Farm News, Markets, Ethanol, Diesel & the Week Ahead | Daily Farm Brief

Good morning, Farm Nation, and good afternoon to Truck City. This is FarmTales' unplugged daily farm brief for Monday, September 21st. I'm Rick Bordanova. We've got a lot to catch up on this morning. Harvest is moving. Winter wheat planting isn't moving quite as fast. Corn's got an ethanol story that could actually matter. Diesel is apparently trying to become a luxury item. China is talking about buying American farm products. Artificial intelligence has found yet another farm job. And later in the show, we've got the farmer's almanac, something strange from the farm world, and a farmer joke. So grab your coffee, fire up whatever you're driving, and let's find out what happened while you were busy actually working. And as always, thanks to our sponsor, World TradeX, the future of food empowering farmers. Corn, big crop, but an interesting market. Now here's something to watch. We're bringing in another very large American corn crop. Normally that would have traders running around yelling, there's corn everywhere. But globally, things aren't quite that comfortable. USDA projects the world could actually consume nearly 30 million metric tons more corn than it produces during the current marketing year. If that holds, Reuters says that would be the biggest global corn production deficit in 30 years. So yes, America has a lot of corn, but the rest of the world apparently has a pretty good appetite. And one of the reasons is ethanol. Brazil's making more ethanol from corn, which means more Brazilian corn is staying in Brazil instead of competing against U.S. corn in export markets. And here in America, ethanol remains one of the biggest customers. We're talking billions of bushels every year. So when somebody says ethanol policy doesn't matter to corn farmers, you might want to check whether that person has actually ever met a corn farmer. The other piece of the story is energy prices. Oil's expensive, gasoline is expensive, and when petroleum gets expensive, ethanol becomes more competitive as a transportation fuel. China is back in the conversation. U.S. and Chinese officials are talking, once again, with agriculture, part of the negotiations ahead of President Trump's scheduled meeting, which takes place, I believe, Thursday this week. Reuters reports discussions have included Chinese purchase of U.S. agricultural products with soybeans playing a major role. Now here's my advice for following this story. Forget the speeches, forget the smiling pictures, forget the handshake. Show me the purchase order. Because soybean traders can turn one sentence out of Washington into a 20 cent move before most of us have breakfast. And Friday proved it. Soybeans dropped more than 16 cents as traders took money off the table ahead of the meeting. So China will probably be one of the biggest market stories this week. We'll keep watching it. Quick cattle update. Translation? There's plenty of cattle standing there right now, but fewer new guys are checking into the hotel. That could become increasingly important for cattle supplies later on. Alright, time for technology. Apparently, AI has decided it hasn't taken enough jobs yet. So now it's coming after the guy running the herbicide sprayer. GreenEye Technology has been demonstrating a smart spraying system that uses cameras and AI to actually recognize weeds as the sprayer moves through the field. Instead of spraying everything, it sprays the weed. That's it. The company says under some conditions it can cut herbicide use by 80 to 90 percent, and it can run at 16 miles an hour. 16 miles an hour? I mean, I hope a cow doesn't wander into that field. Listen, last week we had lasers killing weeds. Now we've got AI selectively spraying them. At this point, I'm starting to feel sorry for the weeds. They've got robots looking for them, cameras identifying them, lasers shooting them, and apparently no right to an attorney. That's today's Ag Tech Minute. Alright, let's check the numbers. These are Friday's closes going into the weekend. December corn about 527 a bushel. November soybeans about 1303. December Chicago wheat 714. And Minneapolis wheat was around 741. The thing to watch this week is pretty simple. Corn has harvest pressure fighting tighter world supplies. Soybeans have China. Wheat has weather and continued uncertainty around Black Sea grain shipments. In other words, everything is perfectly calm, except for absolutely everything. The situation with diesel is not as simple as, oh, oil went up, so diesel went up. The problem is basically refinery output and disruptions. In the Middle East, you got the US, Iran, and uh uh Israel conflict going on. You got the Houthis hitting uh Saudi Arabia, and then uh you also have Ukraine hitting Russia, which just reported reduced output. So we've got a situation where we can't refine fast enough globally, and here at home we got low inventories, and we have we have refinery problems here too. So everyone's asking, when is it going to improve? Well, it's it's kind of like the weather. You know, there's an old saying, if you don't like the weather, give it a minute. Well, it's the same thing with this. I mean, last week, you know, I think it was China told Iran, hey, you know, quit quit hitting Saudi Arabia, and like overnight prices came down substantially, briefly, because then they did it again. Uh, but the fact is, these issues will resolve. This is not a long-term problem, it's just too many disruptions, and we can't refine our way out of it at the moment. Occasionally you're gonna find I'll go off script and just kind of go into commentary mode. And I kind of did that with the diesel, and I'm going to probably do that more often. Under the category you can't win for losing, weather and wheat comes in first. Wheat futures have risen sharply this year, but higher diesel and fertilizer expenses are eating right into that benefit, and farmers are also watching a potentially strong El Nino pattern developing, which could change moisture patterns across important growing regions. All right, time for our daily visit to the old farmer's almanac. According to the almanac, tomorrow is the first day of fall, which means summer is officially over. Although nobody told Southern California, and I don't think anyone needed the almanac for that one. And supposedly today is a best day for castrating livestock. I'm not even going to go where I could go with that. And it also says that uh today is the International Day of Peace, so you know, I, you know, don't know how much we want to base any decisions on the almanac or the moon at this point. As we come to a close, I'll leave you with the joke of the day. The farmer is sitting in a diner when a trucker he walks up to him and says, Hey, I just saw a pig with a wooden leg on your farm. What's the story there? Farmer smiles proudly and says, Oh, that's no ordinary pig. Last year our house caught fire, and that pig ran inside and dragged my son out to safety. The trucker gasps. Wow, that's incredible. Is that how he lost his leg? The farmer shakes his head and says, Oh no, a pig that good? You don't eat them all at once. And that's gonna wrap up the Monday edition of Daily Farm Brief. This week we're watching China and soybeans, corn and ethanol, harvest progress, winter wheat, and whether Diesel finally decides $6 a gallon is enough. And Monday afternoon, USDA gives us another look at exactly how much of this crop is out of the field. We'll have those numbers for you. I'm Rick Portanova. To everybody in Farm Nation, have a safe harvest. To everybody in Truck City, keep the shiny side up and the rubber side down. And remember, the future of food starts with the people who grow it and depends on the people who move it. Thanks again to World Tradex, the future of food. We'll see you next time.