Josh Linville has three slides of black swan events in fertilizer

Paul Yeager : I am pulling out the earpiece we just finished wrapping with Josh Lynnville recording him discuss fertilizer, he's the director of fertilizer for the Stone X company. Arlen Suderman also is an employee of Stone X that appears on the Market to Market TV show from time to time. So we do kind of start a little bit in the area of the connection between the two of them. What we're going to talk today is about the fertilizer industry, we're going to have a big umbrella first. And then we're going to quickly go into a couple of raindrops down when it comes to nitrogen and urea, and phosphorus. But again, it's a big macro look at the industry, some of the global issues. It's going to be fast moving and a couple of times where you may have to rewind and go Wait, what? We'll try to help you out there as best we can. And I play the Duh, Paul card, which I think maybe I'll change the name of this podcast. If you oh by the way, I'm Paul Yeager and the host of this MtoM Show podcast. New episodes each and every Tuesday. If you have feedback for me or a guest idea send me an email at Paul.Yeager@IowaPBS.org. Let's get into fertilizer. Now as we talk about some of the news of the day the barge story, the global story demand, just cut our demand. It's that simple. Right? Maybe some genetics? Let's get to it. Here's Josh Linville.

      Paul: So when we have Arlan on, I have to hear and we have to talk I have to bone up on Kansas State so for you I have to bone up on Mizzou. How's the SEC treating you?

      Josh Linville:  Well, it's a very good because there's a lot of comparisons with a very educational type school and Vanderbilt. Unfortunately, they're not making the comparisons from an education standpoint, they're making it from a sports comparison. So maybe not the best case scenario today. But it's at least something.

      Paul Yeager: Well, yeah, and Mizzou is a great school. In fact, my son just we toured there this summer, and I've got lots of friends in journalism with gone through there. What's the trip from St. Joe to Columbia? How far of a venture out was that for you as a kid?

      Josh Linville: From home is about two and a half hours each way. Gotcha, know I-70 very, very well. But yeah, I had done my life. I love the school love the campus of the people. It was trying to get both of my boys to go there. Partly because I like the school and partly because of in-state tuition. That's it.

      Paul Yeager: We're aware that we'd be out-of-state tuition. How did you end up from? Why Why go to college? What was the vision that you had when you left the farm?

      Josh Linville: Actually my uncle. He was the first person in our family to have gone to college. He ended up being a naval helicopter pilot and grew up around him kind of idolizing him and figure he went to Mizzou, darn it, I need to go to Mizzou as well.

      Paul Yeager: So you were thinking, but what were you thinking agriculture the whole time?

      Josh Linville: No, I actually went to school with every intention of getting away from agriculture. I went to the business school, I got a degree in finance and banking as well as real estate. The idea was, you know, go do the whole Wall Street thing, go do the hedge fund thing, make a lot of money. And then I started getting really heavy into real estate. And one of the jobs I got offered was in a company called to DeBruce based out of Kansas City. They had been looking in the wintertime for somebody to go on the grain side. Of course, they needed somebody right then. And I didn't graduate till spring. And later on a couple months later, they came back and said, Hey, if you still like the company, you still like us, we got a position on the fertilizer side. So I took that. Love the people I was talking to and the rest is history. Agriculture has a way of sucking us back in every time you try to get away pulls you back.

      Paul Yeager:  Well, and I've told this story a time or two, my father basically told me there's just no place for you on this farm. And it wasn't a great time in the 80s, early 90s. We weren't going to expand at least in the current setting. And here I am talking agriculture all the time. It's kind of funny how life does work, Josh. So fertilizer, you kind of back into it. And now you are head into it. What drives you to get up in the morning to dive into such a topic as fertilizer?

      Josh Linville: Because it's insanely important. And it's one of those markets very, very few people know about. It's actually it's funny the first several years of my life in this career, my co workers friends and I we always used to joke, how can we term our job? If we're at the bar talking to somebody so we don't have to bring up that we work in fertilizer, we come up with these commodity trader and a logistics specialist. We didn't want to talk about what we actually did. Well, now all of a sudden, I really think that I stayed into it because you look at fertilizer. It is talked about around the world. All of a sudden the world has woken up to not just how important agriculture is, but how important fertilizer is and you've got countries that are playing politics with it. You have got major losses of production around the world. It's while it is extremely price volatile, and just day to day, it's stressful. I mean, the last two years, I've not had a day off. But it's exciting. There's always something changing and trying to figure out, what's the next shoe to drop? What's the next thing it's going to change out here? It's a, it's a market that seemed more volatility than most any other commodity out there.

      Paul Yeager: And was that volatility mostly in the last two years? Or do you always feel that there's been volatility, we just didn't notice it?

      Josh Linville: There has always been, there's always been volatility, but the price changes haven't been near as extreme of what they've been here recently. It used to be if we had a price change in a given day, $10 to $20 a ton, for example, that was a major event, and you talked about the rest of the week. Now, if we have a price that changes $10 a ton, it's not even worth talking about. That's a very minor event. We've had days where this price has moved triple digits. And I know there's a lot of people out there that talk about it and say, well, you know, this is not okay, and it shouldn't be doing this. I understand where they're coming from, it doesn't feel right. But when you look at the events that are going on around the world, you know, Europe from a nitrogen standpoint, they most of their production is turned off. Our friends at ICIS are sitting there saying they think operate rates are 30% of normal, where they represent 5% Of all the global urea produce, they represent 8% of the global anhydrous 21% of the UAE in comes from Western and Central Europe. That's huge losses, Chinese government's banning the export of urea, they represent 10% of the global export about five and a half million tons exported per year. So these government political things, and in fact, you even see Russia playing politics with their fertilizer exports with Brazil and India and places like this. It has become something where the price volatility, the massive price swings we see are justified because they are major market changing events.

      Paul Yeager: Just before we get came together. I was just working on a script for the show this week. And we were discussing something about well, that's five and a half percent. Well, that's a significant in whatever it is five and a half to 10. When you're talking 10, like China and urea. Yes, that's a major thing. Is that why? Okay, let me back up. Is that why fertilizer has been such a volatile thing is because of all these factors blended up together, there isn't one litre of all of these little 10%.

      Josh Linville: Yeah, my presentation I go around the US around the world using, I always start with the exact same thing. I have got two slides to go through all of the events, all the black swan events have happened since summer 2020. When all this started, and I tried to explain to the audience, this isn't just one event, this is not just two events, this has been one after another after another and somebody said earlier today, you keep talking about these black swan events, you need to make the pin a little bit bigger, because you're getting a lot of them in there. Right? I'm about ready to add a third slide to it. So all these things are going on. And you're right. A lot of times we'd like to discount well, okay, so we lost European production, it's only 5%. And you're right. 5% isn't an enormous number. There's over 225 million tonnes of urea produced per year. 5% of 225 million tonnes is a very, very big number. Small moves do not mean small tonnage.

      Paul Yeager: Small moves don't mean small tonnage. Got it? Okay. So then the question that I get asked them, like when you say something like you just did is, well, then why do we need global production? Why do we why can't we do things domestically here? Why can't we do it in the United States?

      Josh Linville: Well, and we do 230. So we do produce quite a bit here in the US. But unfortunately, when you start looking forward, it's a very difficult process. Let's focus on because when you talk about phosphate and potash, you've got to find phosphate and potash reserves in the ground. And if you can find enough reserves in the spot that you can build production. Well, now you have to get environmental government approvals. Not exactly an easy thing. You know, Florida phosphate, for example, they, Mosaic could expand their mines, expand their production. But the Florida economy runs on tourism dollars, not on phosphate production and the environmentalist don't want it because it's a bad thing for Mother Earth. So it's a very difficult thing to do. Nitrogen. Same thing, if you can come up with you know, to build a new world scale. Plant brand new, he needs somewhere between five and 6 billion US dollars. If you can come up with that. Now you're talking about a plant that will be operational for the next 20-30-40-50 years. Are you confident that US natural gas prices are not going to skyrocket? Our administration changes every four to eight years, our focus seems to change every two years. So it's very hard to sit there and look at that and say, I have enough confidence I'm gonna go invest $5 billion on a market that we have no idea what happens.

      Paul Yeager: Well, it's the same as the crude oil market. There's no been no new refinery and what 50 years in the United States. So I mean, it's the same because it's that same argument, who is going to stick their neck out for it? Okay, and I guess I should even back up further when we say fertilizer it does mean like 12 different things. Yeah, I mean, we've, you've mentioned like eight of them already.

      Josh Linville: We focus on the majors. We focus on nitrogen, phosphate and potash and your audience is going to sit there and say, well, what about gypsum? What about lime? What about zinc? What about magnesium, all these other things. Those are more specialized products, they do not act as a commodity. Because they are in the whole scheme of things. They are relatively small. However, we focus on the majors on nitrogen, we focus on urea, UA and anhydrous. We focus on DAP and MAP for phosphate and of course, potash. Because those are the ones that act more like a commodity. Those are the ones that see more price volatility.

      Paul Yeager: And those are the ones that matter. I'm not, I'm sorry, not matter. Those are the ones used on a much more daily regular basis on the average US farm.

      Josh Linville: Absolutely. And when you look at a farmer input program, the nitrogen the phosphate and the potash accounts for so much of that pie, those minor products while they're absolutely needed to maximize your crops and everything. I'm not trying to sit there and say, but when you look at it from a cost perspective, it's relatively minor.

      Paul Yeager: I had someone asked me well let they asked a little bit of your background. And they're like, Well, does he sell it? And he goes, No, he analyzes it. So, so from this sense, you're protected in this question? What happens if we just use less of it?

      Josh Linville: Well, then markets go down. Right now we're already using our fertilizer, '23 demand models, our fertilizer year starts. July 1 and go through June 30. So we're already looking at next year. And we're looking at using 93 million acres of corn here in the US, 88 beans, 49 and a half wheat, and then a whole litany of other crops out there. And that builds into a total final number. So we sit there and we look at it, if we hit our demand model, the market should stay relatively flat. There's a lot of people saying this corn crop is worse than what we think it's going to be. We just don't have the data yet. Well, if it is worse, guess what corn acres need to rise, guess what rises with corn acres, demand for fertilizers. So from a nitrogen there's a very direct correlation acres go up, demand goes up. phosphate and potash is one that the farmers can look at cutting their rates. That's one of the first things they look at to save money. And let's face it, if you haven't been having a conversation with your banker, I'd suggest having that conversation. Next year's crop is going to be expensive. One of the first things we'll look at is phosphate/ potash. We saw it last year, people were trying to say, well, they can't do it two years in a row. I'm pretty sure in our operation, my dad's operation, it's a corn - bean rotation. The crop that was last year corn that we reduced on this year has been we don't have to worry. Last year's bean is this year's corn, and we can mine that soil. So there is a little bit more of flexibility on that demand. But nitrogen is a little bit more straightforward.

      Paul Yeager: So the natural I mean, and maybe it's where I come from and what's around me. But yes, that crop rotation is almost like a no brainer for some but but others don't do that. It's corn on corn on corn. Yeah. But that alternation of corn beans, there's natural things put into the mean that, again, speaking many people know and they're like, Paul, but there's some that that that's, to me, what you just said is like, oh Duh Paul, that's that I could easily just call this, duh Paul podcast.

      Josh Linville: And again, if we were to sit there and talk about what what percentage of the corn acres out there are corn on corn on corn, we would sit there and we'd go back and we'd say, well, it's a relatively small percentage. But what's our next thing we need to say? How big is the overall number? That number isn't overly small. So you're right. It's still something even though it's something that entire audience is sitting there saying, Well, duh, we understand that. It's still something we need to keep keep in the conversation.

      Paul Yeager: Okay, well, then let me go this way. The big seed companies, they have already altered genetics to be better at handling drought, resistant, or they become more drought resistant, they can handle dry or wet conditions all in the same seed. Do you think it's possible to work genetics that may not need the fertilizer as much or can just take a small amount and make it work?

      Josh Linville: Right? Yeah, that's obviously that's the golden goose out there. Right? That's what every farmer world wants. The problem even with that, though, they come up with those genetics, chances are they're gonna sit there and say, Oh, they don't need this fertilizer, our seed needs to be typical seed cost plus all this for we want it all, you know, we've developed this technology, we want all that stuff. But no, I mean, I know that's something that everybody's working into. I know there's some new deck technologies with the bio and the soil that releases more than nutrients and things like that. And I think it's interesting, but all of this stuff are things that when we look longer term, look, you know, 2-3-5 10 years down the road, we need to in the back of our mind, say hey, some of these one of these might actually catch one these days. But it's also a new technology that to me is not proven yet because we haven't seen it on a wide scale. So I'm not willing to change any of my models or my outlooks based on technology that might or might not work. We see a lot of I don't want to say snake oil sold to the industry. There's been a lot of hopeful things that petered out and didn't happen. We've got to do the same thing with seed technology with fertilizer, different approaches, things like that.

      Paul Yeager: But that's one of those topics that you have to look at that maybe goes into one more X Factor on your balance sheet that's or your Excel spreadsheet when you're figuring out things.

      Josh Linville: Yes, absolutely. Okay. It's one of those risks things you put out there. Alright, risk.

      Paul Yeager: Let's talk about that. If what happens if a fertilizer price is so high for a producer? Does that at some point? Just you mentioned the banker out of a dollars and cents issue? Does that just forced the issue of well, we're just not going to use as much therefore the demand isn't there. Does the price drop?

      Josh Linville: It could it's certainly something we're watching you know, you could see it correct itself from a demand standpoint, because yeah, the further your price goes up and right now take UAN and urea, for example, there is a very, very wide price spread between those two UAE and is a very big premium. That makes sense because Europe's offline. Yeah, they're 5% of the world urea, but they're 21% of you at UAN should be a premium. That is the market's way of trying to force the farmer to give up on UAN, and go to urea, which is more plentiful. But overall, we think that the nitrogen needs to be there, right, you've got to have nitrogen to grow the crop, phosphate and potash is a lot more flexible, that those numbers can go down, we do already anticipate both of those application rates will be down next year, that will continue to weigh on price ideas. But nitrogen unless we start cutting the acres next year, which looks very, very difficult to do with the harvest the way it's going the information we're getting that the only way in my mind right now that we see nitrogen prices fall substantially is if Europe turns back on. And if somebody can give me an idea of how Russia and European politics are going to play out over the next six months, let me know I've got a job for you. We're gonna call this fertilizer market perfectly.

      Paul Yeager: Well, okay. When you say Europe, the switch goes back on where are we watching? Is it just Russia, Ukraine?

      Josh Linville: Well, it is it's more natural gas prices in Europe, because that's the feedstock for this nitrogen production system. Normally, natural gas prices over there, and I watched the Dutch TTF that does not set the price for all of Europe, it's the best one to watch. It's the easiest one to bridge. Normally, it's in the 5-6-7 dollars and MMBtu range, fertilizer production was 100% or close to it rallied to as much as $100 in MMBtu. All but 30% of Europe had turned off on a nitrogen standpoint, now those prices have since fallen to around 50. That's where the number has been floating, you know, 48 to $52 MMBTU. But if that value continues to fall down to a point where manufacturers can say I can start making money again, then they start the restart process. And if you start to restart that now all those sons that are offline that have helped support price ideas around the world, now you start to see them come off because you've lost that European demand, and you gain that supply.

      Paul Yeager: Okay, put the demand side equation for the Europeans. I want to go back to the supply part. Is there anybody that can add into that supply around the world that was produced by Russia or Ukraine? That will? I'm talking,

      Josh Linville: On the natural gas side? Yeah. You do see tons of reforming in there. You know, the US has been a big exporter over there. Some other countries doing the same thing. The problem is, I understand, listen, I am not a natural gas guy. I barely understand fertilizer half the days. But as I've been told, there are logistical constraints on moving product of natural gas moving into Europe, the system just isn't designed. That's why the pipeline was there. It's the same thing where if the entirety of the US had to switch to truck all of a sudden to move all of our material, if rail and barge shut off. It's not happening. It's the same thing with Europe, there's only so much that can be done. And that's the problem. We can't completely offset what Russia used to flow through that Nord Stream pipeline. And after those charges went off on the pipeline last week, that looks any sort of a chance we had is even lower now.

      Paul Yeager: Interesting, any Okay? When you mentioned the barge situation I just saw you tweet before we came on another black swan event possibly forming when it comes to moving fertilizers up and down the Mississippi River. Again, our logistical supply chain infrastructure comes under something we didn't expect but we kind of knew was maybe coming it's been dry in certain areas and there's no water in the Mississippi as there should be for this time of year. What's that mean? What's that matter?

      Josh Linville: Well, yeah, it's another one of those events we had been watching but I didn't want to sit there and talk about it because I'm so tired of just bad news after bad news after a while you're like okay, you know what just proved to me Missouri guys, show me show me the problem. The problem isn't showed us. Yeah, we had a Barge line part claim force majeure. They are canceling shipments because low water means lighter barge loads fewer barges per tow, reduced travel time you heard barges are hitting ground around Memphis. In the problem for that is and the reason why this is so, so big and this is not just a fertilizer issue. This is also a grain issue. Our river systems are the arteries of our transportation from an agricultural standpoint. If barge were to shut down and the problem is this is not a Arkansas River and upper Mississippi and Ohio at this stuff, it is lower miss everything to the Gulf of Mexico travels through that corridor. If that corridor shuts down or is greatly reduced, it affects everything throughout the Midwest mountain range to mountain range.

      Paul Yeager: Because then we have to start trying to put stuff on truck and we don't have enough truck drivers and trucks. When it slows it down. And not everything can go over the ground like that.

      Josh Linville: Absolutely. You're you're down to two options, right? There's three, there's three legs of the stool, there's barge, there's rail, and there's truck. Take out barge now you go to rail, that's your next most efficient route. Well, anybody who receives rail will tell you it's it's slow. It takes time to get there. And I'm not digging on railroad workers or anything like that. It's just a slower transport. And then you go to trucks. We have lost so many over the road Hopper truckers to places like Amazon and things like that. I don't think a lot of people understand it. When I started in this industry, there were tons of them all around. That's not the case anymore, then go work for Amazon run all day and be home with your family not driving to Timbuktu to grab a load of fertilizer at a terminal that may not load you your three minutes after five o'clock. So we've lost a lot of them that our system is not designed to lose barge it simply is not.

      Paul Yeager: And you mentioned the trucks story about changing an industry Yeah, the trucking over the road. trucking industry is a tough industry for someone trying to be in a family or have a life that is more eight to five and we know that not every job can be that way. It's just some people have realized I don't want to be that way. And that's what that's the realities of the world right now.

      Josh Linville: Right What we need is what was the old the trucker movie with like Burt Reynolds and those guys What was that movie?

      Paul Yeager: Smokey and the Bandit.

      Josh Linville: We needed another sharing road to get the younger people excited about trucking over the road and all the adventures you can have that's what we need to get an influx of new over the road guys.

      Paul Yeager: Yes, the new the new relaunched put Eastbound and Down back in all the TV commercials, like what's this from this is kind of going, then they'll just go

      Josh Linville: we're doing it with every other movie out there. Why can't we redo that movie?

      Paul Yeager: That's right. That is right. When you look at you said, you're going to have to add a third slide for black swan events. At what point do we become numb to all of these events and the market might not react and we go back to $10 or 10 as news?

      Josh Linville: Unfortunately, I don't think anytime soon, you might become numb to it. But unfortunately, it is still a huge fundamental shift that has to move price. A lot of these things we always try and look at it is fertilizer moving from an emotional point of view, or is it moving from a fundamental point of view. And if you can figure that out, you got one about 75% your battles. But when we see these events happen, you can sit there and say, oh, yeah, sure, Mississippi River shut down. That just makes sense, whatever. And you go on about your merry day, it still changes the fundamentals of the marketplace. So unfortunately, I don't foresee that as we look forward over the next several years on like the nitrogen globally. Like I said multibillion dollars, and then you got to build and you got to get operational, this takes years to do from start to finish, we have a very good idea of what's coming online between now and 2025. We also have an idea about overall global nitrogen demand. Global demand grows faster than our new capacity coming online. So this thing gets tighter as we move forward. That means as these events happen, the volatility of the price movement that we will see is going to be even greater than what we've been dealing with. I hate to say it from a nitrogen perspective, volatility is not going anywhere. And I don't think it improves. I don't think it gets easier in the short term.

Paul Yeager: Well, you sound like the grain guys and gals that come on the show. Now, that's the same thing they've been saying,

     Josh Linville: I was gonna say in late last week, I did a presentation I said, I feel bad. I'm gonna start in my contracts. And we'll start putting a kicker in there says every single person that walks in the room to listen to me gets a shot of whiskey before they sit down.

     Paul Yeager: When you're sitting at the bar, ordering a shot of whiskey for somebody and it's a bar where everybody kind of knows what you do. How do you describe what it is that you do?

     Josh Linville: It's tried to break down and educate the market on fertilizer moves. This fertilizer market is one that isn't real giving with its information. Information is very closely guarded. The information that is given out is usually done strategically. And that's why whenever I start these presentations, I start every single one of them the same and I'll do one this evening to Chile group. I'll do the exact same thing to those guys. I have a zero Row fiscal position on fertilizer, we don't touch it, I have a zero position on paper, we do not hold a longer short, I won't allow myself to trade fertilizer socks, because I want to remain as unbiased as possible. So the information we are giving I am giving we are giving to the marketplace is as unbiased. Now, that doesn't mean we're always right. I wish we were I'd be doing a different job. If that's the case, I'd be having a different house, you'd be looking at the ocean in the back,

      Paul Yeager: I say, and I don't think I would get you to talk it'd be a pretty expensive get.

      Josh Linville: Yeah, I probably do this as a hobby still. But you'd have a different background. But it's but it's again, trying to give information as unbiased as we can we try to educate the market on how to on what to look for, what are the things to look at what what should you be expecting coming forward, because more information we have, the better inform the better decision we can make. And ultimately, hopefully, that works out to saving some dollars here and there, or at least locking up an opportunity to buy fertilizer, so green and secure profits that way.

      Paul Yeager: I just had a question last week on the show. And you just said something that prompted it. Somebody had said they had sold '23 corn, and also bought some fertilizer for '23. July, kind of a hedge themselves. I mean, are you hearing that that's happening more and more?

      Josh Linville: I think more and more people are doing it. That's something we had been preaching since I came on to Stone X. Farmers, when I grew up in the industry, I used to ask my dad, why aren't you selling your grain? And why aren't you doing this? Why aren't you doing that? And I never understood why. As a farmer in I'm not, the eyes is probably gonna say Linnville? How dare you say this? Work with me, give me a second year. But when I look at farming, all I see is a manufacturer. No more, no less. And of course, you're so much bigger than what that is. But what I mean by that is that every manufacturer out there, they look at what's the cost of my inputs, and what can I sell my outputs? And what's that ratio? What's that profit, farmers are doing the same thing you are buying in your inputs, and you are producing your output your grain. So rather than getting fixated on flat price, and this and that, I get it if you can buy the low of the fertilizer and sell the high of the grain. Fantastic. Same thing I got a job waiting for you can do that all the time. But a lot of us can't. So we look at this opportunity. If we only look in the fertilizer, that's speculation, because what happens is that grain goes down. And what if we only sell the grain and the fertilizer goes up? Both sides of that is more of a hedge than anything else. And that's why we look at it from that perspective. How many bushels of corn, beans, wheat, Milo, canola, whatever it might be? Are we spending to buy the exact same time and everybody you asked? Would you rather spend more or less bushels rather spend less?

      Paul Yeager: Right? Okay. Josh, when you go on to Twitter, you have a pretty good presence. Lots of people you follow? What are you looking for to gather from that source and disseminate?

      Josh Linville: Right now I'm looking for kind of ideas on what the harvest looks like. Is it good? Is it bad enough? We always have to overlay it a little bit of like, you don't always go in there and just say, Oh, it's so so it's average. Usually it's like, oh my gosh, it's the end of the world. Oh my gosh, it's the best I've ever had. So you get to kind of snake through that. But you look for little keys there. But really trying to figure out you know, look for some of these pieces overseas, for example, there's a lot of people got a lot of good information. Hey, I heard this about Russia, there's an uprising happening that Putin seat is getting very, very hot. And that could change things if he's replaced with somebody Western friendly. Well, if that happens, guess what happens with Europe, everything starts to come back to closer to normal. So we look for those sorts of events, we look for the Pakistan flooding that occurred this summer. They're one of the bigger buyers and one of the top 10 buyers of fertilizer around the world that meant their demand went next to nothing. That's something that helped out phosphate and potash values continue to fall. So just looking for a little market pieces out there that might not get picked up by the major publications, and just trying to overlay that with our point of view to either back that will change it. Yeah.

     Paul Yeager: Never a dull moment.

      Josh Linville: No, there's not. It's like I said yesterday that they started very early. It didn't end until about 10 o'clock last night and yeah, I sat there and swore I wasn't gonna get an apartment and I'm basically doing farming hours.

      Paul Yeager: But you're not getting outside. That's the problem. That's right. You know, I guess it's nice when it's a bad one when rainy day but you don't get those rainy days in June like you do when you're combining in the rain. Rains half an inch. So. All right, Josh Linnville. I appreciate the time and the insight. Thank you so much. I know you're busy guy. And just always helpful to get a little insight on what goes on in another part of farming.

      Josh Linville: absolutely appreciate you having me on.

      Paul Yeager:  My thanks to Josh Linnville for his time. You have feedback for the podcast MarkettoMarket@IowaPBS.org or just a story topic you want to hear about in general. That's where you send an email MarkettoMarket@IowaPBS.org. New episodes come out each and every Tuesday. We'll see you next time here on the M to M Show podcast a production of Iowa PBS.