Farm4Profit Podcast
Josh Linville - Fertilizer Market Breakdown: Nitrogen, Phosphate, and Potash
Mon, 2 Sep 2024
In this episode, we’ll explore the current state of the nitrogen market, particularly in light of global events like the ongoing India urea purchase tender and the significant slowdown in Chinese exports. We’ll also touch on the phosphate market, where China and India play pivotal roles, and how these factors are impacting North American farmers. And finally, we’ll discuss the potash market, with a special focus on the potential impact of a Canadian rail strike on supply chains.Whether you’re a seasoned farmer or just curious about the forces driving fertilizer prices, stay tuned as Josh Linville provides expert analysis and practical insights to help you navigate these turbulent times. Don’t forget to like the podcast on all platforms and leave a review where ever you listen!Websitewww.Farm4Profit.comShareable episode linkhttps://intro-to-farm4profit.simplecast.comEmail [email protected] to YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSR8c1BrCjNDDI_Acku5XqwFollow us on TikTokhttps://www.tiktok.com/@farm4profitConnect with us on Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/Farm4ProfitLLC/
Well, those were demand-driven rallies. Those were both ethanol-based. They boosted corn pricing. And so everything chased after that price on the way up. And then the second all that demand started to fall out and there wasn't anything left, it's flat. It all fell back down to the ground. Guys, this thing has been going on since late 2020, early 21.
We have never seen a high-priced market like we have for this kind of length of time. And it's not just fertilizer. It's grains. It's everything across the board. It was crazy. Kind of easy, kind of exciting. Things were always happening. Every time you picked up the phone, there was some crazy black swan event. It always seemed to help out our situation. Now we're in the great reset.
And great resets never happen because your input prices fall. It's always the other way around. It's always the grain prices go down. Then all the other inputs are like, boy, that stinks. I ain't going to drop my price.
Ladies and gentlemen, farmers, ranchers, and distinguished guests, thank you for listening to the Farm for Profit podcast, where we discuss the latest ideas, methods, trends, and techniques available to help your farm achieve higher levels of farm profitability. Remember, if you aren't farming for profit, you won't be farming for long.
And listeners, welcome back to the Farm for Profit podcast. You got Tanner here. Corey's here.
And Dave's in the studio.
Oh, my God, he's back. He's back, in fact. I'm back? No, Dave.
Oh, I was on vacation for a little while.
That's all you do is vacation.
All summer long. That's all you do is just vacation all summer. Hey, that's what the farmers do.
You farm now, so you've been at the lake, right? You do look more tan. I am definitely more tan. Which is crazy because it's, Some are here.
Yeah. But Dominican Republic is a little closer to the equator.
What do they call it? The UV? The UV was a little bit more intense?
I'm guessing, yeah. And I was like 100 SPF all day, every day. Huh.
Uh-huh. That's pretty good. Listeners, thank you for coming back and joining us. Hopefully this episode provides you a lot of value. And we're excited this fall to put really great content in front of you to help your farm grow. making sure that it sustains itself through this tough times, the tighter margins.
We're going to try and give you the best advice and connect you with some of the best experts that we know. If you've got an expert that we should talk to, 515-207-9640, farmforprofitllc at gmail.com or bug Corey out there on the social channels. We'd love to hear from you because that's the only way we get better. We make sure we put the content out that they want to hear. Yes, we do.
Well, Corey, we had Todd Dale on here from Estes Concaves to talk to us about getting our combine set for wheat harvest, small grains. Yep. And we're getting ready to start preparing for soybeans here in the Midwest.
Yeah, getting ready for all the fall harvest crops, getting our combines ready, giving them the once over, twice over, you know, trying to get through the shops and all that. And, you know, one of the best things you can do for harvest is to make sure your machine's ready to go. Because an inefficient combine, especially in these markets, if you're leaving...
kernels out there on the ground or reduce quality anything like that anything that we can do to help not do that would be great So welcome back, Todd. You gave us all those tips for small grains. How did the wheat harvest and everything go?
I think it went really well. So we had quite a bit of feedback on our new system, and it was all as good as it's been with the new XPR3s for the wheat harvest. And we're still – I'm actually right now in South Dakota where they're just getting into their spring wheat crop. So the winter wheat's done and harvested, and we're far enough north here from –
This line that I'm at now, about central South Dakota from here north, it's pretty much all spring wheat. And then we're just about right on the line where they do get some winter wheat. Winters aren't too terribly hard. And several of the folks have said, hey, I saw your guys' last podcast. Tips seem to work all right for them. So I guess we did okay in most regards.
Okay, good. Let's do the same thing for soybean. And this is one of my biggest pains in the butt because it seems like there's so many different varieties of soybean. We're taking the whole plant into the combine opposed to just stripping an ear. So there's just a lot of different variables. Let's get into the nitty-gritty on setting a combine for soybeans.
Soybeans are tough. I mean, it's one of the toughest crops to set a combine for because not only that, but think of the difference in soybeans from your last crop. from 15 years ago, how much greener they are now, how much tighter the pods are. how much better the yield is, quite frankly. I mean, it's a better yielding plant than it's ever been.
The seed companies and all their technologies that's gone into these seeds and plants has just unfortunately made it a tough job for combines, especially if you're out there harvesting pre-frost. Big key with soybeans is still trying to keep the machine full.
And typically what happens, we go out there, you hear it grumbling and groaning and you want to kind of back off and you think you're about to plug it and Maybe you are. I don't want to make it seem like combines don't plug because they do. You know, that's kind of the fine line you got to walk and keep in a machine full.
And so one way that I think really helps is by tightening the concave clearance, closing it down more than you think you should. So one thing I'll tell folks if they ask is you're going to need rotor speed. It's going to have to be on a higher gear, whether that's a deer or a case combine. You're going to have to be 600 to maybe even 800 for a rotor speed, which seems like a lot.
And I get it, but that's about what it takes. And then a tighter clearance just to kind of keep that gap full of as many beans as you can. So you can continue the threshing of the grain on grain as well as the grain on steel of the concave. So that gets you into like feed accelerators. Feed accelerators on a deer combine, feeder house speeds on the case.
Run them up, run them fast because those things are...
typically get a bad rap for damaging the grain and damaging the seed but if it's that hard if it's that hard of threshing where you got a lot of green ropey stems vines on the beans maybe some leaves yet run it and fast that's only going to help you it's not going to damage a well-protected seed like it is when it's a green a green plant it's going to just help the feeding process that much more
If our listeners want to learn more about the XPR-3s and what you guys have in store, how best do they look you up?
Just probably Google Estes Concaves. I mean, it's going to be, it'll pop up and everything. Our website's estesperformanceconcaves.com. All the information that you should, I mean, a lot that you'd need to get started on the investigation process, if it's something you want to move forward with, and then give one of us a call. We've got phone numbers listed on there. We'd be happy to talk with you.
Awesome. Well, thank you much for your time.
This show is going to be perfect to help you.
Yes, this is going to be great. And I have followed this guest for a long time, had a couple of connections with him through interviews on the Ag News Daily podcast, and excited to finally expose him to the Farm for Profit audience. We've got Josh Linville here. And if I read the bio as stated, we could be here for a little bit. This man's overqualified, but ultimately from Missouri.
Grew up on, is this correct, a tobacco crop and cattle operation, Josh?
Yep. Back when tobacco was still a little controlled by the government as far as what you could raise and you could actually make money at it.
There you go. Yes. You got over 20 years of experience in the fertilizer industry. And now your role is to provide us a little bit of perspective here coming from Stonex. So why don't you give our listeners an idea of what your job is? And then we'll go back and learn about Little Josh.
Yeah. So the role that I have, at the core of it, StoneX is a brokerage firm. So our whole thing is trading futures, trading grain futures, interest rates, currency, fertilizer. And that's what they brought me on, is that fertilizer is kind of an up-and-coming futures market, trading urea, U-A-N-D-A-P. But
Once I kind of started to settle into the role, some of the things that bugged me over 20-plus years started to kind of filter through my head, and that's the lack of information on the fertilizer side. I mean, let's face it. Most of the listeners are probably sitting there with their operations looking. The biggest cost per acre is fertilizer. What do you know the least amount about? Fertilizer.
That's not okay.
kind of took a little bit of the role i'm no longer beholden to like manufacturers or anything like that it's kind of like no we want to get the information out there we want farmers to know a little bit more about what's happening may not change a single thing that they do but understanding that hey china did this and it affected me here and russia did this so that affected me here at least having a little bit better of a sense of what's happening around the world puts another piece of the puzzle in there and if it hate it turns out it helps them buy a
Nice. He is the guy. He is the guy. So can I start drilling in with questions yet, or are you done?
I want to know about your background, right? So we said you grew up on a family farm. Is the family still farming today?
They are. My dad is. My cousin is kind of starting to get into it. My cousin actually graduated from high school, straight out of high school, went to Nebraska, did the John Deere Mechanic School, and came back immediately working up around the St. Joe Atchison area.
and kind of getting into it that's just really not been my bag I've kind of enjoyed this role a little bit more so didn't take over the family farm like I probably should consider but I'm having too much fun doing this but yeah we uh a couple thousand acres up of northwest Missouri just south of St.
Joe and yeah it's no longer tobacco anymore um that's kind of moved on the government stopped the program I got out of the cattle business so my dad could have a little bit more free time but Still doing the row crops.
Cool. I still want to go to a tobacco farm sometime. That could be great. You guys need to go to a tobacco auction.
Really? What? Yeah. Yeah. You've got to YouTube it.
It's completely different. So there is probably no C-Bot for tobacco, right? So it's all done at auction? That's where the clearinghouse is? Yeah.
Huh. You take your leaf bales. and all the companies come in, and they literally just go one by one and auction each one of them off and just go straight up and down the line.
How do you know what bale is better than the next? There's order buyers just like cattle, but Google Sandy Houston. Sandy Houston, world champion tobacco auctioneer, and they draw out everything. It's like, oh, American, Sean, Sean. It's different. It's different, but... Let's get back on task.
I love that.
Let's do a whole show on that. Tanner, Corey came out to my farm the other day. We were doing some yield estimates, and we were talking about the state of the economy right now. And, man, our farmland price is coming down as number one. I wish our table had a crystal ball right here because that's what everybody wants.
Maybe we should put one right there.
We need one. We need one. And mine's just as blurry as everybody else. We started talking even next year already and decisions for what we're going to do next year. And that got us right into the conversation of where our prices for seed, where our prices for fertilizer. And Corey, you mentioned to me that it was trending that fertilizer isn't backing off. What are cash rents going to do?
You know, we made comments about that. It's getting tougher. We are backwards.
I feel like fertilizer is backwards. It's gone, you know, anhydrous particularly. That's what we deal with a lot in our area.
is up from last fall which you would have thought you know last fall at this time we were probably in the five dollar range for corn and now we're sub four so if you back up a little farther of course ukraine russia we had a little bit of a scare because a lot of fertilizer comes from there correct yes but let's let josh talk about that why are we backwards why do we feel like we're backwards well you're kind of hitting the nail on the head who do you think was the largest anhydrous exporter in the world
as of about two years ago. Russia. Russia. Guess how many tons they're exporting right now? Zero. Wow. Because their pipeline that they would run down to Odessa, it kind of goes through Ukraine.
And I'm going to guess, I don't know how many times you've studied a war, but the nation that's being invaded isn't real thrilled about letting them use a pipeline to go make money off of an export like that. So that pipeline has been completely shut down. Russia has been trying to build new ports within Russian territory and But it takes a long time to build that stuff. So, yeah, you've got that.
You've got Trinidad production issues. I will say I've gotten that question a lot. Why is it more expensive this year than it was last year? And I'll tell you, last year's price was a gift. And what I mean by that is it was much, much lower than anybody anticipated. It was to the point where I started to hear the price and I called my dad. I was like, hey, dad, how's it going? Yada, yada, yada.
Buy your anhydrous. Well, I don't have a price yet. Buy your anhydrous. well, what price do you think I should buy? I said, buy your anhydride. Take what they tell you and you buy it. When you look at that price versus where the corn was, to your point, it was five plus dollars a bushel. One of the best ratio values we've ever seen in the history of the data that we have.
Boy, it still didn't feel like that right in the check though. Heck no.
That's one of the big things we always kind of get into is one of the things we try to educate is I don't like flat prices because every time you see a flat price, it's never low enough. You know, there's not a fertilizer price low enough. There's not a corn price high enough.
I know I made the argument with a lot of people last year. They said, Oh, we should lower cash rents because commodity prices came down. But the counter argument as a farm manager was, well, the fertilizer and input prices are down as well. So although commodities came down, it was, you know, fractional together. So we just kept cash rent the same.
Now next year, I've already heard people talking about lowering cash rents. Well, we're,
Well below cost of production now, whereas maybe we were not there yet last year.
So help me understand, Josh. I thought, going back as I was studying Russia, Ukraine, that we get some from them, but the U.S. has all the capabilities to produce this. They just don't because of some kind of government sanctions. Maybe we did a podcast on that. Did we not? I don't know how close we got to that. That there were some government sanctions, but basically we could get it out of Canada.
Yeah.
Well, it depends on the product. So it depends on if we're talking nitrogen, phosphate, potash. If we're looking at nitrogen, we are a net importer. We don't have enough production here in North America to meet the demand. We still need to import it.
If you look at, say, like urea, for example, we typically import around five to five and a half million ton over what we produce because we can't make enough of it. Phosphate, that was the argument. So you talk about the sanctions and things like that. So one of the big talking points back in 2020 was,
on this countervailing duty case against Russian-Morocco imports, was we can produce enough in the States to take care of North American demand. Everybody's like, okay, cool, we'll go with it. Well, that was great if their production rates had stayed high. Unfortunately, since that point, production rates have fallen pretty decently. We've been seeing 50%, 60% versus what was normally 80%, 85%.
And Potash... We've got more than enough potash guys, not in the U.S. specifically, but Canada. They are the biggest producer. They are the biggest export. It's not even a close second. It's good to have those guys to the north of us.
If they cannot go on strike.
Yeah, that's kind of a key point of that. It'd be really nice if we could not have that happen.
So that was some big news. We might as well just talk about that since you brought it up. That happened yesterday? Yeah.
And for those that don't know myself, what happened?
All right, Josh, fill them in.
So the rail workers for the CN and CP, two of the biggest rail lines up in Canada, they also dipped down to the U.S. Their workers have been threatening a strike. They've been negotiating. And from what I understand, this isn't a pay strike. This is like a safety and you can't force relocate us and things like that. And so the union has been saying, no, you need to come to us.
You need to come to us. And the rail line, of course, is saying we're not going to do it. And finally, as of midnight, would have been Wednesday night, Thursday morning, official strike, official work stoppage. CNN and CP both blocked like, what was it, 9,000 workers between the two of them from coming to work. But within eight hours, Canadian government said, nope, we're going to send people.
We're going to assist with this negotiation. People get back to work. It's too important to the Canadian economy.
All right, we are back with one of our Nutrient Maximizer segments. We saw such great value in this information that we learned during the winter months before this growing season got started.
It's now time to bring it back and grab some more of the expertise coming out of Taylor Ferguson, the Nutrient Maximizer Strategic Account Manager for Indiana, Ohio and Michigan and Farm for Profit, all of its audience. He didn't realize he got an extra layer of responsibility today. Welcome back, Taylor.
Thank you. I appreciate it. Glad we can get the message out there.
Why is it important for us to think about including these products this fall?
You think about a lot of the applications that happen in the fall, specifically in the western part of the Midwest. There's a lot of fall ammonia. That's a lot of time that that nitrogen is laying out there in that field. We need to make sure that we are extending the lifeline of that overall, getting it to that spring time frame.
Yeah, because that's one of the things that we had talked about was the difference between spring apply and fall applied. What can we do to make sure it's still going to be there in the spring?
Making sure that we have a full rate of Inserve or a full rate of Instinct NextGen depending on what we're applying. Kind of like we reviewed last time, Inserve is for anhydrous ammonia, Instinct NextGen is for UAN, urea, and manure.
Yeah, when you talk manure and even some of the nitrogen applications, sometimes producers are doing them out of necessity. They have to. This is the only time that it's available or it's forced into this time window that And it's nice to know that there's something they can put in with their application process to ensure that they got their best opportunity to be set up next spring.
So if they want to learn more about these products, how do they do that?
Best place is to reach out to your local retailer, your Corteva Agriscience Territory Manager, or go to nitrogenstabilizers.com.
I appreciate you, Taylor, sharing that with our audience again.
Yeah.
So we're recording today on the 23rd of August, just two weeks before this episode is going to air. Where are we at today? Today or in two weeks? No, today as in the 23rd of August. What do we know today?
Today we know workers are going back to work. The negotiations are still ongoing with government help. But there is absolutely still a route out of this where another work stoppage gets put into place. It's not a done deal. Yesterday morning was a fantastic step towards getting back to normal, getting back to some sort of sense of normalcy. We're not there yet.
And you think about how reliant is Canadian everything on rail. They don't have the river systems we have. You think about what kind of trucking capacity it would take to make up for that kind of rail. It's impossible. So it's extremely important, really hoping these two sides can find some common ground and move on with it.
Yeah, but they do get those fancy trucks with two trailers on them, the crane trains. I mean, they can haul like twice as well. We can't.
Rocky Mountain doubles. They're lucky.
That'd be so cool. I don't think any of my trucks have the power to pull that. I know. Let alone try to back it up. Yeah. I saw something on that rail thing yesterday on Twitter. Every day it would shut down. It would take like 14 days to basically make up for that day being down. Is that right?
I've seen stuff like that. I'm not sure. I don't know the science behind it. I can't sit there and say it's right and I can't say it's wrong. Obviously, any sort of a stoppage is going to impact it because then you've got to get everything going and that takes time and you've got to make up for the log jam.
So it's not outside the realm of possibility to say, yeah, a couple weeks may be what it is. I just don't quite know the science behind that number. Got it. Hmm.
So we've talked, you know, foreign trade, global economy. What we haven't talked is local economy. So we have a presidential election coming up, and we're talking about what prices might do in the future. We've kind of talked that they're down now, and we know that. How is who gets elected going to affect our fertilizer?
So I've heard this from a couple different sides. There is a camp that says, and they're looking at it from putting tariffs on fertilizer exports. And of course, the right is sitting there saying, Kamala gets in there. She's just going to do what Biden did. And the Biden administration allowed these tariffs against Morocco and Russia, phosphate to come in.
They're just going to continue to tear up the crap out of it and block even more supply from coming here. That's terrible for farmers. What they don't sit there and talk about is the fact that China, one of the biggest producers and exporters of phosphate in the world, they had tariffs put on them during the Trump administration. And Trump, if I remember correctly, wasn't above
using things like grain sales and things like that to punish, to negotiate with other countries. So I can see either one being tough for the farmer. Unfortunately, the farmer is once again getting stuck in the middle of this political game.
Gotcha. Yeah, we always get stuck in the middle of it. That's just what we do. It's just the way it goes. So, Josh, one of the things you do is you send out a newsletter. You send out market updates to kind of give folks an idea of where we sit. It's full of information. It looks like a brain dump, which is awesome because you get pretty granular on where things sit.
So one of the things you put in here when you talked about China is they're well behind their normal pace of production, especially when you're talking about urea. Is that correct? That's right. So explain how you understand they're behind and how far behind are they?
So you can get information around the world on countries' imports and exports data. And so we gather that. That's a very important piece to know how far ahead or behind you are. That gives you a sense of how the market is going to react. Let's face it.
If we need to buy 5 million tons, for example, and eight months into the year, we've only brought in a million, you know, we're going to start playing catch up. And what does that mean? We're probably moving to a premium versus the rest of the world to try and call those tons in. So We track this data really, really closely.
And with China, if you look at their urea exports on an average here over the last several years, somewhere between 5 to 5.5 million tons. January through July of this year, cumulative, total, 200,000 tons.
What? That's it?
That's it. That is what the data is showing. So is the data accurate? Yeah. We believe it is, as best as we can tell. Now, that's always a question mark. Just as much as we see operating rate indications, and it's continued to show that urea operating rates have been very, very good, so that makes you kind of wonder, now, wait a minute.
If they're that far behind on exports, but their operating rates are good, where's all this product going? That's a big missing piece of the puzzle. As of right now, the data that we're looking at, usually exporting 5 to 5.5 million tons by the end of December through July, 200,000 tons.
We've recently in the U.S. seen layoffs at Kinsey, at John Deere, at other manufacturing facilities. They're predicting or their advisors are telling them the economy is not going to be as good. Do you think they were just ahead of it and made less?
Well, that's the problem. I would sit there and say, yeah, I could sit there and if I put my tinfoil hat on, I could conspiracy theory and say that Chinese... Government people are restricting the exports of dairy in order to drive the price higher to hurt the food supply to mess with the rest of the world. That's the tinfoil hat conspiracy theory side of it.
But the data is showing the operating rate is really, really good, and the exports are really, really bad. Now, I found some articles where they talked about how their government officials have actually been pushing to very quickly build storage for a lot of these different rare products. elements and stuff like that, they're stockpiling a lot of stuff. Maybe they're doing the same thing on Yuri.
I mean, my gosh, they built the hospital in like 10 days when they needed it. It's not outside the realm of possibility to think that they could just be building flat storage with a roof on it just left and right. We need to hire those guys for the school. For the school.
We could have hired them for the studio. Took all summer long.
And they're still not done with the school stuff. Okay, so I think in order to keep this organized for our audience, let's just focus on nitrogen now. So now that we've talked a little bit about China, what is the overall status of the nitrogen market right now as far as supply goes? And where do you think things are going to hit?
Supply side, things seem to be okay. And that is not to sit there and say there are not production issues. The Chinese exports is certainly a situation where we look at urea. The EU is a marketplace that we haven't typically talked about in the past because they just produced what they needed and nothing really went in or out or anything. They were just as they were.
The same thing, we go back and we talk about Russia and Ukraine. You remember the Nord Stream Pipeline? Somebody blew that up. They stopped shipping product through the... Well, their natural gas price started to rise. Their nitrogen production right now is about 75% of normal. And this is especially bad on UAN. The EU region, about 30% of all the UAN produced in the world.
So that's a little bit of a step back. You talk about some of these production issues we've seen in Trinidad and Egypt because of a lack of gas supply. Russia not exporting anhydrous. That's your biggest exporter right there just disappearing from the marketplace. So there are these hiccups.
There's enough things that if we saw corn back to last year's type values, I think every single nitrogen price across the board is higher. The problem is the buyer is sitting there saying, I don't care what the outlook is. 24 stinks. 25 stinks. I don't have money to spend anyway. If I did, I wouldn't give it to you to save my life. I'm not doing a thing. The farmer says that.
The retailer is sitting there saying, I'm in a bad spot. I'm scared to death of this just like everybody else is. I'm not going to take the positions. The supplier is saying, I'm not going to take those positions. It's a standoff. And so we're seeing prices relatively flat. A little bit of a slide on a couple of the products. Anhydrous is moving up a little bit on the resupply. UAN is steady.
Urea is down a little bit. but the market has just grind grinded to a halt because nobody wants to take the next step. They can't last forever. They can last for a while. It's only August 23rd. Do you buy yours yet?
No, I haven't. And I mean, it's been tough to get a price even. And then when you get it, they're like, if you want that price, you'll have to pay a hundred percent of it right now. And then they're going to go lock it in. Basically it's no longer like a 10% booking or, you know, whatever, because they're not sitting on the product. I mean, at least that's, I'm reading between the lines there.
It doesn't feel like they're sitting on the product, which Josh is saying that. Yeah.
Do you think if they, so a lot of marketing companies or sales company, they give you a reason to buy it right now. So to avoid the standoff, as you say, Josh, if they would say, let's, whatever, lower the price to where it incentivized guys like, crap, I got to go now. I got to buy this. But it's, hey, buy today or buy it before you leave and we'll give you this much of a discount.
If they did that right now and incentivized it 20%, would you think farmers... 20% would be huge. Would farmers be out there dumping the clutch even if they think it's going to be bad years in 24, 25, 26? The problem is they did this.
The first price they came out with
was a pretty good okay uh back in like late july i felt like we was what we were hearing you only had a day to make that decision and no one was really willing to move on anything at that time and then normally if you sit and wait on it a little bit you can think and it comes back but that's not how it happened this got it this year so i don't know it's uh kind of scary i've never seen the spread of because i always look at like the cost per unit of nitrogen between anhydrous and urea and
and uan and i think the uan anhydrous spread per unit was only nine or ten cents in my local market and that's pretty tight yep for historically speaking anyways so i guess i i'm sitting here waiting sitting on my hands i guess you're the buyer that's just hanging out right like when we have time right we don't but we do like we have harvest to get through fall application season if we don't like that we can do spring i'd rather not do spring but it's a it's an option
So what else are we missing on the nitrogen front, or does that pretty much wrap that up?
That's a lot of it. I would say, so again, one of the big things we talk about, if you've seen Twitter, the reports, things like that, I always talk about the ratio, right? And for anybody that might not know, that whole concept comes from when I kind of break down what farming is from my perspective, just looking at marketing. So this is a very, very, very simplistic point of view.
It's a lot like manufacturing. And you go to a manufacturer and you say, well, how do you do your stuff? How do you do your inputs and outputs? Well, they're not trying to call the low the inputs. They're not trying to call the high the outputs. They're just sitting there saying when that value between the two of them gets to a good level, I lock them in.
And it doesn't matter where they're at, right? It doesn't matter if your input is insanely high priced or the other side is insanely low. Now, we'd love to hit both of these two, but they're trying to look for that value. And so that's how we track it. We just basically sit there and say, I'm looking at like December Chicago corn.
And I'm looking at New Orleans, Louisiana fertilizer because that's the most liquid point that we have in the North America marketplace. So I look at it from, well, how many bushels of corn does it take to pay for a ton of urea, UAN, anhydrous phosphate potash?
Because I've yet to walk into a room and say, okay, well, you guys, if you had the chance, would you rather spend 50 bushels of corn to buy a ton of urea or 100 bushels of corn to pay for a ton of urea?
Yeah, 50.
Does it matter what the price is?
Nope.
So that's why we look at it that way. If that value gets low, it's a good value. If it gets high, it stinks. And when you look at urea, UAN, it's middle of the ground. It's not terribly high. It's not terribly low versus historical values. Anhydrous is starting to bump up there on the higher side.
We weren't too concerned about fall anhydrous demand, but it's starting to kind of creep in a little bit.
So in the grain markets, a lot of people like to look at historical years. Like this year looks a lot like 2014 or 13 or whatever. Have we ever been at this point with fertilizer sheds empty and prices high, but the grain low? I mean, do we have anything to go off of?
If we have, we've never been set up emotionally like we are. And what I mean by that is we've seen big spikes, right? I mean, you guys were here for 2008 and you saw grain spike up and fertilizer price spike up. And what happened immediately after? It all came crashing back down. We saw the same thing back in what was 11, 12, I think it was. Same thing, prices up and they're immediately back down.
Well, those are demand-driven rallies. Those were both ethanol-based. They boosted corn pricing. And so everything chased after that price on the way up. And then the second all that demand started to fall out and there wasn't anything left, it's flat. It all fell back down to the ground. Guys, this thing has been going on since late 2020, early 21.
We have never seen a high-priced market like we have for this kind of length of time. And it's not just fertilizer. It's grains. It's everything across the board. It was kind of easy, kind of exciting. Things were always happening. Every time you picked up the phone, there was some crazy black swan event. And it always seemed to help out our situation. Now we're in the great reset.
And great resets never happen because your input prices fall. It's always the other way around. It's always the grain prices go down. Then all the other inputs are like, boy, that stinks. I ain't going to drop my price.
Yeah, because a farmer is in a tough spot. You can't grow corn without nitrogen. Right. I mean, you can cut back, right, on some of these scenarios, but ultimately you need to put nitrogen.
You can certainly sharpen the pencil. I mean, we're getting more efficient with our nitrogen use efficiency. We can split up applications and do more in-season stuff. We can get closer to planting. I mean, there is things we can do, you know, get down to that 0.7, 0.75, 0.8 pounds of nitrogen per bushel. we can lower our yield expectations if we're going to cut back on dry and things like that.
I mean, if we're already losing money, let's say, let's cut things back. Right. But how far do you go? That's what we're trying to figure out. Yeah.
Okay. So that wraps up nitrogen. You also include a couple of different sections in your newsletter, one for phosphate, one for potash. Why don't we tackle one of those next?
Phosphate is probably the exciting one. Potash is boring, but then again, potash is the biggest one. impacted by the whole Canadian rail strike, so Let's hit phosphate go for it. All right Phosphate is going to be the toughest market out there because you just talked about nitrogen Can you you take a scalpel to it and change a little bit there and a little bit here?
Absolutely, you can't take it a hatchet to it Phosphate there are guys who are talking about taking an axe to it The price is very very high The price in relation to grain price is extremely high. And a lot of guys have been putting on pretty good rates of phosphate here for the last few years.
And they're saying, I think if I go soil test right now, it's going to show a large amount of phosphate in that soil. I can cut back. Or, even if I can't cut back, there's nobody holding a gun to my head right now that says I have to put it on this fall. Maybe I just drag my feet until spring. Maybe something comes out of it better suited than where we are today.
Unfortunately, there's a couple global events. one being India, the other one being China, that spooked me that we haven't seen the worst yet.
Really?
Talk more about that. On the China side, similar to urea, now not quite to the extent of urea, but kind of like urea, they have been scaling back these exports. They're still letting some stuff go, but it's not near to the extent, not near to the levels that they would historically do. And China, historically speaking, is the largest phosphate producer and exporter in the world.
So when your biggest exporter starts slowing down, restricting those exports, you're going to feel it on the supply side of the S&D. The flip side is India. India is your world's largest buyer, not consumer, but buyer of phosphate. Now, if you remember back in 21, I think it was, Indian farmers started to like riot.
You know, ransacked retail locations lost their mind because phosphate inventory levels dropped down to the lower 1 million ton range. Indian farmers don't truly see world replacement like the rest that we do. They have a flat price.
The importers have to buy the market price, and the government creates a subsidy to help fill in that gap so that they can bring in the product, blow it out to the farmers. The government subsidy has not been big enough to allow them to bring that product in and lose money. And who's going to buy tons just to go lose money and ship to the farmers?
Their inventory levels July, August is believed to have gotten down to about 1.5 million tons when it would normally be about 4 million.
Oh.
So, the thing that keeps me up right now is that you have U.S. farmers who are sitting there saying, I'm going to stick it to the man. We're going to have a terrible fall. We're going to shove that supply back in the system. That's going to create prices that are going to go down. And you could be right.
But when your world's biggest exporter starts to scale back on what they're sending out to the world, and your biggest buyer has to play catch-up on government subsidy money, that is a dangerous, dangerous game. And
We could sit there and see where our prices slide a little bit, but if that world price starts to go up and everybody's like, I'm not going to buy it, what do you think the manufacturers and traders are going to do? Okay. Wave bye to the ship as it darts off to the east across the horizon, guys.
So what's your thought on this? The only thing I got in my head is sustainability. We have this buzzword in agriculture, sustainability. We've talked with a gentleman out in California that said his sustainability is, can I make ends meet next year? I'm listening to this, and I'm like, why are we relying on everyone else to dictate our decision-making capability where we farm?
So I'm thinking to myself, sustainability, why the hell don't we make all this stuff ourself? And I know I'm a million-dollar question here, but why are we relying on the rest of the world to make decisions for our... I mean, as a businessman, I rely on other people. other software companies, etc. But I normally vet them that they can't break on the background. This sounds like stuff's breaking.
Yeah. And if we were to say that same thing about nitrogen, 100%. Who has some of the cheapest natural gas prices in the world? We do. We could produce some of the best economically produced product in the world, some of the most sustainable product in the world, because we are adhering that to U.S. and Canadian laws and restrictions. We could do it here. Phosphate's a different beast.
Phosphate, you need to have phosphate rock. And you don't just find that anywhere, everywhere else everybody would already be doing it. Tremendous amount sitting down in Florida. But the problem with Florida is phosphate mining doesn't even break into the conversation about importance. People go to Florida for three reasons. The Florida economy runs for three reasons.
I lived down there for a little while in Tampa. Didn't have to pay taxes, stuff like that, because the tourism. People go down there to watch rockets take off. I got a chance to do it. Phenomenal if you guys get a chance. People do it to go down to swim in the ocean. And people go down to see Mickey Mouse. And they bring a lot of money.
That's Tanner. Tanner loves Mickey Mouse. Huge fan.
Huge fan. I'll be back down in January for my 15th marathon race in a row.
Wow. Really? You've ran 15 marathons at Disney World. Disney World. We were there when it was going on. The runners were going through Hollywood Studios. When we were at that park.
Actually, this will be my 12th year. I've done every one of what they call the Dopey Challenge. It's a Thursday, a 10K on Friday, a half marathon Saturday, and a full marathon Sunday.
That sounds terrible. You did all of that?
26, 39...
42 what is that 50 miles that's how people practice for a marathon let's run a half today just for the practice 48.6 miles and that doesn't include walking from the parking lot to the start line from the start line back to the parking lot the one year i wore my watch i started it stepping off the plane and i stopped it getting onto the plane i covered uh it's like 115 miles oh my gosh
That sounds terrible. It sounds terrible. It sounds worse than the fertilizer market. It sounds worse than dealing with all the screaming kids at Disney World. Yeah.
And you're doing them both. See, when you run away from the kids, it's not that big of a deal. That's right. Just keep on it going.
So there's three things. Those are the three things that people go to Florida for, and apparently one of them is running a bunch. But why not mine the mines? It's not enough to –
You've got environmentalists that continue to push against it. When you produce phosphate, a byproduct is gypsum that's got this really, really slight radioactive tinge to it. And you've never been allowed to do anything with it, so you've got to make piles. You go to Florida, the only hills you see are these gypsum stacks. Well, Florida also has a lot of sinkholes.
Several years ago, there was video. A sinkhole opened up right in the middle of it during a big, big rain. Water had pooled up in the dikes of it. Well, what did the helicopter do? Video of that water rushing in. What did the headlines say? Radioactive water works its way into the water supply. Here recently, a gypsum stack near the Tampa Bay had broken, released into Tampa Bay.
So the environmentalists have a field day with it. And then you talk about how quickly Florida is growing from a population standpoint. Well, do you want mining or do you want people living there? So it's just really Mosaic, the biggest producer down there, They're just getting hemmed in on all sides. They're not allowed to really expand their operation.
There's more phosphate rock down there, but the other side's winning.
You know how fast we could build that hospital if it wasn't for OSHA? Right. See?
Sometimes we get in our own way here. So gypsum is also a soil amendment and nutrient that we actually like. It has a lot of calcium in it, right? Not if it's radioactive.
Right.
I was going to say, it's because that radioactive tinge, you can't put it on the field.
Really?
I wouldn't mind. You might have green ears of corn. That's already GMOs that people already hate, so let's just throw some radioactive out there, too, and really piss them off.
You'll have deer that glow. You'll have squirrels that glow.
So what do they, I mean, they just pile it up, and do they have to, like, they've got to get rid of it at some point, don't they? Or what do they do?
I think eventually, whenever you're done with the mine, you've got to fill it back in. You've got to reclaim it. So there's probably a little bit that goes back to it. Here in the last 6 to 12 months, there's been legislation that is going to allow them to use that in the construction of roads. And they basically said, listen, Tinge is so, so, so small. It's not a health hazard.
Yeah, we don't want it in the food supply. We get it. But we can use it in other industries. And so they're going to start using this for road creation and things like that. That's going to help them chew down on the piles that are out there. But it's still just – it's a byproduct they have to figure out. It's not easy.
Yeah.
I mean, the other point of what you were saying, Dave, about why don't we produce ourselves as a country, I mean, we do have to have trade partners. And if that means you buy fertilizer from one and so that they buy other products from you, there's a give and take that comes with it. But I've always believed that as well.
Why can't the United States farmers just take care of the United States citizens for food supply? Same thing with manufacturing, so on and so forth. Oil.
and politics stepping in and most farmers do it they don't rely on somebody to clear the road when there's snow we all buy our own snow plows anymore we don't rely on somebody to come in and uh you know grade the road or whatever whatever it may be we try to solve our own problems even we'll have backup generators because we're non-reliant we're self-sufficient if you will and we're non-reliant on all we do but we have backups in place to cover our backsides because we have to
Let's move on to potash, if we're done with. Is that everything for the phosphates?
Yeah, for the most part. I think I've told enough horror stories on phosphate. I hope that's it.
I would echo what you were saying about if you go take a soil sample, you probably have ample amount of phosphorus. It's been pretty easy to cut back on that and maybe focus on more of the things that make the phosphorus that's in your soil a little bit more available. Yep. Yeah, so let's go on to the potash because that's something we all need.
Yeah, if you're wanting to finish up the fertilizer products with a good story, potash is it. Now, of course, potash prices rallied significantly late 21, early 22. We thought we were losing Russian exports of potash, Aramajor exporter, Belarus. They, of course, opened their borders to Russia to send troops across their southern borders so they could attack Kiev, Ukraine from the north. And
Because they're landlocked, they would produce all this potash and they'd ship it through Lithuania and out to sea using their deep sea ports. But Lithuania is a Western country, and they didn't care for the fact that Belarus opened their borders to Russia and allowed them to do that.
So I think it was February 1, 2022, the Lithuanian government signed a decree basically shutting the borders with Belarus. They took all their property, they took all their infrastructure, all the stuff that was within Lithuania, and shut everything down. One of the biggest potash exporters in the world just dropped out of the air. Now they've been starting to kind of find their way back.
They're shipping a lot more stuff like Russia and over to China and different places like that. So they're now starting to come back. Russia, we thought we were going to lose them. Not only do we not lose them, they're actually exporting more on an annual basis than we've ever seen them do. And then you start to talk about all this new production. There's a new mine going in at Canada.
They're continuing to expand. It's going to be massive. Russia is continuing to build more product. China is investing in Laos to increase their operating rates, produce more products so they don't have to buy nearly as much from Canada.
So the list goes on, but basically what it comes down to is as we look forward, potash is the one input that we can sit there and somewhat confidently say, we think supplies are going to be solid. And a market that has more than enough supply, prices stay tame, prices stay low. They stay engaged with the marketplace because they don't want to lose any demand. They need all the demand they can get.
So get that price down where it needs to be.
That is good news. That is. I feel like there's got to be some bad news in there somewhere.
Well, it's the Canadian rail strike. There are still logistical things we've got to watch, right? I mean, if that thing were to occur and it happens over the course of, say, like a month, I don't think it would ever occur. But if it did, imagine what that world looks like now because Canada is your biggest producer in the world.
You shut down the supply, you're talking hundreds of thousands, not billions, tens of millions on an annual basis. Do we have any potash mines in the U.S.? We do. They're not very big, though. Not nearly enough to take care of demand that's here.
Okay. So what do we have in the United States that the rest of the world needs from us? Seems like we need a lot of stuff from everyone else. Pigs. Pigs.
Corn. Corn. We're not giving you the pig unless you give me the potash. Maybe that's an Iowa thing.
Yeah, I think that's an Iowa thing. Soybeans, we export over half of our soybeans? Or is it a quarter of our soybeans? I heard it was three and five rows. Over half now.
More than half. So as we look at, you talked about logistics in Canada with the rail industry. You know, wasn't it about this time last year that we were concerned with water levels in our river systems? And it was a little over a year ago where we had port workers on strike. So far, the U.S. is logistically sound, correct?
Yeah, it's finally had a good spell here. Seems like all the rest of the world's kind of been filling in the gaps. And, okay, if you're not going to have any problems, we'll give you some. But yeah, fortunately, river systems have been running really well. Rail is running about as well as you can expect it to. Everything seems to be firing all cylinders right now.
Before we get off the potash, go to what I want to go to next. Before we get off the pot? What's the difference? I've always wondered this. What's the difference between white potash and red potash or pink potash?
Depending on the mine that it comes out of, it's just the analysis of the product. 60% or 62% potash. Okay. Okay.
I've always heard the white is better. Yeah, it's like dyed diesel. Can't use the red stuff. What? Or like DEF. Yeah, it gets expensive.
I can vouch for that. And? Yeah, those are the environmental costs that they don't tell you.
Yeah. So are you guys covering anything on the micronutrient side of things?
Not really, because that's more of a specialized product. When you look at it, at least your things like DAP and MAP and urea, UAN, all of those are traded around the world. So it's much easier to kind of build a case. Your micros are going to trend along with those major products, but at an elevated rate because they are specialized. You can only buy it from here.
It's only this brand of it or whatever it is.
Right. I mean, I feel like sulfur is becoming another macronutrient in a way because there's hardly ever a conversation about nitrogen that doesn't have sulfur in it anymore. At least on the corn side of things.
It seems to me like, again, been in this industry for 20 years, it seems to me as though sulfur has become a bigger and bigger part because, A, we're raising a bigger crop. Bigger crops pull every single nutrient out of the soil. And, B, we cleaned up the air.
Yep.
You don't have that sulfur coming from the rain anymore like we used to do.
Right. And it is very mobile in the soil. So just because you put it on last year and you didn't use all of it doesn't mean it's going to be there. Right. Yeah. So you guys aren't tracking the sulfur stuff?
Sulfur is the one... It's kind of an amount of time that we have to put towards everything. Right now, we focus on nitrogen phosphate potash. Sulfur will be the next one we do. We're just not quite there yet.
Okay.
There you go. You can start tracking it.
Yeah, there we go.
Just send him the cliff notes. There you go.
So if you had to take all your crystal ball that you could do, I mean, where do you see... all of the nutrients, the macros going here from the situation we are now, go through the fall and maybe spring if you could see it.
I think for the most part, things will stay relatively steady now until partway through harvest. And I say that from a potash, phosphate, and hydrous perspective because by that point, it's too late. If we're going to put stuff on the fall, we have to get that done. And plus, a lot of world demand starts to open up about that time. We're
August is about the quietest period of the world as you're going to find. It only goes up from here in theory. And as we get to next year, unfortunately, I'm going to say this, a lot of the audience might be a little upset with it, but the market is looking at it and says, I don't really care what the profitability of the farmer is. I care about what the acre mix is next year.
And unfortunately, from that standpoint, they're basically looking and saying corn is going to be 90 plus million. Wheat is going to be solid. The demand to grow those crops is significant. If S&D is tight, we are going to keep our price up. Effectively, if we don't have enough supply for the demand we think is going to be there, raise the price until we kill some out and destroy some demand.
That's the cold-hearted nature of the marketplace.
Let's go back to your per acres. We don't care how much it costs. Are you willing to give 50 acres or 50 bushel to buy this much or 100 bushel? So any good company knows what it takes to do business. So if they know that the average farmer is willing to do 50 bushel and they're willing to go there, as their price went down, let's say their paycheck just got cut in half.
If their paycheck got cut in half, eventually you'd think that the people that sell them the supplies have to also take that into consideration and say, hey,
50 bushels is not 50 bushels anymore now you know it takes it takes this much and that they would adjust with the market otherwise guys are just going to back off because they just can't afford it so if you take the price of a truck brand new truck for an analogy and take it to eighty thousand dollars and you cut my paycheck in half i just don't have the money to buy an eighty thousand dollar truck anymore so when do they say we still need to sell some crap let's lower the price of the truck when does that happen
And that's the problem. If we were on an island of our own, if it was just the U.S. market, I think if we hold out for a few more months, we'd probably start to see that happening. But the problem is the rest of the world continues to have all these issues.
So if the American farmer sits there and says no long enough, even if our price does dip down, if the rest of the world stays up, they'll just start loading vessels and soon have to see. And that is where it gets very dangerous to only focus on us from a U.S. perspective. Trust me, I have to fight myself out of having blinders on just as much as everybody else.
At the end of the day, we're part of this world market. You know, phosphate's a great example. We could cut our application rate, stick it to the man, have double-digit percentage demand destruction on it, but if the world stays as tight and demand stays as solid as it is, we could still see our pricing up, regardless of the fact that we really showed them what we were all about.
That's not what we want to hear.
Yeah.
let's say we're back to normal markets and not all this craziness that's going on right now is there any just solid advice you can give our listeners that you know when to buy fertilizer how to buy fertilizer you know always buy in july always buy in august or go to the river pick it up like what's the best thing to do i am still a very very big advocate there's not a time of year that's the best because markets are always changing you never know what's going to happen
My advice is always to watch that, what's my fertilizer price in relation to the grain price. Phosphate, let's go back to last summer on the phosphate. Price has dipped down pretty well. And I can tell you at the low end of it, I thought it probably had another $25 to $50 a ton downside. At the same point, corn looked good.
Corn price was going up, and I thought, hey, they're going to continue to go up. So the ratio is really good. In fact, it got down to some of the lowest 25% range values that we've seen over the last half decade to decade. I thought phosphate was further down. I thought corn was further up. Let's wait and see what happens. But that value was there. And that's when I think we need to jump in.
And those numbers are going to look different for everybody out there. And that's where we have to kind of work with our suppliers. Hey, can we run these type of numbers? I can get the historical grain prices from the elevator. Can we overlay that with your historical fertilizer price? And then you can create a graph that sits there and says, hey, when I get to
50, for example, that's a good value. If it hits 50, I need to do a layer. I don't care what the grain price is. I don't care what the fertilizer price is because that is a value there. And that's the thing. Last summer, when I look at it from a NOLA Chicago perspective, the ratio dipped to 80. And that was a heck of a buy. We started jumping up and down saying, guys, opportunity.
This is a big one. Today, that same ratio is 125. Whew. Almost 50 bushels more to pay for a ton of DAP than what it was last summer.
If you're buying this on an operating note, interest rates are three times what they are. Just adds to it.
You just got to tell them, I'm going to give you your 50 bushel when I get it off the field.
Right? Right.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. It's a barter system. So, Tanner, money's made in the margins as everybody battens down their hatches. Okay? Okay. All I've heard over the past months is we're going to back off. It's not in the cards this year. We're not going to put tile in. We're not going to do that.
Is fertilizer ever in the discussion that that's the card we pull out of the deck that we say we're not going to do?
Oh, yeah. It happens quite a bit. Unfortunately, the conspiracy theories of these folks that come in and pay high cash rent and they skimp the farm. They don't put replacement value back on. That happens. Does everybody do it? No. But there are bad actors or there are ones that are essentially gambling with cutting back their rates. And ultimately, you just wish them the best of luck.
They're the only ones that are going to know whether or not it worked for them. If they were able to produce enough bushels, market those at a level that they were able to create a positive margin without using the fertilizer...
best to them i don't think that's the right advice so it happens i want to leave it on a positive note because we've given a whole lot of negative people were already negative that uh the market sucks and we kind of just told them it's going to suck some more so what's the positive here what's the what's the pull away i think going to tanner saying you know throwing that blanket statement of oh they're mining the soil and all that
I don't know if it's completely true. If you were a good farmer and opportunistic and you've been building your fertility, you know your fields, you're doing your soil samples, you've constantly been on a 50% build or 25% build. This is the time I think it is okay to cash in. Yeah. Like, right? Like, I'm going to cut back or not apply that year. You know, I've got really good rates.
I put manure on that field last year in front of corn.
I can go to soybeans and be fine. And if markets are cyclical, then we're gambling, as we always do, that it's going to come back the other direction, and then we'll make up our margin then.
Yeah. I'd say one of the bright spots, you know, that we can share with our listeners today is Josh's ex-account, JLenvilleFurt.com. is where you find them on Twitter. And on the 14th of August, you made a post. You said, those of you that have farmed through the tough years, what advice would you give to younger farmers? And you had a lot of interaction. You had people that had saved it.
You had 116,000 views. Wow. So clearly that's a question that a lot of people took to heart. And I jotted down a couple of things that I noticed. And Corey tells me all the time, I can't save my way to prosperity. I think there was a lot of responses that were talking about how, okay, you might have to spend money to make money. You can't just save your way there.
Understand the difference between wants versus needs. Is this something that I want to do or this is something that I need to do? Kind of like you talked about, if you built up and you had 50% plus, do you need to put that fertilizer out there? Or do you just want to because it's what you've always done? So addressing exactly clear there. I like that knowing your margins, knowing your break-evens.
Josh was mentioned like 700 times. I mean, I'm exaggerating, but our listeners are familiar with that. They certainly know that we preach that. You've got to run this farm like a business, and most businesses understand their cost of production, so you need to know what that is too. Understanding living expenses.
Probably one of the biggest struggles I had when I was a banker is getting my customers to – not only divulge what their living expenses were, but demonstrate that they accurately knew what their living expenses were. Seems like a tough one to get a hand. Someone with base hits and doubles, don't worry about your home runs, but be ready to hit a fastball right over the plate.
So if it's going to give you an opportunity, you need to be ready to take it. Don't just be watching pitches go by. Sell unused assets. Not necessarily a rosy thing to do, but this is your time to look at your your portfolio, as well as maybe you need some off-farm income. That was just five or six, two, four, six, seven of the things that I had saw.
Other than selling assets, we've seen some dealerships that are liquidating some of their on-site inventory to take debt off the books. How do farmers take debt off the books? Other than selling assets? Other than selling assets. File for bankruptcy? Sell land. Well, that land's an asset.
Yeah, it is. You can't take debt off the books without converting an asset to cash.
Okay, so do they sell more corn at a lower rate just to take the debt away so they don't have to borrow money on an operating note?
Everybody's going to be different. If you are comfortable with the belief system that you have and you've got a piece of ground that you're willing to cut bait with and sell because you feel that the price of land is going to remain steady longer than the price of corn with the opportunity to go up, Follow your belief system. Take and trust your advisory board.
If it's the opposite, you believe land is still the place to park your money and hang on to it, I wouldn't sell your farm. I'd cut bait on the crop that you have and go that route.
Because nobody ever said interest rates are king. It's always cash is king.
I will say on that post, the one thing that I didn't explicitly say, but I hope the younger farmers kind of took away from that, all that advice is coming from guys who went through the 70s and went through the 80s. That was a pretty tough time. They're still here. They're here to give you the advice that they gave you, and there's a lot of good, sound advice. They're still alive, guys.
You said it's cyclical. You're absolutely right. There will be better days ahead. This is just a tough spot. We'll get through it. Just keep your emotion out of the marketing, take your wins where you can take them, and just get on down to the next road.
Yeah. Well, I just got one question left for him, unless you guys have more to pepper him with. We'll try to wrap up every one of our episodes to put a compilation show together with the same question. The question we've been asking our guests right now to provide some perspective and help our listeners is how have you juggled work and personal life?
I've done a terrible job of it. Um, last few years, it's taken quite a bit to get this thing going to what it is today. I've, I've put way too much work in. I've missed a few things at home. I probably shouldn't have. And it's, I say that so openly because my oldest just started his senior year. Realization, he's going to college next year. He's out of the house.
And I finally decided I've got to stop that. I've got to find that balance again. So when I shut down, I put my work phone on the shelf, I put my computer in my bag, and I walk away from it. You've got to make it a priority. You just have to. Because trust me, it goes fast. It'll be over before you know it. The kids will be out of the house, and all of a sudden...
It's just you and the missus, or maybe just you. But you have to make it a priority. You just got to sit there and say, these are my hard and fast rules, and I will not break them.
I like that. I think he's the first one that said priority. Use that terminology. And I love framing this question up. It's not meant to make any of our guests feel bad. That's why I don't use the word balance. I don't like it. But we're going to learn a lot and be able to compile, I think, some pretty good messages to let those that feel like it's not juggled properly know.
understand that they're not alone, and maybe give them some tips to where things can get fixed.
One thing you're going to have to preface with this one from a guy that's in the same spot as Josh works a lot. I wonder if your job depends on this question. And the reason I say that, having been a firefighter, I could shut the mind off on firefighting immediately. But now working a job in sales where you eat what you kill, If I don't kill it, family doesn't eat.
It changes that perspective of how much I want to work. And I've had others that are realtors that I've tried to book deals with, and they're like, my client wants to do a call on Sunday afternoon. He's like, I don't make calls on Sunday afternoon. I'm like, well, I need to because this is a $4.2 million deal, and I need it.
And so respecting others' boundaries of where they are, I was very frustrated. Like, dude, we need to put this together. He's like, I don't make calls on Sunday. I get it. But then him also respecting my side of, I need this because I still got to feed the family. So there's a fine line there in the middle.
And farmers are entrepreneurs. They're the same boat. They, again, they eat what they kill. And sometimes we can get into a position where we don't feel that there's the juggling happening. Yeah.
I did come up with one more question. I got like I always do. I'm curious about your newsletter that you put out. How do people get that or sign up for it?
They can go out, Google StoneX Farmer Fertilizer Newsletter. And I can tell you the next edition is going out next Thursday, Friday. And all that is, is just that was my attempt to try to get more information out there, right?
You can only do so much on X. You can only do so much on like YouTube videos, but this is kind of my way of, to your point you said earlier, it's kind of just like a mind dump. That's exactly it. It's kind of going through what happened in the last 30 days of the marketplace. What do I think is going to happen right now? I don't know.
Sure, you think I'm doing all this job if I know exactly what's going to go on with the marketplaces? I can work a lot less and make a lot more money than what I'm doing today. But just try to give a little bit of insight, some of the price movements, things like that. So you have to go Google that, take them straight to the registration page.
Are you tracking some of those ratios that you talked about that like, Hey, this is like, like I got a stoplight, like green, yellow, red, or, you know, like, Hey, this is a good buy. It's not a good buy.
So every month I update every single one of them, like, uh, on the urea newsletter, I've got urea versus corn. I've got urea versus wheat. I got urea versus everything out there, everything I can think of. And frankly speaking, if people will come back to me and say, Hey, you're missing this, this is a future straight market on the grain side. We could do that comparison. Easy enough.
We'll put it in the system. We'll put it in the newsletter. We'll do it. But yeah, every single month we will update those. And at that point, I don't like telling farmers what I think they ought to do. I will point out opportunities. It's not my place to make a decision for somebody. Because I'll have people, should I buy this? I don't know. I don't know your operation.
I don't know your risk tolerance. I don't know your ground. I don't know your territory. I'm here to try and give you more information so you can make that decision. At the end of the day... If it's a right decision, I don't get any of the income. If it's a wrong decision, the banker's not coming to me and saying, hey, let's talk about settling this account up.
So, non-related to fertilizer, question for you. I did a charity auction last night. And when we're all talking doom and gloom, and I hear a lot of that chatter coming in this way, that market's bad, market sucks, etc. I did a charity auction last night, and we raised a half a million dollars in less than an hour. And it's the highest amount they've ever raised.
And people just freely gave, here's 20 grand, here's 30 grand, here's 10 grand, et cetera, et cetera, like it's nothing. There's a lot of money out there. You know, I always say markets are emotion. Their emotion was great. They're ready to give. The emotion in agriculture right now just stinks. How do we change the emotion?
Sounds like we need to have a charity auction for my farm.
Oh, we could.
That would change Corey's emotions. That would change my emotions. New tractor it is!
That's a tough question. I think our listeners should...
Write in and let us know what their answer to that is. I think Farm for Profit is going to come up with mini crystal balls, except they're going to be cloudy. And we'll just sell them to you. And if anybody asks what we're supposed to do, here you need one of our swag gifts.
It's a crystal ball that's cloudy.
You can't see anything. Well, Josh, this has been a pleasure. Like I said, got to connect with you on Ag News Daily. It's fun to introduce you if those of the Farm for Profit community didn't already know who you were. Hopefully they got some good value out of this. I certainly learned a lot. We had notes being written. Thanks again for hanging out.
Anytime, guys. Thanks for having me on. Sure appreciate it.
Listeners, until next time, have a good one.
Remember, if you aren't farming for profit, you won't be farming for long.