>>> Coming up on "Market to Market."

>> Ten waterways make their way onto an environmental watchlist.

>>> farmers and legislators push for the right to repair.

>>> Helping pollinators thrive in their fight for survival.

>> If you want to say maybe sort of -- >> and market analysis with Elaine Kub next.

♪♪ >>> What's the most complex industry on Earth?

It's not genetics or meteorology or logistics.

It's a business that involves them all.

It's farming.

Thank you, farmers, from pioneer.

>>> tomorrow, for over 100 years, we've worked to help our customers be ready for tomorrow.

Trust in tomorrow.

Information is available from a Grenell mutual agent today.

>>> This is the Friday April 16 edition of "Market to Market," the weekly journal of rural America.

>> Hello, I'm Paul Yeager.

The literal and figurative foot appears to be hammering down on the economy's gas pedal.

Higher fuel prices drove the consumer price index up 0.6%, the biggest jump since 2012.

The core CPI rose 0.3%.

March retail sales soared nearly 10% as the wave of vaccinated consumers were also armed with stimulus checks to buy new clothes and restaurant meals.

The rural main street index dipped slightly but stayed above growth neutral for the fifth straight month.

The survey of bank CEOs in the ten states revealed a reading of 69 on higher farm land and equipment sales.

The Missouri River runs through several states in the Creighton university survey.

And as the waterway makes its way from Montana to Missouri, it borders states trying to get a handle on nitrate levels.

An annual list released this week highlights rivers that have been involved in high-profile legal cases like the raccoon in Iowa.

Josh looks at the list of the report.

>> Reporter: This week, several waterways were found in the crosshairs of the environmentalas nonprofit American rivers.

Since the mid-1980s the Washington, D.C. based group has compiled an annual list of the top ten most endangered rivers in the nation.

>> These have been a tough 12 months.

We're dealing with a pandemic, we're dealing with an economic downturn.

We're dealing with an important national conversation around inequity and injustice.

And I hope that through these challenging times, rivers near you, perhaps rivers you grew up on, have given you a sense of support.

>> Reporter: While the Pacific northwest snake river topped the list of impacted communities, drinking water sources and fish and wildlife habitat, the lower Missouri River, which makes up the majority of Iowa's western border, was the report's second most endangered river.

American rivers cited the ongoing risk of extreme flooding due to poor infrastructure management as the deciding factor.

Towns, farmers, and land owners were plagued with $3 billion in flood damage along the corridor in 2019.

>> That so-called report was a bit of propaganda I think.

>> Reporter: The lower Missouri River designation, as well as the group's first-ever placement of Iowa's raccoon river on the list at ninth due to runoff from livestock operations in farm fields drew the IRE of Mike NAYE who said bioreactors and wetlands have been accelerating.

>> The way that those types of reports come out with no basis, they were nominated by an activist group here in Iowa.

It's a fundraising plea for this organization.

Again, they can do that.

I'm not saying they can't.

But if you want to talk facts, you have to ignore a lot of evidence, a lot of evidence that says we're moving in the right direction, that work is actually getting done every day on the ground.

>> Reporter: For "Market to Market," I'm Josh BITNER.

>>> spring field work is in full month this month as farmers look to prep the soil for planting.

Inevitably, some producers are going to run into breakdowns.

Whatever comes next is at the center of an ongoing debate about who can do repairs to the equipment in use.

Peter TUBBS has our story.

>> Reporter: Farmers throughout agriculture have grown frustrated with their inability to repair some of their farm equipment, simply because they are not allowed to diagnose error codes, their tractors or combines generate.

Manufacturers limit that information to trained service teches from dealerships.

Bills in Nebraska and eight other state legislatures are looking to allow farmers access the data they need to fix their equipment themselves.

Just as drivers can scan the error codes of their cars to diagnose problems, farmers would be able to triage problems in the field rather than at the dealership.

>> It's really interesting.

The dealerships, by and large, are sort of among the side of the farmers on this.

Because a lot has changed for them in the last ten years, too.

And this is not in anti-dealer or OEM.

This is just getting back to like it was 20 years ago.

When you bought a piece of equipment, you owned that piece of equipment.

>> Reporter: Problems with the tractor, be them mechanical, electronic, or software-related might put a tractor in lint mode, rendering it unable to do most work until a repair is completed.

Many technicians in Nebraska are an hour or more away from area farms.

The cost of a service call which includes drive time can run several hundred dollars even if it's just to scan a tractor's operating system.

Jeremy Davis runs a repair shop in Palmer, Nebraska.

The percentage of repairs he is unable to complete without access to diagnostic equipment has risen to a third of his potential work.

>> No matter what color the piece of equipment is, they've all got electronic equipment that needs to be calibrated and looked at to figure out what's happening.

>> Reporter: The proposed measures would not allow for the bypassing of safety or environmental controls.

Nor would they reveal intellectual property.

>> We're not trying to cut dealers out.

There's enough work out there for everybody.

We just need a little help from the manufacturer to be able to fix things, be able to take care of the customers that they created in the first place.

>> Reporter: John DEERE, case IS and Kubota ensures that equipment operates within its engineering parameters.

From "Market to Market," I'm Peter Tubbs.

>>> thousands of farmers are joined in the field by millions of bees.

Each face obstacles in getting their assignments done that are critical in the link of agricultural production.

For the honeybees, they are facing a major obstacle via colony collapse disorder.

If the fight against CCD is lost, $15 billion in agricultural production is in jeopardy.

Josh bitner has more on our cover story.

>> She's laying good eggs, and she is keeping the hive population up.

>> Reporter: Usda values national honey production well over $300 million annually.

But in beekeeper brothers Tim's home, this impacts their $2.5 billion apple industry, which accounts for the lion's share of the fruit's domestic production.

>> One link in the chain in providing food.

>> Reporter: For more than a decade, colony collapse disorder has captured headlines.

The syndrome causes adult worker bees to abandon the hive, leaving the queen and her immature BROOD to fend for themselves.

>> It is a concern.

Every year there are stories of beekeeper who's lose 50, 60, 70, 80% of their hives.

It's hit us in the past.

We're doing our best to prevent that from happening.

All they can say for sure is that it's a multifaceted problem.

>> Reporter: While the brothers say sporadic losses have plagued them for centuries, the usda has noted a substantial decline in new CCD cases in recent years.

But those closer to the hive parse those reports with an away of more than 60 underlying stressors like pesticides, disease pathogens, and environmental factors.

>> This mite has been described by many people as probably the number one threat to honeybees.

It has like these almost like hook-like mouth ripper type appendages.

What they use that to do is basically rip a hole in the exoskeleton of the honeybee.

>> Reporter: This doctor is a post doctoral pathology research associate with Washington State university.

She says invasive SIMBIATES like this mite attract several other diseases and eventually overcome bee's immune systems.

>> Imagine having a parasite living on you that's about the size of a dinner plate that's feeding on you at all times.

>> Reporter: Decreased flying time and the inability to pollinate are among the negative results from this relationship.

>> Bees, just like any other animals, can get viruses.

We do not have any good treatments, much like we do not have a good treatment for the common cold.

>> Reporter: Employing a multipronged approach to boost pollinator populations, this doctor is an entomologist specializing in honeybee analysis whose work grew out of a department of defense initiative involving fungi.

Harvest time.

Paul is a purveyor and promoter of what he calls high-quality gourmet and immune-supportive mushrooms.

Post-9/# 1, the federal government sought extract samples from fungi perfecti as research into safeguards against a possible chemical weapons attack.

Usda, Washington State, and them put their heads together in a partnership with higher education blossomed.

>> Over ten years ago, Paul was growing mushrooms and noticed that honeybees would forage in his mushroom beds.

Bees normally live in hollowed out logged where they would encounter fungi on a daily basis.

Now they live in these very nice wood hives that have less fungus in them.

And so we think that by allowing bees to eat fungal and fungal products again that this could help restore some of their health.

>> Reporter: He says research shows when bees consume liquids extracted from certain varieties of these mushrooms, it cuts viral levels a thousandfold.

>> Those fungi tend to produce a whole range of anti-microbial compounds.

>> Reporter: The natural pesticide is good news for Aaron, who manages a 69-acre apple orchard in the evergreen state.

>> You couldn't set enough fruit without the bees.

You would get some pollination through other insects or things like that, but you wouldn't get near the crop to make it effective farming to make it profitable if you didn't have the bees.

>> Reporter: While the Coronavirus pandemic create someday hurdles in supply chains and cleaning procedures, the state traffic on the roads to market have cleared substantially.

Hundreds of their hives crisscross the U.S. on truck beds every year to pollinate tree fruit and nuts before rounding out the summer in honey production.

>> We have to wait for the sun to go down because the bees will be flying all around the orchard.

When it is dark like this, the bees will all be home, we'll gather them up and take them to a different location.

>> Reporter: With nutritional testing underway, researchers at Washington State university hope to eventually petition the food and drug administration for approval of fungal extracts as a livestock food additive for bees.

>> They're doing a lot of work to try to improve bee health and really appreciative of their efforts.

>> Reporter: For "Market to Market," I'm Josh Bitner.

>>> Next, the "Market to Market" report.

>> Corn traded above $6 for part of the week as a combination of continued pressure by China for some of the old crop.

And weather conditions affecting planting of the new crop BUOYED prices.

For the week may gain 14 cents while the nearby corn contract added 8 cents.

A run on soy oil kept the bulls in the soy complex.

May soybeans improved 30 cents.

May meal increased a dollar.

May cotton expanded by $1.31 per hundred weight.

Over in the dairy parlor, May class 3 milk futures fell 46 cents.

A down week in the livestock sector.

Feeders declined $5.90.

And plummeted $7.25 or nearly 7%.

In the currency markets U.S. dollars index lost 63 ticks.

May crude oil added $3.74 per barrel.

Gold improved $35.80 per ounce.

And the Goldman Sachs jumped almost 18 points to finish at 48945.

Now here to provide insight is regular market analyst Elaine Kub.

Hey, Elaine.

>> Hello, Paul.

>> So, wheat is an easy story to start with this week because it rallied like the corn and soybeans did.

But the question, though, is wheat a follower, or is wheat going to be a leader in the grains?

>> yeah.

I don't know it is such an easy story because that has been a mystery in the past couple of months.

Why hasn't it followed corn and soybean more particularly?

And I took a look at this.

You think about drought in the United States now.

The high plains, Colorado is a big wheat producer.

North Dakota is the number one wheat producer.

And it has large pockets of extreme drought.

So, actually I kind of was feeling that wheat should be following more, or, like you say, take the leadership role.

But it is such a haves and have not story when you look at Kansas, the crop is pretty luscious.

It's 55% good to excellent rated so it's not outstanding, and there are portions of Kansas basically anything anywhere West of highway 385 all through the high plains is going to still be dry.

But, nevertheless, there is enough wheat there and certainly from a stock use perspective here in the United States and internationally.

We're not in the position of running out of wheat.

And we did see that in export sales this week, too.

That was a very disappointing report for wheat.

It was actually net reductions.

This wasn't the week for wheat to be taking the lead.

>> Is this a wave right now in the sense of do I need to be making some sales right now because this wave is almost done?

Is there more to it in the next two weeks?

>> I don't know.

See, I am of the opinion that all of these grain markets sort of should in a rational market sort of move together.

We're going to talk about I'm sure all of the reasons to be bullish about corn and soybeans and feed grains as the season goes on.

So, to the extent that wheat can follow along with that, we do have motivating prices.

If you're in the position to be PLABTing spring week and looking at a 675 price this September, yeah, that's motivating.

But if it's going to keep following along with other bullish greens, let it.

>> where do you want to start in corn?

Because you could talk about the weather.

You could talk about the drain on old crop.

You could talk about the weather not being dry.

What's the biggest story in corn this week?

>> I'm going to split the difference.

You talked about old crop and you talked about new crop.

But what about the stuff right in the middle of this Brazilian crop, the second crop and third crop from Brazil which is expected to be record large in 2021.

Even if it was just a little bit of a yield adjustment because of the weather going on there, that would still be a story, but because we are so short or expected to be so short on corn supplies here in this country over the summer, or the globe was really relying on that Brazilian crop coming in and weaving some of that shortage.

So that I think was the weather story this past week, and going forward as well.

>> The weather story in Brazil, in South America, you're saying?

But what about the story here?

There were pictures in the corn for a week, and there's 50s for another week.

There's a lot of people -- some put some corn in a little early, maybe put some beans in early.

At what point do we start getting concerned that the corn is not going into the ground soon enough?

>> yeah, yeah.

And I was in the camp that absolutely you should be pushing that starting line as fast as you can this year with the intention of trying to hit the September market.

September futures alone are worth 17 cents more than December future.

So if you can get your corn out of the harvesting faster and get it to the market faster, there was an incentive to do that.

But actually when you look at the cash market, there's actually a dollar inverse between old crop prices now and new crop prices now.

But those new crop prices start September 1st if you're looking at cash bids in southern Illinois.

They're about 5% planted statewide.

There is this incentive to do that.

But if the ground's not fit, if it's not warm enough in our seven to ten-day forecast does not seem to support that, you're not going to get the stuff out of the ground by August.

You're not going to hit that market.

We just have to make peace with the fact that we're looking at an inverted and not as great of opportunities once September and October roll around.

>> I want to touch on this just very quickly.

The basis for corn right now.

What does that mean, and why should I be paying attention to it?

>> it's very hot.

It's hot in a local basis, in a nationwide basis.

Even my local elevator here is option.

It's zero basis which virtually never happens North, South did.

Communicate or any time.

Not since July of 2013.

And that's kind of the time frame that I think folks are going to have the back of their mind when we head towards summer.

It's a bullish signal that the market is short on grain and they want it coming to the market.

That means wild things can happen.

It could become wildly more inverted than the 75 cents it is now.

Basis may start going nuts this summer if processors and feed lots and people who need the grain can't get their hands on it.

Whatever crazy thing happens, the point I'm trying to make is that basis is likely to continue to be volatile all through the summer.

>> It almost sounds like you're quoting an old carpenter's song.

We've only just become when it comes to basis in corn.

But what about in soybeans, Elaine?

It was a breakout star at the end of '20.

But it's kind of -- it's playing more of a supporting role.

Does it have star power?

>> I think it will -- these are not bad prices.

Nobody complains about 14 something dollars old crop beans.

New crop beans are not in the teens, but they may or may not get there depending on what the weather does.

But I think you're right to point out that it feels like there is a lid on this market.

And part of the reason I think for that is the ocean shipping rates.

Those have gone up.

You're looking at sending soybeans from the PNW to Japan.

If that's what we're basing our prices on, that's up more than last year at this time, 92 cents a bushel.

But it's up compared to four-year averages in everything.

>> Are you in the camp yet to make any sale if I had some of that old crop left, do I sell that?

Or hold out, let it ride?

>> if you've got old crop anything, I would be inclined to just wait and see what happens this summer.

If it's not hedged.

>> All right.

What about the new crop?

Are you making any sales there?

>> you want to be.

These are very good prices.

And that's the responsible thing to do from a risk management standpoint.

If I'm in the western cornBelt or even if I'm in the eastern cornBelt and I just want to gamble on the misfortunes of those of us in the western cornBelt, it's tempting to just kind of hold off and see how things go.

>> All right.

This livestock market, though, is, you talk about inverse.

The easy headline story might be that it's a feed issue, it's an input issue.

But there is this consumer story out there, and I'm going to start with Aaron in Iowa to start a discussion.

He says couldn't corn keep chugging higher end of summer right as cattle season declines for more margin fund?

There are a couple of points in that question to unpack.

>> I like Aaron's sarcasm.

I think he's absolutely right to be thinking about feed costs.

If folks do not have summer feed costs already locked in, five months ago would've been the right time to do it, but now would be the next best time to do that.

I don't know that necessarily beef prices is stopped out forever.

We've still got chances here in the next three, four weeks for seasonally higher movement.

But then things get a little bit more grim.

Absolutely the margins are tightening up for feedlot operations.

What more do you want me to say about that?

>> well, yes, I don't know what more you do say about that.

But let's go into the consumer part of this thing.

Let's talk about boxed beef.

That has become a topic.

The consumer is buying.

But is the consumer buying everything?

We'll get to hogs in a moment.

Is this the beginning of higher prices, curing higher prices in the live cattle market?

>> not necessarily.

Okay.

So from a beef retail consumer standpoint, it's $276 and they're going up $3 every day, not every day but day by day they have a tendency to do that.

They're very hot.

And the packers are making just tons of money.

They're making $500 a head you could estimate.

So, I think there is potential for the beef prices themselves to go higher if you start looking at, and you mentioned in the show earlier, people have money in their pockets.

They're going to go out grilling and spending money even at restaurants from a retail perspective for both beef and pork.

It's the question of are the packers paying back to the feed lots and contributing down the economic chain?

And that has been the real challenge for the industry.

To some extent, the feed lots have been successful week by week holding back their sales till late in the week, holding firm on their offers.

And it worked this week to some degree.

Maybe a dollar.

We went up to $120 a head for live cattle traded in the South.

That's a dollar improvement.

It's $10 improvement since January.

But considering the packers are making $500 a head, it's not enough.

With the feed lots, just don't have enough power to take back, to claw back enough of that market share.

>> We'll continue this discussion.

I need to discuss the hog market.

I don't know what you say.

We're still above 100.

However, it was a pretty tough week.

Why?

>> yeah.

Well, it's a confluence of factors.

And this was true for live cattle and feeder cattle.

The futures trade collapsed.

In the hog market you saw the April contract was expiring.

You had daily trading limits go off.

There was a fairly disappointing -- just a confluence of factors.

To see some moment of liquidation like this happen.

Not terribly surprising.

It's a big wobble, but I don't think it's more than a wobble.

All of the factors that have been supporting hogs remain.

Actually the pork cutout state high this week, it's still above $112.

You've got China's GDP still growing something like 13% year over year.

But even quarterly it's still growing.

I wouldn't worry too much about the futures losses.

I worry about some of the fundamental factors in the beef market that we talked about.

But the hog market, I think the wobble will correct itself.

>> The wobble will stabilize.

All right, Elaine Kub, thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

>> absolutely.

>>> that'll do it for this installment of "Market to Market."

We will talk more in "market plus."

Find that on our website of markettomarket.org.

It is spring field work season, and all that time in the cab means you can focus on our three podcast offerings of market analysis, market plus and the MTM MTOM show.

Subscribe today where you get your podcasts.

Next week, we look at the study of easing animal pain.

Thank you so very much for watching.

Please have a great week.

♪♪ ♪♪ >>> "Market to Market" is a production of Iowa PBS which is solely responsible for its content.

>>> what's the most complex industry on Earth?

It's not genetics or meteorology or logistics.

It's a business that involves them all.

It's farming.

Thank you, farmers, from pioneer.

>>> tomorrow, for over 100 years, we've worked to help our customers be ready for tomorrow.

Trust in tomorrow.

Information is available from a Grenell mutual agent today.

>>> This week on "Market to Market."

The livestock sector studies pain in food animals.

And market analysis with mark gold.

"Market to Market," the weekly journal of rural America.