Canary or Outlier: The Impact a Meeting of Arkansas Farmers

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[Paul Yeager] Showing you a different side of the MToM podcast studio here. This is the audio waveforms. That's my voice being transmitted to you and what it looks like in editing and what it looks like right now. And the words that you're going to hear are about the state of agriculture in the state of Arkansas. Specifically, a meeting caught our attention in the last couple of weeks where farmers came together in the middle of harvest their rice, their cotton, their soybeans, their corn. Those are the big four in the state, and producers are involved in all of those. But it is a very crucial time for them. Part of the one big, beautiful bill, the skinny farm bill section that was in there does not kick in until 2026, which means some producers are extremely vulnerable to what's happening right now. As policy decisions specifically on trade and tariffs and what they mean to these farmers. It is not good. It was a very intense meeting. We've posted a couple of the pictures from there on our social pages. So you can see, and some of you may not know what's going on there, but you do now we're going to get into what these farmers are going through, what they're trying to hope can come in policy in the short term and in the long term, what can benefit them. And we'll look at some of the positives as well in the M2 and podcast with Doctor Ryan Loy from the University of Arkansas. He's an agricultural economics. We'll discuss, some financial things, some bankruptcy filings that are up and what else is going on in that state and what is similar to other grain states. That's this week's MToM podcast. I'm Paul Yeager. New episodes come out each and every Tuesday here from market to market. And Iowa PBS. You spent enough time in Stillwater? I'm. We're going to start with Eskimo Joe's. Did you go back for the 50th anniversary party this summer?

[Ryan Loy] No, I didn't, but I kept up with it. It looked like a blast. You know, I haven't been back to Stillwater as much as I want to, you know, the University of Arkansas keeps me busy. All good things. But, you know, I go into Joe's as a student. I will tell you that when I first started there, I thought I was going to be going to Joe's more often than I really did then. Reality of college hit me, and I'm like, I can't even afford to get a haircut, let alone, let alone go to get cheese fries and beer. Right? So, but, yeah, that's a great place.

[Yeager] Times change. It's, it's an institution there. And in the email, talk, I asked, for your best doctor, Derrell Peel story. Surely you have one, right?

[Loy] I wish I did. You know, there was he. He was always very fascinating to me as a student, you know, and kind of one of the reasons that I got interested in extension role in terms of what extension means, you know, watching him come and lecture to us as undergraduates, you know, whether it was guest lectures. I do remember one time that the class was being a little bit rowdy, and we they had to, reel it back in, pretty quickly. And. Yeah, that was something I don't want to see again. You know, it wasn't doctor Peel was the other professor whose class it actually was. But, that was probably the one that, you know, that comes to mind the most. I worked a lot in the row crop sector when I was doing stuff down there. So I didn't work with Doctor Field directly. Although we've become good friends, since then. So he's a great mentor and a great, great professor.

[Yeager] He's always nice with his time for us. Always, one of our more popular guests that we've had on this podcast, people do want to hear. They still want to listen. Heck, they still bring him up to Iowa. To do, sessions in Dubuque or so. He was there this year. But you're from Texas. Spent a lot of time in Oklahoma. You're now in Arkansas. What's the similarities between those three in agriculture?

[Loy] Oh, that's a great question. Well, where I'm from in Texas is non-ag. You know, part of Texas. You know I'm from you know Dallas area a little bit north Dallas about Plano. And so I grew up in a big city. And really when I, when I grew up, I had no idea with what agriculture even was, what it meant, you know, but I did know that through didn't come just from the grocery store. Don't know why I knew that, but that made sense to me. And so I joined FFA just because I was like, hey, this is a very interesting, you know, area and fell in love with it. And so from that perspective, you know, I always say Arkansas is one of the most diverse in terms of agriculture states I've ever seen. You know, Oklahoma has has diversity as well. But, you know, the big, pig things over there, wheat in cattle. Right. And then Texas, my area of Texas, you know, had some corn, you know, some wheat, but nothing. Nothing to the degree that Arkansas has. Arkansas is very unique in that it's compared to other states I've lived in where, you know, urban sprawl kind of takes over an area. And nothing that was there was left in Arkansas. It almost seems like the cities and towns and houses are all built around those sorts of things. So you're kind of always surrounded by agriculture and just wilderness here. And so I would say that Oklahoma and Texas are a little bit closer in similarity. But Arkansas is very, very unique in all the good ways.

[Yeager] Well, in Texas we could talk about zoning laws and planning for a that's a whole nother session. And probably some of your friends that went into that. Let's talk Arkansas specific, your job there at the University is to look at all things. Tell me about, we're very familiar, this audience heavily corn and soybeans and understand the price challenges. What are some of the crops that are facing price challenges in Arkansas right now?

[Loy] Well, of course, as you mentioned, corn and soybeans, you know, those are big, ones that are really facing that price slide right now. Rice, of course, you know, we produce, you know, the most rice in terms of states. Now, soybeans are our number one crop in terms of acreage. But we are number one in rice, as well in terms of compared across the country. And so when we're looking at those three big commodities, that's really what we're talking about here. You know, there's some wheat here as well. In but really corn, soybeans, rice and cotton. So cotton as well. Cotton is another one of those that's really been in a, in a bad spot for quite some time at this point. And it's really difficult to pencil that rice. On the other hand, you know what the biggest thing for rice is, talking about the milling percentages and going to the mill. And so the milling yield that they get, you know, versus what their field yield actually is, what they get paid on that milling. Right? So whatever. Just like, just like wheat basically. Right. They have to mill it out, take out the brain and all that sort of thing, to get ready for market. And, here recently, it seems that the milling yields have been pretty poor. And so it's really impacting farmers. Bottom line. And so when you look at prices, comparatively speaking, across the board, all of them are down. But when you're predominantly soybeans, rice and corn, this really exacerbates that situation to an extreme. Well, I want to go ahead.

[Yeager] I want to go with rice there for a minute, though. Ryan. Help me understand the market for that. And is trade and global partners as big of an impact on the rice market and its price?

[Loy] It has an impact. Absolutely. You know, but it's not the same impact as soybeans. Let's take soybeans for example. So one of the big things in soybeans is that China's just not buying them, right. That's the retaliation in the trade war. They're not buying. And we don't have a downstream market right now for soybeans. And when you don't have that market and you have that same supply with no demand, those prices are going to follow, right? Rice is a little bit different now. We don't China doesn't buy our rice. We go into, you know, Africa and some of the Caribbean, areas and then over into like Mexico and stuff like that. But what's really kind of kicking us on the right side is that a lot of Southeast Asian countries, let's talk about India or even Thailand, Vietnam. They're really having a big uptick in their rice production. And so when you look at it from that perspective, when they have that uptick in rice production, you know, there's a quality level in kind of something that they look at and care about a lot more. And so when they go on the global market, they're cheaper and they're mostly the quality that these other countries in the Southeast Asia countries want to purchase. And so when you have that big supply that gets flooded into the market, those prices drop. And so it's really difficult to be competitive against those other countries. Right now in terms of rice, you know, India had the export ban for about a year's time. And then they opened the floodgates back up at the beginning of last year. And so since then, they've really just kind of, you know, there's just been a huge, excess supply on them on the market. And because of that, prices have really followed, again, when we get into those milling yields, like I was talking about, that really impacts quality. And so if those milling yields are not, are not good or at least not what they expect, then that quality gets diminished. And the demand for that on the, on the, on the back end, kind of falls. And then they look for other countries to purchase that. And so, we've seen that in Mexico a little bit, and stuff like that, especially when they had their inflation decree.

[Yeager] And with the sounds very familiar to the soybeans story, you know, a very flooded market. And South America is the big competitor with us, with the China market. Cotton has been, also something. No, but cotton was still heading to China. Right. Is that it? Has that been more of a tariff story? I always hear about the export story. Is that true?

[Loy] Yes, absolutely. You know, when we're talking about exporting the cotton, right, of raw cotton, we're going to be that net exporter of the cotton. Right. And net importer of the finished cotton. Right. And so when we're looking at that, what ends up happening is if we're going to China to sell that cotton are going elsewhere, going to Mexico, some other textile hub, right now it's going to get tariff done, going out. And then when it gets created into a good it's going to get tariffs coming back in. And so all that does is raise the price for an everyday consumer to buy that that that good. Well the comparative aspect to that and where the kind of the counterfactual is, is that a lot of these, you know, synthetic fibers are becoming more and more popular and those are having the same impact right now is what cotton is having. And so when you're looking at it, you know, it's becoming more expensive. And because it becomes more expensive, that demand drops in the prices that those farmers receive, gets low. And so cotton's a very interesting one, right. Because if you are, you know, a corn, soybean or rice farmer, you can buy one piece of equipment and change the header out. But when you are talking about cotton, you have the cotton picker and that's all you can use it for. And so it's difficult to spread that cost out. You know, across everything. Right. And so it becomes very expensive to produce with very little, you know, revenue received on the back end. And there's quality, you know, things that they have to adhere to. There's so many things when you're talking about just specific cotton, production risk, financial risks that the farmers face. And it's very difficult to make it pencil even in a great year.

[Yeager] So the Arkansas farmer already knows there's those challenges with cotton when it comes to the quality and where it can go in the markets. The rice, you never know if it's going to rain enough or rain too much to impact your soybeans and corn. You're already just faced the common weather story. So those are common. And then the trade and the tariff story is another factor. So where is the sentiment? You know, we talk about Purdue with the sentiment. The University of Michigan has a sentiment. But what's the sentiment, anecdotally, Ryan of the Arkansas farmer right now?

[Loy] Well, right now I think anecdotally and you had mentioned the, you know, that meeting that the Arkansas farmers had a few weeks ago, that grassroots meeting where they basically all came together, hundreds of farmers came together to share their concerns. And a big topic of conversation was, you know, we need those export markets and we need those international relationships, right? It's not the case of, you know, a lot of these farmers, over time have gone out and built these relationships, you know, and they go out and they visit these countries in the countries come here and they build these relationships themselves. Right. And so to have that kind of ripped away, from a political standpoint, is, is very difficult. And so the sentiment is not good. Right? So on the export side of things, you know, we have retaliation. You know, China's not going to buy our soybeans there. You know, other countries may also want to retaliate as well. But really when we're talking about soybeans again, that's our in terms of acreage, that's number one. If we don't have that downstream market, you know, where are we going to go with and how do we make money? That's a concern on the other side. You know, without these prices, these commodity prices dropping the inputs to grow those commodities have just steadily increased. You know, they've kind of increased always over time, but really started having that uptick around the first trade war and has really just maintained staying high. And especially when you add tariffs on top of that, because if we we import a majority of our fertilizer, come up the Mississippi River, come up other ways, come down through rail through Canada. When that's tariffs, I mean you're taking already expensive. Good. Adding another expense, a tax on top of it. And then a farmer turns around and says, how? How am I supposed to make this work? You know, and one of the important things, you know, when we're talking about this here, is that what's going on right now is, is a is really not due at all, to pour money management on a farmers part, right. They do everything marketing, they cut costs, they handle everything. And they've got things pretty, pretty sewed up tight and solid. But there's these outside market factors that are occurring right now that just makes it very difficult for them. You know, one of the biggest things I've been talking about recently is this uptick in chapter 12 bankruptcy filings. And chapter 12 bankruptcy is just a special provision of bankruptcy for family farmers. And, Arkansas specifically. Just in the first of the second quarter of this year, we had 16 bankruptcies just in the second quarter alone. And I went back and looked at numbers just from the early 2000s from pretty back far. And I 've never seen that number in the second quarter. And when we're looking at this really big uptick, when you look at filings on a national level, you know, around 2018, they started really up ticking right during that first trade war. Then we had a lot of that pandemic assistance come in. It dropped down. Right. Because that kind of that helped people and we were very low. And now what we're seeing is this resurge. And to me it's sending a warning sign. I think that's pretty that we see around, that these financial stressors are returning to rural America. And, you know, a lot of things are going into that. You've got those export markets, low commodity prices, input cost, and from the Delta standpoint, the Arkansas Delta standpoint, just the rented land. Right. And so we have a very high percentage of rented land that's an additional expense on top, an additional expense without an asset base now. Right. You know, so if you don't have that asset base trying to, you know, loan against something is difficult. Trying to go through chapter 12 is difficult, right? Because you don't have that asset base that you could have had if you own the land. And that's something that's very unique. For, for our farmers down here in the Arkansas Delta.

[Yeager] You said to the early 2000s, there's still the 1980s that resonates in a big part of ag, for the crisis is since you looked at those numbers, does it make you want to pull numbers back even further, or is that an apples and oranges now? Because things have changed with agriculture in your state.

[Loy] You know, I think that there is. I could say that pretty confidently that the 80s ones are probably, at this point higher, you know, because of just again, there was no asset base to the degree there is now in agriculture back then. And so the point is that there definitely needs to be it needs to be looked at as well in terms of, comparatively speaking. And I think that it's not an apples to oranges comparison, but, you know, prices were different and input costs were different as well. And also just the amount that somebody would be borrowing, you know, you look at the federal funds rate, which is just short term interest rates of 18% at that time. Well, you ask yourself, but what was the magnitude of what they were borrowing at that, right, compared to what they're borrowing at the 8% right now, or 6% right now.

[Yeager] So is it $20,000 versus 2 million?

[Loy] That's exactly right.

[Yeager] Okay, I get you there. All right. Let's go. Also, one other thing you said there before was about the family side of things. There's a theory online that I have seen involving Arkansas in this specific meeting last week that this is an attempt that could dramatically change the family farmer to a very large agribusiness way of doing things. Do we have concerns? Are there flashing lights that is a legitimate concern for the economy of Arkansas agriculture?

[Loy] You know, it's interesting because I've seen some theories on that, too. And I think what they're kind of referring to is a lot of, you know, private equity or people from outside of the state coming in and purchasing and buying up the land. Once these farms go, if these farms were to go under, you know, in a couple things there. Right. The size of the farm doesn't necessarily constitute it to be a family farm or not. Right? You know, most farms are family farms, even if they're massive, you know, operations. Right. And so, you know, the family farms, I think, are still going to stick around and they're going to be here. The question then becomes, you know, at what point is it, you know, not a profitable endeavor for these private equity firms or firms that are non ag, I'll call it that. Non-ag firms who come in and buy the land. At what point is it not a cost effective for them to do that. Right. You know, when you're thinking about investing in land versus, you know, some other alternative investment opportunity and you look at yields on maybe some, you know, treasuries or something along those lines that you could invest in. You know, at what point does the interest that you're going to pay to have that land, does it make it non, does it make it not as attractive to do anymore? I still don't think that we've seen that. But the real major concern with that is, let's say hypothetically, they're always going to buy land because it's an inflation hedge no matter what. And, they're going to continue to do that. Well, the the issue becomes and I equate it to kind of like renting a home almost, where if you're renting a home from somebody that is in the community and you know, well, maybe if you're late on rent for two days or something happened at the house, you can have a conversation with that person. And more often than not, things are going to work out. But if you're renting from a corporate entity or one that has no, you know, roots in the community, you can't have those same kind of discussions. Right. And so, from the farmer's perspective, if they're trying to negotiate a lease for the land, those become less of a negotiation and less of they have to be price takers on what they offer that is a really big concern for the Delta. And once it's out of bag, once it's out of bag and once it's owned by these other entities, it'd be very difficult to bring it back in and fully owned by the agriculture community.

[Yeager] One thing we talk about, we talk about speculators in the market and the outside money, the managed money that comes in to buy long or short some type of market. And then there's the farmer that says, well, if the funds are going to do this, then, when that changes, it's going to change my price. So in a way, and then I have our market analyst that will say, but that managed money and that that extra money that's non-farm, but an investment is actually boosting prices and helping things. If I'm selling the land, it's helping me get a higher price for that land. If I'm the family that's fifth generation no longer connected, I don't need that headache. I'm going to sell the land I want to make my money to.

[Loy] That's right. You know, that's absolutely right. And I think to net it's a very good point that you bring up there. And again, I think it all just comes back down to, you know, again, at the end of the day, you're still part of that community. And if you sell the land and, you know, let's say you sell it to that, you know, some sort of outside entity to do those things. I think that could that definitely can happen. But in the Delta, people are very aware of that happening. And I think that there is a lot more, even if they can't expand. I've heard anecdotally of some farmers just falling on their sword and making sure that if land comes up around them, that they can at least retain it, buy it, rent it, do whatever they can with it such that it just stays in agriculture and doesn't leave. Right? Because we don't they don't want exorbitant rents and they really don't want those communities. And, a big kicker here in Arkansas and I'm not sure in Iowa is solar farms. That's becoming a huge thing. So, you know, it's getting increasingly difficult to say you should farm this land versus what you could get paid for leasing it out to a solar farm. Right. And, that, that, that, that becomes also a very difficult discussion to have. And in terms of land values, right. If we're looking at land capitalization rate and commodity prices continue to slump, some slump, some slump, or if you capitalize that land that way, it's going to be it's going to kind of decrease in value. But if you have the solar panels on it and you have that steady income, right, that that looks a lot better. And so, it's very complicated. And it's one of those things of a, of a culture thing as much as it is a money thing.

[Yeager] And we hear the solar story in areas that might have more than two crops. Go with me on that. Michigan is in a way similar to Arkansas with its 4 or 5 crops, not two. You know, in Iowa, Illinois, we're pretty much two. You know, it's corn and beans. The diversity, which then exposes it to more, it exposes it to more volatility. But it also spreads out your risk. Right. But that lease payment of the solar farm is something I can count on.

[Loy] That's right.

[Yeager] And you know it, Ryan. Once that land is out of production and it gets ripped up and done for whatever they have to do to solar, it's not coming back. It's one you can maybe eventually knock down the shopping mall and maybe get that thing back. But tell me the last time you've ever heard that happened.

[Loy] I don't think in my years I've ever heard of that happening. Right. And again, if you're looking at from a purely a business perspective, longevity for family wealth perspective, if you were faced with a choice of uncertainty of income, right, and you have certain income that you can at least just say, hey, I'm going to take care of some things around the around the house and do things, and I'm just going to take the year. You know, I think we're seeing a lot of people consider that more right. And okay, increasingly becoming more production risk around here too with extreme weather. So prevent plant is going to be a big deal this year as well. In terms of hey, is it even worth me replanting? Because I'm going to lose money, or I can just take this certainty right now of what I could, what I could have gotten. And so it's going to be a discussion that we're going to have more in the future, no doubt.

[Yeager] Yeah. I heard you, one of your colleagues on Arkansas PBS last week, that, yes, you had the weather issue at the beginning of the year and kind of set things back. Let's go back to the meeting if we could, is there policy that can change things? Because some of the things you've talked about as economic and policy from the government is not is really going to artificially change some things. What are these farmers asking for when it comes to policy?

[Loy] One of the big things that they're asking for. Let's go back to the one big beautiful bill that got passed. Within that, there was what they're calling basically a skinny farm bill that really updates a lot of the outdated commodity price supports and just commodity supports in general. That was from the 2014 farm bill. So it really brought that into the modern age. But the kicker with that is that a lot of that does not trigger until 2026, right? So ARC and PLC that you won't, you can't get any payments for that until 2026. And so the issue now that farmers are asking for and a big reason that that meeting occurred was how do I get to 2026. Right. You know, we need immediate relief. And so, you know, the farmers are really asking for immediate relief to get to 2026. And so from a policy perspective, that looks like, you know, just some governmental disaster payments, to come through now, this is much different than, you know, some of the actual disaster payments that they had from true disasters. This or, you know, through physical climate disasters. This is because of again, this is in due part to policy as well. Right. You know, if if the policy is isolationism and we are going to tariff everybody, well, they, they can retaliate. And unfortunately the pawn in that is going to be the farmer. Right. They're going to be the first ones attacked because that's the easiest. That's kind of the Achilles heel. And so really they're asking for immediate support to get to 2026. So that way they can get some of these supports that were passed earlier. They really need support in terms of developing these markets again. Right. And and renegotiating and figuring out how these tariffs won't directly impact the farmer. Right. Not only on the output side in terms of retaliation, but on the input side to just grow it. It's astronomical. It really is.

[Yeager] Does this all get saved when China comes and buys a few cargoes of soybeans?

[Loy] You know, I think that that's a Band-Aid on this. Right. Because, in and this is just, you know, my opinion based on what I can see in the data and what, you know, we can see in terms of trade, I think that the China ship, in terms and physically, metaphorically has really sailed, overall. And I think that this has been a slow, shift since 2018, since the first trade war, if you think about it from a purely a business perspective. Right. If I'm China and commodities are on the whole not saying that they actually are, but if commodities are all the same, I have a better relationship with Brazil and I can get it cheaper. So why on earth do you see what I'm kind of saying? So from China's perspective, they're like, even if everything goes right, even if we everything's fixed in terms of relationships. And this why would I continue to buy from the United States when I can just go to Brazil? You know, they've got multiple harvests a year, they're first on the market, and at the end of the day, they're just cheaper. And so that really is the big thing. And so look, you know, China can come and buy from us. But we are extremely reliant on them. They're not relying on us anymore. Because they can shift their purchases where we it's very difficult to shift our soybean sales elsewhere because of the amount that China typically would buy compared to even the number two that we sell to, which is the UK. I mean, we're talking $10 billion worth between first and second, right? I mean, there's a lot of space between that. So it'd be difficult to spread that out amongst other countries. Not saying it can't be done, but it would be, a lot of growing pains in the interim.

[Yeager] One thing that this administration campaigned on and, and talks a lot about is what's fair and unfair practices. If we weren't getting a good, fair deal with China or if we weren't getting a good, fair deal with Mexico and Canada, and why we ripped up NAFTA and went with USMCA, it's a hard it sounds like the farmer is caught again in trying to get a better, more fair, equitable. But at the end of the day, it's still just down to price is what I think I'm hearing you say. Right?

[Loy] That's that's really I mean, when we're talking about, you know, again, we can build up these relationships. We can make trade fair. You know, if we if that's what they if that's, that's the goal. But at the end of the day, people want cheap goods and that's what they're going to go for. 

[Yeager] At the end of the day, are we also going to have the ability to domestically consume and produce the items that are needed for agriculture operation? Can we make the fertilizer that we need? Can we make it? But can we make it profitable? Can we eat all that rice? But can we make it at a price that's sustainable to the Arkansas farmer?

[Loy] I think the short answer, and definitely in the short term, is no, I mean, we first of all, we don't have some of the, some of the when it comes down to fertilizers, we don't have the natural resources to, to make them in the first place. Right. So from potash from Canada, we can't make that and we have to buy it from them. And it's very important input. And so from that perspective we can't. And you know, one of the biggest things is, if trade policy isn't written in blood, meaning that it's not going to change, it's difficult to find a situation where somebody will invest in this ag sector. Right. So let's say let's bring factories back or something like that. Well, if one day it's a 100% tariff on your competition. Good. The next day it's 0% in the next state with the uncertainty surrounding that, you know, why would you make that big investment and ensure that it would be a good one to make. Right. And so from that perspective, it's difficult to create that domestic market for those things. But first, we just don't have that sort of labor. Right. We don't have the labor. You know, people say, well, the technology will come through and they can handle it that way. Sure. That could happen. Definitely not in the short term. But then also, you asked about rice consumption and soybean consumption, you know, and the soybean consumption. We're getting better in terms of domestic consumption, but it's still nothing, to be able to fulfill that need of the supply that we have. Rice the same way. Right? Rice is the exact same way. We just don't have as much as I love rice, but we don't have as big of an appetite for rice. Other countries. Right?

[Yeager] That's right. When you look at one more thing from one of your previous comments about bankruptcies, and you were looking at those numbers, is that something now that you're going to have to look into, from your research purposes and see what was the reason for some of those to help, glean more information, or are you just going to have to be more tracking numbers and just report what's happening?

[Loy] You know, it's more along the lines when you talk about the bankruptcy numbers, the way they're reported from the courts. It's just a number and it's sometimes attached to a county. So hypothetically, the 16 bankruptcies that I mentioned earlier could just be a very small, you know, Peach Farm or something like that. As an example, I don't mean to pick on peaches, but take a specialty crop farm. Very small. Right? Just a few acres. It could be that it definitely could. But the context surrounding what's going on and knowing how many farm auctions we've had in the Delta this year, it tells me that it's definitely these, commercial row crop farms, that are that are facing this right now. And so from, from your question, I think right now it's more of tracking numbers and applying context to it. Because it's very difficult to kind of tease out why that happened. And it's even more difficult to tease out. Were they successful in going through Chapter 12, or was this just kind of a delaying the inevitable situation?

[Yeager] Are we in the middle of the worst right now?

[Loy] I would say we're in the middle of to me, it seems like the worse. But every, you know, it seems about every month I wake up and it gets worse. You know, in terms of this year's specific, I think right now we're in the worst. And mainly because as of this time, China still has not bought any soybeans from us. And at least I don't care if it was 2018, the first trade war or whatever it was, they were at least buying something from us. And right now they still have not done that. And so to see that actually come to fruition, you know, talking about it at the beginning of the year where we didn't really know, and then actually seeing this play out, I think we're, we're really in the worse of it, although I think that around harvest, if this still keeps up, you know, soybean harvest if there's still keeps up, that would be the worst.

[Yeager] Yeah. That's what I was going to ask is what would be the next step? This and how does this get better? Let's try to end Ryan on some positive.

[Loy] Absolutely I love that because I feel like Doctor Doom sometimes. You know, 

[Yeager] You're too early to have that nickname, Ryan, in your career. You can't get that yet.

[Loy] I know, you know, for me, it really comes down to. Okay, so we talked about, you know, one of the things, I did my dissertation on value-added marketing. And I know that that is a difficult thing to do for people. It is because it costs money. It takes a lot of time. But, you know, there are still farms that are, I'll put it this way, they're doing okay because they have created a value-added marketing chain for their commodities. They have a downstream market they produce for that market. And whether it's a company, whether it's, you know, a company in a different, country that they have an agreement with, whatever it is. And it seems that that's going to be one of the things of the future in terms of how to weather these kinds of storms. Right. You know, coming together, creating a product, having that differentiation from that commodity, you know, commoditized these goods. And working through that way, you know, there's edamame here in Arkansas. That's a great example on the soybean side in terms of how it can be, you know, managed in terms of the export markets as well. Okay. I have edamame that can maybe offset some of that. And rice the same way that's possible.

[Yeager] Then we have to find, you know, an outlet, and build that market just like, you know, soybeans used to not be as produced as much as they were, but we found ways to use them and these other crops. And the value added-ness. That's one thing that we still talk about in rural America. And this show for sure has talked about that for years, going back to the 80s and 70s when we started Value Add, it's always been a part of it. So Ryan, I appreciate your insight there from Arkansas. Thank you so very much for the time.

[Loy] Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

[Yeager] New episodes every Tuesday like rate, review, share. Really. Like if you do that share thing with a friend we'll see you next time. Thank you.

Contact: paul.yeager@iowapbs.org