Margin management math - weekly market outlook: Nov. 7-11th

Chris

Barron: Hey everybody, before we get rolling with the market outlook today with Jared Creed, which is a phenomenal conversation, make sure you listen all the way through. Just want to remind everybody about the Ag View Executive Business Conference, January 25th through the 27th in St. Petersburg, Florida. We still have room for some people to get registered. And so if you are still planning on doing that, we encourage you to check it out, go onto our website, agviewsolutions.com, and click onto the conference heading and all the information is there with all the speakers. Again, Steve Johnson, Mike Finley, Joe Vaklovic, Jared Creed, Scott Kozlowski, David Koll, Kristen Arnold, Jim Wiesmeyer, and Paul Niefer. So we've got a phenomenal group of presenters and they'll be there to meet with you and talk with you individually and have some great networking with other farmers.

And so again, if you're not registered and you're planning on it, please get in there and get, get going on that. We still have some openings yet and we want to make sure everybody gets on that. And so again, thank you very much and enjoy the podcast with the Market Outlook with Jared Creed. Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. We are heading into another marketing week. We're still in the front part of November, November 7th through the 11th, and we have with us today Jared Creed again. Jared, how's it going?

Jarod

Creed: It's going well. It's very, very wet out. We've had a couple inches of rain here in the last 24 hours, so very welcome. Yeah, and as always, I appreciate the invite to come on with you.

Chris

Barron: Well, I appreciate having you on. We had you on a few weeks ago and had a great conversation, a lot of really good feedback, and wanted to get you back here again in front of the, uh, you know, it's a week that we're gonna have a report, so we'll be talking about that and, and a few other things and We're kind of in the same boat where I think as we record this right now, we're at almost 2.5 inches of rain. In our farm operation, we still have probably 3 days of corn harvest to go. Our dilemma here was, you know, we got hit by that frost in September. A lot of full season corn that was planted a couple weeks later than normal, and so we kind of got nipped by the frost, and it's made the corn stay a little wetter, a little harder to dry down and stuff.

So it's kind of slowed our our pace down, and we've got a lot of clients that are pretty well wrapped up, and we got a number of clients that still got a ways to go too. What are you hearing out in the country as far as how people are coming?

Jarod

Creed: I can echo the exact same thing. Kind of geographically, surprisingly enough, the fastest pace in all reality seems to be South Dakota, North Dakota, and I don't really think that was the expectation. You know, they didn't really get that early frost that locally we experienced here and you did in southern Minnesota. But I can definitely echo that, that southern Minnesota producers, not only did they fight having to harvest maybe a touch tatter, wetter crop than they would have liked to, but in the end, I think it did ding their yields a little bit as well. We have a lot of individuals that are wrapped up with harvest and then have plenty that probably have, safe to say, 10, maybe 15 days left to go.

Chris

Barron: Hmm, okay. Well, I don't feel too bad with having, you know, maybe 4 or so, but it's like you said, that, that frost, it did nip us from the standpoint of yield. Um, that's another quick question for you on the production side is, um, are you hearing that generally speaking a lot of your customers are off the pace a little bit, or pretty well where they expected, or kind of what are you hearing? Because we're We're definitely off the pace in our own farm operation and talking to a few clients and haven't done as much of that because I've been playing farmer, but there's a number of operations that are a little disappointed, you know, they were expecting super high yields and maybe off the pace a little. Are you hearing opposite of that or similar, or what are you hearing?

Jarod

Creed: No, I think the takeaway is the areas that expected it to be pretty poor, it was definitely poor. The areas that didn't really know what was coming their way, I think that's definitely the case. The variability is extreme, but maybe the more interesting one is, you know, the areas where we expected to pull the big, big yields, they just— don't get me wrong, there are pockets that had record yields, but a lot of the client base that I work with in northeast Iowa, you know, southern Minnesota like I mentioned, some of these areas that expected to be big just didn't quite— didn't get quite over the hurdle. One very analytical producer I work with locally has tremendous, tremendous data keeping over years and years and years of production.

And this actually ended up being his fourth highest production on corn behind last year and behind 2017 and '18, I believe, '17, '18, or '18 and '19. And that kind of took me by surprise. It was a good 10 bushel off each of those 3 years. Hey, the expectations where they were high just didn't quite get over the hurdle where expectations were. It didn't quite pull those record yields consistently as expected.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, that's kind of what we saw too. It sounds like we were in a similar boat to your client in that, you know, we were just off the pace. We were expecting record yields and, and we're just about our 4th best crop probably. We had you know, like you said, '17, '18, and last year, '21, was where our, you know, last year was our by far best ever. '17, '18 were really good, and this year is off the pace of all three of them. But anyway, that's probably enough on production. What are some of the things you're looking for? And people, some people listen to this after the report, and so we'll see what your crystal ball says and see if you knew what you were talking about. We'll We'll give you a chance to climb under the bus or stay in a seat, but what are you looking for on this report coming up on the 9th?

Jarod

Creed: Well, I'm going to start by kind of repeating myself for, I think, what I've told you a handful of times now. It just seems like the board, the Board of Trade specifically, hasn't necessarily ran out of energy, but we just don't have the participation from outside money to push us in one direction hard. Consistently. And it's leaving the cash market to do the job. And while we're not going anywhere very quickly, uh, you would think that the volatility has kind of succumbed over time, but it's just, it's too expensive of a game to play for your managed money to be in there. And you can make an argument it's going to be very hard to get paid being long $14 beans or $7 corn or $9, $10 wheat., but it's equally as hard to justify being short in as tight of a supply situation as we are in, even though you have the continuing talk of recession, recession, recession.

But normally, Chris, your November report is not really a needle mover. I wouldn't be surprised to see yields in corn jump around 3 to 5 tenths a bushel. Wouldn't be surprised to see demand get cut a little bit more. Back to the comments, if you just flat out can't use what you don't have, exports are going to be the first one to get cut naturally. Uh, corn processors seem to be paying out the nose for corn. They continue to grind what they can, and soybean processors looking at monster margins right now. So it's just a snapshot in time. I, I really don't feel that the November report is going to provide any type of long-term direction. That's probably not until we get to January when they adjust final harvested acres and final yield adjustments as well.

It's, it's back to the same old grind right now of every commodity having to prove on its own that it's recession-proof on top of battling headlines day by day, specifically out of Ukraine and Russia.

Chris

Barron: What I want to ask you too is, so it sounds like, you know, you don't expect any kind of, any kind of a major move. And a lot of times these reports are, you know, they're a flash in the pan, they, they move it one way or the other. And rarely do they, do they change a trend or whatever. And so what I'm wondering is, for a lot of producers that are sitting there right now, with the remaining bushels of unpriced, you know, you get to— you get wrapped up with harvest or you're close enough to it, you have a pretty good idea, and eventually you have an absolute idea of what you've got for unpriced bushels. What's your, what's your take there? I mean, what should producers be paying attention to with those unpriced bushels that are in the bin?

Jarod

Creed: I think there's a couple different things that need to be considered. The only known that we have in this market is the here and now. We don't know what one month holds. We don't know what six months holds. We don't know what South America weather is going to be. We don't know how Ukraine and Russia unfold. We don't know any of the market, uh, reactions to additional changes from the Fed. But the known right now is that once we've gotten through the insurance averaging period, you know what that revenue is. It's if you're a producer that's short on production or you'll know very soon, now you get to start stacking up the rest of the revenue from sold and unsold production and you're looking at a very, very attractive price that even individuals that were faced with tough yielding situations, they're still looking at very substantial profit margins for the 2022 crop year.

And taking that a step further, um, I commented on the Fed. You know, a picture-perfect example, a very good friend of mine, young producer, just made a mention the other day, hey, I see I can sell $7 corn for July. And my response to him was, yeah, that's all great. But do you understand that that's a lesser of a value than selling $6.90 corn in January? He wants to sell $7 corn, that's great. But with the cost of money right now, not only to finish out operating money for the 2022 crop, but the soon-to-be building expense for the 2023 crop. I, I just, I go back to the only thing that we know is today, and we do know that with where the prices are, the overwhelming majority of U.S. farmers can make very good money. That I, I do have a little concern that the juice is just not worth the squeeze to see what this next summer can bring.

There's going to be a huge portion of American producers that still hold off to see what June, July brings, see what planting this next spring brings and what next weather, next year's weather looks like next summer. But I'm not really in that camp that that's what we want to do. I kind of back to my comment about manage money. It's hard to get paid being long corn above $7 and long beans above $14. Those are just big values. That doesn't mean corn can't go to $8. That doesn't mean beans can't go to $15 or $16 or higher. But I do know that I have a lot of production coming to me in 2023, whether that's insurance-guaranteed bushels or what I actually produce, that I need a rally on. I need a rally in the sense of that's where I can make more money on next year's crop than I can on this year's, stringing together another year of profitability on the farm.

So I guess my, my main takeaway is, again, just I don't just feel that the juice is worth the squeeze to hold on forever. We have had a long-term goal from a 30,000-foot view. It's not going to be accomplished by every single farm. But generally speaking, we want to get through first half rents this next spring before borrowing any money. That's not going to be doable for everybody. But it is going to be doable for a significant amount of producers. And you start shaving down 3, 4 months of operating money at today's variable interest rates, that's a huge cost saving going into next year. And, and, you know, back to my comment of just understanding what the cost of money is and a bushel sitting in the bin and paying operating right now. It's, I mean, yeah, yeah, every day the clock is ticking. Every day interest is building.

Uh, you know, rough calculation at 7% in a million-dollar operating line, every 6 months is an additional $30,000 to $40,000, right? And it doesn't take many acres to rack up a million-dollar operating line either.

Chris

Barron: Exactly. Yeah, and that's the thing, you know, we've— you're echoing what we've been talking about. And we, we've got an interest calculation tool where it kind of shows you what it's costing you per day and per month as well. And it gives you a perspective and, you know, what is it on a per-acre basis? What is it on a per-bushel basis, you know, and making sure that you have a good recollection of what it really is. The other thing too, you made a comment offline and you can comment on this, but, you know, the lenders are going to be looking at this as well as to how we as producers are managing that working capital. Because, you know, it's either liquid or it's grain in the bin or whatever, you know, it's all, a lot of it's going to be how we manage this window here of time, you know, because basis is going to be an opportunity.

And, you know, nobody knows what direction the prices are going to go totally. But, you know, we're in a situation where we can have some knowns for '22 and then going into '23, it makes for a much better projection of exactly where you're at and where you're going, doesn't it?

Jarod

Creed: Yes, and here's probably a little bit of an unpopular opinion, Chris, and I don't mean to pick on the ag industry as a whole. Everybody knows these type of individuals. The bad side about the known, of knowing how much money is on the table today, is that it is sure as hell It is creating people spending money that they probably shouldn't be spending on buying different types of items. You know, the tax schemes or whatever, whatever it may be. Yes, there's a great opportunity to upgrade a fleet of equipment right now, but I do see there's plenty of operations that are probably going above and beyond their means. So you take that a step further back to the conversation about the banker. Yeah, the equity position may be great. It's had a build.

But it still comes down to what can you get borrowed, especially if you're going to hold money for whole grain for an extended period of time. When you think back of what the cost was for the 2022 crop, and what the cost is going to be for the 2023 crop, it takes so, so many less inputs to rack up the same expense of what we had 2, 3 years ago. And I'm a little concerned that there are going to be producers that do hold grain for an extended period of time. Whether price goes up or down, I don't care. They're gonna be so tight on working capital and cash that I think you're gonna see people maxing out their operating money before they've got all of their inputs bought. And that can create a little bit of a panic selling to generate cash, and then it's just a You know, it's a wild guess of what value does that cash grain have to it down the road.

And I would add one more piece on the cash grain market. We've experienced this 3 times in the last 2 years where you have some type of sharp board run-up for whatever rhyme or reason, and all the farmers engage, whether it's selling to the processor or selling to the elevator, and ultimately the cash market for the 30, 60-day period ahead gets its fill of what grain it needs, the board goes into an inverse, and so does the cash market, you know, just sees a sharp drop. And all of a sudden, hey, the board rallied a buck, but 60 days out, cash grain is now worth a dollar less than what it was. And I think that's what we're, we're working ourselves towards again. And You know, that's a, that's a big, big risk for producers that carry too much HTA exposure right now. Um, just got to be mindful of that.

There's not much of a carry, and what you don't want to get yourself into is December-July is even money right now, and all of a sudden December-July is a 30-cent inverse, or March-July becomes a 30-40-cent inverse, and basis out in the summer is 50 cents cheaper than what it is today. All of a sudden the dollar in the cash market just got zapped. Mm-hmm. And perhaps all the planning that you had done in your head leading up to now and over the next few months, uh, is all for nothing, uh, if nothing's been executed. So that, again, that just gets all the way back to my personal opinion that I just don't know if the juice is worth the squeeze to be overly aggressive, uh, in a timeframe of past planting.

The majority of producers I work with logistically, the ones who are logistically capable of making this happen, you know, we're going to be out of cash grain before we get on a planter tractor. Mm-hmm. We know the money that's in hand. We know what our costs are coming towards us next year. We know we can keep our interest exposure down, and I don't need to go, you know, risk making a very good situation turn into something poor.

Chris

Barron: It's a lot easier to shovel corn out of a bin in March when it's 57 degrees out than when it's 97 degrees out in late July and you missed an opportunity or whatever too. Absolutely. Yeah, because, you know, and the other thing too, you know, this isn't advice, but this is just an observation and get your take on this one too as we talk about the '23. Risks in the economy and things and what people are doing for decision-making for the '23 margin management. But is, you know, land costs have gone up in the— on the rental side of things. And I guarantee there's a high percentage of the listeners here that have rented ground, and I guarantee a high percentage of those have rented land costs that have gone up significantly.

And I see a good correlation when people are buying fertilizer, they're doing one-to-one, they're selling you know, if they buy $100,000 worth of fertilizer, they're selling that. The thing that scares me is, is, you know, let's say the, the land rent up— rent went up on a particular parcel or piece or whatever by $50 an acre, and now there's another $100,000 there or whatever on, on some rented ground, and, and not correlating that to sales as well. I think that's a kind of a risk area too. Do you get— what's your two cents on, on managing that? Expense too, because that's a big one that's gone up.

Jarod

Creed: Absolutely. I think what's intriguing, uh, and I never really thought about this because it's not like we're in a, we're in a scenario that we've experienced consistently before, but my, my takeaway of these higher costs is I think there are more producers who actually do their homework on what their costs are, that they know a higher percentage of their overall cost going into next year at this time of year than they normally would. And that's a positive, right? And I think there's a whole other segment of producers that are probably, you know, feeling very, very good about things right now from the crop that they had from '22 and the prices that they could sell and their financial position. But I don't know if they're looking hard enough at what the possibilities are in 2023.

So as of late, some of that conversation has just been When does the guy, you know, take a little bit of a football analogy? You're up by several scores. When do you start playing a little bit of prevent defense, still knowing that that prevent defense is at very likely still good profitable numbers for next year? I can't really say that on soybeans yet, uh, just from the cost that we see. $14 cash beans for next year, it's awfully exciting to think about a $14 bean. But it doesn't really return a lot of money to the table, and corn still is a big leader for next year. But when you start thinking about $6 to $6.50 cash corn for next year and the cost that you do know, specifically probably fertilizer, chemical equipment, and land, that's going to cover a significant portion of the overall cost.

You know, you have a little bit of, um, better visibility than normal at this time of year to take some of those opportunities off the table. I shouldn't say take opportunities off the table, but, you know, take advantage of an opportunity that allows you to spend a dollar and get a dollar fifty back. Might not be that good, but it's, you know, it's the higher cost environment. It's been a no secret for the last couple years that just make sure you're dotting your i's, crossing your t's, and and don't get yourself into a repeat of 2008 to 2010 and 2012 to arguably '17 or '18.

Chris

Barron: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's, it's for sure. I mean, it's just one of those things where, like you said, we probably have a handle on 70, 75% of the cost, and, and we're afraid to a lot of times, you know, feel like, you know, well, we might miss out if we do this. And in one of these years, you You know, the last couple of years we've been kind of trained to do nothing, and pretty soon that's going to be the wrong thing to do.

Jarod

Creed: So yeah, I would add one thing. You know, we spent a lot of time talking to your listeners about margin protection over the last year and a half, and just to comment to those who do have it, you know, I've ran the math so many times now that it's, it's pretty simple that with margin protection and being around 35% hold into next year's corn crop above $6, you're almost in a bulletproof situation. And the, the emotional hurdle to get over selling that crop for next year, I think it's as simple as, can you afford to risk a dollar higher on 30% of your crop on missing out on that dollar higher move? Or can you afford to take a dollar risk on 100% of your crop? Because I promise you, we're in a world of hurt if cash corn is $5 next fall for a huge portion of North American agriculture.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, which, which, which is worse? You, you could have made an extra $50 an acre, or you left— or you're $200 an acre behind the 8-ball.

Jarod

Creed: Yeah, and it's not even a, uh, it's not a hindsight type of comment. That's just, again, that's a known, that's a fact of what can be accomplished from a few forward sales with a good insurance program, whether you already have it or you're going to elect a good one in February. Uh, just, and I, I think I've said this numerous times, I would love to be cautiously optimistic the grain market. The cash market is what's doing the work right now. And if I wanted to go further out on a limb, I think that a lot of your elevated basis levels that we have today, the regions that that's taking place, I think there's high probability that you're going to be looking at elevated basis levels next fall.

And you're not looking at historical basis situations and thinking about logistics all the way out into next fall of can 5 or 10% of my acres move in a hurry at a premium to gut slot harvest to give me a boost to the cash position right away. And I think that's a high probability, and that's a risk that I'm willing to take. And being a, you know, a hedger to an extent for next fall, uh, versus, yeah, I just gotta wait, I just gotta wait this thing out and, you know, find an extra 50, 75 cents in the corn market to somewhat mirror what the profitability has been in the last couple years.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, when you're doing these sales, are you thinking HTAs? Are you thinking— what do you— what are you thinking? Are you, are you doing some on a little on the board or doing some puts or what?

Jarod

Creed: Overwhelming majority has just been HTAs, Chris. Uh, in the environment we're in, you know, the cost of money again, and the odds of basis being pretty good next fall probably too. Yeah, just let somebody else carry the hedge, right? At the end of the day, it's obviously the overall average is what's most important. It's not about the first sale or the last sale. It's not about basis on the first sale or last sale. But if you can be good, uh, from a good profitable sale— again, no opinion on price being higher or lower— that it's what I've seen for so many years is the first sales that individuals would make on grain that they don't have space for were always at harvest lows, and it's the fastest way to ruin an average.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, takes it down.

Jarod

Creed: So trying to just be out ahead of the curve a little bit. And I'm going to repeat it again, the only thing we know is what today is. I have an opinion that we can be friendly grain prices long term, but I also have to say that, you know, I had a target of we're going to get back to $7 corn, and we really haven't done anything above $7 board price to this point. Point, and we're looking for a catalyst to make that happen that is big enough to bring in outside money once again and push us in a direction. And it ain't gonna happen until we have that reason. We're not going to break lower, we're not going to break higher until you have that fundamental reason to push things one way or the other.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, Dwayne had a compelling argument last week. I don't know if you listened to his comments, but, you know, he was kind of talking about how, you know, corn and soybeans are about the only two commodities that haven't really come off their highs to that 40 or so percent of reduction from the highs, you know, maybe off 10 or 12% from the highs or whatever, you know, um, can corn and beans maintain that, that strength relative to the other commodities?

Jarod

Creed: Well, if it's all fundamental, yeah, we can. If it's, if it's just the farmer cash marketing to the user and the worldwide importer, absolutely we can maintain it. The biggest risk again is you think about the wheat market. I know exactly where Duane is coming from. The huge drop that we experienced in wheat had hardly a darn thing to do with long-term world supply and demand. It was all outside money, right? And when the money comes in and buys, buys, buys, that's when the farmer would like to turn over grain to them. Uh, when they're selling, that's obviously when you don't want to, and that's obviously the risk that whatever entices them over time, whether it's a huge supply increase or just brutal recession changes or China COVID policies, you name it. If something entices outside money to sell the commodity market lower, it's gonna go lower very quickly.

I just do have a hard time justifying what makes that happen right now. But that's one man's opinion.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, yep. Well, the other thing I want to— as we get close to wrapping up here, the other thing I wanted just to hit on real quick is have you, you know, talk just a minute about what your opinions are of what's going on in the overall economy and the demand side. And is there anything there that, you know, we need to be like, okay, we got to watch this careful, this could have an impact one way or the other, instead of the sideways we've been getting, what's out there that we need to be, be watching or paying attention to?

Jarod

Creed: Well, let me go ahead and put my tinfoil hat on first, all right? Yep. I, uh, I joke a lot, but somewhat seriousness with plenty of people, that we talk about the, the economy being in a recession, and there's a lot of indicators to suggest that. And I ought to obviously preface this that I'm obviously not an economist either. But everybody can have their own opinion. I look at this, that one argument that's always had is people don't want to work. So it's slowing down our supply pipeline. I look around all the people I know, my hometown, my friends' friends, my family's friends. I don't know anybody that's not working. Okay. I guarantee that there are people out there who are manipulating the system and taking advantage of that. I get it.. But on a large scale, I think that's all foo-foo dust, just media telling us what we want to know or what we want to hear.

People aren't working. Secondly, the American consumer, right, wrong, or indifferent, continues to spend money on the products that they want. And the demand is good enough across the entire space, whether it be automobiles, fuel, you know, just groceries and goods and electronic purchases. The demand is strong enough that we just don't have the ability to keep up with it. And I still think that that's what's creating some of our inflation. And I don't want to pick a political side here, but I somewhat agree with the comment that we're not going from inflation straight to recession and buckle up, we're going to get really, really bad. And the Fed's comments this week, in my opinion, once again, just kind of allude to that, that we might not be done with interest rate hikes, but the momentum that we've had may be slowing and the, uh, the basis points on hikes might be slowing.

And I still hold the opinion that 5 years from now, we may look back on this interest rate hike that we've had and say, oh well, That was fun while it lasted. And we find ourselves back in a completely different scenario than where we're in today. So that's a little bit of a, maybe a rant, I suppose. But I just think that it's tough to find any commodity or any good, a consumable good or whatever goods the US consumer wants to buy that is suffering at the hands of recession. I think a lot of price situations that we're in, higher price situations of all these goods, is still reflective of the US consumer willing to pay the money for it. Maybe that's what ends up catching up to us, the debt of the US consumer and higher interest rates. That is probably my number one concern from that standpoint of just a debt load that's being created.

Chris

Barron: But well, and I don't know, eventually—

Jarod

Creed: that's a fun conversation over a beer.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, exactly. And, and, you know, the Fed eventually is going to win. You know, they're going to— they're just going to— at least the way it looks right now, they're going to probably just continue to keep jacking rates until we do, you know, squash inflation. I think, you know, there's, there's a pretty good camp out there that thinks inflation is done, but you You know, every time I go to the grocery store, it still continues to cost more than the time before. So I don't know. I mean, it's eventually you would think that the rate hikes will start to work at some point.

Jarod

Creed: Yeah, but I think there's one caveat to mention to all this. Quite frankly, Chris, and this isn't pointed at you, but in agriculture, who gives a crap, right? Again, we know what we know today. Why are we so worried about what the Fed is going to do when the Fed has been nonstop pushing things higher? And what have commodity prices done in that entirety? They've done nothing but rally. Mm-hmm. Generally speaking, we have done nothing but take soybeans, wheat, corn, soybean oil, a huge component here lately, everything continues to find either a, a floor that the user's willing to step in and buy it, or just continue to trend higher on slower than normal.

Chris

Barron: Isn't a piece of that though the production side of it though too, and the concern of the production like South America?

Jarod

Creed: And absolutely, it's the, the supply and demand always wins out. Always. Yeah, you can have sharp price movements in the discovery of that supply and demand, but it's pretty evident right now what the supply situation is based upon the cash value of grain that can be sold. Yeah, so I just— I'll tell you, Chris, that's a little bit of a pet peeve of mine of placing too much emphasis on what's happening within the macro markets and its potential impact on U.S. farmers' crop prices. We don't know again what what the future holds on those. What we do know is that price has done nothing but stayed firm or higher in the face of all this. And it's like we're now on to finding the next caveat that can create a crater in commodity market. The next event— what is the next event? We don't know.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, none of us know. The only thing we do know is '22, for the vast majority— you always find exceptions to this— but is a phenomenal year economically. 23 could be, depending on how people want to manage the margins and the opportunities.

Jarod

Creed: Absolutely, absolutely.

Chris

Barron: I think that's a great place to kind of wrap it up. Is there anything I didn't throw at you? I mean, with this great conversation, just kind of making sure we're kind of hitting, hitting all the connecting the dots here. Anything that I didn't hit you with?

Jarod

Creed: No, I, I just share with your listeners that We've worked our way through, I don't know, probably as of end of this last week, probably 150,000 acres of corn and soybean costs for 2023 throughout the producers we work with. And I would say on average what we're finding right now, our corn cost is up equivalent of about $160 an acre year on year. Our bean costs up about $75 to $80 an acre. I think that's case by case, obviously, but we kind of take the edges out on those averages by spreading it out across all those acres. But it also has to be considered a boy, that's a big price hike. But looking back at last year's cost at this time of year and with where cash corn was, we've got corn over $1 higher a bushel in November 1st for new crop 2023. Than what new crop '22 was November 1st last year. So the revenue at this point is actually outpacing the cost increase.

Uh, just need to be aware of what those increases are and what that means for cash flow and operating money, so on and so on, and drive your decisions from that versus all the noise that's still in today's market.

Chris

Barron: I love it. That's awesome. That's, uh, manage your margins, man. You got the opportunities in front of you for sure. That's great stuff. So hey, really appreciate your comments, your content. It was excellent as always. Jared, really appreciate it. If people wanted to get a hold of you, what's a good way to reach you or to get a hold of you if they wanted to?

Jarod

Creed: Just old-fashioned. You can give me a call or text message. Phone number is 402-680-1744.

Chris

Barron: Awesome. Great conversation, great info, and really appreciate your time today, Jared. Thank you.

Jarod

Creed: You bet. Thanks again, Chris.

Chris

Barron: You bet. And hey everybody, if you are still rolling and trying to wrap up harvest, be safe out there. And if you're getting things wrapped up, it's time to do some math. And so everybody be safe out there, and we will catch you again next time on the Ag View Pitch.