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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.
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Don Wick | When Washington Gambles with Rural America's Future
Farmers face financial hardship as a government shutdown looms while simultaneously promising relief payments through tariff funds known as "Trump Bucks." The situation highlights the dysfunctional relationship between agricultural policy and political gridlock in Washington.
• Government likely to shut down at midnight Tuesday due to lack of agreement on continuing resolution
• Administration proposes using tariff funds for direct farmer payments, but requires congressional approval
• Section 32 funds (30% of tariff revenues) typically used for commodity purchases for nutrition programs
• Cattle markets experienced extreme volatility after comments about potential heifer retention incentives
• Argentina temporarily lowered export taxes, causing China to purchase 35 loads of soybeans
• Basis levels vary widely across regions, from 80 cents under in southern Minnesota to $1.60 under in North Dakota
• Harvest beginning in northern regions with favorable weather and good yield expectations
• Government shutdown would delay all agricultural reports including the upcoming stocks report
• Commodity markets showing potential inflationary signals as gold approaches $4,000 and silver hits $45-46
• Farmers would prefer market-based solutions like year-round E15 rather than direct payments
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Thank you, Tommy G
Well, it's been a heck of a week, everyone. Tom Grassofi with AgBo Media AgBill Trading. We have the one and only Don Wick hiding behind the curtain. But I gotta tell you, this is our second time doing this. We had a little mishap. But you know what? I was joking around too much, and there's some really serious things going on. Farmers are hurting financially. Our government may be shutting down. The government's saying they're gonna give farmers money, yet the government's shutting down. So let's be serious about this until we start joking. If we don't laugh, we'll cry. Mr. Don Wick from the Red River Farm Network on our second time. And you know what? It always goes better the second time. You're doing so great too. Stage is yours, Mr. Wick. I will say this. How are we gonna keep the government open? How are we gonna give farmers money if we can't give if we can't keep the government open?
SPEAKER_01:Well, starting with the government shutdown, we're due to run out of money or funding. The government would shut down as of midnight Tuesday, Tommy, or Wednesday morning. At this point, it doesn't look it looks pretty bleak on getting something accomplished without a shutdown. The House, uh House Speaker Mike Johnson has said that they're not even gonna come into session. So that forces the hand of the Senate. They can only vote on the House bill that was passed a week or two ago, a week ago, and there's certainly not enough 60 votes that they need to get something passed. So I don't see what kind of luck they're gonna have in getting getting this government a continuing resolution passed that would really just kick the can down the road until mid-November.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's some tough things going on. I'll tell you what. If I could make a video to sum what the heck's going on in Washington, it would look like this. Are you ready, Mr. Wick? I made this myself. All right, let me see what we have here. This is what Washington, D.C. looks like. We're trying to keep it open. We're telling farmers we're gonna give them money. We have tariff money coming in. This is what it's like right now in DC. There you go. This video is called the Capitol Casino. What the hell's going on at the Capitol? And you kind of described it. And I'd say you've been, I'm gonna guess, you've been to DC in your career 40 times, 50 times, twice a year, probably.
SPEAKER_01:Probably, yeah. That would make sense.
SPEAKER_00:You always learn something when you go there?
SPEAKER_01:Always. I love it. But always love to come get on that plane ride to come home as well. Again, you show the uh Trump bucks. That was the the big story on Thursday when uh in the Oval Office the president talked about the challenges that are happening in agriculture and the uh the decision to use tariff funds to to send some direct payments to to farmers. The challenge is it's still a pretty big lift to get that job accomplished because they need to do some things to make that happen. You just tariff money is is uh targeted to a certain area or it goes into the general fund, and you can't just make the decision that we're going to boom send checks over to farmers. It doesn't work that way. Congress is going to have to get involved at some point. The talk is uh the use of Section 32. That's uh an area where 30% of tariff revenues are going to USDA. That's a program that's generally been used when we've had some low commodity prices, and USDA wanted to build some demand so they would buy commodities at commodities that would go into nutrition programs like uh school lunches and those kind of things. To tweak it to send direct payments to farmers, Congress would need to get involved. And it's likely that it would be late in this year before that would be accomplished. So the trick would be how do we get that done? What vehicle are they going to use in Congress to deal with this? I think there's a story to be told, certainly, uh, that there it needs to be some kind of bridge to help farmers get through this time when we get into next year. You know, they used that one big beautiful bill and bumped up reference prices and did some things with uh ARC and PLC and crop insurance, but that doesn't take effect till next fall. So this is really that bridge they've been talking about to help farmers have that cushion to get them through this year and buy the inputs they need to get into 26.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's operating's gonna be tough. We have interest rates coming down a little bit, Don Wick. We have interest rates coming down just slightly, but not enough. I mean, interest rates dropped last week, they may go down a few more quarters. Agriculture has a much bigger problem than a quarter, half point uh percent interest rate. I saw this picture on the internet of uh this farmer right here, and uh I would say he is pretty disconnected from what is happening in agriculture. We had a little mishap here. We had a mishap on the beef situation. This young lady right here started saying that maybe we would pay farmers, maybe she didn't say it, maybe it came from her staff. I don't want to misspeak, but we would pay farmers to retain heifers. What do you know about that, Mr. Wick?
SPEAKER_01:She said there would be some incentives to uh she was in referencing the New World Screwworm and talked about the beef supply and talked about incentives. I think that somehow got translated in the media of saying that uh we'd be paying farmers a check uh to add replacement heifers into the herd, those kind of things.
SPEAKER_00:You know how the media is, you know how these reporters are in this radio guys, but uh and you know what, everyone's looking for the new story, the new beat, but boy, did it affect the cattle market. It did the cattle market traded limit up that day, Mr. Wick.
SPEAKER_01:So yesterday she was speaking in Kansas City. She talked about some of the same farm assistance, the helping hand that uh Trump talked about, but she did clarify, at least in a news briefing after that uh USD or that Ag Outlook conference that was going on in Kansas City, just to clarify how that was going to be done. Again, she was talking about some kind of incentive, but it was not a payment that was gonna be happening to cattle producers. She just made it pretty clear she didn't want to interrupt the supply-demand situation and cattle, particularly when that's the one sector that's actually been making money.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And then cattle then had that close to limit down day, finishing the week here a little firmer. We had another, I don't know what the hell you want to call it, debacle or situation. I'm gonna read this to you. Why would the USA help bail out Argentina? This is from Senator Chuck Grassley, who I'm sure you know well. While the bailout Argentina, while they take American soybean producers' biggest market. What did he say? We we we should. I think he forgot a letter there. They guys spell them like me. We should use leverage every turn to help to help from hurting pharma comedy family farmers should be the top of mind in negotiations. Did are they spelling stuff wrong on purpose? Or I just realized what that looked like. I'm trying to read it. I'm like, are there letters missing?
SPEAKER_01:I'm not sure if Chuck's doing his own social here, but uh he's they had a little nightcap and then put that beauty on it. Give him a break. He's like 92 years old. So if he's on the on the Twitter, he's 10 years old. Oh, ouch.
SPEAKER_00:Ouch. Seriously, Chuck, he's the man. He actually farms. I love when he posts those pictures. Well, he's the man if you want to be the man. I do love when he posts those pictures of him uh harvesting grain in that makes me happy. Speaking of harvesting, we have some of that going on. What are you hearing for harvest up north by you, Mr. Wick?
SPEAKER_01:So the weather's been beautiful this week. We've just uh been blessed with uh warm temperatures and dry conditions. It really was what this corn needed, I think, to some get some final GDUs and bring it to black layer, bring it closer to maturity. We're hearing a few guys that are sneaking into soybean fields uh just very early in that process, though. But this forecast still looks good going into next week. I think there's a lot of optimism once you get in the combine attitude, certainly can change.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. And uh, I'm hearing yield reports uh pretty good from up north, not a lot of complaining. Obviously, they're complaining about the basis, the poor price. Speaking of the basis, that actually improved a little bit. It got less worse in some places. Did you notice that or did you hear anything? I think we might have sold a few loads out of PNW.
SPEAKER_01:We each week we do an assessment. We have seven different elevators that uh in our our listening area that we we track as far as their basis levels. We saw it widen in particular. You go down to Worthington, Minnesota, which is our our southernmost area that we had. Uh there, I think their basis was down closer to 80 cents. While you looked at other elevators, I think Alton Grain in Halstead, North Dakota, they were at 160. So you had quite a difference. So in some areas it was getting a little you know a little worse as far as the basis, and other areas that approved.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we'll see if we could sell a few more loads, get a few trains lined up. They're definitely a value. From what I understand, going back to Argentina, was that we Argentina lowered the tariffs, the markets sold off. They did a ton of business, and they're like, okay, we did a ton of business, raise the tariffs back up. Is that the way you understand it?
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, they they have an export uh tax that they have on their all of their commodities, corn, soybeans, beef as well, and they put that at zero because they're trying to prop up their economy. They needed some dollars to be funneled into their into their coffers, and China came through. What did they see?
SPEAKER_00:Like 30, 35 right there at the bottom of our screen. Someone just popped that up there. Look at it. I want to thank myself for that. China booked 35. Allegedly, you know, whatever. They did some business. And all right, so let's talk about it.
SPEAKER_01:It reached a certain level that they had predetermined it would go to, and and that it only took like what three days before they hit that limit, and then they they dropped. So I'm sure I had to do that. It shows you how aggressive China was, really.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's what I'm thinking about. So China, you know, they will take them all. All right, now if the rest of the world wants to go to South America, there's not going to be as many beans left. And at some point, there's some ifs and buts and maybes, you know. But if we cut a deal with China and South America has a weather production problem, we will explode in the market. The speculator will buy it, the farmer will hold tight, the trump bucks will be showing up. It's interesting how the Trump bucks affect the farmer's ability to market grain. It kind of, I'll just say it, I think it makes them worse at marketing because they're like, oh, this money bought me some time. Let's see if we can't catch a rally. Oftentimes they do, but if they don't, then they will have paid a lot of money to store grain to just be in the same problem they are here. And I think that's what so many ag lenders are worried about. But with that, the American farmer is the most optimistic person I know, and you don't farm for all these years, they do being a pessimist, right? I mean, if you're gonna be there like the world's ending chicken little all the time, you're only gonna make it a few years. And these are gonna be a tough couple years, but usually, as you know, you've been in agriculture for a long time. We go through good cycles, bad cycles, good cycles. I just don't know what gets us out of this, Don. It's gotta be demand, right? We can't just count on the prices going up. We need demand. We are too good at growing grain, correct?
SPEAKER_01:Obviously, I I think farmers they're gonna take that check when it comes their direction with this gets figured out, but they would all rather have it come from the marketplace. You know, if they if if the Trump administration went and said, let's do year-round E15 and we'd automatically have some demand built into that corn market, I think that probably would go a lot. Uh it would be more welcome, probably, from producers than just cutting them a check. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:All right, as we uh finish up this week, what else is on your mind? We got weather up north looking pretty good. We got uh possible trump bucks on the way. We still have a heck of a bull market in cattle, bull market and hogs, gold and silver exploded higher at the end of the week. Folks, I don't know if you're watching gold or silver, but check that little coin collection of yours. Silver hitting$45,$46 an ounce, gold approaching$4,000, crude oil up a dollar fifty on Friday. Don, those are all things. When I say that, that's starting to sound inflationary with me. If we get commodities up like gold and silver and get energies to go for the ride, we have inflation at a time when the Fed's lowering rates. This could be interesting, couldn't it? Yeah, no doubt.
SPEAKER_01:Next week we also have a stocks report and a small grain summary, those numbers from USDA. Will that have any impact?
SPEAKER_00:Or oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh obviously, what day is that report? Because if we shut down Tuesday, what's day? Tuesday. Yeah, you're right. Well, watch the shutdown wouldn't happen till midnight, right? All right, let's make sure the math is math in on that one. And yeah, I know shutdowns during harvest delay the data for all reports, financial reports, agriport reports, crop conditions, export sales, the whole deal. Like the government shuts down, it's not a good thing. So we got a mixed bag. We got Trump bucks, the the government sending us money. And uh, on the other hand, you know, can we keep the government open and with that? All right, if people like this and they like getting information like this, how do they get a hold of the one and only? Mr. Don Wick.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, you can shoot me an email, Don at rrfn.com. We have a weekly e-newsletter, goes out every Monday called FarmNut News. And uh, we like to think it's a pretty good snapshot and what's going on in the world of agriculture, whether it's policy or crop conditions, those kind of things. You can also go to our website, rrfn.com, and sign up there as well.
SPEAKER_00:All right, I'm gonna put you on the spot. I'm not gonna put the camera back on me, but I'm gonna ask you something serious. If you could give a 15-second little speech of words of encouragement to the farmer at harvest, what would it be?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think we got some pretty big bushels out there. That's uh a positive. There's nothing like having some good weather at harvest time. And and yeah, there is certainly going to be some financial support coming there either way, uh a helping hand, so to speak. That's uh that's got to be a positive.
SPEAKER_00:Mr. Don Wick with the Red River Farm Network, this is Tommy Gersafi from Magbull Media with your week in review, 926, 2025. The calendar's just flying by. I'll see you next week, Mr. Wick. Thanks, Tommy.
