I states planting and conditions update

Shay

Foulk: Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. Today you have Shay Foulk's special guest, James Ramsey from Indiana. How are you today, James?

James

Ramsey: I'm doing pretty good.

Shay

Foulk: Good. Hey, appreciate you making the time for this this morning. Just wondered if you could give us a little bit of an update on where exactly you're located and kind of how crop conditions are in your area.

James

Ramsey: So I am— our farming operation is based out of Shelbyville, Indiana. We're straight east of Indianapolis, about 20 miles. Located in Shelby County, Indiana. Currently crop conditions and planting everything in our area has progressed extremely fast, especially compared to last year. Currently we sit about two-thirds planted on corn and just a hair over half on our beans. The neighborhood, I would say our community, probably is in that neighborhood of 80 to 90% of the corn is planted, um, and probably 60 to 70% of the beans are planted. Um, where there's not really much emerged, it's just the whole crop is just now starting to come out of the ground. Um, first corn planted is starting to hit second leaf stage. Um, the cold really set us back there and just kind of stunted everything and held everything in the ground for a little while, which is probably blessing in the skies.

And so we've been 75 to 80 degrees the last 2 days, and so this stuff's just flying out of the ground, ready to take off and get going.

Shay

Foulk: So speaking of that cold weather, another thing that goes along with that as far as getting that germination up and out of the ground has been moisture. And you and I were talking offline here shortly before the call, and, you know, I know you had some rain maybe in some of the fields there, but What does that look like as far as rainfall here through the spring?

James

Ramsey: We started the winter out pretty wet. A sideline business/full-time business for me is we also own a farm drainage and excavating business. And we fought rain and water all winter long, clear up until here just about 3 weeks ago. It's been wet. We turned off dry— dryer about a month ago, there about mid-April. Things started turning around, the rainfall started getting shorter, temps were on the rise for us, and then Cold Spell came and it got cold again. But we— so we're drying out a little bit. We're actually sitting where we could You know, we would take some rain. We would, you know, we would not be opposed to any rain. We have not had a rainfall event over 4/10 of rain on one farm probably in about 3 and a half weeks. Wow.

We're, we're, we're to the point where it's time to start getting some regular rainfall or back of my mind, we're starting to see some signs of a repeat of the 2012 drought. Kind of setting in. It's just, I think it's somewhat localized to our area, but at the moment, I'm— we are getting a little nervous that you might be seeing history repeat itself again here.

Shay

Foulk: So why do you say that? What signs are you looking at? And the reason I'm asking on that is because that discussion has been pretty heavy here the last few weeks, uh, and it's not, you know, it's regionalized in the point where it's not widespread across say, Indiana, but we are seeing that in areas in Iowa and Minnesota that have actually had very little rainfall. What kind of signs are you looking at there that you make that comparison?

James

Ramsey: Locally, for the farming operation, we have some small ponds we would call duck ponds, low-lying areas that are unable to be perfectly drained. Due to wetlands and government regulations, we're not allowed to drain them completely. Those areas are dry and are planted. We have a crop growing in them. Last time we had a crop growing in them in the second week of May was in 2012. The other— that's from the farm perspective. When we can get 4/10 of rain on a farm and We're a heavier clay soils, lighter— we have a lot of lighter soils. And when we get 4/10 of rain, usually that knocks us out. On an average rainfall year, that'll knock us out pretty easily for a day, day and a half. It's nothing for us to be back in in 24 hours now, right now. The other perspective is that I get the advantage of is with the Farm Grange Excavating Business, we travel upwards of about 60 miles.

In any direction from our shop. And in that work, I'm seeing a lot of soil profiles all over the place in about 12 different counties. And the soil profile is telling me that there's not as much moisture in it from a perspective— because some of the tiles are not running as much as what they could be or should be at this time normally. And then on top of that, we're seeing just drier conditions through the soil profile down 3, 4 feet already. Much drier than what I'd prefer to see in the second week of May.

Shay

Foulk: Right, right. Well, you know, I think that pretty well covers a lot of the crop information that we wanted to talk on here. I guess just overall, as far as the environment and everything that's going on right now with the coronavirus, some of the economic downturn, things like that, you know, what do you see as kind of the biggest challenge for yourself or your operation heading through 2020 that you maybe weren't considering at the same time last year? Of course, we had a whole different set of issues, but what do you see as some of the biggest challenges you're facing right now?

James

Ramsey: Currently with our operation, some of the biggest challenges we see— we raise corn, soybeans, and wheat. The wheat and soybeans are all feed production, but the corn is a mostly food-grade corn type production, non-GMO, high starch, that kind of stuff. And the issue we're going to run into right now is obviously markets are down. So now we're marketing, trying to just— the goal right now is purely just protection, asset protection, you know, production protection for ourselves and just trying to cover our bases, make sure we keep employees paid, get our families fed. Gets bills paid. There's not gonna be a lot of money going in the bank this year, if any. But right now our goal is just putting plans in place to try and keep everything afloat for another year. Our floors, our marketing floors are definitely a lot lower than what they've been in years.

We're going to see a lot lower trading range than what we've seen in a lot of years as far as pricing goes. Right now our biggest challenge is just trying to, just try and keep our head above everything, keep up on all the government programs and qualify for everything we can. I'm not a, not a big advocate for government assistance, but at the same hand, I got to take whatever I can get. Um, so then we can try and protect ourselves and keep everything going here.

Shay

Foulk: So absolutely. No, I appreciate that insight there. And I, one last question that I have for you, James, is, you know, you mentioned offline, uh, Morristown as kind of a location there. For some of the larger processing facilities. Where else are you maybe going with some of those products? What does processing look like, and how is basis in your area as well?

James

Ramsey: Basis is all right, right now. So we have a Bunge bean crush plant 6 miles from our facility, and we also have a brand new POET ethanol plant that is sitting completely idle. It is, it is 100% ready to go, ready to pump it out. It's one of their biggest facilities they own in the country, and it is sitting completely shut down. All the employees have been laid off or furloughed. So the, you know, basis right now is pretty average for us. Right now, our time of year, we usually have about a 36-under basis $0.30, $0.40 is not uncommon. So that's where we're at. We're trading in an average range. But the problem is, is there's a lot of grain still on the farm. There's a lot of grain that guys have held on to and it's unpriced. There is, there's no contracts on it. Last year was so— everybody didn't know what was going on.

And a lot of, you know, ourselves included, went into 2020 with a lot of unpriced grain. So that, that, that will be a basis game there because if that grain comes out and fills these facilities up going through the summer and early fall as they create room for the next crop, that's going to create a basis issue because they're obviously going to drive the basis down because they don't have— a lot of our local corn, commercial corn goes into chicken and hog feed or ethanol production. And with lower livestock numbers and ethanol plants sitting idle, We don't have any demand. So I would not be at all surprised to see a 60-70 cent under basis pretty easily this fall, which would be a pretty big wide basis for us. But unfortunately, I think that's what we're going to be looking at.

Shay

Foulk: Right. Well, I appreciate perspective on that. And anybody listening right now that didn't get a chance to listen to the conversation with Steve Johnson that Chris talked with, regarding this basis issue or potential basis issue that we see down the road. I encourage you to hop over and listen to that conversation. James, hey, I really appreciate the perspective and your time today. Wish you all the best with planting season. And I would just say, you know, love to check back in with you here later this year.

James

Ramsey: Hey, definitely do. And like I always tell the guys in the family, at this point we can do everything we can do, but It's in God's hands at this point. We just gotta let his plan play out and we'll do whatever he wants us to do.

Shay

Foulk: Absolutely. James, thank you so much. And now moving from Indiana over to Illinois, we're joined with Brad in southern Illinois, south central Illinois, I should say. How are you doing today, Brad?

Unknown: Doing fine, thank you.

Shay

Foulk: What's the weather look like in your area today and what are you seeing for planting progress there?

Unknown: Central Illinois here, which generally, you know, looking at Cass, Morven, Sangamon, Brown, Schuyler, central to west central Illinois portion, last couple days, 1 to 2 inches depending on where you're at. A real nice planting run here Sunday through Wednesday. It's going to put the majority of this central to west central Illinois in that 80 to 85% planted total corn and soybeans. There are some growers that are completely done. So the guys that did get out and plant a significant amount back in early April when things were fairly dry, soil temperatures were very cool at that point in time. But a lot of those growers are done and done for quite a while. But overall, I would say again, 80 to 85% planted both corn and soybeans. Here in central to west central.

Shay

Foulk: Well, that's a pretty good spot to be in. With that stuff that was planted a little bit earlier, how is the emergence looking on that? And have you been out doing any stand counts as far as what that final stand looks like there?

Unknown: Generally, those stand counts are all good to very good. OK. Say if a guy was planning on dropping 35,000, generally we're looking at 34,000 to 35,000 now. Emergence in a lot of it wasn't the most even that we would like to see. Planting into sub-50-degree soil temperatures, some of it got snowed on more than one time. Corn being a warm-season grass, we have to expect that some of these negative things, like uneven emergence, are simply going to occur, especially when you throw some cold rains and, again, some of these snows on top of it. We also did have a minor frost frost event here this Saturday and again on Monday morning, although it doesn't look like it's really going to create any major problems, minor issues, but nothing that's going to warrant replanting anything there.

So overall, considering really not the greatest spring, the worst, but when we make decisions as producers or even as consultants helping make people decisions, we have to be willing to accept the consequences, whether those could be good or bad. And we knew going into this spring and some of the guys that were planting in early April that there were consequences there. We also know that there are possible consequences when we plant ahead of a big rain that was forecast yesterday. Sometimes those are chances that we have to take. When it happens, regardless of the outcome, we have to accept those. And, you know, some of the questions that we had, especially with some of those early April planted crops, was as of May 1st, that was struggling to emerge. This, you know, corn emergence is all based on heat units.

And just because it's been in the ground for 3 weeks doesn't guarantee it's going to come up because of the lack of heat units that we had. Considering those situations, considering everything that's occurred this spring, sometimes we have to go back to Dr. Albrecht's famous quotes. He was at the University of Missouri, but one of his famous quotes is, "Study books and study nature. When they don't agree, throw the books out." I believe there's a lot of truth to that. Yeah, nobody wants to go plant into soil temperatures that are less than 50 degrees. By the same token, there's a lot of guys that remembered 2019 and usually, yes, we're rewarded by being patient. Last year was not one of those years. And, and so when we were getting those phone calls earlier this year, you know, had the same kind of conversations with growers is, look, here's the potential risk.

If you're okay with accepting, you know, the consequences with that, we'll plant. And we're not going to tell anybody not to plant because of last year, because of, again, in so many cases, especially in some of these river bottoms, the soil actually was in very good shape minus the temperature side. And so if we take into account this quote from Dr. Albrecht of study books and study nature, and when they don't agree, throw the books out, we would all be a lot better off.

Shay

Foulk: Right. Well, no, I think that's very true with the soil conditions there up here. Kind of northwest Illinois where I'm located as well. We had some great conditions early on. We were able to get oats in there at the beginning of March, that first week of March, and we actually threw some beans in pretty early for our area, April 3rd, just to try. And like you said, ground conditions were great, temperatures weren't there, but the forecast looked decent. Well, then we got cool after that and we have some beans that we're going to be replanting. But I think testing to see what's out there And pushing those limits every once in a while is certainly a good thing. So anything else that you want to make a comment on here as we wrap up on some of the field conditions in your area? What does maybe that last 15% look like on getting in? I know that you're pretty wet there right now.

Unknown: The last 15% is going to all be dependent on location and environment.

James

Ramsey: With the Oklahoma River—

Unknown: being back in that 21-22 range. I didn't look at it today. There are significant amount of acres in that river valley that river is going to have to go down to get them there planted. Mississippi River is fairly low at this point in time, but I don't know what the rains the last 2 days, what's going to occur here in the mid Mississippi River Valley outside of river bottoms. Depending on the rain forecast for tomorrow and Sunday, I do believe if we were forecast to get another roughly inch to inch and a quarter, if that's all we get and next week's temperatures and weather holds true, I think mid to end of next week, the majority of those acres will allow growers to get finished up. Good deal.

Shay

Foulk: Well, I'd say that's pretty good. And as we mentioned, you know, relative to last year, Can't really complain about that.

Unknown: So, Brad, thank you. You got that right.

Shay

Foulk: Thank you for taking the time here to talk crop updates and planting progress in your area. And hopefully we'll be able to touch base here sometime this summer again.

Unknown: Absolutely.

Shay

Foulk: Well, joining us here from northern Illinois is Joe Paulsen. And I need to preface the conversation from saying that Joe, you were out on your jet ski doing some crop scouting this morning. Tell me a little bit about that.

Unknown: I was. I was out this morning. I woke up, looked outside, and we got about 3.5 inches of rain last night on top of the 2 inches we had before. And the big part of our farm is kind of all floodplain. And when we get a huge amount of water like that, it can sometimes really jump out. And it jumped out in a big way this morning. And my brother and I are like, you know what, let's, let's dance in the rain a little bit. Take the jet ski out. So that's what, that's what we did.

Shay

Foulk: So that was on a field that was planted here. Was that last Friday? I think you said.

Unknown: Yep. Yep.

Shay

Foulk: Now that went into corn. So let's talk a little bit on, on your planting progress. What's that looking like in that area? Like I said, up north central. Illinois, where you guys sitting right now on planting?

Unknown: So I would say we're sitting fairly decent from a, you know, there's some people that are actually done with both corn and beans. I would say probably most people are all done with corn. We are personally finished with corn. We probably have about 75% of our beans to put in yet. And I would say maybe half the beans are probably in in the area. So it's coming along. I mean, there was a little bit of— of course, this was a huge prevent plant area. We're located in DeKalb County. That was one of the hard-hit ones here in Illinois. And so everybody up here was a little bit— you could tell. Shell-shocked when we— because we've had these little micro windows where it's like 36 hours, 48 hours, and, you know, people were really going like hell to get things in. We had a little window here after Mother's Day. Um, the corn stalks were really not where you wanted them to be.

Um, it was, uh just really, really wet underneath. A lot of, you know, just the mud wasn't coming out of the root balls and stuff. It kind of looked nasty. I had a neighbor that had quite a bit of corn to get in. And I looked at it. We looked at each other and we're like, you know what? Let's occupy ourselves with just— let's finish getting all your corn in. So him and I went like hell and got all this corn in about 45 minutes before it started raining. So, you know, we'll hit it hard on the beans next go around.

Shay

Foulk: Well, and for a little bit of perspective here, so, you know, I was just talking with Brad a little bit ago down there in southern Illinois and in Indiana, and then we'll hear from Shawn out in Iowa. They're actually seeing some dry conditions here. And to give a little bit of perspective on why through Illinois we have this wetness here, I would say starting about 2, 2.5 weeks ago, it seemed like every day, Joe, and I'm sure you saw most of the same thing, we had winds either out of the north or out of the south at 20 miles an hour, and we got the hot corn showers. They just kept coming up out of nowhere. So the amount of precipitation, I don't think Brad mentioned it in the earlier part of this podcast here, but they had some areas that have had over 11 inches of accumulation in the last month to month and a half. Oh, wow.

So, you know, these regions that they're talking similar to drought conditions, you know, early 2012 feeling to it, we're not looking at that right now. We have flashbacks in some areas more like 2019, I would say.

Unknown: I would totally agree with that. You know, we didn't get like the 11 inches of rain. I don't know what the exact number is, but we haven't had really large rain events, but they've been spaced out just enough that it's— and then with the cool— the worst part that's been so bad for us is the cool, overcast weather. I mean, if we could have just had 60s and sunny, we probably could have gained a day and a half on each one of our planting windows. And I would have just about all my beans in, but we just didn't have the dry. It was just too cool.

Shay

Foulk: Right. And I know you and I both are looking forward to having some of this warm weather coming through here. I'm standing outside right now. It's about 75 degrees and, and sunny and looks even better moving into the beginning part of next week. So hopefully things will dry out here shortly and be able to get rolling and get the rest of those beans in. Joe, is there Any other kind of last comments that you have as far as your area goes? I guess, how are guys feeling overall with everything that we have going on market-wise, and then also now with these planting conditions?

Unknown: I've been farming since 2001, and I have never seen people so despondent and just fed up with absolutely everything. Uh, it's, it's, uh, it's just, it's like we can't catch a break. And, uh, you know, we're gonna get through this, but I mean, it's just a lot looking at prices. And then, you know, we've been fighting it a little bit getting the crop in, and, uh And then now, you know, 5 inches of rain over 2 days. And, you know, it's, it's just a lot. But, and I'd say that's pretty much the general consensus with everybody.

Shay

Foulk: Well, I think it's just, it's, it's not negative. It's not all down talk. It's just the reality of things, you know, how they are right now in different areas. Some people are feeling great about how things are and some areas with these localized events or not. Well, Joe, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk through this, and hopefully here later on this summer we'll be able to catch back up with you and see how things are going along. But for now, stay safe planting out there, and wish you the best of luck with the rest of your season.

Unknown: Thanks for including me, Shea. I appreciate it. It was fun to visit.

Shay

Foulk: And now we're going to jump back over to Iowa, joined with Shawn here from Central Iowa. How's it going today, Shawn?

Unknown: Good, Shay, how are you today?

Shay

Foulk: I'm doing well. Had some rain showers here last night and thankful for that. We needed it. Some areas here in northwest Illinois, some areas north of here, as you know, we heard from Joe there, got a good bit of rain. So how are conditions in your area? And if you could just maybe give the listeners a little bit of an idea of where exactly you're located and what it is that you do out there, Shawn.

Unknown: Absolutely. So we are located just outside of Central Iowa, if you're familiar with the Farm Progress Show site or Iowa State University. So we would be just west of Iowa State University near the Ag Research Farm, a couple miles south where the Farm Progress Show will hopefully be held in August, or I guess it's early September. So yeah, just Central Iowa, cover kind of that, just north of Des Moines area. So conditions I would say are good. We also got rain showers last night that were much needed. We've, we've been in one of the, one of the drier spots I would say. Not necessarily all of Central Iowa, but where we farm and do the bulk of our business. We seems like we missed a lot of rains this spring, which helped us get planted pretty quickly, but certainly the rain yesterday was a welcome sight, especially to a lot of these soybeans that are kind of kind of lingering.

Shay

Foulk: So as we heard from James earlier over there in central Indiana, you know, they have a lot of areas that are very dry, and James even made some— you think it is, you know, similar to that at this point, or it's missed rains? Kind of what's the feel in the area there as far as how dry you are?

Unknown: Yeah. So I would not say we are dangerously dry by any means, but certainly we saw our forecast. Our forecast is starting to look really good. About a week ago, I was starting to get a little nervous because we planted into probably the best conditions we've seen in— oh gosh, it's been at least 4 or 5 years since we've had this nice of a spring. But then, but then we were starting to look dry and our forecast was indicating that we might be, you know, progressing towards some sort of a drought. That has changed. We've got rain chances off and on for the next couple weeks. I'd say we feel pretty good, but we're far from saturated. You know, we're going to need to— we're going to need to hopefully keep timely rains coming.

Shay

Foulk: So let's talk about planting progress a little bit associated with that. Of course, you know, I got family over there in Iowa and we got producers that we work— some operations had pretty much everything in the ground in a 10- to 12-day window that they never had to even park the planter. How did it look in central Iowa, kind of where you are, and what would you peg planting percentage at for your region?

Unknown: Yeah, so our business— so we have a family farm, and then we also have a seed dealership here. We support a lot of growers in central Iowa. We are, knock on wood, we are done, assuming that we only get to do Plant 20 once. If that's the case, which everybody certainly is hoping for, then we are 100% done. It was a crazy spring. We had a few guys this year that were running liquid systems, and so we went out probably earlier than maybe we should have. We ran some corn into the ground in early April. Which is unique for us. We typically don't do that. We hit a cold patch that I think started April 9th and lasted through like April 15th or 16th. It was really cold, overnights in the upper 20s and low 30s and daytime highs only in the 40s. We started basically April 18th and we were more or less cooked by about May 2nd.

Obviously, there's a couple a couple, you know, lingering things to be done. We actually have some seed acres, some seed beans that are yet to go in the ground. But in terms of commercial crop, we are done, and we're hopeful that we're done, that we only have to do it once. When we were talking about moisture, you know, we've had some beans that got planted where we didn't have moisture, and we were kind of chasing, should we go shallow and keep them dry, or should we go deep and try and find moisture? And so that rain, we're going to learn a lot over the next 4 to 5 days. We need some heat desperately and we're finally going to get that. But I feel, I feel pretty confident, short of anything unforeseen, that we're going to, we're going to have it all cooked in one batch.

But yeah, we did, we did 100%, basically, or let's call it 95% in about a 16-day window, which I've never experienced anything like that. It was, it was pretty crazy.

Shay

Foulk: Well, that's great for planting conditions. With that cold that you mentioned in early April, A separate incident that we had here last week really was some freezing temperatures. Were you guys affected by those freezing temperatures at all?

Unknown: Yeah, so today is May 15th. So Friday the 9th— or I'm sorry, Friday the 8th— that overnight we caught frost. Luckily, we had very few soybeans that were emerged. We had some that were just emerging. We had a few kind of VC transitioning to V1. We haven't seen much soy damage. I was more nervous about that, obviously, in terms of replant. We saw a lot of corn take kind of a hit from that. So, you know, some of that you could literally see from the truck, but nothing that I think is going to cause real long-lasting damage. Again, we're pretty desperate for some heat. Today's supposed to be nice, the sunshine, and that's going to do that corn a lot of good. Our bigger lookout has been some of that early planted stuff that went in the ground before that cold snap. We're learning a lot about hybrid variation as far as how it handles some extreme cold and that sort of thing.

We've seen some uneven germination, a little bit of loss in stand, but that's a pretty small percentage of it. The bulk of it looks really good.

Shay

Foulk: Right. No, that's good. Now, I guess one of the final questions I would have here in regards to your area is, What's kind of the farmer sentiment right now from the seed dealership perspective? I know you get a lot of input, of course, talking to people on the countryside on how people are feeling for this year. 2019 isn't a great year necessarily to compare to, but how do people feel for 2020 with all things considered, crop prices and everything else in your area?

Unknown: Great question. So I saw one of my customers posted some sort of a meme that said, you know, we should apologize to 2019 and beg her to take us back. I had to giggle at that. So, you know, we're really lucky, Shay. We work with, you know, I believe some of the best growers in the state of Iowa and really some of the best guys in the Corn Belt. So I have a I'm a very optimistic set of growers. We've got some new products this year that we're trying. There's a lot of excitement around some technologies, some biologicals, some things that we're excited about. You know, it's hard to go into a year like this with commodity prices the way that they are and all of the other uncertainty, right? I mean, we're in pretty weird times. You know, overall, I think it helps a lot. We got a crop in well.

Which, you know, the last few years really it didn't matter where you were, it's been hard to get stuff put in the ground well. So I think that feels good. Overall, there's certainly, you know, angst in the countryside around, you know, around the crop and commodity prices. I don't think there's a way to get away from that. But we feel good. We put in probably the best crop into the most ideal conditions we've done in a long time. And I think in terms of where we sit today, you know, the things that we can control, I think we all feel really good about that. Good.

Shay

Foulk: I think last question I have for you, Sean, that I probably know the answer to, but in regards to planting decisions, any major switches in acreage here this spring as we saw some of the effects of the coronavirus and everything that's going on? Anybody make any switches between corn and beans of, you know, significant note?

Unknown: I wouldn't say significant. We are very, very close to 50/50 in both our family farm and our seed dealership. So, you know, we have a handful of growers that run some corn on corn. We saw a few of those guys maybe push slightly towards beans, but nothing that I would say was earth-shattering or significant. Probably the biggest, the biggest kind of trend that I see continuing within our own grower base is really just this pushing soybeans earlier and earlier. This is the first year we saw a significant amount of our customer base either run simultaneous planting of corn and soy, or even soy first, then corn. And, you know, time will tell whether or not that was the right decision to make, but certainly that's a trend. In terms of heavy acreage switches, we've run pretty close to 50/50 over the last probably 5 or 6 years. Right.

Shay

Foulk: A good deal there. Any last notes that you would want to say to anybody listening pretty much all across the country or to your folks in general there in central Iowa? Any last notes from your end, Shawn?

Unknown: Yeah, no, I appreciate the question. I think the thing that I would hope is that You know, there's a lot of uncertainty, and certainly, you know, certainly people feel vulnerable. You've got the, you know, the corona stuff going on that adds a layer of that. I think there's a lot to be excited about. I went to Commodity Classic this year, went to another conference, a couple conferences in December and January. And, you know, it's— I would encourage people, get outside of your bubble, go meet people. If you're feeling uninspired, or if you're, you know, if If the coffee shop is a real negative place, get out and look. There's some really exciting stuff happening in the industry. And at the end of the day, obviously, we've all got to be profitable, but there's some really neat things happening.

And if you kind of, if you get away from some of the majors and you start to look at what's happening in ag, I do think there are things to be excited about. We've got to survive 2020, but there's some really cool things going on in the industry that we kind of attach our hope to those things, I think, in times like this. That helps us kind of keep our eye on the prize, so to speak. But yeah, otherwise, keep plugging away. We're a very important industry and we got to keep people inspired and moving forward.

Shay

Foulk: Sounds like a lot of optimism there in central Iowa. Shawn, thank you so much for taking the time to have this conversation today. Wish you guys the best for the rest of your growing season.

Unknown: Yeah, thank you, Sherry. Wish the same for you and everybody listening.

Shay

Foulk: And thank you everyone for tuning in to today's episode of the Ag View Pitch. Hope you enjoyed an update on the I-states, what's going on here through the Corn Belt. We'll be talking through some other states here in the next few days, getting an update on conditions throughout the region. As always, we hope everyone stays safe out there. Thanks for listening, and we will catch you next time on the Ag View Pitch.