Ep. 49 Farm Commodity Prices Unlikely to Recover to Breakeven Point for Arkansas Farms in 2025

00;00;12;10 – 00;00;31;21
Dr. Hunter Biram
An updated decision tool on profitability, prices are in their downward seasonal trend, and what does the rest of 2025 hold for prices? That, and so much more on this episode of Morning Coffee and Ag Markets. I’m Hunter Biram, and in the studio today I’ve got Dr. Ryan Loy, a very familiar face. How are you, Ryan?

00;00;31;21 – 00;00;32;10
Dr. Ryan Loy
Doing well, Hunter, how about yourself?

00;00;33;06 – 00;00;38;04
Dr. Hunter Biram
Doing pretty good. I wish, that it would rain a little bit less, maybe, like not even rain.

00;00;38;07 – 00;00;48;14
Dr. Ryan Loy
I know I like the rain, you know, I’ve always enjoyed rainy days and stuff. Of course, if it’s not torrential. And I understand what it does for farming, but I’ll tell you what, I think everybody’s about tired of it now.

00;00;48;16 – 00;00;52;22
Dr. Hunter Biram
I love rainy days. I’m like Phyllis from “The Office.” I just want to curl up with a blanket and a good book…

00;00;52;22 – 00;00;53;21
Dr. Ryan Loy
Right, that’s right. Exactly, exactly. I’m like you.

00;00;53;21 – 00;01;04;25
Dr. Hunter Biram
[…] Well, and me and my wife, we garden, and right now everything’s doing good, except the okra. Because it’s wet and cold. Yeah, and okra don’t like that.

00;01;04;25 – 00;01;13;12
Dr. Ryan Loy
No, no, not at all. I can only imagine. Like, my yard is just… a swamp essentially, right now. It’s crazy, you know, the ground just can’t take anymore in.

00;01;13;12 – 00;01;15;17
Dr. Hunter Biram
Yep, yep. Good luck keeping your shoes clean.

00;01;15;18 – 00;01;19;02
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s right. That’s exactly right. Good thing I don’t own white shoes.

00;01;19;04 – 00;01;41;01
Dr. Hunter Biram
I think I just got a new pair for Father’s Day. Perfect. But anyway, so today, to start our discussion, as I mentioned, we have an updated Profit/Loss Tool. And so, Ryan, would you mind just kind of walking through, just give us a brief history of the tool, maybe what motivated the development of the tool and what we can expect from the tool, generally.

00;01;41;01 – 00;01;42;25
Dr. Hunter Biram
And then go into maybe the updates.

00;01;42;25 – 00;02;05;05
Dr. Ryan Loy
Absolutely. So, you know, the reason we initially had put this together, because when we were going out to the counties, we were actually creating kind of our own profit and loss tables just based on whatever county we were going into that week or, you know, that day. And we would kind of pull those yield, estimates, pull some prices and kind of look at what profitability would look at and what break evens could be for that upcoming year.

00;02;05;05 – 00;02;19;02
Dr. Ryan Loy
And one of the things that you and I talked about this year was saying there was such a high demand for that, that we really need to give the farmers a way to just kind of look at, look at this and do it themselves whenever they would like to. So really, that was the biggest motivation for it.

00;02;19;02 – 00;02;36;13
Dr. Ryan Loy
We said, okay, let’s go ahead and create a, you know, a web app that pulls in the county specific yields and the prices and, and basically be able to give the farmers a way to say, hey, under these, you know, under this, these costs and this expected price and this yield, where am I going to end up this year?

00;02;36;13 – 00;02;50;18
Dr. Ryan Loy
Am I going to break even? Am I going to make some money? And this also, you know, is a good way to, you can use that to help market to say, okay, if I hit this price point and if I look at the futures market, and it’s hit this price point, I can break even or I can even make money at this point,

00;02;50;18 – 00;03;11;28
Dr. Ryan Loy
so maybe I should book some, you know. And so from there, it’s kind of several angles of why this tool really was developed and really just like I said, it kind of provides that summary of potential returns and losses under those various price and county-specific yield combinations. And then we also provided, under various land tenure situations, such as owned, cash rent, or crop share.

00;03;12;01 – 00;03;37;01
Dr. Ryan Loy
And so, you know, given, you know, all the market activities that we’ve seen this year, with the uncertainty around export markets and the tariffs and global trade, and just high input cost year over year over year. And to even add insult to injury even more, the Federal Open Market Committee Meeting will end today and we’ll know a decision on where the Fed funds rate is going to be until the next meeting, next month.

00;03;37;03 – 00;03;44;03
Dr. Ryan Loy
And right now they’re penciling in about a 99% probability that the Fed is going to maintain the rate is what it is. So really…

00;03;44;08 – 00;03;44;22
Dr. Hunter Biram
Not what we want to hear.

00;03;45;01 – 00;04;03;11
Dr. Ryan Loy
No, no it’s not. And you know, if we go back to when, when we were giving talks in November and December, one of the biggest things I pointed out was, hey, if they start cutting rates like they’re expecting to do, this might be a good form of relief in terms of an interest expense on your budget, but it seems that it’s just going to be persistent and maintain.

00;04;03;11 – 00;04;23;25
Dr. Ryan Loy
And really it’s, it’s really a function of, okay, the Fed’s looking at this and saying, we don’t want to make the same mistakes that we did during COVID, and so we’re being extra cautious. And I think that’s what we see with the extra caution around uncertainty in markets and supply chains, those sorts of things. And so really, right now we’re kind of looking at that and saying, we’re just going to maintain the status quo.

00;04;23;28 – 00;04;34;05
Dr. Hunter Biram
So, I’ve got a question about that. So, you know, what we’re following what’s happening with the Fed and the interest rates. And it’s all very well and good and important. But how important is it right now?

00;04;34;07 – 00;04;50;09
Dr. Ryan Loy
Right now? It’s probably not as important right now, but what it is in the immediate term, right? As we stand right now, everybody should at least have their operating notes if they went and got some this year. However, what this really is going to hold implications for is what your interest rates are going to look like for next growing season.

00;04;50;12 – 00;05;05;19
Dr. Ryan Loy
So you make it through and you look at next year and you can use this, see this trajectory to say, am I going to be paying more or less or the same interest expense I’m paying this year, next year? So that’s really kind of just that forward planning of always kind of keeping your finger on the pulse of where their head’s at.

00;05;05;24 – 00;05;16;16
Dr. Hunter Biram
Yeah. So then, so would you say that right now, that we’re pretty much looking at what an interest rate would be for the 26 crop year? All other things constant.

00;05;16;17 – 00;05;38;19
Dr. Ryan Loy
Could possibly…all other things constant, let’s just say, hypothetically, nothing changes between right now in the 2026 crop year, it could be the case. However, honestly, you know, during the… and last couple months of the year, they may cut it a little bit more, just like they did last year. But time will tell. And actually, this will be a good meeting, today when, Chairman Powell kind of comes out and he’ll give his reasons.

00;05;38;21 – 00;05;50;07
Dr. Ryan Loy
And usually in that press conference, he kind of says, okay, this is the expectations for the next couple of months. And, you know, those can change on a dime. But at least that’s the most up to date information we can have at the time.

00;05;50;09 – 00;06;08;18
Dr. Hunter Biram
Okay. And so with that, then with, you know, we’ve got this new interest rate environment, we’ve got new commodity prices, a lot of volatility, various things that we’re not going to get into. We don’t have enough time in the day to talk about all the things happening in the market. We have updated that tool that you were just talking about.

00;06;08;21 – 00;06;28;07
Dr. Hunter Biram
And we’ve put in new expected cash prices for Arkansas producers. And so what we do with that, is we just say, hey, what’s the monthly average price in June right now? And what’s the expected basis by crop. And then we adjust and give you a cash price. And so, go check out that tool. It’s in the newsletter.

00;06;28;07 – 00;06;38;11
Dr. Hunter Biram
There’s a link in the parentheses, as “updated tool found here.” Click on that link, and that’ll give you updated profit/loss tables. Now, is it encouraging? No.

00;06;38;11 – 00;06;46;22
Dr. Ryan Loy
No, unfortunately not. That’s right. Unfortunately, it’s really not encouraging. And just looking at those updated numbers is pretty staggering, you know?

00;06;46;28 – 00;07;13;14
Dr. Hunter Biram
It is. And, you know, to me the most concerning. Well, there are two things that are concerning, but I’ll say the most concerning thing first is that prices are probably as good as they’re going to be. Or we may have even… I think we’re on the downside of the price highs that lead into harvest. Because, you know, typically what we see is leading up to, say, the June acreage report, you know, on June 30th, which is… it should be released June 30th.

00;07;13;16 – 00;07;37;00
Dr. Hunter Biram
Actually, that’s on a Monday this year, so it should be on that day. Once we get to that acreage report, the market has a really good idea of, like, what actual production is going to be. And so there becomes a lot more confidence in… supply, essentially. In supply. Exactly, thank you. And so what happens is, we start to see where there were premiums and prices leading up to that moment,

00;07;37;01 – 00;07;52;29
Dr. Hunter Biram
now, we’re starting to see discounts. Right? And so what I mean by that is, relative to June. And so, everything at this point, you know, this is, I think what I want to center the conversation, no pun intended, on June, which is the six month of the year. But really, to me, this is a time that we need to be thinking about marketing.

00;07;53;01 – 00;08;09;03
Dr. Hunter Biram
And, you know, if you missed it a week or 2 or 3 ago, that’s okay. You know, I still think that you’re in good shape to go ahead and market now. But we’re hoping with the tool that you can at least have a better idea of what your profitability looks like as you’re booking bushels.

00;08;09;05 – 00;08;18;07
Dr. Hunter Biram
You know, the bad news is, I mean, really, if you’re at average, for, you know, each of the crops in terms of yield, things aren’t looking good.

00;08;18;19 – 00;08;38;24
Dr. Ryan Loy
Things are really not looking good. And just, reading through the newsletter, who our subscribers, you know, if they do that this week, we highly encourage you to do it, because there’s some great graphs on there, kind of just breaking down the potential of where prices can go. And one of the things we talked about when we were putting this together was, I don’t see any price upside at all for the rest of the year.

00;08;38;24 – 00;08;53;09
Dr. Ryan Loy
And that makes sense, right? You know, a lot of this comes back down to, you know, in a lot of our talks, it’s very simple supply and demand, right? It’s the more confident they are about the supply they’ll have, the price will go down, right? And so that, that’s where we’re at right now, unfortunately.

00;08;53;12 – 00;09;08;00
Dr. Hunter Biram
Yeah. And so, you know, while the decline in commodity prices is very concerning given how prices, seasonality has tended to favor the price increases in this pre-harvest window, what is even more concerning is the fact that no commodity price has been above breakeven point this year.

00;09;08;00 – 00;09;12;21
Dr. Ryan Loy
Yep. Which is just, I mean, staggering. It’s really crazy.

00;09;12;21 – 00;09;32;05
Dr. Hunter Biram
I mean, we are, I mean like, you know, like I said earlier, normally we see premiums leading up into June and you know, that price relative to say, February, January, even, the price increases. And yes, there’s been some increases here and there, but overall there’s been decreases in, say, corn from $4.25 to $4.20. For long-grain rice,

00;09;32;05 – 00;09;55;04
Dr. Hunter Biram
$6.44 a bushel to $5.63 a bushel. Cotton, $0.65 a pound of $0.62 a pound. Soybeans has seen a little uptick, given the news from EPA recently, but still, we’re looking from $10.20 to $10.25 a bushel. Not a ton of upside. And those are WASDE cash prices. Those are gonna be national average prices.

00;09;55;07 – 00;10;19;22
Dr. Hunter Biram
And so, now I want to shift into breakevens and talking about breakeven. So what we do, and we lay this out on the newsletter, we calculate breakeven prices based on county yield expectations for representative counties for each crop. So, we use Lee County for corn. That’s about 197 bushels per acre. We use Mississippi County for cotton, looking at 1,156 pounds per acre.

00;10;19;25 – 00;10;39;23
Dr. Hunter Biram
We use Jackson County for rice at 164 bushels per acre. And we use Crittenden County for soybeans at 45 bushels per acre. And so, you know, the reason that I went with this approach instead of the state averages is because I wanted to find those hot spots. Like, if you’re looking at the cropland data layer map from NASS, literally that’s exactly what I did.

00;10;39;23 – 00;10;53;08
Dr. Hunter Biram
I just looked and I saw where most, where’s most of the corn being grown, where’s most of the soybeans being grown and so on. And so I chose those counties, because I think those are, not that all of it’s grown there, that’s not at all what I’m saying, it’s just most of it’s grown in that area.

00;10;53;11 – 00;10;55;21
Dr. Hunter Biram
And we have a lot of data points for those areas.

00;10;55;28 – 00;11;13;16
Dr. Ryan Loy
Absolutely. And if you, and from that perspective too, you know, picking those counties, the ones that grow, you know, that’s the most for that respective crop, if those counties are struggling, right, then you can kind of extrapolate that across to say, well, if other counties who don’t have that yield potential, they’re going to be in an even worse spot, right.

00;11;13;19 – 00;11;14;14
Dr. Ryan Loy
Or better.

00;11;14;17 – 00;11;21;15
Dr. Hunter Biram
Exactly. And so, now that we have these yields that we use, we’ve talked about the prices. Could you maybe, Ryan, walk us a little bit through breakeven, real quick.

00;11;21;17 – 00;11;42;17
Dr. Ryan Loy
Absolutely. So very simple in something we’ve talked about a few times on the podcast – breakeven, and in this case, breakeven can mean several things, but breakeven really just means that you did not earn a profit and you covered exactly your expenses. So the profit is zero and your expenses, you’ve covered everything. In this case, we are actually saying our breakeven is just above our operating expenses.

00;11;42;17 – 00;12;15;11
Dr. Ryan Loy
So we’re not accounting for some economic costs and some fixed expenses. Depreciation, capital recovery, we’re not accounting for that here. But we are accounting for all your operating expenses and, including, if you have a rental agreement, whether it’s crop share or whether it is cash rent. And so really, what we’re saying here is when we say breakeven, that means, when we say the breakeven price is $4.10, for example, that means that that’s the price that you should receive for your corn to make sure that you cover all of your expenses.

00;12;15;11 – 00;12;32;19
Dr. Ryan Loy
You won’t be taking anything home, but all your expenses are at least covered. And breakeven is an important thing, especially in years like we’ve had, you know, where it’s so difficult just to make ends meet. Sometimes, breakeven is the best you can do. Now, is it’s something you want to do repeatedly, over and over and over? No, because you’ve got to make some money.

00;12;32;19 – 00;12;40;04
Dr. Ryan Loy
However, and years like this year, if you made some money last year, maybe breakeven is just okay for this year.

00;12;40;07 – 00;12;51;19
Dr. Hunter Biram
Yeah. And that’s unfortunately what a lot of folks are dealing with. I mean, it’s… some folks are thinking about leaving land fallow because, I mean, it’s going to be a complete loss. So it’s like, there’s no point in getting the loan to plant the crop because you won’t make any money.

00;12;51;19 – 00;12;55;10
Dr. Ryan Loy
I know, and the flooding, this is seriously not helping at all. I mean, it’s…

00;12;55;12 – 00;12;55;25
Dr. Hunter Biram
It’s still here.

00;12;56;06 – 00;12;59;07
Dr. Ryan Loy
It’s still here. It’s still raining right now, as we speak. It’s crazy.

00;12;59;23 – 00;13;03;06
Dr. Hunter Biram
Two and a half months later, after that big flood event and we’re still dealing with it.

00;13;03;07 – 00;13;06;03
Dr. Ryan Loy
I know. We should have waited to write our estimates, honestly.

00;13;06;05 – 00;13;16;14
Dr. Hunter Biram
Yeah, just keep updating them into perpetuity. That’s right. But, but anyway. So, yes, breakeven price. You’re not making any profit. And we’re talking about cash expenses.

00;13;16;14 – 00;13;18;18
Dr. Ryan Loy
Cash expenses. Yep.

00;13;18;20 – 00;13;36;09
Dr. Hunter Biram
So, let’s walk through some of these breakeven prices. And we do account for, you know, in these prices, we do like a weighted average breakeven price based on the percentage of land that’s owned and the percentage of land that’s rented. I’m not going to go into great detail about that. I think that we’ll let newsletter readers get into that.

00;13;36;09 – 00;13;43;20
Dr. Hunter Biram
But, Ryan, would you maybe walk us through what some of these breakevens look like, you know, under the full and maybe under some different rental agreements?

00;13;43;20 – 00;14;04;21
Dr. Ryan Loy
Absolutely. So when you’re looking at, you know, corn, and we’re talking about Lee County, remember that’s 197 bushels an acre, you know, at that. We pulled those operating expenses from our enterprise budgets, which, again, if you go to the tool, the expenses are right there on the front page, exactly what we’re kind of, calculating the breakeven over.

00;14;04;23 – 00;14;39;23
Dr. Ryan Loy
And so under this scenario, when Hunter is talking about the weighted breakeven, essentially what we’ve done is, like he said, calculate a weighted average for the breakeven prices, accounting for rented and owned land. Under that assumption, the weighted average to receive corn this year is going to be $5.04 a bushel. Now, what does that mean? What that means is that if we were to randomly just pluck a Arkansas corn farmer, on average, they will need $5.04 a bushel to break even.

00;14;40;01 – 00;14;54;16
Dr. Ryan Loy
Now that’s accounting for that proportion of rented and owned. Now what does that look like under the full ownership? Let’s assume they own the land. If they own the land, we’re looking at $4.10. Okay, that should make everybody pause real quick.

00;14;54;16 – 00;14;55;20
Dr. Hunter Biram
That’s on full own.

00;14;55;21 – 00;14;56;05
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s full own.

00;14;56;10 – 00;14;57;27
Dr. Hunter Biram
And we just said $4.20 was…

00;14;58;08 – 00;15;01;23
Dr. Ryan Loy
$5.04 was the weighted, oh and $4.20…

00;15;01;23 – 00;15;02;26
Dr. Hunter Biram
Is about where we’re sitting.

00;15;02;27 – 00;15;18;16
Dr. Ryan Loy
Exactly. So, under a full ownership, you can actually lock in something there, where you’re at, right? And then let’s talk about it under a 75/25, which is part of what the weight that we added into there. You’re looking at $5.47 a bushel.

00;15;18;16 – 00;15;19;06
Dr. Hunter Biram
Yeah. There ain’t happening.

00;15;19;08 – 00;15;38;19
Dr. Ryan Loy
No. And that’s under 75/25 crop share agreement, which I know is very popular in the Delta. So when you’re thinking about that, you know, those are the differences, that’s that spread. If we’re thinking about just the pure dollar amount to get from breakeven, from full to 75/25, you’re going to need $1.37 per bushel more on corn to do that.

00;15;38;19 – 00;15;39;09
Dr. Hunter Biram
Oh, wow.

00;15;39;09 – 00;16;00;12
Dr. Ryan Loy
Relative to the full ownership amount. Moving on to cotton, but we all know that cotton has really been in droves. That weighted breakeven is going to be $1.03, okay. And again, recall that we talked about that it’s fallen to $0.62 a pound since we’ve last updated this tool. Under full ownership, cotton looks at $0.84 a pound.

00;16;00;12 – 00;16;01;02
Dr. Hunter Biram
That’s what you need.

00;16;01;03 – 00;16;31;21
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s what you need. That’s what you need to break even under full ownership. Under 75/25 crop share, you need $1.12 a pound to break even. Yeah. So you’re looking at a pretty significant amount there. Moving on to rice in Jackson County, that weighted breakeven is going to be $7.42 a bushel. And again, let’s recall that rice has fallen since we last updated the tool to $5.63 a bushel. And under full ownership in Jackson County

00;16;31;21 – 00;17;05;00
Dr. Ryan Loy
for rice, that is $6.04 a bushel and under 75/25, we’re looking at $8.06 a bushel. Now, again, in the interest of time, I’m not going into every detail of what this is, but if you read the newsletter, we have everything laid out there for you. If you have any questions, please reach out. And just to kind of, you know, reaffirm on the rice side, to break even, if you went from full ownership to 75/25, you needed to, you need to receive $2.02 more per pound, or per bushel of rice.

00;17;05;02 – 00;17;29;27
Dr. Ryan Loy
Yep, to go from full ownership to 75/25. Now let’s talk about soybeans, because this one really opened my eyes pretty significantly. Under that weighted breakeven in Crittenden County for soybeans, you’re looking at $13.77 a bushel. No way, you know. We’re looking at $10.25 a bushel right now. We’re looking at all under $11 on the futures market as it currently stands. Under full ownership,

00;17;29;27 – 00;17;42;25
Dr. Ryan Loy
that goes down to $11.22 a bushel. Still, still not… you wouldn’t be able to hit that right now. And under a 75/25, you’re looking at about $14.96 a bushel to break even.

00;17;42;25 – 00;17;44;22
Dr. Hunter Biram
Yeah, that’s like post-COVID price.

00;17;44;24 – 00;17;53;02
Dr. Ryan Loy
Exactly. I was thinking, when I was doing these numbers, I was like, when’s the last time that soybeans have been above $14, let alone even close to $15, you know, and…

00;17;53;10 – 00;17;54;23
Dr. Hunter Biram
And it was because of a pandemic.

00;17;54;24 – 00;18;20;02
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s right, that’s right, that’s right. And so, to go from full, to go from full ownership to 75/25 in Crittenden County for soybeans, you would need to get $3.74 more per bushel of soybeans that you grow. And so really, you know, not to depress everybody, depress all our listeners today. But really, this is something, when you’re thinking about how to market and when to do that, breakeven might just be what you’re, what you’re after.

00;18;20;02 – 00;18;39;19
Dr. Hunter Biram
And again, and we’ve said this, but just want to reiterate, like, this is a representative farmer. Like, this might not be you. I mean, maybe you get some shutbuster corn yield, 250 and 275. Go to the tool and check it out, like you can see where you fall. We’re just saying, like, if we just randomly pull that random representative producer,

00;18;39;22 – 00;18;40;23
Dr. Hunter Biram
this is what your return would look like.

00;18;40;23 – 00;19;01;06
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s right. And another thing onto your point is that your expenses may also not look like what our expenses are, which is very, very important. So, if you are concerned about these numbers and you’re looking at this and… go to the tool because we allow you to put in your own cost and it will spit out all this information for you based on your own costs.

00;19;01;06 – 00;19;03;27
Dr. Ryan Loy
And you can really have a true representation of where you’re at.

00;19;03;27 – 00;19;06;01
Dr. Hunter Biram
Your own cost and your own land tenure.

00;19;06;02 – 00;19;06;16
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s right. You get to choose it.

00;19;06;16 – 00;19;14;24
Dr. Hunter Biram
Cash rent or crop share, and you can, there’s a nice little slider that you can choose how much the landlord would get versus what you get.

00;19;14;24 – 00;19;23;10
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s right. So it’s a really useful tool. I encourage everybody to go out and use it. And please reach out to, Hunter or I for any questions you may have on it.

00;19;23;13 – 00;19;51;09
Dr. Hunter Biram
Great, I guess. So we’ve talked about breakevens. What I want to go into now is, talking about how prices typically behave this time of the year. So like I said, we’re… prices are probably about as good as they’re going to be, you know, under normal expectation, all of the things constant. I’m not saying that it won’t, but it’s very likely that we’re just going to continue to see prices fall.

00;19;51;11 – 00;20;21;24
Dr. Hunter Biram
And so, there are two things that I want to talk about real briefly. I know that we are already kind of hitting our time limit. But really, the one thing that that I want to talk about is, there’s a figure, Figure 2. The percentage difference between the farm average price received and the weighted breakeven price from that. So Ryan walked through those actual prices. And so, you know, in this graph, like for example, the corn price received in the graph was 15% below breakeven in January.

00;20;21;27 – 00;20;48;14
Dr. Hunter Biram
And it’s stayed at about 15% below breakeven since January. okay? Moving on into soybeans, it’s about 25% below breakeven. And that price has continued to remain there. Again, since January – January, February, March, April, May, June 2025 remain there. Rice has been 10 to 15% below breakeven, leading up until May, and now we’re looking at closer to 25% below breakeven.

00;20;48;21 – 00;21;12;16
Dr. Hunter Biram
Cotton is, you know, has hovered around 35 to 40% below breakeven. So again, reiterating the point, since January, there has not been a point at which, under these representative farm examples, just a caveat out of those representative farm examples, the price has not been at break even. Now. Second point. Now, I look at, well, what do prices typically do leading up to harvest?

00;21;12;18 – 00;21;33;28
Dr. Hunter Biram
So what I do is, I look at, how does the price change from June, which is what we’re in now, to July? How does it change from June to August? How does it change from June to September, June to October and June to November? So how does the price behave relative to where we are right now? Well, in Figure 3, I show that in July things are pretty much the same.

00;21;33;28 – 00;21;55;18
Dr. Hunter Biram
I mean, pretty much between June and July, they tend to be the most… to be very similar. This is over a 25-year period, by the way. And so, you know, corn falls by 1% from June to July, typically. Soybeans stay pretty much the same. Rice, long-grain rice falls about 1%. And cotton actually increases about 1% between June and July.

00;21;55;19 – 00;22;20;13
Dr. Hunter Biram
So, that’s June and July. But when you get into August, September, October, November, get into the heat of harvest, no pun intended. Like, when you get into the main part of harvest, price declines. There is no price increase at all in any commodities that are, you know, this accounts for, I want to say, I think according to our RAFF income report, maybe 90% of crop production, the value of crop reduction is attributed to these four crops.

00;22;20;16 – 00;22;45;22
Dr. Hunter Biram
So corn declines by 3% from June to August, declines by 5% from June to September, declines by 7% from June to October. Similar pattern for soybeans. And rice looking like, you know, declines by 1% into August and September and then by 3% into October. And then cotton, you know, hovers around a 1 to 3% decline leading into November.

00;22;45;27 – 00;22;47;18
Dr. Hunter Biram
So…

00;22;47;20 – 00;22;50;01
Dr. Ryan Loy
The point when supply is the highest, right?

00;22;50;01 – 00;23;05;12
Dr. Hunter Biram
Exactly. It’s on hand, and farmers are flooding those elevators. I’m sure if you’re a farmer listening, you, either you or your truck driver, has sat in line, sometimes staying the night, sometimes you got to get in that cab and get up in the bed in that big rig. You got to, you know, you just got to sleep in it because you got to stay in line.

00;23;05;12 – 00;23;26;00
Dr. Hunter Biram
You don’t want to lose your place. We say all these things, we do, we update the tool. We talk about all these numbers and stats just to motivate. Talk to your elevators, talk to your crop consultants. Look at your breakevens. Right. Look at the tool. This is the time to be making some very serious decisions. This may be the best price environment

00;23;26;00 – 00;23;29;20
Dr. Hunter Biram
you’re going to get this crop year, if you’re trying to market within this crop year.

00;23;29;20 – 00;23;46;21
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s right. And with my finance soapbox, I would say, these are the moments where your records that are accurate and knowing what your finances are, really pay off. Because you can know exactly what you need, not a ballpark estimate, because in times like this, ballpark estimates can make or break you.

00;23;46;23 – 00;23;50;28
Dr. Hunter Biram
Absolutely. Well with that, Ryan, are there any other comments from you?

00;23;51;02 – 00;23;56;26
Dr. Ryan Loy
I think that’s it. I hope everybody’s you know, season’s going well so far and that everybody can stay dry.

00;23;56;28 – 00;24;11;15
Dr. Hunter Biram
That’s the thing. Stay dry. And you know, I, I do want to make a quick note and just say that, listen, like mental health is very important. Very. And I am not a mental health expert, but I just know that being, you know, growing up on a farm family and marrying into a farm family as well,

00;24;11;15 – 00;24;34;06
Dr. Hunter Biram
I mean, mental health is just so important. And, you know, if you can talk to somebody, like reach out. Yeah, absolutely reach out. Seriously. Because like this, I mean, this is, we talk about money, money, money. And we’re economists and it’s easy for us to kind of dissociate the emotion in things. But I mean, I know, I don’t know, I can’t fully relate, but like, I just cannot imagine just the weight and the pressure that farmers are feeling.

00;24;34;06 – 00;24;40;07
Dr. Ryan Loy
I can’t either. I can’t either, you know? So reach out, call. You know, we’re humans, too. We’d be happy to talk to you.

00;24;40;13 – 00;24;54;05
Dr. Hunter Biram
Yeah, and we know people, that we can… you know, help with… And if there’s someone on your mind that, that you’re like, I’d love to talk to them, but I haven’t talked to them in years., I’m not sure if they would listen. Just go ahead and call. That’s right. You just never know what’s going to happen…

00;24;54;08 – 00;25;01;26
Dr. Hunter Biram
what’s going to happen… So with that, just, thank you for tuning in today. And, stay tuned for the market update. Thanks, y’all.

00;24;52;18 – 00;25;15;16
Dr. Hunter Biram
September 2025 corn futures coming in at $4.29 a bushel. Compared to a month ago, that’s down $0.06, which was at $4.35. It was $4.45 a year ago, down $0.16. September 2025 rice coming in at $13.76/cwt. That’s going to be up from a month ago, it was at $12.95. And a year ago we were at $15.66,

00;25;15;16 – 00;25;39;29
Dr. Hunter Biram
so we’re down 12% from a year ago. November 2025 soybeans come in at $10.68 a bushel. A month ago is at $10.41, and down from a year ago, which was at $11.17. December 2025 cotton futures coming in at about 66.7 cents per pound. A month ago, we’re looking at 68.7 cents per pound, so that’s down about $0.02 from a year ago.

00;25;40;01 – 00;26;13;02
Dr. Hunter Biram
We’re down from 72.6 cents per pound. July of 2025 wheat futures looking at $5.74 per bushel. That’s up from a month ago at $5.46 and, up from a year ago, $0.01 from $5.73. Peanuts comin’ at ya at $538 per ton for the weekly average. That’s up, from a month ago, which is at $512 per ton, and, up from a year ago, which was at $520 per ton. Moving in to fertilizer prices,

00;26;13;04 – 00;26;34;10
Dr. Hunter Biram
we’re looking at urea coming in at $575 per ton. That’s going to be down from a month ago at $637 a ton and, down from three months ago, which was $585. Ammonium nitrate coming in at $414 per ton, that’s up from a month ago at $403 and up from three months ago, with $371. Ammonium sulfate at $504 per ton.

00;26;34;10 – 00;26;58;03
Dr. Hunter Biram
That’s going to be up from $524 a month ago and up from three months ago at $497. DAP coming in at $810 per ton. That’s up from $786 a month ago and up from $745 per ton from three months ago. TSP, triple super phosphate, coming in at $675 per ton. That’s going to be up from $663 a ton a month ago and up from $656 three months ago.

00;26;58;22 – 00;27;06;03
Dr. Hunter Biram
Potash coming in at $440 a ton, pretty much unchanged from a month ago, which was at $438 and three months ago at $422.

00;27;06;03 – 00;27;12;00
Dr. Hunter Biram
Highway diesel looking at $3.35 a gallon. A month ago $3.22, year ago $3.45

00;27;12;00 – 00;27;12;14
Dr. Hunter Biram
Arkansas

00;27;12;14 – 00;27;13;01
Dr. Hunter Biram
farm diesel,

00;27;13;01 – 00;27;20;14
Dr. Hunter Biram
$2.78 per gallon. That’s going to be up, from a month ago, of $2.38 and about the same as a year ago at

00;27;20;14 – 00;27;39;08
Dr. Hunter Biram
$2.77, so we’re looking about the same there on farm diesel. Your Mississippi River level at Memphis is up at 18.43ft. That’s almost twice what it was a year ago. Actually, a little bit more than that, which was at 9.19ft. I thank you all for tuning in. And, until next week, y’all have a good week. Bye.