Ep. 25 Recap- Reflecting on the Year & Wishing You Happy Holidays!

00;00;10;11 – 00;00;12;18
Dr. Ryan Loy
I’m ready. Whenever you are, my friend.

00;00;12;21 – 00;00;26;21
Riley Smith
Well, here we go. Well. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to another episode of Morning Coffee and AG Markets with your host, Riley Smith. Today’s a, very special day for us. We are recording number 25.

00;00;26;22 – 00;00;28;21
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s wild. It’s crazy to think about it.

00;00;28;26 – 00;00;29;29
Riley Smith
Imagine that, ain’t it?

00;00;30;02 – 00;00;31;18
Dr. Ryan Loy
Yeah. It has

00;00;31;18 – 00;00;35;10
Riley Smith
25 episodes later, and here we are at the end of the year.

00;00;35;10 – 00;00;46;14
Dr. Ryan Loy
I know it’s crazy, and I feel like we just got started with this. And I mean, 25 episodes in, it doesn’t sound like a lot, but when we look at this calendar we’ve done here. I mean, good grief, we have done. We’ve done a good amount.

00;00;46;20 – 00;01;12;18
Riley Smith
We dropped two. We literally dropped two on the Jan on July 26th. Yep. And that was our first introduction into morning coffee and ag markets. And we’ve come a long way since then. Had some interesting topics, had some interesting guest. I can only imagine what the next year in the new year is going to bring. When you’re listening to this, episode, we kind of recorded it pre Christmas.

00;01;12;18 – 00;01;26;12
Riley Smith
So, that way everybody can have a good holiday off. And we hope everybody enjoyed their Christmas and had a merry Christmas and has a happy New Year. So we’re going to go ahead and throw that out there. That’s right.

00;01;26;15 – 00;01;30;07
Dr. Ryan Loy
So I agree because by the time they’re listening to this it’ll be right around that New York Times right.

00;01;30;08 – 00;01;52;22
Riley Smith
Right. Right. There you go. So the only can, can only imagine what the New Year’s going to bring us and what kind of topics and what the future holds for us. So, interesting to, see what’s coming now for this episode since it being the 25th episode. Me and Ryan, Doctor Loy, he’s sitting right beside me.

00;01;52;24 – 00;01;57;09
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s right. Riley, I’m sitting right here, right beside you in our in our nice little podcast.

00;01;57;12 – 00;02;06;25
Riley Smith
Our, unfortunately, our left hand, right hand man is I’d like to call him. He is unfortunate sick today he is, hugging the trash can.

00;02;07;00 – 00;02;13;07
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s right. I think that he’s been, perpetually sick for, like, the last, you know, month or so, to some degree.

00;02;13;07 – 00;02;17;05
Riley Smith
But I’m not sure if I would put that out on the air because he’s been around some people.

00;02;17;06 – 00;02;30;19
Dr. Ryan Loy
Well, well, it wasn’t necessarily like, it wasn’t necessarily flu type. It just kind of feeling down. But he also does have a newborn at home and that’s what that’s what happened. So those are the, the joys of it. But yeah, no, he’s not going out there exposing people to anything crazy. I think he’s just been dealing.

00;02;30;20 – 00;02;49;06
Riley Smith
I would I would definitely go out and say, you know, I’ve seen a lot. I actually Cil she just got through being sick. I have no idea what was wrong with her. She was just sick and a week later, we kept her doctored. She had some symptoms. Kind of like she did when she had bronchitis.

00;02;49;06 – 00;03;10;06
Riley Smith
And so we still had some of that medicine, some of that steroids left over that we gave her. And she actually got to get healed up, but it almost acted like it was, I thought it was flu just because of the way the weather changing. And we went from extremely cold to we had this, you know, current warm front come through kind of had some rain come through.

00;03;10;06 – 00;03;27;28
Riley Smith
Now it’s getting cold again. And I know a lot of people tend to get sick during that time frame. But for me fortunately my immune system I have is about like leather on a boot. It’s, it’s pretty thick. It’s pretty thick. Like, good. I’ve doctored enough yearlings and calves.

00;03;28;01 – 00;03;31;17
Dr. Ryan Loy
You’ve been exposed to all sorts of diseases that we probably don’t even know exist.

00;03;31;20 – 00;03;36;00
Riley Smith
Yeah, I’ve probably had stuff that I didn’t even know I had, but I just knew I was sick. I was.

00;03;36;01 – 00;03;37;10
Dr. Ryan Loy
Right for.

00;03;37;12 – 00;04;00;25
Riley Smith
My, been in my. Well, technically, I got my associates at Beebe, so I went two years there and then. So it been my start of my junior year at University of Arkansas, Fayetteville and, helping my buddy background some yearlings and, I literally them were also sale barn calves. And I literally stayed sick for three months, four months.

00;04;00;25 – 00;04;10;16
Riley Smith
And daddy always called it shipping fever, Shipping fever is. Basically, the terminology is anything and everything that the caves have it’s.

00;04;10;16 – 00;04;11;08
Dr. Ryan Loy
Going to give you.

00;04;11;09 – 00;04;11;24
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s right.

00;04;11;24 – 00;04;32;07
Riley Smith
Yeah. You could feel it come through them four weight calves you could feel them, come through and they’d have fever in them and you could fill it. And I was, I . They were cutting bulls most of the time. So you were have to castrate them. Yeah. And then, my buddy that was, I was doing all this for he, he come up with the concoction to give them.

00;04;32;10 – 00;04;52;16
Riley Smith
I know we’re getting off base, but we’ll get back on. He’d give them a concoction of, basically human and in-flight. Inflammatories. Oh, okay. So he took. I can’t remember exactly how much it was, but he take, like, a chill capsule of, like, a bolus. Okay. I don’t know if you know what a bolus is.

00;04;52;22 – 00;04;53;23
Dr. Ryan Loy
I know, but that’s okay.

00;04;53;23 – 00;05;15;12
Riley Smith
So, like, you had, like, a sulfur bolus, which is basically it’s like a big pill. It’s about that big. It’s about probably 2.5in long okay. And about a big around is a almost, a little bit bigger than a quarter. Okay. Anyway, he have a bolus and bolus gun. Well, they make a gel capsule in the shape of a bolus.

00;05;15;12 – 00;05;33;02
Riley Smith
Well, the gel capsule is in two pieces, so basically you put whatever medicine you want into one in, and then you slide the cap the other side over that side. That’s your bolus. And so he did one in a hand like depending on the weight of them I think he was like six. Ibuprofen.

00;05;33;04 – 00;05;34;03
Riley Smith
Oh wow. Okay.

00;05;34;03 – 00;05;38;14
Riley Smith
6 to 8 ibuprofen.

00;05;38;17 – 00;05;48;09
Riley Smith
And when we would cut those bulls, you would give them, anti-inflammatory bolus to keep them from swelling.

00;05;48;11 – 00;05;50;28
Dr. Ryan Loy
Yeah, that makes sense, basically.

00;05;51;01 – 00;06;11;02
Riley Smith
Because when you do that, that creates trauma, right? Oh, yeah. In that area big time. So it keeps it from swelling there and it keeps there their guts from that kind of that gut area to keep from bloating and swelling as well. And it worked tremendously. But where I’m going with that is, is that you would have to open their mouth and get that slobber all over your hands and your arm.

00;06;11;02 – 00;06;11;14
Riley Smith
So you would.

00;06;11;14 – 00;06;12;15
Dr. Ryan Loy
Just be covered up there.

00;06;12;17 – 00;06;25;01
Riley Smith
In their face. And so I stayed sick dog sick for three months, and it wasn’t nothing. I could get over it. Just like when I finally got away from, healed up. And then after that, I never got sick.

00;06;25;02 – 00;06;34;15
Dr. Ryan Loy
Well, yeah. Like I said, you’ve been exposed to things that most normal people would never be exposed to, so. Well, that’s good. And I hope she gets to feeling better. I hope Hunter also, she’s doing better as well.

00;06;34;17 – 00;06;36;06
Riley Smith
She’s back to work yesterday.

00;06;36;07 – 00;07;00;07
Dr. Ryan Loy
Good deal. Good deal. Well, and I hope that everybody’s getting ready. Or hopefully by this point everybody had a great Christmas and they’re, getting ready to, kind of start the new year. And we’re starting this new year like Hunter, like, Riley alluded to earlier, we want to just to kind of take a step back and look at some of these big topics we talked about this year and, just kind of discuss those, and then we’ll leave you all to, to celebrate the new year.

00;07;00;08 – 00;07;00;18
Dr. Ryan Loy
So.

00;07;00;18 – 00;07;01;07
Riley Smith
Right, right.

00;07;01;14 – 00;07;18;08
Dr. Ryan Loy
You know, as Riley mentioned, we kick this off and July, which is just crazy to even think about. And, we kick this off, we’re talking about some farm bill proposal stuff that we, it was looking at at the time. And, you know, it’s still looking like we will not get a farm bill. We certainly probably will not get one this year.

00;07;18;10 – 00;07;32;03
Dr. Ryan Loy
AD hoc assistance is still on the table as to what degree and when that will be delivered, if that will be delivered. And it’s looking even more so than a farm bill extension, of the 2018 farm bill, which is essentially just an extension of the 14 farm bill.

00;07;32;05 – 00;07;34;18
Riley Smith
Have you seen anything on that yet?

00;07;34;20 – 00;07;37;21
Dr. Ryan Loy
Other than it’s not looking good. Nobody can come to an agreement.

00;07;37;21 – 00;07;39;17
Riley Smith
That’s about all I know on the extension.

00;07;39;17 – 00;07;43;24
Dr. Ryan Loy
Well, on the extension side, that’s looking like what everybody’s going to be able to settle on.

00;07;43;26 – 00;07;54;09
Riley Smith
I figured I figured the extension was coming. I just didn’t know if they’ve moved any further, faster to get an appointment on the extension, because I know that we still had an appointment on it.

00;07;54;09 – 00;08;14;26
Dr. Ryan Loy
No, I don’t I don’t know. And it looks like maybe something happens in the lame duck or the sometime next year, but the issue being is that even if there is a farm bill, you know, a brand new farm bill written tomorrow and it’s, you know, implemented tomorrow, for example, you know, the benefits of that won’t even be seen until probably 2026 at the very.

00;08;14;28 – 00;08;20;06
Riley Smith
Yeah. So it’s it’s definitely. Yeah. Because we still have to appoint 1300 chairs 192 days.

00;08;20;06 – 00;08;34;24
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s right. And just the way that those payments come out of the farm bill and that assistance comes out of the farm bill, it’s just the timing of it. So an update on that from our first episode was just, still not looking as good. And, you know, we just got some of the things that were being talked about at that time and, yeah.

00;08;34;24 – 00;08;57;05
Riley Smith
And at that time, you know, looking back, so what we’re going to do is here is we’re talking from the from the beginning. We’ve what we’ve done is, is we’ve gone through and we’ve picked 4 or 5 topics to, to really kind of brief in on. We’re going to talk about a few more other topics. Not really in brief, but just kind of mention them.

00;08;57;07 – 00;09;17;12
Riley Smith
But definitely some topics we thought were very important. Also, some of our biggest episodes, as far as listeners go, the, you know, looking at 7/26, where we talked about the comparison of farm bill proposals to the, policy outlook that we did two weeks ago.

00;09;17;12 – 00;09;19;17
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s right.

00;09;19;19 – 00;09;36;19
Riley Smith
With you and Hunter and Scott, you know, we were discussing at that time farm bills. So we looked at I believe it was, Senator Bozeman’s proposal. And then we looked at, I’m trying to remember what her vote.

00;09;36;22 – 00;09;38;05
Dr. Ryan Loy
Into my Debbie Stabenow.

00;09;38;08 – 00;09;43;12
Riley Smith
And her proposal. And then, what was the third proposal? There was three proposals.

00;09;43;14 – 00;09;46;07
Dr. Ryan Loy
GT, GT for the house as well.

00;09;46;07 – 00;10;01;06
Riley Smith
Right. So we looked at, at looked at the farm bill proposals and versus now we’re not going to get a farm bill. We talked about the Act, and I believe Scott said something about the deadline being December 20th for that. Is that correct?

00;10;01;08 – 00;10;09;11
Dr. Ryan Loy
For the farm, for the, for that one. You know, that would be a question for Scott. I do not remember if that was not my portion of this.

00;10;09;14 – 00;10;13;26
Riley Smith
Yeah. You’re or what’s, you’re our financial guy.

00;10;13;28 – 00;10;44;28
Dr. Ryan Loy
But what I did talk about, last week was or. Excuse me, the time that we talked about the farm bill policy update a few weeks ago, was looking at the FSA, distressed borrower set aside program that we talked about, which, again, if you have any questions on that, go back to that, newsletter and there are some, resources from the USDA to actually, get that written request, getting those production income and expense records and any other supporting documentation to show that financial distress.

00;10;45;00 – 00;10;54;16
Dr. Ryan Loy
We talked about the Brics Plus, which is that agreement between, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and a few other countries as of a few months ago.

00;10;54;20 – 00;11;15;05
Riley Smith
And that was on the that was on this last farm policy outlook. Yeah. Let’s roll right into so from the sac from the that that was our the the farm bill proposal. Comparison was our very first. And then we had an introduction of who we were and what the podcast was about and all that. But that was our very first episode.

00;11;15;07 – 00;11;26;01
Riley Smith
The second one was disburse. There’s disparity between input price input and output price, which was was you. So if you want to just kind of walk us through real quick.

00;11;26;01 – 00;11;27;06
Dr. Ryan Loy
Yeah, that topic.

00;11;27;06 – 00;11;28;16
Riley Smith
And that episode was about I.

00;11;28;16 – 00;11;45;24
Dr. Ryan Loy
Think it’s a good segue to because we just talked about, okay, you know, at the time, the week before I would release this one in July, we talked about the farm bill proposals and what they could look like. And now we just talked about how that’s kind of all, you know, gone to the wayside, what with the changes in DC and everything in between.

00;11;45;26 – 00;12;05;09
Dr. Ryan Loy
But, the next week and this is a great segue, we talked about the disparity between crop prices received input, prices paid, and if you’re a listener and you listen during that time and you recall, we talked about that index, between the input prices and the crop prices and what that index is, is essentially a basket of commodities.

00;12;05;12 – 00;12;38;16
Dr. Ryan Loy
That what it takes for that basket of commodities to produce and what it is, what it sells for. And this is a basket of several commodities. So it’s not even, you know, it’s not commodity specific. It is just, specific to crop prices. But the point and the main takeaway was, is that, you know, you know, the in 2013, when we wrote the 2014 farm bill, the index for input prices paid was almost exactly the index for output prices received, meaning on average, that producers for, you know, every $1 they were putting in were getting $1 back.

00;12;38;17 – 00;13;03;09
Dr. Ryan Loy
You know, they’re essentially breaking even what we’ve seen, you know, since this is the divergence between those two indices with the widest gaps between, you know, 2014 basically to now, and, you know, both indices increased and about 2022. But we’ve seen that gap remain where the input price paid overall has, completely eclipsed the crop price received.

00;13;03;12 – 00;13;21;09
Dr. Ryan Loy
And I say that this is related to the farm bills because this is part of that farm bill assistance. Right. That could really help out and, really get those two indices to kind of start being on the same playing field again, because currently what producers are paying, to produce the crops versus what they’re getting paid for, it is in two different worlds.

00;13;21;09 – 00;13;27;12
Dr. Ryan Loy
And that’s a big struggle. And a lot of the main reason, the struggle that we talked about, over the course of this year.

00;13;27;15 – 00;13;57;02
Riley Smith
And, and round after that, you know, we rolled right into the the first episode we had in August. We talked about historical input, price deficit that, that I had that I had put together and that kind of married, marriaged to your topic because we looked at me and Hunter looked at the macros, the macro nutrients and fertilizer and how that at what the change of it was to crop prices received.

00;13;57;02 – 00;14;27;26
Riley Smith
And I believe we went all the way back to 2010, if I’m not wrong, and we looked at the differences in price across the commodity, across the different commodities with those macro nutrients. And we showed, you know, that it was a 9 to 1 ratio. Now, now where it was in 2011, where that base index was, where it was 1 to 1 to break even, that it was, you know, you were getting for every nine units of input, you were getting one output.

00;14;27;26 – 00;14;50;26
Riley Smith
So that just tells you of how much price changes there’s been in, in inputs versus crop prices received and all across commodities. Now, to say the least, that we are coming back down in those input prices crop prices receive are not raising, but we are coming back down in input prices. So we are getting closer to that 1 to 1.

00;14;50;28 – 00;14;55;27
Riley Smith
It’s just not in the direction I would know. I guess you would want.

00;14;56;00 – 00;14;57;15
Dr. Ryan Loy
The magnitude or the speed that.

00;14;57;16 – 00;15;23;21
Riley Smith
That folks are right. You, you know, instead of prices, crop prices coming up in input price and input price is coming down. Basically your, crop prices or staying the same, you know, they’re pushed to stay standard of where they’re at right now. And your input prices are coming back down, which is, you know, lowering that magnitude of, input price, that ratio.

00;15;23;27 – 00;15;24;10
Riley Smith
So

00;15;24;11 – 00;15;25;04
Dr. Ryan Loy
that’s right.

00;15;25;07 – 00;15;32;12
Riley Smith
And then we, right after that, we, believe, the feds dropped their first.

00;15;32;15 – 00;15;56;25
Dr. Ryan Loy
That not not right after that, actually, we got we, we got there and we talked about that. The first thing I talked about in October, in August was just talking about, you know, how does the fed decisions, you know, that monetary policy, when we’re talking about controlling the money supply, raising interest rates, lowering interest rates, one of the main tools that the fed has, and what I mean by the interest rate is that fed funds rate, and I’ve talked about that several times on the show.

00;15;56;25 – 00;16;20;10
Dr. Ryan Loy
I don’t want to get too, into the weeds here on this. But the point being is that we looked at, right after this. What is that interest expense you’re paying now? You know, how much has that changed for your inputs? Over time and what we saw was, you know, just a year ago, comparatively speaking, quarter for quarter two of, 23 and quarter two of 2024.

00;16;20;18 – 00;16;37;25
Dr. Ryan Loy
You know, we’re, we’re paying over $10 more in interest, alone. And that is just based on the prevailing market interest rates on operating notes, which, again, you know, we talked about this idea of input cost alone. That’s not even considering your interest expense to borrow to actually put that crop in the ground and take care of it.

00;16;37;27 – 00;17;01;19
Dr. Ryan Loy
And so you’re, we’re adding another layer of, of very difficult for management decisions to say, well, you know, not only are is everything so expensive, but I’m getting, you know, eight alive by interest expenses. Right. And so we talked about that in in the meantime between these between when the fed actually, cut their interest rates, you know, we talked about some other stuff relating to the Mississippi River and crop basis.

00;17;01;21 – 00;17;08;14
Dr. Ryan Loy
We talked about our, our PLC payments. And then, Riley, you actually talked about a hunting budget as well, which was very interesting.

00;17;08;14 – 00;17;27;19
Riley Smith
Well, I want to step back. And, you know, we had Hunter, he talked about the cotton stacks, County yield and didn’t me, determination. And then we had then you and Ron or you and you and Ron. You and Hunter, discussed three peat that we had talking about the Mississippi River level and how it affects crop bases.

00;17;27;22 – 00;17;54;10
Riley Smith
And then our very first what I like to think about is our 1st September episode was actually our first ever roundtable discussion. That’s right. It was, first time that we’ve ever had more than two people on the mic. And, that was one of our first. And we did that at the, Northeast Arkansas Rice Research Center, that they just opened this year, where Scott and, I’m trying to think of his name, doctor.

00;17;54;13 – 00;17;56;02
Dr. Ryan Loy
Doctor Burchem, Burchem.

00;17;56;02 – 00;18;20;26
Riley Smith
Burchem. Burchem Doctor Burchem is located and, we, actually got to listen to the governor that day. And, that was our first roundtable discussion with the mobile equipment. And then then I, I did release one on, no. And so that says hunting budgets. We’re looking at our master Excel sheet. That was actually the farm income.

00;18;20;29 – 00;18;21;17
Dr. Ryan Loy
Oh, okay.

00;18;21;23 – 00;18;25;17
Riley Smith
Okay. That I did. Okay. Did the farm income, and then.

00;18;25;19 – 00;18;26;18
Dr. Ryan Loy
You did the USDA.

00;18;26;18 – 00;18;27;05
Riley Smith
Yeah. And then.

00;18;27;10 – 00;18;27;25
Dr. Ryan Loy
Update.

00;18;27;25 – 00;18;51;21
Riley Smith
Right, right. And then, Hunter talked about, price risk protection for 2025, using margin protection crop insurance. Though Hunter isn’t here, I wanted to to knock on this or talk about this one a little bit, just because how important it really is that, you know, a lot of producers don’t know a whole lot about margin protection.

00;18;51;21 – 00;19;19;25
Riley Smith
It’s kind of a new concept. I know that they talk about, you know, RP and YP , Ec, ECO, SCO and, you know, basically that’s your, your crop insurance. So, you know, ARC and PLC payments. So margin protection is kind of the new the new insurance being looked at, definitely, definitely was an interesting topic.

00;19;19;25 – 00;19;40;21
Dr. Ryan Loy
It is. And hunters such a wiz when it comes to that crop insurance stuff. And you know, if anybody has any questions on any of these crop insurance related topics we talked about, you know, please feel free to reach out to Doctor Biram He’d be more than happy to talk to you about it and just kind of, you know, look at some of the analysis he’s doing, which is great analysis and, very applied.

00;19;40;23 – 00;19;44;08
Dr. Ryan Loy
And, he’d be willing to talk to you about it and kind of explain it more.

00;19;44;16 – 00;19;48;10
Riley Smith
Right. And and then then that’s when the feds release three.

00;19;48;11 – 00;19;49;03
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s right.

00;19;49;06 – 00;19;52;00
Riley Smith
And we talked about the bold 50 basis points.

00;19;52;00 – 00;20;05;26
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s right. And then, you know, again, not to get in too much of the weeds here, you know, not to if you are very interested on the deep dive, you know, please go to the Fryer Center website and you can go back and actually look at all of these as well, and read them on your own, or listen to the episodes on your own.

00;20;05;28 – 00;20;29;13
Dr. Ryan Loy
But one of the things we talked about in September was when the fed first started cutting those Covid era, interest rates. They cut it by 50, 50 basis points, which is half a percentage point, which is extremely, extremely bold. But I think that they’ve made a good decision thus far. We’ve seen that, inflationary pressures, unemployment, unemployment has stabilized, inflationary pressures have come down.

00;20;29;13 – 00;20;43;29
Dr. Ryan Loy
It’s being a little bit of a, of a booger when it comes to just coming down to that 2% that they want year over year. Still not to that point yet. As of the date of this recording and as of the date of this recording, they’re going to, the fed is actually going to meet here soon to determine if they’re going to cut it one more time.

00;20;43;29 – 00;21;00;22
Dr. Ryan Loy
This year. And so those are the big topics as far as ag finance is concerned. You know, with cutting that basis. But having that 50 basis point cut, you know, into next year, your interest on your operating loan could be impacted in a positive way because they’re bringing down that prevailing interest rate in the market.

00;21;00;26 – 00;21;28;25
Riley Smith
Right. And then following that, we, that’s when I released, the OSU food plot tool, budget tool. That was a, quite the podcast and newsletter, actually. A lot of, a lot of viewers got down that one. Not saying just because it was mine. But it was, completely different. I would say it was different kilter and had economics tied into it, but it was definitely a, thing.

00;21;28;27 – 00;21;43;28
Riley Smith
It was a tool offset to the, insurance side and the finance side of agriculture. So that was fun to play with. Actually got to do a food plot meeting or, conference meeting. I don’t know what you want to call it. Planning meeting? Yeah.

00;21;43;28 – 00;21;44;20
Dr. Ryan Loy
The workshop.

00;21;44;23 – 00;22;09;16
Riley Smith
Oh, yeah. Workshop. Workshop. Following that and, first episode in October, we had Scott and Hunter and Ryan, and then y’all wrote on this, but we actually talked about, pork strikes. That was a big topic for the day. It, just happened to be the day that we released that that, that the port strikes ended.

00;22;09;19 – 00;22;15;04
Riley Smith
So right after that was our, that was let’s see.

00;22;15;04 – 00;22;16;12
Dr. Ryan Loy
That was the beginning of October.

00;22;16;12 – 00;22;37;00
Riley Smith
And yeah, October 14th is when you and Hunter went and I believe Scott went to the southern Outlook Conference. That’s right. And, y’all gave some outlook talks, but you also had Grant Gardner, and, I can’t remember who who is the other Will maples. Will maples for Mississippi State. And he was on there, talking about the marketing in the post harvest window.

00;22;37;02 – 00;22;37;29
Riley Smith
Do you want to talk about it?

00;22;38;03 – 00;23;07;22
Dr. Ryan Loy
Yeah, we can just just really quickly. Yeah. And so Riley mentioned, doctor Biram, myself and, Scott Stiles, we went over to, Knoxville, Tennessee, and gave an outlook on some southern crops. I gave a rice outlook. Scott gave a cotton outlook. And, Hunter gave a SRMEC and policy update. And while we were there, we actually traveled with the podcast equipment and actually did an episode with, our colleagues, Grant Gardner, who’s at the University of Kentucky, and Will maples, who’s at Mississippi State University.

00;23;07;24 – 00;23;25;18
Dr. Ryan Loy
And what we did in the discussion was just talking about how important marketing is. And, you know, should you store, should you not store? You know, I’m just looking at some of those crop marketing strategies, and looking at those crop marketing strategies, you know, the choice to sell is highly dependent on the operation. But there are some options.

00;23;25;18 – 00;23;38;23
Dr. Ryan Loy
And looking at, interest expense, how you’re going to cover that and some other options to get out of that. And so we talked about that, which was a really great discussion. I really appreciate those guys there. You know, they’re extremely smart, extremely knowledgeable now.

00;23;38;24 – 00;23;47;24
Riley Smith
And I assume Ryan and I have listened to, Doctor Maples quite a bit now and that, when it comes to cotton, he is so intelligent.

00;23;47;27 – 00;23;48;21
Dr. Ryan Loy
He knows that,

00;23;48;24 – 00;23;49;07
Dr. Ryan Loy
Grant

00;23;49;07 – 00;23;53;02
Riley Smith
and he is apparently quite livestock guy to come to find out.

00;23;53;02 – 00;24;00;26
Dr. Ryan Loy
So they, so he is also a livestock cat as well. But his brother also works in the, you might be thinking a Josh. Josh Maple.

00;24;00;26 – 00;24;04;16
Riley Smith
Well, Will was in it before he got into.

00;24;04;19 – 00;24;07;15
Dr. Ryan Loy
Maybe. So, Will. Will into Arkansas?

00;24;07;16 – 00;24;13;04
Riley Smith
Yeah, he was in livestock economics before he was, Row crop.

00;24;13;06 – 00;24;29;06
Dr. Ryan Loy
Yeah. So he, I knew him from Oklahoma State, but yeah. So we did that, and it was it was really great. And, you know, after that, we just, you know, the rest of October, we talked about USDA’s farm income report revisions and some takeaways we had from that. We talked about the WASDE report at that time as well?

00;24;29;06 – 00;24;29;18
Dr. Ryan Loy
Yeah.

00;24;29;23 – 00;24;49;29
Riley Smith
We’re going to talk about that because that was, actually so we’re going to release there’s a podcast episode before this one, but before that, me and Scott sat down and talked about the December WASDE report, and there will be another released. Another one released excuse me, my dialect gets in the way sometimes.

00;24;50;02 – 00;24;56;24
Riley Smith
There will be another one released January 11th, I believe. So, we’re going to talk about that here shortly.

00;24;56;27 – 00;24;57;18
Dr. Ryan Loy
Perfect.

00;24;57;20 – 00;25;10;17
Riley Smith
But you know, we’ve said the WASDE report and then we had a farm income report. Hunter talked about crop insurance, and I believe that one was on SC, SCO or ECO.

00;25;10;20 – 00;25;13;02
Dr. Ryan Loy
Supplemental coverage option. Yeah.

00;25;13;04 – 00;25;20;05
Riley Smith
Enhanced coverage option. And then then we talked about the Rice survey announcement, with you. And, was Hunter on that one?

00;25;20;05 – 00;25;38;00
Dr. Ryan Loy
No, that was just you and I. And so actually, for any listeners now, you know, if you are interested in being part of a rice, survey, that would just be, you know, given by Doctor Biram and myself. Please reach out to any one of us. We’d love to have you. If you’re a rice producer and are interested in it, you know, we’re paying.

00;25;38;00 – 00;25;49;22
Dr. Ryan Loy
We’re paying, paying you to take the survey. And for your time. And so we’re trying to still figure out the best way to get some folks involved. So if you’re interested, please reach out any time. We’d love to talk to you about.

00;25;49;22 – 00;26;01;18
Riley Smith
So, let’s see, that was we had just got back. Or did we just get back or were we going to Stuttgart to the, rice Land members meeting?

00;26;01;20 – 00;26;16;01
Dr. Ryan Loy
We were just getting ready to at the time of that rice survey announcement. And then the day after, the rice land meeting, we actually had John McMinn from Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation and, and and that was one of our, he was actually our first outside guest, John McMinn

00;26;16;01 – 00;26;17;06
Riley Smith
Outside of

00;26;17;08 – 00;26;18;18
Dr. Ryan Loy
outside of academia.

00;26;18;18 – 00;26;20;20
Dr. Ryan Loy
Yeah, outside of the division.

00;26;20;22 – 00;26;21;06
Dr. Ryan Loy
Guest.

00;26;21;06 – 00;26;36;09
Riley Smith
And because we had Grant and we’ll on. But that’s right. They’re both academia, I would say. And then we had John. He was, he’s the host or co-host of, Farm Bureau’s AG cast, another agricultural podcast, which was a great.

00;26;36;09 – 00;26;36;25
Dr. Ryan Loy
Podcast.

00;26;36;25 – 00;26;37;24
Dr. Ryan Loy
By the way.

00;26;37;26 – 00;26;43;18
Dr. Ryan Loy
Into it. It’s it’s really good. Their production values is, excellent. They talk about some great topics and they have a lot of fun.

00;26;43;22 – 00;27;04;02
Riley Smith
Right? And then right after that, we had, what, one of my, probably personal favorites was the pasture, rangeland and forage insurance. I know insurance is probably not like, for a lot of people. Something fun to talk about. But when you’re a cattle livestock guy like I am, I grew up row crop. I’ve been around all of it, folks.

00;27;04;04 – 00;27;35;12
Riley Smith
But when we get to talking about cattle, I kind of get giddy. But when he’s talking about that with, James Mitchell and, Walker Davis, a graduate student at University of Arkansas, that was a good podcast episode. And then following that, me and Breanna Watkins, the front line lady that takes care of the crop enterprise budgets for the state for the last ten years, had her on talking about the 2025, kind of the review of the 2025 crop budgets, what they’re going to look like, what we can predict, is going to happen.

00;27;35;15 – 00;27;44;28
Riley Smith
Perfect. And then following that, we’re down the last three episodes, four episodes, actually. So we had a roundtable discussion that we talked about earlier, to.

00;27;44;28 – 00;27;52;10
Dr. Ryan Loy
Farm Policy Outlook and some things on the FSA side, farm Bill update and outlook for 2025, which kind of comes back to what we had talked about earlier.

00;27;52;10 – 00;27;54;08
Riley Smith
That was a long episode.

00;27;54;08 – 00;28;00;25
Dr. Ryan Loy
That was but it was a good one, honestly. That was probably some of our that was our most intense episode where the discussion,

00;28;00;27 – 00;28;14;02
Riley Smith
By far, that was I was literally sweating as we I mean, I don’t know if it was sweat or tears because listening to the all the information that was coming out, it was so sad. Yeah, man, we’re in a hole.

00;28;14;02 – 00;28;47;06
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s right. And some of the things, you know, you know, us as economists, we we it’s a struggle. It’s a struggle to, you know, relay this information in the positive, most positive way we can, without, you know, just being total doom and gloom. But, you know, that’s really what we talked about, you know, a lot of, you know, kind of in summary, we, we talked a lot about some of these farm issues, you know, the farm financial issues and some of these tools, such as crop insurance or budgets, that can really help, farmers during those times and, and help them with securing credit and help them with ensuring that

00;28;47;06 – 00;29;09;00
Dr. Ryan Loy
they have a good crop and help them getting the highest price that they can for those their crops. And we talked about a lot of those things over the year, and we kind of intertwined that with a lot of these big, topics that came out last year. And I’ll be curious to see what happens next year. I suspect we’re kind of going to be having a similar type discussions most of next year.

00;29;09;02 – 00;29;14;23
Dr. Ryan Loy
But we’ll see. It’s, you know, we have a lot of, new changes in Washington and, we’ll see what kind of impact that has.

00;29;14;26 – 00;29;39;03
Riley Smith
Definitely. I would not say I’m curious. I know I probably should be, but I’m, I’m hoping and I’m praying and hoping that it’s a lot better than it is right now for for our producers and our growers. That means row crop or, livestock producers or or fish farmers or whoever it may be, that it affects it, because all growers are the same.

00;29;39;04 – 00;30;06;27
Riley Smith
That’s right. Just change this commodity. Right. But following that, we, did a December WASDE report with Scott, looking kind of reflecting the first one we did recapping the WASDE report on the, October 21st, hadn’t changed a whole lot from that previous report. January 11th will probably explain a whole lot more, because then they will have all their production aspects in at that point.

00;30;06;29 – 00;30;18;16
Riley Smith
Now today we are recording our very last episode, 25. However, right after this, we are going to meet with the Arvest Bank folks.

00;30;18;21 – 00;30;40;23
Dr. Ryan Loy
That’s right. We have, some farm loan managers coming in from Arvest Bank. They were interested in reached out to us and I wrote an article recently in southern and today just talking about, you know, the benefits and some of the drawbacks of debt, debt restructuring and debt consolidation. And we’re just going to they’re going to come in today and kind of give me that, in the give us that industry perspective on those sorts of things.

00;30;40;23 – 00;30;43;05
Dr. Ryan Loy
And I’m looking forward to talking to them. Right.

00;30;43;08 – 00;30;52;29
Riley Smith
Well, we, kind of went in brief detail about a lot more than, just 4 or 5 topics. But you know what they say when, you know, when your on fourth down just back up and punt. And so that’s what we did.

00;30;53;02 – 00;31;05;29
Dr. Ryan Loy
Well, Riley I really appreciate it. And for listeners that don’t know, if you enjoy this podcast, which I’m, I’m hoping you do and I’m sure you do. And if you didn’t, you probably let us know by this point. But, you know, this only happens because of Riley, and we really appreciate it.

00;31;05;29 – 00;31;07;11
Riley Smith
So man, I appreciate it.

00;31;07;15 – 00;31;11;01
Dr. Ryan Loy
He’s a mover and kicker, man. And without. And we wouldn’t have one man.

00;31;11;01 – 00;31;12;18
Riley Smith
I’m just trying to do my job

00;31;12;20 – 00;31;12;25
Dr. Ryan Loy
well.

00;31;12;25 – 00;31;19;06
Dr. Ryan Loy
We appreciate it. So I hope everybody has a great, I hope everybody had a great Christmas and an even better New Year.

00;31;19;06 – 00;31;29;21
Riley Smith
Yeah. And I’m hoping, like, at the end of this deal, like, we’re probably have a market report, so y’all stay tuned for that. But I’m hoping at the end of this deal that I’m going to get like, get Ben to send me some Christmas music.

00;31;29;21 – 00;31;35;20
Dr. Ryan Loy
There we go. There you go. I like it. I like it. Let’s do this.

00;31;35;20 – 00;31;54;24
Riley Smith
I mean, it could be kind of festive. I love Christmas. Oh, so do I. I’m okay. Okay, okay. Before we jump, before we jump ship, I don’t know if I should ask it now or ask it in our first episode, January now saying this is our last episode. We’re not dropping one next week. So this will be dropped on 12/30.

00;31;54;26 – 00;32;16;19
Riley Smith
The next episode will be, I believe, January 13th. Yeah. We’re going to skip a week. Kind of give us give, I don’t know, us a break. Give me a break for a minute. Let me catch up on some other things. And then and then it. And then we’ll, get back swinging. I think one of the first episodes we’re actually going to cover is the WASDE report.

00;32;16;20 – 00;32;18;15
Dr. Ryan Loy
Yeah, it should be that that would make sense because.

00;32;18;21 – 00;32;41;04
Riley Smith
Because it’ll actually the day or two days after will be when the, January WASDE report got released. So anyway. Well, everyone, thank you all again for listening and and staying hooked with us for the last 25 episodes. We greatly appreciate y’all listening. And if you not subscribe, subscribe, go join the newsletter. we would greatly appreciate it.

00;32;41;04 – 00;32;53;23
Riley Smith
Share it with your friends, your family. We try to, loosen this deal up and have fun with it. And once again, thank you all again. Have a very, very I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

00;32;53;26 – 00;33;10;18
Riley Smith
And we’ll catch y’all on the flip flop, bye bye now.

00;33;10;20 – 00;33;13;24