NO BULL, November 17

Dollars & Cents

The kids attended a birthday party at an indoor waterpark last weekend.

Genevieve put her goggles on approximately one hour before the party and proceeded to wear them around the clock, including TO school the next morning.

Why would I let her do that? YOU come tell her no and see how it goes!

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The $30,000 Club

Northwest Iowa has done it one again - breaking farmland price records for the who knows how many-th time this year.

Last Friday, 73 acres of Iowa farmland in Sioux County went for an astonishing $30,000 an acre.

Zomer Company’s website describes the tract as “checking all the boxes including 1/2 mile rows, nearly 100% tillable, great location and excellent soil ratings” with an average CSR1 of 72.6 and average CSR2 at 96.6.

Thanks to Jim @theLandTalker Rothermich for these details:

Both the buyer and runner up were local farmers (I suspect the runner up isn’t sad this one got away…). For $2,195,700 the winning bidder walked away with 73 acres of pure ag land with no wind income or development potential.

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A $16-million shopping spree

Sioux County, Iowa is far from the only standout as two 320-acre contiguous tracts in Carroll County (west-central IA) went for $20,000 and $18,000 recently.

The gross price was $12.16 million, sold to Beck’s Hybrids - the seed company.

If you are thinking whew, that is a big chunk of change - hang on, I am not done.

The next day Beck’s purchased another combined 240 acres in the same county for $18,600 and $18,700 an acre. That brings their two-day total to $16.6 million in Carroll County, Iowa.

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Down a few dollars

Most of us are wondering if land will ever come down from its stratospheric highs…

That question I cannot answer, but I can tell you barge freight is a couple dollars off of its all-time highs made in early October.

St. Louis nearby freight was 1025% for the week ending November 15 - the equivalent of $1.23 per bushel of soybeans, barged downriver to the US Gulf.

While it feels fantastic to see barge freight $2 off its recent highs, current levels remain nearly three times average for this time of year translating into higher-priced bushels for the world buyer.

Take corn for instance - Brazilian corn delivered to Asia is on average $1 cheaper than US PNW or US Gulf corn in December.

Export premiums and barge freight have been battling it out (CIF goes up → freight goes up, CIF goes down → freight goes down), all while the farmer seems quite content to keep his bushels in the bin.

Plus, the Western Corn Belt and Southern Plains have turned into a corn vacuum as South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas combined produced 600 million bushels less corn in 2022 than 2021.

Be it premiums running higher to try and combat rising transportation costs or western Kansas feedlots paying a higher basis than Gulf exporters - mix it all together and you have an export program whose cumulative sales are half of where they were this point one year ago, trailing the pace needed to hit USDA’s current export sales projection by almost 300 million bushels.