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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 Courts, Policy, And Commodity Volatility Collide
We unpack fresh market data after the government reopens, weigh China’s year-end purchase promises against a looming Supreme Court tariff decision, and pressure-test farm margins as input costs stay stubborn. We also dig into right to repair, sugar beet payment cuts, and what aid might realistically look like.
• government data returning and confidence gaps
• China purchase commitments and trade timing
• emergency tariff authority risk at the Supreme Court
• aid posture versus rising fertilizer and equipment costs
• antitrust attention on fertilizer and equipment markets
• right to repair implications for downtime and cost control
• cattle herd declines versus drought and policy narratives
• dairy herd dynamics and dairy beef revenues
• grain volatility with December options expiry
• sugar beet payment collapse and per-acre losses
• disaster funds progress and appropriations priorities
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Thank you, Tommy G
Welcome back, everyone. Tom Grassafi Ag Bowl Media, Ag Bowl Trading. I'm sitting here in my basement and Mr. Don Wick had traveled out to the National Association of Farm Broadcasters. I believe that's in Kansas City. We'll bring him in. Mr. Don Wick, we have a lot to talk about. It's only Tuesday. Where are you, sir?
SPEAKER_01:I am in Kansas City. It's our our farm broadcasters, 80 second annual convention going on uh here in downtown KC.
SPEAKER_00:At one of their finest hotel rooms. Is it at the big convention center?
SPEAKER_01:The uh we're at the Western Crown Center downtown. Yeah. Yeah. The NFB was like one of the first conventions held at this convention some I don't know, 45 years ago, and we've been here ever since.
SPEAKER_00:I like it. And how long ago did you start going? You're gonna show your age a little bit, but uh I think this is my 43rd year. I love it. I love it. That's awesome. Well, good. Uh, you are a veteran, and it's absolutely uh a privilege to uh get to work with you. All right, let's get right into it. Government's open, it's only Tuesday. I'm losing track already, but it's only Tuesday. Government's open for business. We're starting to get different crop ratings, stuff like that. Information's coming out slow though. What are you hearing?
SPEAKER_01:You know, it's kind of been a little bit of a data dump, though, when you take a look at like all the export sales that came through for that that short that period of time. Of course, the uh the supply-demand report that came out on Friday. They couldn't have used all of their normal sources when they were shut down all of those all of those many weeks. So those numbers we'll have to see how they adjust when we move forward here. You know, we got FSA back to work. There's that was what I think really important. We needed these farmers to be able to get into their FSA office and have that third party sign off on those checks and those kind of things. So it's good to have the government back up and running.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. What uh uh speaking of government, you had a banger of an interview last week with this guy. Let's talk about that. Stephen Vaden.
SPEAKER_01:Yep, Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden spoke with him midweek last week, talked about a number of things. One talking about uh China. I asked if uh he expected they'll meet their obligation of going through the you know 12 million that we're talking about here before at the end of the year, and he said that he fully expects China to fulfill their obligations, that President Gi understands he's negotiating with President Trump rather than former President Biden, and really laid it out that he thought this was going to happen, which it's been a little interesting since uh the Treasury Secretary Bessant has has made some comment that he hopes to get everything finalized before the Thanksgiving holiday. I think the president's a little anxious to get it done before that. But so still a work in progress with China, but we are starting to see some action way sounds a little bit more out of the gulp, maybe than the VMW, but some action happening. My conversation with Vayton also talked about a couple of different issues, one being the financial aid package that we've talked about. I spoke with Vayton at FarmFest in August, and he reminded me that prices are a lot different today for soybeans than what they were in August. And he said the administration's not going to do aid for aid's sake. They are going to put together a package, but it's going to have to be adjusted because of what's happened with the commodity prices, which I quickly said the input prices, the input costs have not gone down. They certainly have remained high for fertilizer, seed, chemical, everything that's out there. Land rents haven't really been adjusted. So while the commodity prices may have changed a bit for soybeans, we know that the input cost has not changed the situation at all.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you were very quick to talk to him about that. When, yeah, sure, soybeans went up, but what about fertilizer? They said he did talk about fertilizer and had some opinions about that, right?
SPEAKER_01:He talked about the need for a federal investigation and antitrust violations. He started, of course, the administration has come out on the the big four meat packers that uh Trump renewing promise that he started in the in the first go-around, his first administration, to investigate those meat packers. Now Vaden kind of went to we want to go further than that, not just into the beatpacking industry. He wanted to look at fertilizer. He spoke at length about wanting to look at the farm equipment business. He made reference to the fact that you buy that brand new tractor and it's cost just as much as uh a Rolls-Royce, but you don't have the opportunity to determine who's going to fix it or you know make equipment changes yourself. Uh it it feeds into that whole right to repair issue that farmers have been very conscious of uh in most recent years.
SPEAKER_00:And that's a new subject for me, but I think what you're talking about is like death fluid and stuff like that. Like the guy, when there are guy who went to jail for taking off the death, and uh Trump says pardon him. I think uh I think there's a mechanic who actually was sentenced for uh taking off death on uh equipment, and he actually went to jail. So I will check on that. But it's a very serious issue, and it it's it's like someone old school. I hear farmers often talk about I'm my little bit of older something, this way I could still work on it and everything else.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I and you look at the tractors or combines that we're running today and the kind of technology that uh we have at hand here, and you pretty much have a monopoly because the the company that you bought it from, they're the ones who control the the computers behind what's what's making a tractor open down the field.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the parts, everything else. All right. I want to talk to you about an awkward interview, or maybe it wasn't awkward. We could talk about it. But Secretary of Ag uh Brooke Rollins, I give her credit, she's out there, she'll speak to folks. I don't know, will she be at your meeting? I'm sure there'll be some people from DC out there. But she had an interview on Fox News and she was blaming cattle prices on Biden, and I just found it awkward. What you want to explain what Rollins said as best you can? I can.
SPEAKER_01:So she was on Fox Business and was asked about the you know, there's a lot of focus on high consumer beef prices, and the question was dealing with the size of the cattle herd. And she made reference to the size of the cattle herd, was he said the blame was put on the Biden administration, focused on climate change, saying that uh she called it a literal war on beef, is what uh President Biden put uh put out there. I don't know. We we're looking at a 70-year low on the cattle herd. We also have to remember there was a drought that took a lot of that pasture away, and and a lot of those cows went to town when when we were looking at Mother Nature, not necessarily climate change or the policy from any administration having too much of an impact.
SPEAKER_00:I'll throw you a curbball that we didn't talk about before we started talking. Tony, our good friend Tony St. James, I was listening to him today. He must have mentioned four times that the dairy herd is at 30-year highs. Have you heard anything about that? We have so little dairy up by us in North Dakota that's not uh much of a talking point.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's growing. We've got an operation that was 155,000 cows coming into South Design Fork. But you know, it's kind of tough in that dairy business and the fact that we've got$16,$17 milk. It's hard to cash flow on the milk side where they've been making money is on the dairy beef, selling their kel calves and uh kel cows and their and their calves and those kind of things. So he said the dairy herd was at the at a high. I'm I'm kind of surprised because we're not really maintaining a herd just because of the high beef prices. That's what's been propping up to the profitability for a dairy operation in the recent.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's definitely not the milk because I I talked about it. But uh, I'll ask you another question and I'll Google it just to make sure. But he mentioned it over and over and over, and it kind of caught me by surprise because I thought overall animals would be down Don just because of how tight the beef industry is. But you know, a couple years ago we had some higher milk prices. Remember that? We were shooting milk in the 24, 25s. Milk was on a good run. Yeah, corn was at real close to you know lows, multi-tenure lows, and dairy industry was flying. Now it just it's just a typical agriculture thing to overproduce. But let's talk about the markets. We have continued volatility here in soybeans. It's fun. Corn trice go long for the ride. Our friend, Minneapolis Spring Wheat had a good day today. Minneapolis Spring Wheat had a real good day and highest price for spring wheat in months. It still has a five in front of it, though, in the December contract. Real quick on futures and options, December options expire Friday, Mr. Wick, and we could see some volatility there.
SPEAKER_01:Volatility's really been the word here. You expect that to continue until all this China stuff gets figured out, or what's the what's the reason for the the big swings we've got?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I do. I I really do think the markets will stay busy for a while. There's something creeping up. I was trying to Google that, and apparently I don't know how to talk and type at the same time. Don't try that, chew gum and walk. There's something that no one wants to say the quiet part out loud. The Supreme Court can go pull all those tariffs away. So you you said earlier in the show, oh, Trump's working fast to do this. Uh, he wants this done by Thanksgiving. Why won't anyone just say it? There's a really good chance the Supreme Court can shoot down all these tariffs and all this arguing and fighting and volatility in the markets, they can just say, nope, that's not what we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_01:That's a huge face that we've got that's that's kind of hanging out there. I mean, the the oral arguments almost uh seem like that's the direction they were going, was questioning the authority that the president had for emergency tariffs. So I think that is certainly a big issue. Of course, the president knocked off the import tariffs on a number of food products, everything from bananas to coffee. Beef was also tied into that uh that mix as well. I thought that was kind of surprising.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we'll see what happens. But uh, my sources and my gut tell me that uh he they could they, he, we, us, whoever, we could lose this case in Supreme Court, depending on what side you're on, right? And maybe want them to lose so we can get, but it'll have a big effect on markets. I think it'll have a huge effect on markets if that was to happen.
SPEAKER_01:And Trump still has some authority on to be handling some things on the trade stuff, though, even if that emergency authority goes away, it wouldn't be as easy as he's been doing that as of late, but uh there would still be some resources I think they'd have.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So overall, since we've we've been doing these here for quite a few months, the markets are at the highest price they've been since then. Corn, bean, and wheat. We've had cattle calm down. We've had big volatility recently in the stock market the last few days, seeing a pullback tomorrow. NVIDIA comes out with earnings, that's the most valuable stock. And gold and silver have had some big moves. I'll let you talk for a second because I have to cough, Mr. Wick. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_01:No worries. Talk about what's going on in these markets. You always ask a lot about sugar beet prices, and we're gonna see those beat payments come out in early December at uh meetings with American Crystal and MINDAC and Southern Mint. The beat payments we're gonna see this year are gonna be half of what we had a year ago, if not less. Oh boy. I I spoke with the executive VP, Mike Metzger, with MINDAC. I think they're looking at a sub-21 dollar beat payment, and a year ago they were in the 40. I think it was even higher than that, to be honest with you. I don't want to quote that number. But he talked about farmers are losing five to seven hundred dollars per acre. Think about that.$500 to$700 per acre for the beet grower. These are guys that are used to coming out of that meeting in December and buying that new shiny truck. That's not gonna happen this year.
SPEAKER_00:Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Real quick, uh, I I still see the need, but uh let you talk about it. Trump bucks, are they gonna happen or not?
SPEAKER_01:Uh yeah, I think uh they're gonna be well in the way now that we've got government back in in action. They have announced some disaster programs, not the necessarily the one that I think everybody's looking for are those Trump bucks, but there's been some like the wildfire disaster money from 23-24 that uh just got uh kicked out here early this week, and and some of those kind of things are coming up. Having North Dakota Senator John Hovind leading that Senate Agro Appropriations Committee has been key in making sure some of those funds are there to really get the job done for our producers. It's it's been pretty critical.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. All right, I gotta get you out of here. You gotta get out of here. I want to tell people, of course, that we have premium content, www.agbull.com. If you are watching this video, you are a premium subscriber. Now I'm gonna put the audio part out for free. We'll let people listen to it. But if they want to see Mr. Wick's pretty face and my pretty face, they're gonna have to click like and subscribe.$25 a month,$250 annually. Back to the show, Mr. Wick. How do people get a hold of you at the Red River Farm Network? And I want to congratulate you on that interview. You've had lots of great interviews in your life, but that one uh was really awesome. Thank you for that.
SPEAKER_01:You go to our website, rrfn.com, as in the Red River Farm Network. We publish a weekly newsletter on Mondays called Farm Net News. So we'll get a lot of traction. Love to have folks sign up for it.
SPEAKER_00:Sounds good. What are you optimistic about here at the just take 30 seconds, promote the farm broadcasters? What do you all do there?
SPEAKER_01:So there's some newsmaker sessions. We have what's called Trade Talk, which is a huge interview fair. It's kind of the who's who bag that's going to be here, whether it's Richard Fordyce, Under Secretary of Agriculture, will be in Trade Talk. You got all the major farm groups, all the big companies from deer to bear to BASF. They'll all have key individuals here. That's our Thursday schedule all day long. We've also got our business of our association. We're going through some bylaw changes. So it's uh going to be a bit of an interesting business session for our farm broadcasters.
SPEAKER_00:Good luck to you and all the farm broadcasters. Who knows? Maybe I'll become a farm broadcaster someday, Mr. Wick. You believe it? I would love it. Oh boy. All right. Give the misses a hug and uh time of your happy at bull media, Mr. Don Wick, Red River Farm Network. We'll catch you next week, sir. Thanks, Tommy.
