[PAUL YEAGER] Welcome back to the table for the Friday, August 7th, 2026 installment of Market Plus.

Joining us now, Kristi Van Ahn-Kjeseth.

Are you ready to do the whole thing?

If I give out?

[KRISTI VAN AHN-KJESETH] Yeah, I can.

I talk a lot so I can do this.

[YEAGER] And I do too.

And that is the hardest thing of all of this, Kristi, me trying to get through this.

[VAN AHN-KJESETH] I got you, don't worry.

[YEAGER] Okay, so you mentioned your windshield tours.

We talked about it with Dan Hueber last week.

Let's talk though, forward.

Looking to Wednesday, and we lead off with Jay in Missouri's question.

Do you see any surprises in planted acres for corn and soybeans in the Aug 12 report?

[VAN AHN-KJESETH] I don't and maybe that's me just saying please USDA do not do it because I think USDA is a hot topic the way it is and what they did with corn acreage, the amount of changes post June in corn last year was absolutely atrocious to the market and such a bad thing to do.

And you had that information.

And so, I think that they probably learned their lesson.

I'm hoping they learned their lesson from what happened last year, how disastrous it was.

So, I do think that they're going to set those numbers for June and then wait till later in the fall, like they typically do.

[YEAGER] I'm going to play stinker.

Look at the last two reports that USDA has done.

[VAN AHN-KJESETH] Yes.

[YEAGER] Normally not big movers.

They were big moves.

[VAN AHN-KJESETH] Yeah.

And you talk about those reports.

One of the things that is so confusing to me right now is how high feed usage is year over year for corn.

And I get it, you know, you're feeding cattle so much heavier than you are.

It's part of the bearishness to cattle is that inventory numbers are down, but you're running 20 pounds higher when you look at them.

So, the weights are there.

And so, I get that.

But almost a billion bushel of corn increase in feed use.

When we spent a good chunk of this year with cattle stuck on the other side of the border, I it makes me question why were they wrong last September when they cut feed usage so aggressively?

And so now, are they making up for it?

Or are we worried that in September they're going to do the same thing as last year and slash corn feed usage?

I'm hoping that's not going to be the case, and that they're just making up for some past mistakes.

[YEAGER] You're opening up the door.

I could go down and say online, have fun with that.

But no, let's not.

I want to look though here for the next two days, clearly.

I mean, we already mentioned the word of this week was neutral for corn and wheat, right?

Obviously Tuesday, Wednesday, Monday, Tuesday will be probably neutral ahead.

So, prepare me where I should position thyself ahead of Wednesday.

[VAN AHN-KJESETH] Yeah.

Unfortunately, I think you're just stuck in the middle of the range right now, that there is not a whole lot I want to see that I would do at this point.

Like it's mostly I'm in this camp that I think as long as we don't have big moves on Monday and Tuesday, you can come into Wednesday kind of like net neutral and say, let's see how we evaluate.

You also have had some bigger yield estimates come out this last week.

And so, I think the market got its chance to react to seeing a printed big number.

That's not a USDA number.

But I think it's enough that you can react to that.

And sometimes, you know, that's such a hot topic for producers.

They get very frustrated at these numbers.

But I do think that a lot of times these numbers aren't all that far off from where we end up.

And so, it gives you that opportunity to react and set your expectations and know where your risks are moving forward.

So, I don't think it's the worst thing, but I do think that this report could be a quieter one and wait until we get more into the official crop tours.

And then in September, when you're having like the boots on the ground type of yield, I wonder about that.

[YEAGER] And we're going to have an early harvest because we had an early plant in a lot of places.

So yeah, we might know earlier than normal, but.

[VAN AHN-KJESETH] I think so.

[YEAGER] Seasonality has been out the window anyway for the last couple of years.

Right.

Okay.

Good.

I've been paying attention a little bit.

All right.

Let's go.

Top of the list.

Mark in Minnesota emailed us this one.

What percent of the 27 soybean and HR s w would you sell at the current futures price with input prices where they are today?

These prices are historically decent, but inputs are still high.

[VAN AHN-KJESETH] Yes.

So, this is a tough question because we are 10% across the board.

So, corn, beans, wheat we are 10% for 2027.

Those came at some different prices.

So, if you didn't have anything done right now, I'm not sure I would say, you know, get to 10% because that's where we are.

But that is where we currently are is 10%.

I get a little bit nervous about mostly corn for 2027 with input costs and not necessarily knowing the breakeven quite yet.

So, I want to be a little bit cautious to that and where we might lend more towards options in this situation versus cash sales because of those unknowns.

But yeah, we're ten, 10% across the board.

[YEAGER] Bradley and Nebraska was listening to our earlier discussion and submitted this question in between the show, but it's very similar to what Christy already said with expanding crush because you were very positive on crush earlier and current export demand, will the U.S.

Have 25 million metric tons of soybeans to export to China?

[VAN AHN-KJESETH] I don't think so.

Technically, yes, I think you would.

But you'd have to really ration the price.

I think that the profitability is so large and crushed that they can afford the price going up a little bit higher.

And so that's a big number.

When you look at year over year expectations of exports for soybeans, I think they're increasing like 120 million bushel.

And you look at what China bought last year compared to what they're slated to buy this year.

If they follow through with that 25, that's kind of a large number.

And so, I'm not so sure we actually have that.

A lot's going to be indicative of yield.

Obviously, but it would make it extremely tight if they carried through with all of that.

[YEAGER] And if the price goes up, China's not going to buy.

[VAN AHN-KJESETH] Correct.

[YEAGER] They historically will see a deal not pay sticker price.

[VAN AHN-KJESETH] Right.

Yeah.

And you know they've kind of came out and there's been some talk about an additional 17 billion of other agricultural goods.

So, I don't know if they would kind of sway their purchases a different direction and saying, hey, we're still committing to this, but it just doesn't make sense for us right now at this point.

And we have to remember that South America continues to say they want to be prevalent.

They want to be the winner in beans.

And so, the early estimates, you're not even close to planting in South America.

But the early estimates there is that you will continue to see production grow just due to the sheer increase of acreage dedicated to soybeans.

[YEAGER] We haven't even really discussed the South American side of this discussion at all today.

No, the El Nino factor, what's going to impact them opposite of us does that give you pause of by golly, maybe I should be a little farther down the road in some sales.

[VAN AHN-KJESETH] To a degree.

But it was really hard for us this year to sell $12 soybeans.

The producer was not on board for it.

And, and sometimes we take that into consideration and sometimes we say, hey, just because they don't want to at this point does not mean we should not be pushing out this recommendation.

And so, you have to find the middle ground between that.

But $12 was not paying the bills for a lot of people for soybeans.

So now you're looking at saying, do I want to be 20, 30% marketed at a price that might not pay the bills?

I know that a banker is probably cringing right now hearing me say that, because there is that downside risk.

But I do think it's something you really need to be attentive to and just try to keep those breakevens in mind.

[YEAGER] Dan's going to help play the what if game on this crop right now here on our Market Plus.

If the US corn and soybean crops finish almost exactly as projected today, would that be bearish?

Bullish, or mostly neutral for grain prices?

And what would that scenario mean for cattle, hog and dairy producers over the next year?

[VAN AHN-KJESETH] Yeah.

So, let's break it down.

Corn versus beans like the corn market.

If it finishes exactly where it is, I think it's pretty neutral.

If you kind of take bushels, the yield down to or up to, you're finding yourself probably somewhere between like a 1.6 and a 1.9-billion-bushel carryout that is not that far off from where we were the last two years.

So, two years ago, 1.5 last year two.

And we found ourselves in this range of price.

We found ourselves down to the lower fours, very high threes, and we found ourselves into 480 to $5 to the top side.

I do think that it's neutral.

I think that post-harvest it gives a reason for this market to find some support and get up to those upper ranges.

But overall, nothing screaming my name soybeans.

If we finish exactly how we are, it.

To the table or not.

Because if we stick with this yield that we have, I just elaborated, I don't know how much extra beans we really have, especially just proven how much we've grown.

Crush.

You are accounting for a growth and crush again.

But if we look at kind of how far we've accelerated these last few years, you could say it could happen again.

[YEAGER] And that's part of this current administration's goal in a way to not be reliant on exporting and handling things internally.

If the crush is so strong in the United States, we're getting there.

Oh, sorry, politics.

I'm going to stop.

Okay.

Let's talk about speaking of politics, Colin in Iowa has a good one for us.

How much impact are the rumors around plants in Texas, Colorado and Pennsylvania and whatever's happening there, whether it's a closure, or a suspension or suspension of activities?

What is that?

What's that doing to the market?

[VAN AHN-KJESETH] Yeah, I think this comes down to let's talk like closures, because I feel like that's a hot topic that a lot of people have wanted to talk about lately for cattle.

Unfortunately, it comes down to a business decision, right?

A business decision that is going to have negative impacts on a cattle producer.

So, to say we are not running at capacity at a lot of these facilities right now.

And so, for them to be more efficient, you're closing them and kind of combining them.

That ends up giving producers, cattlemen a pretty far travel, right?

You're, you're going to have higher transportation costs.

And so that is the downfall of that.

But from a business perspective, it's the right idea for a Packer.

And I'm not so sure.

There's a lot you can do about that because they are business-oriented people and that is what they're going to do to continue to try and keep profits in the green.

[YEAGER] We could spend the next half hour on the livestock market, but this could have a pretty rough ending sooner than later.

If all of these scenarios play out.

[VAN AHN-KJESETH] Yeah.

And you know, one thing that I feel like is so detrimental to a farmer is the big kind of stories that come out.

So, when we were towards the top of corn here recently, you had you were like the cool kid.

If you were coming out and saying, you know, commodities, especially corn long term, is supportive.

We see that these prices are going to continue.

I'm not disagreeing with that, but you can have two stories at the same time.

You can have long term support in corn, but know that short term, we might struggle coming into harvest.

And I think that's that same situation for cattle is that you can talk about food inflation prices, but that doesn't necessarily mean that what the farmer is making is going to be higher.

It probably means a lot of the other stuff around it.

Transportation costs are higher, employment is higher.

Right.

And so, it doesn't always correlate necessarily to higher prices paid to the farmer.

[YEAGER] Okay.

Another part of this, and you alluded to it, I want to close with this.

I want to do the last question, if we could, Mike, in Oklahoma, this is about Mexico and their how they play into this factor or how they factor into this.

What are the numbers for kill capacity in Old Mexico for daily slaughter of beef cattle?

[VAN AHN-KJESETH] Yeah, it's about for like a year is about 7.5 million.

And so, when you look at it, we this last year, I think were like just over 29.

So, it's much smaller than here in the US.

But we also probably left a little bit of a hand in forcing them to continue to grow that when they had all the cattle stuck on the other side of the border, because they weren't just going to sit there and do nothing with those cattle, right?

So, they continue to process them on that side.

And that beef was still finding ways into the US market.

It just wasn't in a live animal.

And so, you're looking at a situation that isn't nearly as large as the US.

But I think that's where you could see growth from there.

Where here you're seeing kind of inventory numbers dwindle and you're seeing those kind of consolidations of places to go.

[YEAGER] I really meant that's my last beef question.

Give me two things to look out of Wednesday's report.

[VAN AHN-KJESETH] Wednesday's report, I would say you're going to have a lot of people looking for yield.

I don't I don't expect a whole lot to come out of yield yet, to be honest.

But I think that's what people are going to be looking for.

I said it feed use, I think is going to be huge.

And then you're really trying to fine tune this old crop number prior to September when they finalized it.

And so, we saw some big adjustments in old crop corn.

Last report.

I would not be surprised if they're making the bolder changes in old crop to kind of fine tune it.

So, September's not as much as a shocker like it was last year.

[YEAGER] We'll see how it plays out.

Thank you Christy.

Thank you.

Great to have you here as always.

Kristi Van Ahn-Kjeseth everybody, next week.

Jeff French and Ross Baldwin will join us for a panel discussion with an in depth look at the commodity and the livestock markets.

Thanks for joining us.

Have a great week.