a webinar on this in late October, with the caveat that they wanted to come back after the November crop production report, which by the way is due next Tuesday at 11:00 AM Central Time, to give some final decisions. They did talk a bit about ARC-IC and that there would be some specific issues that producers might need to take into consideration. Otherwise, at that point, they were saying ARC-County probably for most counties and farmers in the state for both corn and soybeans. Can you talk to me a little bit more about the ARC-IC decision? This is for individual farms and it is just different than everything else.

Dave Chatterton: Yeah, Todd, a couple of just general things real quick. Meaning the change to December 11th, keep in mind this is for our 2026 crop, and we're making the decision at a later time than normal. So it gives us a little bit of hindsight that we wouldn't normally have. One, we kind of know what our own yields were. We have a pretty good idea of what the county yield may be in terms of how the county products work and different things. And we certainly know what the reference prices are in relation to where we're at with the marketing year average.

Right now, this doesn't look like a big payday no matter how you slice it, whether it's ARC or PLC. To your point, in most cases, if you want to make a very generalized statement, I think ARC-County is probably the way to lean in most cases, particularly if you have a county that wasn't setting record yields.

If you peel the onion back another layer, ARC-IC or ARC Individual Coverage really hasn't been used since 2021 or the prevent plant year. But what it does is it allows you to measure your production this year in terms of your average in the 2020 to 2024 time period. So, your five-year Olympic average during that time period. If your numbers are below that, you have some decisions to make, and it's worth running the calculation to decide whether ARC-County or ARC Individual Coverage may or may not pay, or one may pay more than the other. In most cases, ARC-IC comes in where a producer has suffered a bit of a yield setback in terms of what their own individual historic numbers are.

It has its own individual calculations. It's a 65% payment versus an 85% for ARC-County, but it also pays on base acres, full base acres. There's a lot that goes into it, but we've seen those numbers add up to some pretty significant $10, $20, $30, $50,000 differences for producers as we run through some of these numbers. So it takes a little time, it takes a little bit of effort. Keep in mind this is not something you can probably dump on the FSA the last day of the period. You've got to get all of your landlords and all the people who have shares in the farm to sign off on it. Staying ahead of that process, I think, is key here, knowing what your base acres are, getting that from FSA if you need to, getting your production in order, and getting that in front of typically your crop insurance agent is the best way to evaluate your situation.

Todd Gleason: And if you want a quick look at it before you go see the crop insurance agent, and you probably should see the crop insurance folks as well, it's possible to use the online calculator that the Ag Economists, the FarmDoc team, has developed. It's at farmdocdaily.illinois.edu or at farmdoc, it doesn't matter which of those two websites you go to. It is under tools and it is the last thing. It simply says "ARC PLC Calculators." There's a spreadsheet you can download, and there's also the online calculator. You can find those again at farmdoc.illinois.edu.

Now Brian Splitt, coming back to you. I'm interested to know what you think the action looks like, particularly on this Thursday. I believe there were some things that took place in the soybean market that might be very technically and chart-oriented. What have you been watching?

Brian Splitt: So we've got the January contract now, the front month for volume and open interest. November is in delivery, and the January contract today, this is going to be the first settlement below the 200-day moving average since a period going all the way back to about January 20th. It's a pretty major marker. If we kind of look at how the corn market and the wheat market broke—and obviously they're much closer to their summer lows than soybeans—however, when we took out the uptrend from June to August, that accelerated selling. When we took out the uptrends from January to June, that accelerated selling.

And so now we're doing that in soybeans, where we've taken out these longer-term uptrends that we've been holding since the beginning of the year, and this is our first close below that level. So we're very close to testing the August lows in January beans. That was another major marker in corn, when we took out the August low, that was at the $4.57 and a quarter mark on December corn. So look at where we are now.

I think this is a market that is doing some catch-up work to where the funds have essentially liquidated and then gone short wheat. They've paired their fund position in corn tremendously and I think as of right now they're probably pretty close to about flat. But we are now, I think, embarking on where the soybean market is seeing the additional fund liquidation. We're anticipating a report here that should show some higher yields for soybeans, and I wouldn't be surprised if we don't end up working our way back down to the June lows in Jan beans, which is going to be around that $11.40 zone. By the way, the uptrend from the contract low to January is going to come in right in that vicinity. So it looks like we're just in store for a test of the longest-term uptrend and a reset back to the summer lows, if you ask me.

Todd Gleason: And then Ellen Dearden, if you could follow up on what you've been watching in the charts and what you're hearing from farmers, and seen across the whole of the Midwest as it's related to soybeans, and the potential for that yield to go up next week, and where this market might be headed.

Ellen Dearden: So folks that I talk to are mostly done with soybean harvest. There's a few double-crop acres that need to come in. But in general, the pattern is the yield is at or above what I expected. I think farmers always seem to be a little hesitant to sell a lot of beans ahead, and they didn't do that. And now that January beans broke under $12 really handily today on Thursday, I think we need to make a lot of catch-up sales on the bean side.

Todd Gleason: Okay, so let's talk through that and what that means. I'll let you start, Ellen, and then maybe Dave, if you could pick up after that. Catch-up sales, how do you start with that? What kinds of things do you think producers should do?

Ellen Dearden: I'm personally looking at selling hedge-to-arrives and waiting to lock in basis for some gains there. The river system has seen a bump in the basis in the last week or so, and there are interestingly, there were river elevators on the Illinois River that were open this past weekend taking in both beans and corn. So there's definitely demand there. I'm hearing something similar on the Mississippi, but not as you go further west than that. Processors seem to be the best markets, best basis markets here in Illinois. And also as you go east, basis in the western corn belt is a little bit weaker on the processor side of beans.

Dave Chatterton: I think you have to make a decision here, and the decision is, are you going to wait the market out or are you going to go ahead and push some stuff out the door here in anticipation of lower markets, similar to the technical situation that Brian described. It's never an easy decision. At this point, I think our producers were aggressive sellers through that summer rally and into harvest, and have enough, I think, sold here, where we're probably leaning a little bit more towards the latter here of just sitting on our hands for just a little bit here.

We suspect that China will fulfill the 25 million metric ton commitment that they've widely talked about. I don't know that they go a lot beyond that. If they did, or if they were to overperform, certainly that's something that we can lean on. I think we're also looking at the South American situation. The much-touted Super El Niño has been a no-show to this particular point, but we've had some long-range forecasts that have come out in the last few days that are certainly leaning a little bit more what I'll call El Niño-ish. So, very dry for the northern part of the growing regions, and very wet or flooding conditions in the south of Brazil and into Argentina. Whether or not that develops, I think we'll have to wait and kind of find out, but when you look at these technical indicators right now, certainly everything that we can measure in terms of a Stochastic and RSI, whatever you want to pick, is in an oversold condition.

Now that doesn't mean we can't stay there for an indefinite amount of time, but I think the risk to the downside here, Todd, is getting a little bit smaller than what we may have on the upside. I don't know what the USDA brings us next week and whether they increase yields. If they do, I'm hopeful that they don't do that by a lot. But I think we're still in a situation where crush demand is very good. To Ellen's point, these processor bids have bounced back nicely from harvest. The spreads have tightened here in terms of what we're looking at, the board spread, and I think farmers are going to be pretty tight sellers here for a little bit.

We've got a situation where the combination of the ARC/PLC money that came in from last year's crop, as well as the receipt of this harvest fuel $8 billion program—we'll call that twenty-something dollars an acre—coming out in January, puts the farmer in a little bit of a better cash position than maybe he would have been. So, we're going to be a little bit patient here, see what develops. I'm not saying it's the right call, but that's based or predicated on a position that we've sold 60-65% of our beans to this point, and are looking forward as opposed to what do we do with excess bushels.

Todd Gleason: Brian Splitt, anything to add from your point of view?

Brian Splitt: I do think there's a little bit of a different situation in the overage bushels, if you will, for corn relative to soybeans. I do think there were a lot of soybeans that were sold out of the field, especially because corn had already removed itself from the highs substantially while the soybean market, as producers were getting beans out of the field and they were getting them out early, was still holding together pretty well big picture.

And if you're considering the cost of money and what is going to be going into your bin, I would rather store something that is at the time, maybe it was a $4.70 or $4.80 product, versus something that is trading at $12.50 to $12.70, if you will. So, I do think there was a lot of soybeans that were sold out of the field, and in the short term here, I'm going to be more inclined to let the market go to where I'm thinking it may go and look for some re-ownership opportunities into the South American growing season.

We do traditionally make some lows kind of earlier in the growing season, and I think we've made some lows in December and January the last couple years. So I wouldn't be surprised if we kind of price in a lot of the hay we got the crop in, and the funds are getting out, and then switch right back to, okay, how does South American weather look? So that'll be kind of the play if we break another 30, 40 cents, I'd like to look at that.

And for corn, I just don't see a reason right now to do any selling. Frankly, at $4.40 for December corn, we're at the low end of a range that we were in for 18 months prior to the war starting. And while we could still see another trip down potentially to the summer low at $4.25 and three quarters, I just feel like the big picture risk is limited to the downside, and we're going to work our way into some other scenarios over the next few months where hopefully there's some potential upward mobility. And even if we could just work ourselves from the low end of the range to the upper end of the range, that was a $4.40 to $4.70 range that we were in at that point. So I'm just not a big seller in this vicinity and, as David said, I could be wrong, but time will tell.

Todd Gleason: Hey Ellen Dearden, I do want to talk about this timeframe between now and the end of the month of November and what you think has happened and why soybeans fell off so hard, so quickly. You may argue about the quickly side, but between now and the end of November, we have two things that will happen. One of them is next week's USDA report, give us a better idea of what the size of the crop is, particularly for soybeans, and whether it gets larger. A reminder that StoneX has that number at 55 bushels to the acre. And then at the end of the month, the third aircraft carrier will arrive in the Middle East and the President still is saying, give diplomacy a chance. But I don't know what really will take place between then and now and if the Iranians will change their minds and the President can come to some kind of conclusion. Can you put that all in perspective? Let's start actually just with what caused the fall off in soybeans. Was it just that the funds said, time to get out?

Ellen Dearden: I think the funds had exited their long corn positions and in the last week to 10 days they've focused on beans, getting out of long beans. And they never had accumulated as long a position in beans as they had in corn, however they held on for a longer period of time. So the money flow is out of beans.

I think we are still talking about China coming in for 25 million metric tons of soybeans and that seems to be a quote done deal. However, the Chinese have been hinting that part of the deal when they said that they would buy 25 million metric tons of beans and also some other ag products, was that the tariffs would be reduced by the US. And they were rattling the sabers today about that part of the deal. So I think that was really the tip-off on getting hit as hard as we did today in the nearby contracts. And we had double-digit losses from November all the way into August. So all the 2026 crop beans got hit.

The Middle East situation, I think, yeah, we're talking about playing nice and looking for a diplomatic answer to the situation. And I just hesitate to be very optimistic that anything will happen there. Folks in the Middle East have been battling it out for 2,000 years; they're not going to go and play nice just on somebody's ask of that to be, not the case anymore.

Todd Gleason: Dave, anything else to add on the Middle East side, whether it's as it's related to diesel fuel costs, which have all been built in at this point, or to that third aircraft carrier not arriving until the end of the month?

Dave Chatterton: Yeah Todd, it's always, you know, geopolitics always a tough gamut to kind of predict and I think the Trump administration takes that to the next level in terms of just how quickly they change policy and make decisions and do different things. That said, I think you have to look at what's being said versus what's being done. And while the President is talking about giving the diplomatic avenue more time, moving these assets in and getting past the midterm election I think tells you that his preference is to go ahead and, I'll say finish what we started or attempt to finish what we started in terms of the military campaign and the ultimate kind of victory in Iran. If that's probably not the right term, but I think that's how he views it.

What effect the midterm landslide by the left or the Democrats will have on that particular process, I think, is a little bit of an unknown right now. It may slow him down just a shade, but I think that's the preference, and I think that's the betting odds right now, is that we're going to see that military lever being pulled again in Iran, and the oil market will have to deal with that accordingly as we go forward.

Diesel fuel stocks here in the US remain at historic lows, lowest on record here for the month of October as we ended the month and started November and started into the demand season. So not a lot of relief in sight in terms of these cash markets or what it can mean. I'm not actively telling farmers to go ahead and lock up fuel for spring or fill their tanks ahead of the spring and summer demand season, but I'm certainly opportunistic in the fact that if we got a decline to the order of what we had yesterday, I think you have to be paying attention on those days and be willing to kind of work your way into that, knowing that solving the inventory situation, or I should say improving the inventory situation, is going to be a very tough process.

Todd Gleason: Brian Splitt on the charts, and maybe this is not where you want to go, but I'm gonna ask because I don't know whether you keep track of it in this way. Is the timing for any of the things that you look forward to, does that coincide with the end of the month or with next week and how do you view those things?

Brian Splitt: Well, so if we're going back to the soybean market, we're gonna have a report and that's going to be next Tuesday, that is November 10th, which I'll add is the 251st birthday of the Marine Corps. So we'll be celebrating that, but yeah, I think as you're getting into the report, the timing of that, and very often the market will try to price in the expectation of the report before the report is released. And if there is the expectation that the soybean yield will be revised higher, and maybe the evidence from the corn report in the month of October would support that. And from my desk, I just continue to hear very solid yield reports for soybeans.

So I think that adjustment is on its way, and the timing of the bean market is likely to try to price in that bushel or bushel plus higher yield before the number actually drops. Now, perhaps if that were to happen, that would give us that "sell the rumor and then buy the fact" setup, and especially if we work our way down to those June lows leading into the number and we see a continued liquidation event into the report, I think that would support that idea.

On the corn side of things, you know, we're just kind of I think trying to build a little bit of a base here against some old lows, and I think the market's a little bit more cautious there where it doesn't want to get much more ahead of its skis anymore until we get a sense of, okay, will the USDA change yield? Will they dial it back a little bit? I still think there's a lot in the camp that particularly Illinois and maybe Nebraska are too high. However, I think as we've digested some of the private estimates this week of a bushel higher from StoneX, it lingers some questions of, well, what if the USDA raises corn yield a little bit more? And there's still that, hey, we're not exporting the bushels in order to hit the current pace that we would want to see to hit USDA's numbers.

Now, I think this is just back to a typical marketing year where we're very front-loaded on bean sales and then we'll start exporting corn a lot more aggressively once the calendar flips all the way through the end of the marketing year. But these are the questions that the market's dealing with right now after this tremendous break. So I think we're going to see a little more consolidation in corn, a little bit more liquidation in soybeans, and the timing here is all surrounding the report that we have, and that's going to be three trading days away.

Todd Gleason: That's on Tuesday again, as you said. It is the establishment day for the Marine Corps, the 251st, and Veterans Day is the following day on Wednesday. And Brian, thank you too for your service to the United States, we appreciate that.

Ellen Dearden, as you think about the corn market going into next week's report, Brian suggested, and the numbers from StoneX, which are higher, and whether or not USDA might continue to move this marketplace higher. Do you think that can happen? StoneX says that Illinois, along with Missouri and I believe it was Indiana, were all lower for corn in their customer survey, but their numbers still went up because of what happened in the plains. North Dakota even went a little higher for them, along with northern Iowa and southern Minnesota. So how do you see that number coming out next Tuesday?

Ellen Dearden: Well, it's always a crapshoot, but my guess is that USDA will come out with a number that's maybe just a hair higher and try to confound everybody. Northern Iowa is really good. Southern Minnesota, really good. I'm hearing some really good yields as well from Wisconsin. Now certainly Wisconsin's not a big state, but shaving a bushel or two off Illinois, maybe off something off Ohio as well, and Nebraska still isn't going to make up for the spectacular yields that I've heard out of southern Minnesota and northern Iowa.

Todd Gleason: How should producers deal with what they have, Ellen, in commercial storage for corn?

Ellen Dearden: Pay the storage bill. And just wait for bounces. I think, like Brian said, I think we are still in a trading range on this corn. I think we've got more upside than downside from 440 Dec.

Todd Gleason: Dave, any other things for corn as it's related to commercial storage or otherwise?

Dave Chatterton: Yeah Todd, I think if you got in commercial storage or DP, to Ellen's point, pay the storage, look forward, look ahead. But do that with a plan. Have some offers working ahead of the market if we do start to see some recovery. We've pinned, in terms of the Dec corn market or the lead month futures, pinned to kind of this 440 level, and we've tested that support a few times. Haven't moved below it, haven't been able to significantly move or close below that level. So assuming that we can hold that, I think you have to start looking at, okay, what makes sense and what can we do.

If we do see the USDA increase, a quarter of a bushel, a half a bushel, a bushel, all we're doing is pushing our US carryout higher. To Brian's point, we are behind on these export sales in terms of pace or seasonal pace to get there. Doesn't mean we can't get to the USDA's record 3.3 billion number, but we're going to need to pick up the pace in order to do that. So I think there's some questions out there in terms of our balance sheet. And you can easily, if I add a bushel on to the USDA's number and I adopt a cut in US exports commensurate to what we're seeing for the pace right now, I'm coming up with a carryout number that's between 2.4 and 2.45 billion. And that's not a number that we want to deal with. That's probably $4.25 to $4.50 corn instead of $4.50 to $5. I'm not necessarily in the camp that that's the case. I think we're in that $4.50, kind of $5 type of a range looking ahead, but have some offers, have a plan in front of you, and realize that the cost of money and what we're doing here doesn't lend itself to staying in this market forever without an all-out drought situation for that safrinha crop in South America. The supply side of the equation is pretty well solved for corn here going forward.

And we're gonna, China doesn't show any sign whatsoever of needing corn. They reaffirmed today about willing to do the 17 billion in additional ag purchases beyond the soybeans, but they're waiting for the tariffs to be reduced before they do that. That's still going to take a number of weeks if not months to play out, and I don't think they'd buy much, if any, corn even when they do. So have an optimistic view, but don't have an overly optimistic view. Have a plan and some offers in place here to kind of make sure you're moving along in terms of the calendar with those bushels, and not simply getting to next September and October and having to make a decision.

Todd Gleason: Brian, on the lagging US corn exports. What did you make of the early in the week reports from USDA that there were sales to Mexico and those two were very, very large combined?

Brian Splitt: You know, it's November, and Mexico typically buys a lot of corn in November, right after the harvest. And I think if you were to just go back and look at the export sales that we've had over the years in the month of November to Mexico, there are some very, very large one-day totals. So it's not uncommon at all to see Mexico do some one million ton-plus purchases in the month of November.

Now, the question is, is that showing us that there is value at current levels, or is this more of a calendar-type purchase? I don't know the answer to that question, but I'd like to be optimistic that Mexico is buying the totals they are because they do see value at current levels. Now, Mexico has been a tremendous buyer of US corn, and that was really the reason behind a lot of our strong pace last year, and frankly the year previous. But Mexico also had a drought, and so the drought there is not what it was a year or two ago, and I just don't know if Mexico needs to buy as much as they did over the last couple of years.

But again, we do have November providing a show of value, and I do think that when we get through the large program of exporting soybeans, we will see the export program for corn ramp up. And the question I have is, will there be a period where the USDA feels compelled to lower the corn for export on the balance sheet, perhaps similar to what they did two years ago, just to then have to raise it later in the marketing year because we are seeing a very good seasonal strong pace of sales through spring into the end of the marketing year. So we'll see how it all plays out. But I think that would be the expectation, and we're not seeing anything from the flat price that is doing anything to dissuade demand at current levels.

Todd Gleason: Ellen Dearden, I would like to get a final word from you. But before you start that, or maybe you don't have anything more to say about this as it's related to the exports to Mexico. Are there enough beef cattle animals there to support that kind of continued export pace from them?

Ellen Dearden: The numbers are down. However, they still have a big pork industry and poultry industry. So the imports of corn from all sources will continue to be pretty strong. I went back, when Brian was talking, went back and looked. Over the last five years, the November buys of corn by Mexico accounted for about two-thirds of the amount that they bought for the year. So right on, Brian.

Todd Gleason: Final word from you, Ellen?

Ellen Dearden: Final word is when the board dumps like it dumped this week, then the basis has to work. So look for basis improvement in both corn and beans, particularly on the beans.

Todd Gleason: Dave Chatterton, your final word?

Dave Chatterton: Yeah Todd, I mean, you know, we've taken as a, the industry as a whole here in terms of the producing side of the industry, a little bit of a gut punch here in the last couple of months really. And it goes all the way back to September. It started with the September stocks report, where we added additional supply to the marketplace via stocks. Then we got the September USDA and the WASDE report, which added bushels and yield to the equation, upping supply again. We saw the same routine in October. Now we're ready for November and hopefully we're about through this process.

So I don't see a lot bullish in the very short term of the marketplace, but we have taken a significant correction. We have taken a lot of the fund length out of this marketplace. Certainly not all of it, but this kind of reminds me of maybe where we were back in June, and funds had piled into the short side of the grain and soybean markets before they flipped to aggressive buyers. They eventually built a record combined long position across the CBT grains and oilseed markets into early Sep, and then here we are where we are. But that bottoming action back in June lasted for a number of weeks, and it required some kind of a bullish catalyst, and in that case, it became the weather and the US yield worries to kind of flip that switch. And what we're lacking right now or looking for is that catalyst that can be out there.

And that at this particular point, it could be weather again in terms of South America this time around. It could be these recent signs of value buying by our export partners that we've just been discussing and the global end users. It could be the report that we get next week with a surprise, you know, USDA's been surprising us with higher numbers, they could surprise with a lower number. I don't think that's a bet I would take right now, but it's certainly possible. And, you know, it could be something that we're totally not seeing or not aware of at this particular point. But the point is, I don't think all is lost here. I think you have to be optimistic in terms of, we've taken our punch, we are where we are, we have to look forward. And, you know, set your sights, just don't set your sights too high in terms of where you're at with marketing. Make sure you make a good ARC and PLC decision for this year and then it's time to start thinking about 2027.

Todd Gleason: And finally, Brian Splitt from Ag Market, your final word?

Brian Splitt: Yeah, we'll go right back to what we had discussed right at the very beginning. The market has taken a very large break to the downside. Let's compare what it costs you to maintain physical ownership, whether it is in your bin or especially if you are considering paying commercial storage. If the board is down and we have some basis opportunity, can we make some sales and just spend what we would spend on commercial storage or even less on an at-the-money call? And a lot of that depends on where you are. Some producers, maybe it takes them 20 to 21 cents to store out to Jan 1. Well if that's the case, an at-the-money 450 call that is priced on the March contract, which expires in late February, is about the same price. So, you know, let's compare some apples to apples. See what makes sense as far as cost of ownership and what we're giving up and what we're protecting, and make some good decisions and educated decisions.

Todd Gleason: Commodity Week is a production of Illinois Public Media. Our thanks go to our panelists this week, including Ellen Dearden from Ag Review, Brian Splitt of Ag Market, and Dave Chatterton of Strategic Farm Marketing. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.