Just to match it, do you think about what's next in terms of technical adjustments?
I can't grasp what's new.
We don't need humans anymore.
Yeah.
It's amazing what they do already.
Right.
Someone I was in a meeting, this was 20 years ago, and they're like, what do you see coming in 10 years?
Like, I'm not understanding what's here now, like the one in 10 years, and that was 20 years ago.
Like I said, it's what these pieces of equipment can do, and it's just line by.
I don't even drive the trackers anymore because it's too computerized for me.
Yeah.
I'm sure your brother's just thankful for that too.
Yes.
My nephews are.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think we're going to roll another, I don't know if you want to hook with us.
I do.
Yeah.
So, Doug, thank you so much for hosting us at your farm and your leadership with the Soybean Association.
That is outstanding and very pertinent to our discussion today.
And I want to thank both Matt and Casey for being here today also.
And just, you know, looking out at this beautiful farm, I just think about how much of, you know,
that agriculture is sort of the backbone of Wisconsin.
And farmers that I know work harder than anyone else I know.
And with great benefit to our state and our nation and frankly with soybeans the whole world.
And I know that farmers during tough times want markets and opportunities not handouts from the government.
So, I want to acknowledge the headwinds that farmers have faced sort of historically but also currently.
You know, natural disasters and mother nature is sort of, you know, you don't, there's no one to blame.
But that's something that you have to deal with.
Volatile markets that happens with ups and downs routinely.
And low commodity prices can be a real strain on our farmers.
But there's some recent actions that also have impacted our soy economy as well as other crops.
The trade war.
I think about how when President Trump announced that there would be tariffs, a lot of our trading partners announced that there would be retaliatory tariffs.
And some of our trading partners said if you're going to put a 50% or whatever percent tariff on certain products,
we're going to find other countries to make deals with and buy from.
And so that created a huge impact for our soy farmers.
There were also last summer there was a bill that President Trump pushed that cut nutrition programs in this country.
The largest ever cut to SNAP and other cuts we saw in USDA.
The cumulative effect of some of these created a $15 billion export loss to China since March of last year.
And nearly half of that was soybeans.
So really a significant impact.
And all of this is driving up costs, but also driving uncertainty.
Which is the enemy of farmers and businesses across the board.
For planning purposes, you need certainty.
And I had one person say, you know, the uncertainty is like a tariff in and of itself, you know.
But now recently we've had a lot of major additional impacts.
The war in Iran has caused the closing of the Strait of Hormuz through which about a third of all fertilizer inputs travel.
And so farmers have seen an incredible spike in the cost of fertilizer and sometimes the availability of fertilizer has been in question.
A recent survey said that 70% of farmers right now cannot afford all the fertilizer they need for their operations or so are taking lots of additional steps to see what they can do without.
And where they can be more tactical and strategic in fertilizing in the planting season.
Diesel is up nearly $2 a gallon compared to what it was last year.
And they get a lot of our nation around the world's global supply of oil travels through the Strait of Hormuz.
So that's had a real shocking impact both for automobile fuel, jet fuel, but certainly diesel.
And so it makes it really difficult for farmers to plan.
And of course you're also struck with all the other increases in costs that all families are facing, right?
Grocery's and housing and childcare and all the things that people struggle with.
So on my part I wanted to just make a couple of things given these challenges.
I am opposed to the war in Iran.
I feel as though it were, well, I feel strongly that it was a war of choice that we weren't under attack and so the President went in without congressional authorization.
And because of that, and I know I'm getting in the weeds, but because of that we've been forcing votes on war powers resolutions to contend that the President doesn't have the authority to declare war on his own.
And we are actually steadily gaining support.
And our last vote right before the Memorial Day recess resulted in 50 in favor, 47 in opposed to bringing the war powers resolution to the floor.
So we now have a majority in the Senate, but we need more than that to actually drive a vote to bring it to.
And in addition, I'm involved in a number of pieces of legislation regarding the price of fertilizer.
I wanted to just highlight the Fertilizer Transparency Act of 2026.
This is a bipartisan bill that will give farmers more insight into input costs in real time so that planning can be used so you can rely on that for planning.
I've also been involved in a couple of other bipartisan bills relating to fertilizer and looking at some more that might be introduced in the coming months.
I'd like to have us more independent substances because Americans have fertilizer production.
There's been some initiatives to do that.
It's a struggle because a lot of the inputs that we rely on are produced in other nations, including Canada, where we have a trade agreement that's being reevaluated right now.
So what I really want to do is elevate the stories of how this is impacting Wisconsin farmers, soybean farmers, corn farmers.
And talk about how this is impacting you.
And so I want to just start with a question of how you're experiencing the rising fuel diesel and fertilizer costs in your operation happening at the same time as spring planting season, et cetera.
And just for folks who aren't in agriculture and aren't on the farm, we're sitting in a location that has a lot of diesel consuming equipment.
Tell me a little bit about what you have on your farms and how much diesel you need throughout the season and what you're doing when it goes up $2 over a gallon over last year.
Jim, do you want to start?
I mean, here we got our one tractor that we use for struct telling and multiple other things.
It's got 300 gallon fuel tank.
And, you know, so we're putting in 200 gallons a day.
This year we usually go through six semi-volids of diesel fuel, off-road diesel fuel in a year.
And this year we didn't go and contract much out because, you know, prices were good and there was no indication that things were going to change.
So we didn't go on our farm and we didn't contract any out.
Now that's going to come back and really affect us.
Like I said, when you put in, you know, 200 gallons into one tank and that $2 increase for $100, you know, right there.
I live last year, we spent $120,000 in fuel on the farm last year.
For both, we put in that hand from our truckers.
So, let's do that pricing.
So, I mean, yeah, we've got a storage here for us in a load each time.
You know, we're having a good time.
So, we've set up a number of items that we use in different practices that we still burn fuel.
At springtime, what we use is our low-unit fuel.
I did the math on the per acre.
We probably, you know, we spent 10,000 to $100,000 a year.
I wish we didn't have some water early before the sauce started.
I brought some solos to the new tree.
Durano.
Luckily, we didn't go too much.
Toronto.
I'd like to follow the different story because you're in a whole lot of people's office.
Yeah.
Well, let's sort of do a little bit more.
Kind of running the same ice.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, we're similar to Casey.
We don't raise lives back at all.
We're purely real crap.
Yeah.
And so, for us, spring, no-till.
So, we're not running a bunch of tillage equipment in the spring.
We're just running a planner in the sprayer.
So, our field demand in the spring is this low, but it'll ramp up considerably in the fall
of harvest.
We're, I think, it does affect guys more as if they're full of tillage or livestock operations
making hay, you know, your dairies and stuff.
They're running equipment all the night.
Yeah.
So, hopefully manure.
Okay.
And some of these other processes.
Those pumps are filled.
Yeah.
And thankfully, we have had an increasing commodity price.
So, that does help us out a little bit.
I mean, if the bottom comes up, hopefully the top comes up a little bit, too.
But it makes everything more expensive.
Yeah.
Your lines are under more stress.
Yeah.
Well, now, we don't have irrigation in our firm.
Yeah.
But irrigators, those are run by diesel pumps.
Oh, okay.
So, to water their crops.
Yeah.
It's crossing them a lot more.
Yeah.
Okay.
There's these other things, I'm trying to start it by from other countries.
But I don't, I'm getting enough to talk about fertilizer.
Yeah.
Do you need?
That's much more impactful to us.
Row crop, rise.
Just fertilizer and especially no secret,
I've got a soy bean shirt on,
cases where a corn shirt,
people grow like raw corn,
you know soy beans as well.
So in the soy beans base,
fertilizer is a lower demand.
We've got great soils here in
here in southern Wisconsin. We're good farmers. We're taking care of the land.
So we do have a cushion of certain fertilizers. The big one is of course
nitrogen for gold corn so it doesn't store it. You need to purchase that
every year. So that's kind of the one I think a lot of guys are zooming in right
now and just ways that we should increase domestic nitrogen production and keep
that production here. That's the thing that would be so close to that.
This goes back to the last fall. To be impated we put down the bus for some
testing that we found last fall was by $30 more naked pool than previous years.
We have our nutrient numbers up. We're supposed to be able to cut back out in certain areas and push other places.
We don't have to necessarily make all the adjustments. But I was visiting a firm we can have it though.
We are the Wisconsin. He's out testing every field going like we do
without this year. And really it was micro, micro managing his farm operation.
There are farmers that are doing that. I mean majority of farmers buy all their
inputs like in December, January. So most farmers had their stuff paid for for
this year. But now it's just talking to a guy from the local co-op that works on
buying for next year. And they're going to start buying in July for next
week's. And they said even if the Iran were stopped right now or most was open
it would take six months to get things figured out before prices would even
think to stuff coming down. While these co-ops and you know different dealers
are buying that stuff now at these high prices. And so that's going to be
transferred to us when we're buying this December and January. So I mean this
year yeah it's an impact but it's next year that's going to be the big impact.
That's right. Would you say most soy and corn farmers would buy in January
December? Majority of them do. That's why operations may be not. The ones that
don't are the ones that are doing canning crops they're not sure what they're
going to you know what's going to be in canning crops or what they're going to
put in a corner of soy. So it's sort of the ones that are buying all this way.
Tell me a little bit more about how the trade wars and especially the
cancellation of contracts with China impacted the global demand for soy and
how that trickles down to each of your operations. You know when you hear
that China decided to you know retaliate for our tariffs and purchase
from Argentina, purchase from Brazil, purchase from other countries. What's
the impact on each individual operation? Where do you see that? You sell to someone who
then sells it to the local market. Just explain to a late person how that works.
And yeah I mean we're selling to our local co-opter, local elevators and
they're the ones that are selling to the bigger companies that ship it for a
whole lot. Yeah. You know someone like Matt's got the longs close to him that
does the worldwide shipping right there. But you know what I see when it comes
down to all this stuff is like when China was going back and forth we're buying
we're not buying. You know as farmers we're pretty optimistic people you know
things are gonna work out. We're gonna get through yeah we may have a bad few
bad years here and there but we're gonna have those good years to help us get
through and everything. What stuff that's been going on I'm seeing less
optimism when I talk to my neighbors because okay yeah our prices they didn't
drop dramatically through all this but we're not seeing that build-up of okay
in the future we're going to be you know sending you know soybeans to China or
anything. This is kind of lag effect when you hear those announcements. Yep and so
you know so we're sitting here going okay are we going to get to China market
back probably not. We need to be working on you know working on other countries
and whether that's soybeans or corn we need to be you know spreading it out more
and not so reliant on one country and we need to find a lot more domestic uses
for our products and that way we're not so reliant on the world market. Yeah. Any
other comments from there? We travel quite a ways for our soybeans. We go down to
Joliet on the South Side Chicago and this year versus last year they're paying
a dollar fifty more bushel. You know that's a container market and it all goes
whether it goes to China or Vietnam. Yeah. The longest goes everywhere. Yeah. Right. In that
area and granted it's just like a fertilizer you don't know it's gonna
happen next year but as of right now the market's up that much compared to what we
say last year. Yeah. Yeah our beans we were still fifteen hundred acres of soybeans and
they're split about five hundred five hundred five hundred and I would say five
hundred and my food grades. I know. So those are going to Joliet going to the
container and those are going to you know Vietnam Korea and Japan. Yeah. To be consumed
not through the longs. Five hundred of them are going into what I would call the
commodity bean market so that's like a straight export to China oil and then we
have five hundred acres this year for the first time. And they're crushing it
feeding it to cattle and that's a really to me good opportunity. I mean it's
domestic and better than domestic it's Wisconsin. Yeah. It's going at staying
right here and I think we need to make sure we're not putting all of our eggs
in the basket. Right. Right. I have a question about those. There's
different markets for corn and soy and there's a big battle that we've been
fighting to try again. The impact soy and corn differently. How do you
watch the various associations corn association and the soy association.
How do you struggle with those those issues. I mean I guess I'd say we work
together we have a few little minor disagreements but I mean like I said
before we grow their carnivores soybean growers we throw everything so we're
very we work together a lot. It's not as first as them type of thing. Yeah and
so yeah we want what's going on. We want what's best on soybean side. We want
what's best for corn because that helps us on our farms. Corn wants what's best
for soybeans because the other things happen on everyone's farms. So I mean we
work more together and yeah like when we come out to Washington DC and come in
and visit the different offices we're pretty much saying the same thing.
You know if there's been times where ones walk in just before the other and
it's the same message. Yes. Yeah or it's got to be 15 that you know they're they're
working on soybeans. You've got to buy them people and everything.
Like I said, we want to work together and we're not competing.
Yeah.
My pleasure.
Right.
Yeah.
Okay. I think part of the the debate the E-15 year round and then stopping
granting the waivers to the small refineries that don't want to do that.
That's on the soybean side we're you know very supportive of E-15.
Like you said it's those small refinery exemptions that's going to hurt the
soybean market. So that's the one part of the bill that you know we have the
little issue with. Yes. E-15 is a great product. We want that to be used but we
we want to make sure that it's not at a detriment to soybeans and it's the
small refinery exemption part that would be hurting the soybeans not the E-15 itself.
Yeah. Yeah. So why don't you hear from your
harming neighbors about the costs that are going up. What's the
discussion like when you're you know you're too busy to be chatting. Most of the
time but for this kind of year. What do you hear about how people are
studying the ABC crisis or farmers are pretty resilient for you.
You know I think the talk is just always keeping an eye on it and keeping an eye on
your equal costs and keeping an eye on the green market and you're figuring out
where to turn around. Yep. And locking margin to be kept and so
we're always upbeat and positive. Usually you know you get bummed out for a few days
and then some changes or another calamity comes up and pulls you that
direction. And when we're talking to neighbors we're not you know well all
yeah you know these prices you know aren't good you know they're going to impact us
but we don't follow them. We sit there okay but what's next what what else can we do.
Yeah. So that's to me.
Right. You can have your price for this season. How much transparency do you have
from the co-op or you know the person or the entity you're selling to on what
is going to be in the future. Is that that's just the dealing with the
volatility or.
On markets you've got the Chicago trade so that's that's really transparent.
You can see how long ways as far as the contracts go what the question is
is what the basis is. So that's what they're going to charge you for getting
it from the farm to the market and that's what you know a lot of guys we've
guessed on that. It's more on the input side that you just you just don't know
we look at trend lines and what you've paid years past but then something
happens that makes it spike or change and then that's where it gets a little bit
trickier you know you're like well it's going to get better and it works and
you just kind of eventually you have to make a decision.
So you're just going to take an educated guess.
Unless if they've got a crystal ball that I don't have so.
We definitely don't have a crystal ball here but yeah when it comes to markets
you know we're we got bids out for contracts for the
2026 year and we got bids out for the 2027 year.
So I mean stuff we haven't even started looking at input prices yet.
We've got bids out there going okay here's what we
think would be a good price so we'll start putting those out there and so
yeah we've got some both corn and soybeans sold for 2027.
Okay what sort of volatility do you see in
seeds prices?
Thankfully that's the one thing that's pretty much flat.
Yeah the last last couple years it hasn't changed a lot.
Yep yeah those prices are pretty consistent.
It's a domestic. Yeah I mean well and that's the one thing that
generally we can say is better than the whole
seeds of today are better than seeds of 10 years. Oh yeah 100 percent.
My diesel fuel and my potash are exactly the same that I bought 10 years ago.
They're just cost more.
That's why they're about the seed. Yeah but the seed is the technology is better.
Yes genetics are better. Yeah you can look at that and say well
I understand a little bit and they've done well.
Hopefully this isn't an invitation for the underage prices.
Well yeah you know what?
We're a profiteering. Yeah you know that sort of thing going on.
And I mean on farms that's our biggest.
The biggest thing you hear from people in our biggest fear is
these prices they go up so fast. Yeah but it takes a long
time for prices to come back down for our inputs whether it's fuel,
fertilizer or anything that we're using here.
Well I so appreciate your coming by talking about the impacts of these
these price increases sudden and scary in terms of how long they're going to
stick with us but you know I appreciate that and the
holidays. Okay thank you.
We're here for it. Yeah I am too.
All right I think we're going to do a group photo.
I'll buy the track here. Oh great.