AG Bull
Tommy Grisafi is the main host and content creator for Ag Bull Media.
The Ag Bull Podcast showcases agriculture's top talents in a long-form video format. The Ag Bull Trading Podcast is a deeper discussion of trading with analysts and key players in agriculture nationwide.
AG Bull
Agriculture's Triple Threat: Cattle, Crops, and Capitol Hill
Cattle markets reach unprecedented heights amid rumors of USDA incentives to rebuild herds and growing concerns about screwworm threats near the U.S.-Mexico border. Global grain markets respond to Argentina's elimination of export taxes while farmers in the Northern Plains contend with variable yields and challenging economic conditions.
• Record cattle prices driven by potential USDA heifer retention incentives
• Screwworm threat intensifying with cases increasing 50% south of Mexico border
• LRP insurance offers protection for ranchers navigating volatile markets
• Argentina eliminates export taxes, leading to immediate Chinese soybean purchases
• Spring wheat harvest completed with decent quality in Northern Plains
• Regional variations in crop conditions with wet weather impacting some areas
• Looming government shutdown threatens CCC funding and potential farm payments
• Interest rate cuts providing some relief but agricultural profitability remains challenged
• Gold and silver reaching record highs as alternative investments
For more information on market updates and agricultural news, visit agbull.com or rrfn.com. Follow our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube for regular insights into agricultural markets.
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Thank you, Tommy G
good afternoon everyone. Tommy grisafi, agbo media, agbo trading, agbo podcast. We got a lot of agbos here. I'm down in valparaiso, indiana, or, as my friend likes to say, in my mother's basement here we got the nasvic trading logo behind me. That's where I clear my trades through. I am an associate person of NASVIC trading group. We just announced earlier we got a new podcast coming out, mr Mike Sands. We're calling it Fat Tuesday and that is no relationship to this next guy we're introducing to you. But he's got me laughing. He said something off the script, so doggone funny. He got me cracking up, so that's funny. Anyway, we won't tell him what you said because it's just too good. All right, how you doing tommy I'm doing well.
Speaker 1:We have lots to talk about, and sometimes you and I plan these better than others. This one's a little unscripted, as they like to say. I want to talk to you about cattle. We had, or have, the most dynamic cattle market we've ever had, and now there's, like these, rumblings coming out of the usda. None of us quite know, but the, the twitter x, is just blowing up on speculation of what it could be. It may be nothing, it may be a nothing burger, but I think there's something behind it. What are you hearing? Done again just rumors.
Speaker 2:At this point we're looking for something official from usda, but there's something behind it. What are you hearing, don? Again, just rumors. At this point we're looking for something official from USDA, but there's been some quotes attributed to the Ag Secretary about some type of incentives to rebuild that cattle herd. I'm not exactly sure how that would work. Cattle industry isn't quite like we're used to seeing some of the relief payments maybe we have in the grain sector, but it does have the market, or at least the the rumor mill churning anyway yeah, now let's go back to.
Speaker 1:That was just today, let's go back to yesterday, and that was yesterday too. But people thought the market moved up yesterday because of the screwworm. I, I don't think it had very much to do with mexico and the screwworm. I think it had way more to do with her comments that were buried about paying ranchers to retain heifers, which would massively make the back months bullish. Yesterday in the feeder cattle three of the back months finished limit up and but then we do have the screw worm now. The gentleman from texas, the who's, the sid, the, the, yeah, yeah he was on today, yeah, he, he's sharp and what he said was this is scary as hell, don.
Speaker 1:He said, yes, there was a screw worm 70 miles from the border, but you take where all the screw worm cases are. 300 miles south of the border, cases have went up 50%. Have you heard anything like that?
Speaker 2:Certainly we haven't gotten this thing handled. They're looking at trying to amp up the sterile flies that they need to try and get rid of this pest. The National Cattlemen's Beef Association has come out with a statement supporting the Trump administration, supporting all the work that Rollins has done, but because of this new case just an hour south of the border, they are saying that they'd like EPA to expedite having pesticides available that may be able to control this insect. They want USDA to step up, expedite the building of this facility. They've got this five-prong plan that is in place to deal with New World Screwworm and one of them is to build this domestic sterile fly facility. They want to get that amped up. They're just there's a obviously a lot of concern and they're trying to, you know, light the fire. I think a little bit under the administration on this one.
Speaker 1:Yeah you want to see what the cattle pits look like yesterday, what the trade look like? This is what it. This is what it looked like. This is every day in these cattle. It's crazy. All right, In all seriousness, let's talk markets. Well, we were being serious, but I asked you some hard questions that I knew weren't answerable and I could briefly see you were uncomfortable. That's what you've been doing to people for 40 years asking the hard questions, but you're not. You don't try to stump people, I know, but I knew it. I did the other day.
Speaker 2:I was laughing, but you did well, you did really well, I'd rather be on the other side of the microphone. That's for now.
Speaker 1:I was laughing there because I knew like we don't know. But I had a young rancher from North Dakota just call me and said what do you think I should do? And this is the actionable thing here If you're involved in this cattle industry and prices are at record, record highs and they're exploding, the fact you can do LRP insurance is amazing. The fact you can protect a calf that's not born yet through a government policy, I think is pretty damn cool. So if you need help with that, you can give us a call. I have plenty of friends over at Nesvik who are qualified to sell LRP. I I have plenty of friends over at Nesvik who are qualified to sell LRP. I'll pop up my number right there 1-855-737-FARM. I really think that this is a chance. You always say I'm going to protect them. I'm going to do this. Listen, you got to do it while the market's going up. Don you know as well as I do once this market starts to headline news?
Speaker 1:we're not getting much done with this guy, are we? No, there was a phone call, obviously on Friday, between Trump and Xi.
Speaker 2:They talked about TikTok primarily. Trump mentioned trade in his post on Truth Social, but no reference to soybeans. I think that had particularly the soybean market somewhat disappointed, just because there's some anticipation that maybe we'd get an announcement. They're just hanging on every word that will come out of the White House at this point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hey. Speaking of soybeans, we had that news yesterday about Argentina, argentina lowering those taxes. They've lowered them before, they lowered them a few months ago, but they took them to zero, I believe. The only way I could explain it it's like every American farmer waking up and all their corn beans and wheat are worth 20 to 25% more. Is that the way you understand it, mr Wick?
Speaker 2:Well, argentina's in a world of hurt as far as an economy, economy and they're trying to get some dollars pushed into their country and so, to do that, they're putting that export tax down to zero and try to generate some, some export business. And they got it. What? Like 10 cargoes? China jumped in right away. What is that? I don't know if that's good or bad. Does that mean they're still buying at this point? I mean, does that's what you miss about of this?
Speaker 1:if we could find any there's only so many soybeans in the world and at the point they go buy everything they can buy from a certain area. At this point, the greatest thing that could happen to world farmers is a production problem in South America Because China's buying everything they can there. If we had adverse weather not that I wish that upon anyone, but if you want to know what it would take to get markets to go up great demand, which we don't have from China, especially in the PNW all these soybeans are horrible. Basis up north. It's not just up north, like North Dakota, it's North Dakota, minnesota, south Dakota, the whole. Anything that could ship out north, south, east, west. It's not good unless there's a crushing plant in your own backyard with that. We need business right. And what can make markets go up? Demand? Or a production problem, and that's what? Uh, yeah, that, that. That might be what happened.
Speaker 1:So we have china no china, with soybeans sold off 40 cents from their highs on friday from where soybeans were to where they ended up yesterday. And what else do we have? We day-to-day business. We're doing decent business, decent exports done. Things aren't bad. Spring wheat basis is picking up. Let's talk about spring wheat wrapping up and then we'll ease over into edible. Well, edible crop too up there, but then sugar beet harvest, so spring wheat's done.
Speaker 2:I heard that crop was decent up by you yeah, didn't see a lot of quality issues either, which I think there was some thought that that may be an issue with some of the wet weather we've had this summer, but decent wheat crop. We're now, like you said, taking out edible beans. In this region Canola's coming out. We're hearing some decent, some pretty good reports on canola. We're chopping silage Kind of depends where you're at. Last few days I've talked with farmers in that Aberdeen area of South Dakota and then down in that Benson-Murdock area of west central Minnesota and they've just been saturated too wet. Their crop certainly is below average at the very best. A lot of frustration, because not only do you not have a price, then they don't have much of a crop either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a real problem. What are you hearing for bailouts? What are you hearing from these guys? You know any of these characters over here. Are they going to be able to send us any money, or what are they doing? Well?
Speaker 2:those are the three that were just put into, confirmed by the Senate. So they were the three undersecretaries that came on board. So Fordyce was in the Trump one point first administration, now leading the farm and foreign services area. So he oversees FSA. If we're going to do any bridge payment it's going to have to come through Fordyce. So we'll see how that goes.
Speaker 2:The big challenge we have is we've got a government shutdown looming. If we don't get something done before the end of this month, the commodity credit corporation runs out of funds and that's where they would likely tap to get any bridge payments that would help farmers make their cushion through the end of this year and into 26 when the big, big, a big beautiful bill funding would finally kick in. So you know that shutdown. There was a potentially a meeting between Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and the president. That was the talk yesterday. This morning Trump was on Truth Social once again and said there wasn't going to be anything productive happening in a meeting like that so he canceled it. We don't know. The Congress was not able to get anything done in the Senate. Then they recessed. Of course, rosh Hashanah the Jewish holiday, going on this week. They have to come back, I think Monday or Tuesday of next week, and try to get this thing wrapped up, or we've got a government shutdown happening well, it wouldn't be the first time.
Speaker 1:I know it sounds like really scary and bad. It is bad for agriculture in the in the sense that it screws up our government reports. But I used to get excited. Oh, my god, the government's gonna shut down, sell the stock market like. I've seen this so many damn times. It doesn't. It doesn't end up being.
Speaker 2:I just I just got a news release from dusty johnson, the congressman out of south dakota. He's got a bill, along with the Senator out of Wisconsin, also named Johnson, talking about let's get rid of these threats of a shutdown and just have it. So if we aren't, we don't have everything wrapped up we'd be having an automatic two week renewal of a continuing resolution. I'm not sure if that'd get any traction, but that's. I just got that news release before we got on camera.
Speaker 1:So that's breaking news, mr Don Wick, with breaking news. Repeat that one more time. The proposal is big, bad shutdown. Maybe not so much.
Speaker 2:He's got a proposal, a bill anyway, that would prevent this talk of a shutdown and we would have an automatic renewal of a continuing resolution resolution. At current levels it would go for two weeks. If they don't have anything done, it would renew for another two weeks and continuing on that path. I'm not sure if that gives any leverage to lawmakers to get anything done, but that's at least a bill that's being introduced at this point. That's interesting.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, with that, we got grain markets, which typically hit a seasonal low. I want to ask you about sugar beet harvest. That's starting up in the Red River Valley right now and we've done the pre-lift here the last few weeks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think really throughout the region American Crystal, mndac and Southern Min they've all made good progress with their pre-pile harvest. We've got to say about 10%, 11 percent of that beet harvest wrapped up at this point. Southern men has had some weather challenges because it's been too wet in that area, but we're hearing some some good things as far as the, the tonnage with american crystal, particularly more to the northern area of the valley, but we're not looking at a really good sugar price here at the end of the year, so a little frustration, I think. What's going to be with that beat payment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, let's talk about prices real quick. I talked to a client this morning. He said holy cow, he grew wheats, he grew edibles, he has sugar beets, he has a little bit of corn. He said there's not one of these things that's even remotely profitable and with all that you got to go back to the bank and renew operating. Let's talk about interest rates. Last week the Fed lowered interest rates. The Fed's out on the tape today talking moving the stock market a little bit, but interest rates went down a little. It's going to help, but they need to go down a lot. Is that correct To stimulate the housing market and help farmers be able to borrow money at a discount?
Speaker 2:The indication was at that Fed meeting maybe another two interest rate cuts before the end of the year. So we're pushing in towards the end of the year so that'll have to happen relatively soon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just the other day stock market was at all-time high. Stock market's selling off here recently, but that was just on. Some Jay Powell comments, et cetera. It's extremely interesting. I want to end the show. I comments, et cetera. It's extremely interesting. I want to end the show.
Speaker 1:I was just thinking of something. I'm seeing my board over there moving. I think I did some trading while we're doing this. But gold, gold hit record, record, record, record, record, record highs in gold again. And yesterday I was on Chip Flory show. He said what do you make of the gold market? And really the only honestly thing I could say is people want to own it Like they want to own gold. The only thing I could say is people want to own it Like they want to own gold. And I noticed Bitcoin quit going up Bitcoin's at 110, 112, 115,000. But gold has absolutely stolen the show and its cousin silver Silver market 44, 45, $46 silver. I was telling Chip I own some silver, but don't break in my house. It's not that much. I think I'm going to sell it, don. I don't know if you're one of these old timers who collected coins or bars of gold or silver At some point. When do you take a profit and just say, hey, that was fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, might as well get it out of the home safe and send it somewhere, right?
Speaker 1:I'll Venmo you the money, mr Don Wick, with the Red River Farm Network. How do people sign up for your weekly letters, sir?
Speaker 2:We have a weekly newsletter. Farmnet News goes out every Monday. You can drop me an email, don at rrfncom, or go to that website rrfncom.
Speaker 1:Speaking of websites, damn it, you set me up real good there. I got a new website, wwwagbullcom. With that, we got our own little package out. Everybody's selling something, but some people don't want a futures and options account on. They just want to pay for information. And, as you know, media is changing and people want good quality information. They get text alerts, they get audio alerts, they get special content and you know we're having some success. We've had some people sign up and we're meeting new friends along the way. Yeah, and it's just that easy.
Speaker 1:People are like why would you sell information? Some people don't want a futures and options account and typically when you open a futures and options account, the information showed up. And I'm just thinking you know what? Some people just want to be in that flow. Hey, when are people selling cash grain? What's going on? What's your weather guy saying? What's your cattle expert saying? What are your political correspondents like wick and weesmeyer saying? And not that you're just politics, I mean, you're all encompassing, but we're bringing experts. You're, you're an expert up in the north. I don't think anybody knows north dakota, south dakota, canada, minnesota as well as uh, you do so information's a pretty big and commodity.
Speaker 1:That's a good value that you have for folks. Yeah, but they want today's information today. They don't want to recap of what happened yesterday. You know what I mean, mr wick? Yeah, exactly, and you're still in that business because I can see the bags under your eyes.
Speaker 1:You get up how early every morning, three o'clock three o'clock, which means doing this video today, is keeping you up. Mr don wick coming to us. I'll show you where that guy is coming from. I got a little map of it. Oh, this is just a beauty here. Look at these graphics, mr Donwick Well, he's not quite in Mayville, but he's real close. Mr Donwick, red River Farm Network. Click like and subscribe to his content. Click like and subscribe to my content. Just keep that pretty face. I'm looking for the button with that. Thank you, folks. Please, it helps. If you follow our podcast on Apple Spotify, go to YouTube. You could watch this audio video. However the hell you like it. We're doing it several times a week. See you, don. Thanks, tommy. Thank you.
