Paul Yeager: Welcome back to the table for the Friday, December 26th, 2025 installment of Market Plus. Joining us now, Chad Hart Jeff French. We're talking Tuesday before Christmas, Jeff French Christmas to you in the commodities business. You kind of mentioned it. It slows down. But all of a sudden, once we get through Thursday, Friday, Monday, Tuesday, we got to start thinking about year-end things. Markets do not move a ton, but what if I have to do something here between now and the end of the year? Is this a good time to be doing anything, selling, buying, holding?

Jeff French: Well, I mean, that's a loaded question there. I mean.

Yeager: That's what I.

French: Do, you know, you know, if I'm buying beans. Yeah, I think it's probably a pretty good time. We just had a nice dollar 20 sell off if I'm selling beans. No, I don't like selling into a down market. So if I'm an end user. Yeah, it's not a bad time. But I, you know, I look at these prices, I'm not from a producer standpoint. I'm not looking to sell these prices right now.

Yeager: Okay. Let's talk overall economy for a minute. Chad Hart in the Midwest, we saw three consecutive Saturdays and the holiday and the Thanksgiving weekend pretty bad for going out to shop. Are retail sales going to be down as is the weather going to be the excuse, or is it going to be something else that pulls and holds back retail sales, or are we going to be? Didn't matter. We still bought everything with a click.

Chad Hart: Well, we bought a lot with the click. But I'm going to argue we're probably going to be down a little bit whether it will be one of the biggest factors. But let's face it, that inflationary bug is still out there. And so when you put that combined with the weather, it tends to pull back on you. And if you think about the inflationary problem stops you from doing that, click, click, click.

Yeager: It does. But there's still deals to be had. The stores, the malls all look busy. I know Ted Seifried and I talked about this a couple of years ago on this weekend, when we thought things didn't look good and we were all still out buying, so is it harder to gauge the retailers mind and the consumer's mind in an environment like this?

Hart: It is harder. I would argue it's a lot harder these days, especially since a lot of these transactions can be done in the ease of home, where no one can really see it until, if you will, that you know, that bill or credit card statement comes in.

Yeager: Yeah. Well, let's not get into that at this point. Let's get into something really fun. Commodity questions. Before we get started, I want to say, Justin, in Iowa, we asked your question in the TV show and Holtz View Farms, we kind of answered that one in the In the front show. I didn't mean to steal exactly your questions, but you helped me a ton. So let's go, Boyce in North Dakota to start, Chad, I want you to take this one first, if you could. And Jeff, if you want, you can take a swing. When did economists start believing that tax increases cause inflation? When I went to college, they told us that tax increases are deflationary because they take money out of the economy. But now everyone says tariffs, tax increases stimulate the economy and cause inflation. When did economic theory get turned upside down?

Hart: It's not that it got turned upside down, but you have to separate what type of tax it is to determine which way it's going to impact the market. And in the case of a tariff is an import tax. And so it has both. Let's call it proportionally and discretionary, you know, movement when you're looking at it. Yep. We're increasing prices on goods which can tend to slow down the purchase of that. Good at the same time too. If the tariff is high enough, you may be actually still spending more on that product, even if you're buying a little less of it. And that's when it can become inflationary.

Yeager: Back to what we were just talking about. People still are shopping one way or another, and it's just a matter of how much they're paying. Do we know if tariffs have impacted anybody's spending habits? Will we ever know? Is there any way to find that out?

Hart: Oh no. I would argue we are seeing that play out. But it's also the case of it varies sort of product by product, commodity by commodity. When you're looking at how that's changing things up, for example, when I'm looking at the fertilizer market, I could argue that, yeah, what we're seeing there is having tariffs are having an impact there. And it's the problem of farmers are still spending that money to get that fertilizer. And so there's where a tariff has been inflationary as opposed to deflationary.

Yeager: Are farmers are still talking about inputs like this?

French: Oh absolutely. Talking about one of the biggest things that talks about. Yeah. I mean and that's what I was going to say. I mean, that's the only thing that I see directly the tariffs are affecting is the fertilizer costs. I mean, it's just and it could be, you know, solved with a stroke of a pen, but we just haven't got there yet. So yeah, it's having an effect. There's no question.

Yeager: But are the farmers facing, they're more caught on the other side of the discussion when it comes to trade. I mean, a tariff maybe not direct, but if there's trade talks or standoffs or sanctions on someone, the farmers kind of been feeling that pinch, right?

French: Well, yeah. Because I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, you don't have much of a choice. I mean, you got to fertilize your crops. I mean, yeah. Can you reduce it. Sure. But in a low price structure, I mean, you kind of want to have as many bushels as you can to throw at this market. So, yeah, it's having a direct impact.

Hart: If I may jump on that too. I mean, you got to think about for agriculture, we tend to catch it on both sides that the tariffs hurt us because they tend to raise our input costs at the same time, too. They tend to lower our output prices. So it's a double barrel squeeze. We're not just getting it from one side of the market. We're getting it on both.

Yeager: All right Jeff mentioned solve with a swipe of a pen. What's the magic answer right now?

Hart: Well it is a stroke. Actually I wouldn't argue it's the stroke of a pen. It's probably a tweet or whatever we're going to call it these days. But I mean, that's sort of the big challenge right now. I would argue what we're looking for is stability. 2025 was dominated by trade policy instability. A lot of farmers just want 2026 to be stable. Tell us what the rules are. Let us play by those rules, and then we'll figure our way out of this mess.

Yeager: Are you hearing that same thing?

French: Yeah, absolutely.

Yeager: Okay, let's do Scott and Wisconsin. If we could, please. I want to have him ask what percentage of corn farmers can make money at these prices next year?

French: What percentage? Well, I don't it.

Yeager: Depends on everybody's situation, right?

French: I mean, you know, if you have, you know, everybody's situation is different. You know, it's not going to be many. How about that? It's not going to be a high percentage. I mean, it just it costs too much to put it in the ground. And you know you get futures prices at 4.65 -2530 cent basis. You're under the cost of production. So there's not going to be many as of right now. But there's a lot of things that can happen here in the next 12 months.

Yeager: Let's just say we have 200 bushels to the acre corn plus in a lot more places next year. What does that mean?

French: That means we're going to have, you know, we're going to have to work through a lot of grain. And you keep on adding multiple years of 2 billion bushel carryouts. That probably means, you know, low fours. I mean, that just if you look at history, that's what happens. But a lot of things can change. I mean, I'm not going to get real negative right now because you look at 25, I mean, we had one of the best growing seasons we've ever had with rain and the weather. Do we repeat that next year? I mean, I think that's highly unlikely.

Yeager: Are we? What's your weather forecast say? What do you, I mean, I know it's not exactly your realm, but you know, you have to pay attention to it. We all do. Are you hearing anything different than just, you know, the same?

Hart: I'm hearing about the same. But I'll go back to when we think about this year. It was yeah, it was phenomenal for growing a crop. But it also created it was phenomenal for growing crop disease. We did have some issues out there. We're seeing some weaknesses there. But I think it's you know, in this case we've been on an incredible run the past several years. It's not just the 2025 crop that was monstrous. If you think about it. We set the record for production before this year was 2023. The record for yield before this year was 2024. We've been on a heck of a run the last few years. It's likely going to come a little bit back to the mean here, but even then, you're still talking about probably producing a 14.5 to 15 billion bushel corn crop. That's still a very large crop here for the U.S.

Yeager: And would you say that the market knows that it is factoring that in, knowing that we'll likely I mean, the market factors a lot of things in but it's looking at averages, right?

French: Yeah. And you know, like Chad was saying on the main show, I mean, for as big as this crop has, I mean the price I mean, yes, it's not that good, but it could have been a heck of a lot worse. It could have been worse. So, you know, but that just remains that demand has been excellent and it has been robust.

Yeager: Okay. All right. Now you have one last thing, and you really have to stick your necks out on this one. Tim in Minnesota wants to know on your 2026 Christmas show, which I think he's meaning you're booked already for it. Do you think wheat, corn and soybean prices will be mostly higher or lower? Or about the same? You can pick one. You don't have to answer all three.

French: I think we will be higher. I think corn could easily be higher. I mean, beans are going to be tough. I mean, you can make an argument for, you know, a nine handle in front of beans. If everything goes well with Brazil. But that hasn't happened yet, so I'll go higher. Corn, wheat and beans. You know, beans is going to be tough.

Yeager: Said a shoulder shrug. Yeah, okay. What do you have?

Hart: I agree with that. I mean, the idea is you look at the futures markets now, they're already sort of leaning that way. We've got the slope of hope, as I like to call it, out there for corn and wheat right now. It doesn't exist there for soybeans. And we know the demand growth that we're going to have is already prescribed. And in there China getting back to it, the market is already saying we know we're going to basically just create production to fill that and keep us basically where we're at right now.

Yeager: I know the next big report is January, and that's going to give us maybe the best picture of the ‘25 crop. But we do start to quickly look ahead. We get to late February on acres. You kind of mentioned maybe a little bit of a shift. Do you think that the early forecasts are about on, spot on?

French: You know, they're probably close. I mean, we got to get into spring and see the weather. That will be probably the biggest indication. But you know you look at the futures prices I mean it just you know again it just favors corn.

Yeager: We're not taking acres out of production are we?

Hart: We're not taking acres to production. But it's one of these cases of I think USDA had it for their early projections for 26, 95 million acres of corn, 84 million acres of beans. So a 3 million acre shift back to beans, arguably to maintain those agronomic rotations.

Yeager: But the way Jeff's talking, it doesn't sound like that might I mean, might not be not necessarily the best idea, but maybe it's a harder row to go putting so much more back into beans if the price doesn't look good.

Hart: But again, we're probably that 3 million acres probably is enough to get China back to the 25 million tons as opposed to the 12 they're buying this year. So you can think of it as just kind of lockstep. We're matching the demand. We know we're going to have the supply that we're likely going to bring online.

Yeager: All right, Jeff, I'm going to get real personal. What's the Christmas Day menu?

French: This year? I think it's beef Wellington.

Yeager: Ooh. What time can I be over? I got two boys. They eat a lot. Oh that's good. What do you have?

Hart: I'm leaning on turkey this year.

Yeager: Turkey?

Hart: I decided to help Gretta Irwin out here. There you go. Turkey.

Yeager: Yeah. That's that's it's been that's been a story as well that we'll have to get to it another time. Chad Hart. Merry Christmas to you, Jeff French. Merry Christmas to you. Happy New Year as well.

French: Merry Christmas.

Yeager: Thank you for all your help. Thank you as well. And thank you so very much for watching us here in 2025. Next week we are going to look back at the biggest stories that impacted the year in rural America, and Don Roose will be in. Thanks for watching. We will see you next time. Have a great week.

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