[Paul Yeager] Welcome to the table for the Friday, March 20th, 2026 installment of Market Plus.

Joining us again and now and forevermore.

Mark Gold.

Hi sir.

[Mark Gold] Hello.

Nice to be back.

[Yeager] You know, this week there was a passing in the Agriculture Reporting community.

You are a guy who's been majority of your life in Chicago.

I think every time I learn a new Chicago story from you, WGN this week in agribusiness, this guy named Orion Samuelson, many of our audience know who he is.

You knew who he was.

You even brought something to share with Orion.

Let's start with that.

What did what do you have?

[Gold] Well, this is Orion's book.

You can't dream big enough.

And he.

I got this about 13 years ago.

I had the honor of introducing him at the American Bankers Association ag lender's conference, and I was he was the keynote speaker.

They asked me to introduce him, and I asked him, would you sign the book?

And he was kind enough to sign the book to me and.

[Yeager] Open it up again.

Hold on.

You closed it too quick.

We got to.

So, he wrote, there, Orion, as a speaker, had a. And as a communicator, a big presence.

[Gold] Yes he did.

[Yeager] How was he on the speaker dais?

[Gold] You know, he was great.

He would tell stories.

He'd get everybody laughing, and he would tell stories about, you know, everybody from President Eisenhower to Earl Butz, you name it.

He had stories about everybody.

And this book is really a history of American agriculture since the mid-50s.

And it's a great read if you've never read it or gotten it, go out and get a copy of this.

It's and it's a fun book.

There's a lot of funny stories in here as well.

[Yeager] Orion was 91.

He was just short of his 92nd birthday, and when he retired, there were plenty of good tributes that were done there.

And it's definitely somebody that had a very big, influential voice on agriculture.

[Gold] You know, he had that booming voice.

You knew it was him.

I grew up with my dad listening to Wally Phillips, who was on WGN before him, and then we'd listen to Orion, you know, 12:00 on the weekends or whatever.

And that's how I got to know the voice when I first got.

Young guys, let me interview you.

And we never were social friends or anything, but I think we had a mutual.

I had a certain certainly a respect for him and Max Armstrong.

They did such a great job.

And over the years I'd be at a place, you know, in like North Dakota, he'd be the keynote speaker.

I'd have a breakout session.

So, he was always very generous about saying something positive about the other people that were around and trying to highlight you as well.

He was just a class act and a wonderful person.

[Yeager] What do you think his question to you would be to lead the discussion this week?

[Gold] How is this war going to affect the American farmer?

And I wish I had a really great answer for that.

We know input costs are going higher.

What we don't know is how the president's going to react to that.

We have this appreciation day, farmer Appreciation Day coming up on the 27th.

It's alleged that he's going to make some kind of announcement from the EPA on what the renewable fuels are going to be, and I can't believe he's having this big show without coming up with something very positive for the American farmer.

So hopefully we'll get that.

But, you know, this is such a time of chaos.

You know, as Orian would say, marketing, marketing, marketing, American farmers need to do a better job of marketing.

And he's right.

And whether it's something I do or somebody else you like out there, find somebody that can help you with the marketing.

[Yeager] I didn't quite follow the question that I likely should have.

Joel in Minnesota asked you, you know, what's your best advice to do something?

But you said in your newsletter yesterday, a no position might be the position to have right now.

Yeah, flush that out for me.

[Gold] Well, you know, over the weekend in particular, just not having any position on I mean, if you want to roll the dice, go to Vegas, put your money on the line and you got basically the same odds as whether the war is going to really take off or whether we're going to have some kind of settlement.

So, in this kind of environment, you know, keeping your powder dry is certainly something you can do.

And, you know, no position is a position.

So, I think, you know, particularly on these weekends, it's okay to be kind of evened up or at least if you're long something be short, something against it, have some kind of spread position on it.

[Yeager] We have a couple of other questions for you if you have time for a moment.

Justin in Ohio is where we're going to start.

Please.

It's well known the farmer is mostly sold out of old crop beans, reducing natural hedge pressure to the old crop rally.

So, what's the situation for old crop corn?

Are we about to hit another massive wall of more selling, or is the crop mostly out of the farmer's hands?

[Gold] Well, I think we'll know better on the quarterly stocks report whether the farmers have really gotten out of it, but it seemed pretty clear to me that with all those cash contracts coming due at the end of February and basis contracts, that they did a pretty good job of moving a lot of corn out.

And I was telling people the last two weeks in February, look for that low right around first notice day, and that's your opportunity to buy some corn.

And that worked out pretty well.

So, you know what's it going to be now.

Do they still have grain on storage?

Should they do.

Is it burdensome?

I don't think so.

[Yeager] That's interesting.

So that's the old crop story.

We got a new crop story here.

Matt in Iowa wants to know what with the price increase in grains, what percentage of new crop should we have priced right now?

[Gold] You know, because of the chaos and the volatility, we're being very careful here.

But in the last week we did sell 10% of new crop corn, new crop wheat, new crop beans just to stick a toe in the water, get something on the board at pretty good prices out here, you know, worked out pretty well so far.

And you know, we'll be looking to sell these rallies as they come.

And there will come.

But not only do we have the chaos of war, but when you look at some of the weather forecasts coming up for the summer, do you want to get too aggressive here at, you know, for 60 corn, 1140 beans, 1160 beans?

I don't want to get too aggressive right here, right now, but you can buy a relatively inexpensive put.

You don't need to go out to December corn in November beans.

You can buy a short-dated option, save a lot of money and in time value out there and have something on in case you know, something goes awry wherever it can go awry.

But let's hope that we can see some higher prices out here.

So, we did a pretty good job when we sold all this cash for old crop.

You know, early on, we've been telling people right from the get go, we own it with call options.

Keep the upside open.

And I think again, that was pretty good advice.

And if the guys followed that, they've done very well.

[Yeager] Do you think the trade was distracted by other things this week and didn't necessarily factor in the weather forecast that you're speaking of this weekend in Nebraska?

And when you look at everything in the West, is that what's going on here or is it just too early?

[Gold] You know, I think it's a little bit early, certainly for the corn and beans, it looks dry enough that the corn is going to go in.

It's going to go in quick.

And you know that's a good thing.

Get it in the ground.

Once you get it in the ground, now you've got to be a little bit more conscious of the marketing.

And between now and let's say July 4th, you're going to have to make some marketing decisions.

Generally, sometime in late May and June is a good time to look at marketing some grain if we're on highs.

And I would certainly suggest looking at that, there will be opportunities, as there are every year in these markets.

So, I've.

[Yeager] Heard you I've heard you say that a time or two.

Yeah, I do pay attention over here sometimes.

One thing that I haven't heard you discuss much is Cyril and South Dakota's question will corn futures continue to go up while basis gets weaker, or will it both come back to normal?

[Gold] Well, the basis right now, you know it's kind of normal 4060 under on corn 6080 on beans.

Unless you're at a terminal or you're on the river or by a processor, those bases are much more generous.

Can the prices go higher?

Yeah.

Does that mean the basis is going to follow it?

Not necessarily.

Sometimes it even weakens it because the elevators don't want to pay as much.

So, it's a little bit of a catch 22.

It's going to for corn.

Watch what happens in China if they don't come for corn bases probably won't get great.

[Yeager] Well, and that's what I thank you for bringing that up because earlier when we talked about the China and the bean story, you were saying this week that maybe it's not all about beans, it's about other things.

So, you're saying watch what they do with corn?

[Gold] Yeah, I think it's important.

I don't see them coming for beans.

China coming for beans.

That 8 million metric tons they've talked about.

I think that's out the door.

Again, I don't know if this meeting is ever going to take place between President Trump and President XI, but the corn there is going to be some room for China to buy some corn if they want to.

So, we'll have to see if we can start seeing some of these export sales.

You know, unknown 250, 200,000 metric tons.

That may be an indication.

And that would certainly be helpful for the corn market.

[Yeager] Gary, in Wisconsin, your question about acres.

We kind of covered in the main program.

So, let's go to puck and let's talk a little bit more.

You mentioned stock market.

At what point do high gas prices and a faltering stock market impact beef demand?

[Gold] I think significantly, you know, if you've watched the beef over the last six weeks, stock market gets strong, beef gets strong when it gets weak.

You know, the cattle move lower.

As we have more and more high input prices out there.

And the American consumer is going to be looking to cut back with box beef over 400.

Are they going to be buying or are they going to be buying steaks and hamburger and everything else that goes along with it?

I think they're going to back off of that.

I think you've got to be very careful that demand part of the equation out here.

And if gas prices continue to move higher that's an issue.

And I think you've got to be very careful with that.

[Yeager] And a follow up to that is Robbie in Kansas, just with the Greeley, Colorado JBS plant at Stryker.

Will the other packing houses be able to absorb the cattle that are already that are ready to be killed right now?

[Gold] You would think so.

There was even talk about a Saturday kill.

I don't know if that happened or not, but it's interesting that the box beef has been able to maintain this because it doesn't look like the other plants are picking up the slack.

So, you know, I think the feedlot guys are looking at higher prices.

They want higher prices.

The processors, there's some margins there.

They're making money.

So, it's a little bit of a 50/50 kind of deal on the cattle.

[Yeager] You're saying that the feedlots are making money because the Packers have been losing money here for a lot of this.

Does this change any of their story?

[Gold] You know, how much of the Packers have been losing out there?

I don't know that it's quite what they're telling us.

There's a lot of I don't want to say I'll be careful what I say here.

Are we getting all the facts the right way?

I don't know, but I think the Packers have done okay out here.

I think the Greeley plant should have certainly done something to the market, and it doesn't really seem like it's moved at that much.

Fox beef broke about 3 or $4 this week, but it's still as of last night, it was over 400.

So.

I'm concerned that with everything that's happening with the American consumer, with the war, higher gas prices, higher inputs, that this thing can go south in a hurry.

So, I think if you're raising cattle out there, you got to look at these prices and say they aren't what they were.

But historically, they're still pretty darn good prices.

At least you want to be protecting, you know, maybe it's not protecting a profit, but you want to protect a smaller loss than just let it turn into nothing for you.

[Yeager] See, you ended with a somewhat positive thing there.

I didn't even have to get you there.

[Gold] You know, I'm positive on the grains right now.

I just want to look to buy breaks in the grains.

[Yeager] All right.

Mark Gold, great to see you.

Thank you sir.

[Gold] Thanks for having me.

[Yeager] All right.

Mark Gold everybody.

And next week we are going to look at a story that's encouraging more women to step into leadership roles on the farm.

And Don Roose is back with us.

Thanks for watching and we will see you next time.