Is there a spring rally ahead? Weekly market outlook, April 8-12th

Chris: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. We are heading into a new marketing week, April 8th through the 12th, and we're lucky enough today to have with us in the house actually Dwayne Lowery. And it's been a day or two since we've had you on. How's it going, Dwayne?

Duane

Lowry: Good, Chris.

Chris: Glad to be back. It's good to have you. And, uh, like I told you before we started recording, I was excited to have you here because we're looking for some wisdom. So we're looking for, uh, I guess looking for some, some maybe not answers, but some perspective here because we've, uh, you know, seen a lot of things going into, uh, 2023, going through '23, coming out of '23, and then into '24. And We got a bit of a rally after the lows there in that March timeframe and, and kind of gave everybody a little bit of a chance after that. And then all of a sudden we're kind of back in the doldrums here anyway as we record. So what's your, your thought on some of the things that guys need to be watching on the markets in general? And we'll get to some specifics.

Duane

Lowry: Well, the first thing I will say is the only part of wisdom I might have is the gray hair. So, but as far as thought process, I think every discussion about farmer marketing for 2024, and maybe even beyond, but at least on 2024, has to start with the question, do you want this to be a survival year as a target or something, a year where you're going to take a lot of risk? Or do you not want a lot of risk? If you listen to some of the expectations or fearful worst-case scenario possibilities. There's a lot of risk even from these prices if you believe that and you don't take a proactive approach. So we're kind of felt with a situation here that right or wrong, when we look at the carryout numbers of what they might be, what kind of yields and supplies we might have, we're kind of backed into a corner where we feel we have to take a defensive approach here, I think.

Chris: Yeah, today we had the processor that my family's operation sells grain to here, and we had kind of a heart-to-heart. We talked about, you know, kind of what their outlook is as a company. We talked about kind of what their perspective is short-term and long-term. And I was excited to have you here to arm wrestle with them a little bit because we had a— I wanted to be good cop, bad cop. I want to be good cop and have you challenge them a little bit.

And I think there was some things that, that you brought up with respect to— there are some potential positives in the market, you know, when we went through all the negatives that they brought up in terms of— which is real— which is in terms of how many bushels are still in farmer hands, where the fund positions are at, you know, just looking at the overall wet blanket, so to speak, that we have with this just huge amount of grain here yet, and demand a little bit suspect as far as what kind of demand picture we could maybe have. And we're going to be really relying on weather picture to give us any strength. But you kind of brought up a couple of things that could give us some strength and some things to kind of watch for. What are a couple of those things that you kind of brought up in our discussion today?

Duane

Lowry: Well, first of all, it's very difficult to argue with any of the raw fundamental possibilities about excessive supply. I probably am not as pessimistic towards demand as some people might be. I think we have an environment that, first of all, I don't think demand is really poor anyway. Secondly, we have a lower price end of the last several years where we've been, so that, that part of the demand side shouldn't be hurting demand. And if to the extent that you think prices might get cheaper, that's not poor for demand. And so I'm more optimistic towards demand than many. In regards to the supply, though, it is really difficult to not be fearful and respectful of the large supply narratives. But the part that might be friendly or might not be so bearish or might be worth contemplating a tempering of the negativity.

First of all, I'll start out with the decline in prices that we had from last half January through March. Let's say that was a very dramatic capitulation type of break in the marketplace. And it's a strange time of the year for that to happen. It felt like market action-wise that this was July or August. And we— this occurred at a time where the large spec trade, the managed money, were trading at or setting new records for levels of short positions. And it seems like in all these markets anymore, to some extent, we trade money. And when we get to these outer parameters of, you know, excessive longs or excessive shorts, there's some certain limitation, factor that comes with that position. And so I think it's going to be difficult for the market to build a lot of downside momentum below the lows that we made here in March. Could we revisit them? Could we take them out?

I think that's absolutely possible, especially if we fast forward the calendar, you know, 5 or 6 weeks, it crops off to a good start, um, and, uh, it's certainly possible that we can go down there. Um, I struggle with building a lot of bearishness beyond those lows that we made in March by any material amount or for a prolonged period of time, partly because the entire economy has changed. And, you know, wages are significantly higher than they were 5 years ago. We have inflation that's still not under control. We have costs of cost of production, whether it's transportation and fuel costs, or repair costs, if you want to talk specific to agriculture, everybody's cost of production is up. And I think that because of that, there's some revenue sales values that are up if you're a consumer of agricultural products. And I think to those consumers, these prices look pretty cheap.

So I'm not overly bearish below the values that we've already seen this calendar year. But it is possible to go at or below those levels. I think again, it's possible we could have a year or two of prolonged cheap prices. We saw that when we came off of 2012, we had, you know, several years of smaller range markets. And that was the outcome from that low profitability, much smaller profitability than we've seen the last several years. So it's not unreasonable to consider that as a possibility. But in the same token, every single thing that we're involved with is moving faster and faster and faster, more volatility. And you look at the, the geopolitical landscape, we've got, you know, conflict in Ukraine, Russia.

You never know if Russia is going to pretty soon take— go towards Odessa and have military conflict there, maybe choke that off, make it, make it difficult for supplies to get out of Ukraine. You don't know what's going to happen there. You don't know what's going to happen in the Middle East, whether things could expand there, send energy prices to another whole price level that has a big impact on everything. And commodities are typically not weakening in an environment where you have inflation or perceptions of rising inflation. So I think you have some of those factors that, you know, could provide some support. And the last time that we had this much negativity about around the grain market was associated just before China became a major importer and imported at levels in corn that they, you know, we'd not seen forever, really.

And this last year, China supposedly had a record crop, and yet they're still importing large quantities of corn. So there are factors here to maybe, you know, check how bearish you want to be. And the last thing I'd point out is when all Boy Scouts are on one side of the canoe, that tends to be, you know, a little difficult. So I feel a little uncomfortable trying to get overly bearish, or, you know, there's no reason that I can see to be overly bullish. I think when it comes to marketing, you look for opportunities. This last little rally we've had of approximately $1 in beans and 40-some cents in corn off the lows, we're up at levels that if it's a survival year and you're looking for singles and not home runs, it's probably better to have a few sales that you're looking to make here soon in this timeframe.

This price level, maybe we can go another 10 or 15 cents in corn, maybe there's more left in beans. And this is without any sort of a summer weather situation. But at the end of the day, you know, making some sales here are better than being caught in a situation where you find yourself at harvest with very little sales, the market is sold off, and your crop insurance just doesn't kick in at a level that's beneficial for you. It probably does a great job protecting the banker., but it may not, may not do a great job protecting.

Chris: Yeah, kind of keeps you surviving anyway a little bit. I want to hit a more, a little bit more of a specific thing back to the funds for a minute. There's all this talk about, you know, initially in the year of, you know, maybe 3 interest rate cuts and, you know, you get all this talk going on and then all of a sudden the stock market goes down a bunch and, and there's a lot of money out there, you know, the funds and investing dollars that are floating around, always looking for a place to make money. And, you know, the funds— I think I was listening to Joe Vacca kind of talk about this too, that it sounds like, you know, the funds have pretty much always, if they've been, you know, short, they'll go long at some point.

What would be the triggering thing, or do you see that happening, or do you see them staying stand short in this market, or what would it take, in your opinion, to kind of switch that thing around? Is— or is there any, any variable there specifically that might do that?

Duane

Lowry: I'd say there are two things that would cause that to switch. One would be some sort of shock, and, uh, that forced them to go in the other direction. But oftentimes it's the other, where, uh, in the case of the— looking at it through the eyes of a producer, Sometimes when the producer panics and makes the sale, when they aggressively come in making sales, that's their opportunity to get out of their short position. If they're short and they want to buy it back, they got to buy it back from somebody. So as soon as that somebody comes in and becomes a sizable seller, whether that's because of producer sales, because of a bearish input, a bearish report, something that creates an influx of selling, that is their opportunity to get out. And normally, based on my experience, those type of events is what causes them to buy.

Because if they miss and don't buy, then next thing you know, they'll be chasing somebody else.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Okay, good, good perspective there. I'm going to shift gear. I'm going to continue to shift gears on you here a bit. Another area I want to, I want to pick on your, your perspective a little bit is the Acres, you know, with that Acres report.— was it 2 weeks ago now or whatever? $90 million on corn. It was a pretty big surprise that gave us some strength for like 20, 22 hours or something like that. Not very long. Yeah, it was short-lived. And, you know, how much credibility do you put in that? And do you think there could be more acres? I know we talked about that today in our meeting and you got my, my $0.02 on it, but I, I still want to kind of see what you think. You see a lot of producers and, and have a lot of wisdom and experience in, in these reports and kind of looking at the big picture.

Do you think that 90 million is a real thing, or do you think that number could get bigger? And if it does, that really bodes negatively on corn further yet, right?

Duane

Lowry: Well, conditions going back to last fall were such with that weather and soil conditions and, uh, price structure, whatever else, seem to give ample opportunity for the farmer to make a decision and make a commitment. And so I, I don't see a lot of opportunities to think that the producer is going to change much because of that last report or anything for this spring. I think, you know, right or wrong, I think everybody's pretty much got their game plan designed. If I had to guess, I would say that if there's an adjustment and a surprise in June as we get to the final reality of what it was, I think there might end up being fewer soybean acres and more corn acres.

Chris: So what, what kind of acre— what was the acre number, do you know, off top of your head?

Duane

Lowry: 90 million corn.

Chris: On soybeans, you know, I don't remember testing you. See, I don't know. You don't have your numbers in front of you.

Duane

Lowry: All I got, I don't need the gray hair.

Chris: The wisdom's gone. Yeah, well, I mean, that's just it. I mean, there was like 6 million acres that went away. I mean, is that a real thing?

Duane

Lowry: I don't want to second-guess USDA. We had a large acreage number last year, and I think to some extent it's hard to believe what we had for total acres. So there's probably some opportunity for some acres to come back. Yeah, but a lot of number crunchers I expect or respect They're not looking for a big increase in total acres just because of the low numbers in a couple weeks ago.

Chris: Gotcha. Another thing I want to hit you on, I'm continuing to look for some hope. So if you recognize a theme here, as I continue to say, is there any hope here without saying that? And now I just did. Weather. So we, we, you know, as we record this, you know, for the week of April 8th through the 12th, I think we came up to this point anyway thinking we were going to have a pretty early planting season. And then we had a couple of weather events go through. That kind of gave the eastern maybe half of the Corn Belt a little bit more water than say maybe we had in our area. We're in northeast Iowa and then, and, you know, further to the west, probably drier, maybe even yet. Talk a little bit about what weather could do in terms of— I mean, is planting give us any hope or is it going to be more likely that we have a weather event later on in the season?

Because That, you know, it's another thing I'll pick on Joe Vaclovic. I was watching his video too, and he was saying, you know, went back and looked and there was no— there were no years that he went back and looked at. We didn't have a weather, you know, weather volatility doesn't mean up and it could mean down too, right? So the weather volatility, do you see any hope there? Any, any perspective on weather?

Duane

Lowry: Well, I don't think there's any I don't think it's very likely to get a positive weather scenario from planning delays or any planning disruptions or poor conditions. I doubt if that's likely based on what we have for current weather forecasts and soil moisture profiles. Is there potential that some areas could be too wet here for a window? Yes, but we're a long ways from being late. Right. And I— so I don't really think there's a storyline there. As far as other weather factors, anything's possible when you reach out farther. And as far as looking for places of hope, in the last 20 years, 18 out of 20 years, we've taken out the winter high with the December contract after the 1st of March. Okay. So there's only been 2 times that we didn't. So that's 10%. That means 90% of the time you got a better selling opportunity than what you're looking at right now.

So I think there's some hope in that if you want to study of history. The year that that didn't happen was one of them was coming off of '13, and that was when markets were in full decline. And yet you were still— by the time that happened, you didn't have— you had not had such a capitulation in this time frame that you had that we already did. We already had. Yes. And so I think the odds are pretty good. That you'll get— that would also— that would imply a chance to sell Dec corn in the, you know, $5.10, $5.20 range. That's not an unreasonable target. Does that mean you should not make any sales if you want to make sales somewhere here and you want to wait for all that? Probably not.

But it does give you some semblance of hope that if markets weaken here over the next couple of weeks because of favorable spring conditions or what have you, and you find yourself at Dec corn back at $4.40, and that winter high was $5.17. And, you know, it does give you some reason to think that maybe there's some hope. And the other factor of hope is the fact that we're in the bottom side of price parameters we've seen in the last 5 years. And I think that's some pause. And with everybody, you know, fully bearish and fully expecting a large supply, you know, the element of surprise is on our side too.

Chris: Yeah, so I always, you know, like the idea of having a margin target. In other words, kind of what your, um, what type of profit margin are you really looking for? Is a, you know, on a year like this, maybe, you know, we're calibrated to thinking, you know, somewhere between a 3% and 5%, you know, a pretty modest rate of return for most. There's some that, you know, maybe shooting for that 10% or something if they're a lower-cost producer. A lot of the producers we talk to that are, that we work with that really truly know their cost of production and things, you know, and I was just looking at our averages, weighted average on all of our clients to this date as of, you know, going into the week of the 8th of April, we're at $4.97 for corn weighted average cost of production and $12.34 for soybeans.

And when we look at those numbers and you're talking, you know, maybe we could see an opportunity for $5 to $5.20, and I'm not holding you to that either because no one knows, and I know you understand that. But my point is, I guess, you know, what makes Dwayne comfortable if you put your farmer hat on and say, I want to be a certain percent sold by a certain part of the year, and so I put targets in. So let's say, you know, if this is— say you're the average producer, your cost of production is $4.97. You know, do you want to be 30% sold at planting time or at the end of planting time? Or do you want to be 50% sold by the Fourth of July? What are some, some parameters? It's not advice, but just some perspective on like, you put your farmer hat on, what makes you comfortable in terms of sales?

Duane

Lowry: Well, first of all, if I've answered the question that I want to take an approach that this is going to be a survival year, okay, if that's my mindset, and that's how I want to approach it, the next question I'm going to ask myself is, do I have a 95% crop insurance policy? Or do I have an 80% policy? If I got a 95% policy and we're sitting here with prices largely at the spring price or below the, the margin protection price from last fall, if you had that, then I'm thinking that if I elect to make some sales in the near term and relatively close to these levels, that might not even be at the target that I want. Okay. I think 30%, if you made a 30% sale and the prices did fall, you know, fairly hard into harvest, if that was the scenario we were dealt with, you're probably going to get an indemnity payment on that higher percentage crop insurance plan.

Unlike that, unlike, like, you're 95%, you're— that's what you are. You made a 30% sale, that's going to work out well for you, probably, if the market breaks, and you're going to have probably a survival year. If the market rallies for whatever reason, and you only have 30% sold, I think that still puts you in a good position. If you, however, have an 80% or an 85% crop insurance policy, you know, that means you have virtually no marketing perspective to your crop insurance.

Chris: Okay.

Duane

Lowry: Yeah. So then if you maybe market only 30% or don't market hardly anything, you've got a lot of risk between current values and where the public thinks we might go. If you maximize the risk, whether you believe that risk or not, you'd have to define that as your risk. That's a lot. So that guy might be compelled to make a sale that's more getting closer to 50 or 60% if he's trying to survive. Now then, under that scenario, he's got a bigger commitment because he's trying to avoid this big loss, but in the same token, he's going to give up some of the upside. The, the producers have to try to find that balance. I think it's dangerous in the current situation out of respect for what yields and supplies could be to be too complacent and not making sales because you have a lot of downside risk.

On the other hand, when you're marketing and considering marketing a large percentage of your crop in the bottom of the last 5 years, and we know we have inflation, we know we got energy prices at the upper end of where we've been in the last several months. And we know we got all kinds of, you know, potential volatility from geopolitics and even macroeconomic conditions. You know, if you start making large percentage sales in this price level, because you think that you're certain that prices are going to be cheap in the fall, let's face it, you got risk with that side of the equation too. So you got to try to find some sort of happy medium. But again, if you have a good crop insurance plan that has a lot of coverage, you know, you might— you still need to make some sales, I think, but you can get away with a smaller percentage and net out probably in good shape.

But if you don't have that high protection on crop insurance, I think it tilts the scale and shifting more towards a survival year, which basically means you're going to end up making more sales. Now, you could take that approach, and maybe your approach is going to be buying puts. It's going to be more costly, maybe. Okay, but you could take that approach. But somehow you got to be a little bit more proactive because you do have to respect the downside risk.

Chris: So, you know, we, we talked about corn with respect to that. Let's just hit on soybeans for a minute. You know, and I'm not holding you to any prices. We're using these as, as examples and perspective. But, you know, let's say we for whatever reason, we're blessed with an opportunity for $5.10 corn or $5.20 corn for 10 minutes, which is probably the case, you know, it might— it's probably going to be— if it does occur, it's likely to be a short duration. But where does that take soybeans? And does that get, get us to a level, you know, our cost of production average right now is at $12.34 weighted average on guys expected yields, what kind of number do you think that gives us on the soybean side of things? Do you think we get to cost of production or a little better level or not?

Duane

Lowry: I would say that in the— between now and let's just say early July, if we could get the November beans up to $12.20, $12.25, that might be the upper part of its parameters in that window. To get beyond that, you probably have to have a summer weather problem. You might also have to have some sort of confirmation or expectation that the soybean acres are less than what we currently have dialed in. And as far as the downside goes, I think it's probably quite likely that at some point in time between now and harvest, we're going to see spot beans, maybe November beans also fall in this category, that's going to trade $10.50 to $11. And so I don't know if that means that you should be making sales here in beans or not.

I don't feel quite as compelled or forced to make sales in beans as I do in corn, which, by the way, if I'm a corn and soybean grower and I want to remove some risk off the table, I'm probably going to err on the side of being more aggressive marketing corn at levels I don't want to, but out of trying to remove some risk, I'd probably do that. And then I'd probably err on the side of marketing a few less beans than maybe what I would normally do.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. And I just bring that stuff up because I think a lot of the listeners are going to have to go through some algebra in terms of the kind of like we did in the '23 crop. '24 crop, as I see it, '23 crop was the most expensive crop we ever grew. And I think I said it on the last podcast or one before, I can't remember, but when we got done— or not done, but mostly done— with profit managers, it looked to me like this cost of production year isn't that much cheaper than last year. The corn is— soybeans is about the same, and corn is a little less because of some fertilizer prices, but everything else is about the same, and interest is higher and stuff.

So with that said, I, I, I still think, you know, if if a person can— and I just want your two cents on this, but I just think if a person has those targets in, assuming that these opportunities are only maybe going to be a few minutes at a time, you know, a lot of times at night on a Sunday night maybe or whatever, but have those targets in maybe right at or slightly below whatever your cost of production is. And, and for, for those who are listening, I know we've got some people in those— in that range, you know, when I say the cost of production is $4.97, that's an average. And so we've got, we've got some operations in there in the $4.45, $4.70 range in terms of cost of production, maybe a little higher, and some guys in there in the, in the mid-fours for cost of production and kind of everywhere in between.

But I think, you know, if you're that high-cost producer, you almost gotta put some targets in there below the cost of production to get some stuff moving? Is there an issue with that or two cents on that?

Duane

Lowry: Well, we don't like to do that. I know. I think we are forced to, out of respect for the conditions we're dealing with. I think we are forced to do that on some bushels, especially. Again, I'll go back to this crop insurance. If you got 80 or 85% coverage, you have no marketing protection through your crop insurance. Okay. And so You're open to risk.

Chris: But let me ask this, wouldn't 80— so if you have 85%, if the producer has 85% coverage, and let's say that we have a similar thing happen to what happened last year, so we're $4.66, is there anyone that would say corn couldn't go to $3.70 this fall? Or do you think that's way too low?

Duane

Lowry: I personally don't believe that will happen. However, that's irrelevant.

Chris: But if it did, then you would have a big if you yielded your APH, there'd be a similar payment to what 85% brought producers in '23, right?

Duane

Lowry: You'd have a minimal payment assuming that the reason we're down on prices because yields are up.

Chris: Right, right.

Duane

Lowry: So if your yields are up, that's going to weigh in and diminish that calculation. And that is so uncertain.

Chris: You can't— you wouldn't want to bank on it.

Duane

Lowry: You can't market on that. Yeah, you can't not market on that. Okay. So it's like it's irrelevant.

Chris: Yeah.

Duane

Lowry: And as far as making sales at levels that aren't profitable, We don't want to do that. But again, you're trying to define risk and trying to control risk. And I think with the equation we are at, at making some sales and everybody will come to a different conclusion, but if it's 20 or 35% of your sales and you make those sales and they're not good sales and they don't really work, they're your worst ones, you know, at least you've got something that if prices do fall out of bed a lot and then maybe you will get a crop insurance payment, and then that and these sales would maybe put you in a good position. And the other thing is, when you say your cost of production is X, that's also, uh, there's a chance you could end up yielding better than—

Chris: and lower, right, and lower that cost.

Duane

Lowry: And so maybe you'll benefit from that, right? And, uh, so again, I think this boils down to that first question is, do you want to try to survive this year? And I think that's the goal.

Chris: And to your other comment there, I think what everybody is going to do, at least from the conversations we had all winter long is everybody's going to try to outyield their way out of this situation. Right. So we see red ink on the bottom. But if you, like you said, if you increase the bushels by 10 bushels or 15 bushels on a lot of operations, it changes the ink on the bottom of the page to black with the price.

Duane

Lowry: You know, no matter how high the costs are, nobody wants to plan on producing less.

Chris: Right. Exactly. Exactly.

Duane

Lowry: Have to try to produce more. The exception to that is If it's late in the year and the crop's not doing well, they're not going to maybe save the money. Yeah, I'm not going to save the insurance company.

Chris: Yeah. Last question. You mentioned just a little bit ago in part of the conversation, you brought up energies. If you look at where the price is on crude and all that kind of stuff, and if that would happen to take off, is there any— this is my last hope question— is there any hope there that, that the energies from a commodity standpoint, because a lot of the commodities aren't that bad, but corn sucks and soybeans are kind of sucking with it. And we, you know, the three sisters are kind of not holding their own. So if energies would give us all of a sudden some strength, is there any, anything there, there that you would see potentially?

Duane

Lowry: Well, I have been friendly energy prices. I still am friendly energy prices. And I think if what you're describing, if you were to just suddenly have something happen that caused crude oil to embark on its way back to $130 again or something like that.

Chris: Yeah, I believe that's the shift that moves the funds.

Duane

Lowry: Well, I'm not saying it's $130 or $120, but I'm saying it's something right outside of a comfort zone. Then I don't think anybody's going to care what the carryout is. I think the short in the commodity markets in general and the grains would be very uncomfortable if that was either unfolding or perceive that it might unfold.

Chris: Yeah, gotcha. I'm sorry, but I'm going to do a last, last question. I haven't done that for a long time. I used to do that with you all the time. Last, last question. What do you tell the guys that are still sitting on a fair amount of old crop? The same stuff we were doing with the new crop when these, you know, if there's a weather market or there's anything, do you clean house pretty aggressively? Because I think One of the conversations we had with our meeting this afternoon with our family business with you and, and our where we market our grain was if everybody decides to unload, that door is only so big. When everybody starts to dump the corn through it all at the same time, basis is going to be horrendous and all those things really quick. So any, any last comments on be thinking of these things as you finish up and, and try to finalize the '23 crop sales?

Duane

Lowry: In the case of old crop corn, first, I think we need to identify the fact that South American growing season is over. The opportunity to get a weather market or something to happen there is kind of over. The opportunity to get an idea that the U.S. crop was overstated last year, that's over now. Maybe it was overstated, but nonetheless, we got to live with what the numbers are. So that's over. All we've got to look forward to here is the new crop. And we're going to have a window of time here where the pressure is going to be on the bull or on the farmer holding that corn, that it's going to be— it's going to feel like a lot of weight. And the market has given us a recovery. You got cash bids, you know, probably $0.50 off some of the worst cash bids that we saw in February, March. I'm not sure. I think that's probably correct.

Honestly, I think you almost have to turn the page on the old crop corn. You just got to get it, let it go, turn it into cash, stop the interest costs. The other factor on old crop corn, I don't know, I don't think this happens right away, but there is a window of time ahead of us that we're going to have basis risk big time. And yes, and so the inverses that are in the cash market are going to be gone. That may not happen till July. Who knows when it happens? But given risk reward, I would say that, you write it off and turn it into cash and be done with it. And if you want to speculate, do that with an option or futures or whatever is your appetite. But I would, I would choose that approach. And I would just, I would just say uncle on the old crop corn and turn it into cash.

Chris: And the same apply to soybeans?

Duane

Lowry: Oh, probably. I don't feel quite as motivated or pressured to make soybean sales, whether it's old or new. I'm not saying that we can't go down. Like I said earlier, I think at some point in time we'll see a price into that $10.50, $11. But I think that could end up being short-lived. I'm much more concerned about the corn price in terms of identifying the risk. I'm not making a statement I honestly fully believe it. I'm just saying that risk seems more real to me than beans.

Chris: Okay. All right. Well, I really appreciate your perspective today and your wisdom. We finally got you back here, and we got you back here in person too. So thank you very much for being here.

Duane

Lowry: Well, to all the video watchers, I apologize for being in person. This is a radio face.

Chris: Well, yeah, and I don't know, I think you've been— all the ones we've done with you up to this point were always just audio. We never did throw—

Duane

Lowry: it's always been audio. In fact, I might not have been here if you'd have told me that.

Chris: Well, yeah, and we're doing this super, super professionally because I don't have any of my tech guys here with me today. So I'm I've got the computer sitting here in front of me and we kind of— a bunch of wires everywhere, but that works.

Duane

Lowry: It's always good to be in person and spend some time learning from you, Chris.

Chris: Yeah, you do a great job too, Dwayne. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. And hey everybody, really appreciate it. We will also have a podcast that came out on Saturday that came from Shay and I and two of our new associates too. So if you didn't get a chance, go back and listen to that. There's some announcements on there that we want to make sure everybody is aware of with some new changes and some things going on with Ag View Solutions. With that said, thanks everybody, and we'll catch you next time on the Ag View Pitch.