(lighthearted music) - Hello, and welcome to "Prairie Pulse."

Coming up a little bit later in our show, we will learn about the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile Site in Cooperstown, North Dakota.

But first, joining me now is Randy Martinson, a farming market analyst.

Randy, thanks for joining us today.

- All right.

Well, thank you.

- As we get started, tell the folks a little bit about yourself and your background.

- Okay, well, I lived, born and raised in North Dakota, farm in Southeast part of the state down by Milnor.

Went to high school at Milnor, went to college at science school, went through their ag business program, and then came back and farmed for a few years.

Then decided to expand my education at NDSU.

Didn't quite make it all the way through to finish, but I wound up working in the commodity marketing business and have been there for 30 years since.

(chuckles) - So how did you become interested in agriculture, the industry and the market?

- Well, being born into it.

I mean, it was kind of, once you get the dirt under your fingernails, it's hard to get it out of.

And so agriculture has always been kind of our passion, and for my family and also for the state.

It's a big thing as far as the state is concerned.

I figured if when I left the farm, I wanted to do something to help farmers and that's kind of led me into doing this risk management, which ties together the marketing and also the crop insurance.

- So what is risk management and analysis when it comes to agriculture?

- Well, it's looking at, at helping the producers basically protect themselves for what they're going to grow, you know, to help them get a better price for their product, timing their sales when the market is saying when they want the product instead of when the bank account says they need to sell crop to get revenue.

So it's kind of helping them to determine what's the best time to give somebody else the risk of the price change or whether they should keep it themselves.

And then we also look at helping them with the crop insurance side, which helps guarantee a certain amount of revenue on a yearly basis.

- Well, I think you said you farmed a little bit and did some other things, but what really pointed you and got you involved with that ag risk management part of it?

- Well, when I left farming, it was kind of the thing.

I wanted to do something to help producers and be able to make them better managers to stay on the land.

And so it was something I thought would be the best avenue to go to bring something back to agriculture.

- Yeah.

Well, harvest has started for many farmers.

How's the season looking so far from the market perspective?

- Well, actually a lot better than last year.

You know, when you compare this year to last year, our prices are quite a bit higher, which is mainly due to the dry conditions and also due to a couple of different wars that are going on.

So that really helped push prices.

And then our demand is a little bit better.

Of course, we have China's, of course, the big marketer as far as our soybeans are concerned, and they're back in the US market buying soybeans, which really does help North Dakota out quite a bit because most of our soybeans have been having to be exported.

Now with the crush plants, we do have a little bit more use, domestic use, but still China's our biggest buyer of soybeans.

And with them back in, it's certainly helped our market.

- Yeah.

Well, going into the harvest this year.

You know, what was the market looking like following the drought that we had this season?

- Well, we were kind of a little bit apprehensive because we didn't quite know how the crop was going to come in.

You know, we had an extreme dry conditions.

The drought, or the heat actually hit in June.

So we were kind of worried about what the small grains crop was going to look like.

It actually made it through the heat a little bit better than we anticipated because it was done maturity-wise.

Corn and soybeans, though, that's going to be pretty variable.

So that's still one that the jury's still out on.

We're trying to get harvested now, which with the rains, it's causing more problems.

So it's looking a little bit better.

As far as is this going to be a great year for producers?

No.

It's going to be, I think, an overall disappointing year, but one that could have been worse.

- Well, why do drought conditions have such a big effect?

Why can't farmers just water their crop?

- (chuckles) Well, they'd like to, but the cost.

You know, there's a big cost in irrigation and there is quite a bit of irrigation that does take place across North Dakota, especially Southeast when potatoes are irrigated in some of the cornfields, but mainly it's due to cost.

And soil types, some soils you just can't put that much water on.

And some you would have to run into the irrigation all the time just because of how thin some of the soils are.

But overall, we kind of depend on mother nature to kind of give us what she can to make the crop.

- Yeah, well, with mother nature, how long are these drought conditions expected to last?

- You know, that's the million-dollar question right now.

You know, right now we have seen some pretty good rains move across the state, which has helped, you know, replenish the supply of moisture in some areas.

So some areas have started to crawl out of the drought situation.

As far as the eastern part, we have not made it out of there yet.

We're still pretty dry.

You know, at this point, we hope we can get enough rain this fall or snow, which I hate to say, to get us through the drought situation and get back to normal.

But at this point, it looks like we'll still have some concerns going into spring.

- Yeah, well, some have predicted a drier winter, but whatever.

How has this past drought affected soil quality in the Red River Valley?

Has it changed it any?

- It has.

I mean, as you see the dry conditions, you start seeing salts come up a little bit, so it does create a little bit more of a problem.

But it also, the drier the soil gets to be, you can't go in and work the fields in the fall.

So there gets to be a little bit more of a compounding problem as you move forward.

And that's one of the big things we'll deal with now is if we don't get much more rain, a lot of producers will forego working their fields for the fall, gets that tillage done, which will kind of push back some of the work that gets done in the spring.

- Yeah, so go back to what kind of condition the soil was in at the start of planting season, and you said then the drought kind of hit, and what's it like now?

Is it better, worse, about the same?

- We're a little bit worse.

I mean, the way we started the year we started off cool and wet, and it was a tough planting season, and it looked like we were going to have trouble.

Well, then all of a sudden we warmed up quickly and the rain shut off.

And what happened is, is that the crops that got planted, they had moisture to get started, but they didn't have moisture to put their roots deeper into the ground to get down into that deeper soil moisture level.

And that is what created some of the problems as far as the crop developments are concerned and why our yields are going to be off a little bit this year.

- So how does a farmer decide what type of crops he's going to plant, or does he plant the same thing every year?

- Well, I mean, there's rotations.

You know, we want to put things into a rotation because you want to break up the soil differently and different crops have different, you know, they perform differently on the soils.

And putting the same crop in year after year, you kind of deplete your potential for yield.

So you want to do a rotation and it helps with weeds, it helps with bugs and all that.

So for the most part our rotation up here in the Northern Plains now has become corn and soybeans and wheat is kind of leaving it.

So we are becoming more like the corn belt where we actually have just a two-crop rotation, especially the southeast corner.

You get a little farther out across most of the states, you get a little bit more opportunity or a little bit more crops that you can raise.

But you still look at rotations to kind of help with the soil.

- Are there crops that have a better outlook in the market compared to other crops, soybeans, corn?

- Most definitely, yeah.

I mean, like right now, you're looking at, the way we look at the market, wheat probably isn't holding a great amount of opportunity because of the issues going on with Russia and the Black Sea area and their exports.

We are too expensive in the export market.

For corn, our domestic demand and our exports have been phenomenal, and that has really given corn an opportunity, and that's why guys like to raise corn or the producers like to plant a lot more corn.

And soybeans, as long as we got China in the market and with our crush because of the biofuels industry, that certainly has become a little bit of a bright spot.

- Yeah.

How do farmers determine the conditions of their crop?

- Basically walk in the fields.

You know, go out there and walk and see what it looks like.

And that also gives you a good indication of what you need to be doing, you know, as far as agronomy is concerned too, whether you should be spraying or for bugs or different weeds.

So I mean, basically you got to get out and look at them.

- Why are some of the crops doing better than others?

What sort of drives the demand?

- Well, there's a couple things.

You know, for growth-wise, what's really helped is some of the technology that's come into the seed development.

That really has helped corn with some drought-tolerant genes that have been worked into the plants, or into the seed.

But then on the other side when you look at the demand side, it's just, you know, where we can find sources to move the crop, like soybeans.

We're really a... Our soybeans have to be exported.

You know, somewhere between half to 60% of our soybeans that we raise in the US had to be exported.

Now with the development of the biofuels, we're starting to use a lot more of the soybeans domestically to make the renewable diesel fuel and the sustainable aviation fuel.

So now we're starting to see a lot more domestic demand, which is something that's good because that continues and it's a renewable, so it helps.

Same with corn, you know, feed demand is our biggest one.

So that's the animals that it goes to.

We export quite a bit and when we stopped bringing cattle in from Mexico, Mexico became a huge buyer of our corn.

So we created a demand source there.

And ethanol has been a big one.

Now, if we pump the E15, that will create a little bit more demand for corn having to go towards ethanol.

- You mentioned something about seed development.

Can you talk a little bit about, what do you mean by seed development?

- Well, each company that sells seed does what they call grow-outs.

And they take traits and they breed it into their seeds, into their product so that it can be tolerant to rootworm or whether it can be tolerant to drought or certain weeds or certain herbicides.

And each development certainly helps make that plant that much better.

And one of the things they've come with over the last few years for corn is putting in a drought-tolerant gene so that the crop actually can slow down its growth and kind of go into dormant when it's dry.

And then once the rains come, it can kick back up again and start growing.

And that has been a huge, as far as the Northern Plains is concerned, to help expand corn acres up here.

- You know, you talked livestock.

Has the drought affected the areas of ag as it concerns livestock?

- Oh, most definitely, because pasture.

I mean, a lot of the cow-calf guys, they have to have the cows out on pasture.

And right now, the pastures have started to deteriorate pretty rapidly.

And we still, we're just leaving September going into October.

Most would like to be able to keep the cows out on pasture for another month, but there's some having to bring them in and start feeding early, which means that our feed supplies are going to deplenish a lot faster than what we anticipated as we're going to have to feed the cows for an extra month or two months than what would be normal.

- Yeah.

Well, in addition, do the poor soil conditions, whether it's because of the drought or whatever, does that also affect livestock?

- It does, I mean, of course, without rain, I mean, that's really the biggest thing that we need to make a crop or to make a hay crop or whatever.

And with you take the rain away, even the poorer soils are going to see the deprement a lot faster than the little bit heavier soils.

So anything that's... You kind of think of Western North Dakota, they're really in a lot more hurt because they have thinner soils, they don't have the capacity to hold moisture like we do here when we do get it.

And that has really kind of brought their conditions of their crop and their pastures down a lot faster.

- Yeah, do experts know what the factors are that lead to these drought conditions?

- Just too little rain, you know?

(chuckles) You know, really they don't.

I mean, it's just the phenomenons that happen as far as even cyclicals.

You know, it's really just cycles as far as the weather goes.

Everything has a cycle, and weather's no different, and we're just now into a little bit of a dryer stretch.

- Yeah, you mentioned recent rain showers.

Is that gonna help with the condition or is it too little too late?

- It's too little too late right now as far as helping this year's crop, you know?

The farmer's motto is there's always next year, and right now this rain is helping to replenish for next year and help get us back to a little bit more normal soil moisture content as far as the soil is concerned.

Overall, the rains that we're seeing now is probably more depremental because it's slowing down the harvest.

Phenomenon that's going on right now is that the soybean meal demand is very strong.

And because we can't harvest soybeans, the crush plants can't get the soybeans, so there's getting to become a push to try to entice harvesting.

And with all the rain out there, it's gonna continue to slow.

And at some point it will bring down quality of the crop because the longer it sits out in the field ripe and ready to harvest, the worse the quality gets.

- On average, how much rain or moisture would we need in North Dakota or Red River Valley, whatever, to alleviate the effects of the drought?

- I think as far as the eastern part of the state is concerned, we could probably see a good 12 to 15 more inches before we get built back up to a normal soil pattern, soil moisture pattern.

- Another issue, and you mentioned diesel prices, another issue that's affecting many farmers is the rise in diesel prices.

Have you heard from any of your clients how they're dealing with this and how much it's affecting them?

- Well, yeah.

I mean, the thing with diesel fuel is it touches every single product that's made, sold or moved as far as the US is concerned, because everything gets moved by diesel, whether it's by train or whether it's by truck.

So even the food in the grocery stores to all of our products that we raise on the farm and truck out, it's all touched by diesel fuel.

And a lot of producers are, I guess you'd have to say, are cutting back on what we call recreational tillage.

(chuckles) Not a lot of guys are going out doing a lot of extra field work because of the high cost of diesel fuel.

I mean, on average it costs $1,500 to fill up a tractor or a combine and you go through that a day.

You can burn that much in a day.

So a lot of them are looking at or hoping that we start to see diesel fuel prices start to see a little bit of a decline.

But the bigger thing is that they're just not looking at doing extra work in the fields until they see a little bit of a break.

- You know, with diesel prices and things like that you mentioned, how do these challenges compare to previous years right now?

- Boy, you know, I remember we had diesel fuel up quite high a few years back, but I mean, not to this extent.

So this one is hitting pretty hard.

But then you couple that with fertilizer costs are high, seed costs were high.

So this is, you know, the '26 crop was probably the second most expensive crop we ever saw put in as far as farmers are concerned.

2027 looks like it's going to be the most expensive crop we're ever going to plant as far as agriculture's concerned.

So those costs are quite large.

And as far as agriculture's concerned, we buy everything wholesale, or we buy everything retail, we sell everything wholesale, and so we go to the town and say, "What will you give us for this product?"

So it makes it tough to make the cash flow work sometimes.

- Well, you've been a little bit maybe on the negative side.

Are there any positive farmers can look forward to at the end of this year?

- You know, I mean, I think overall, I mean, the prices have certainly improved.

And so that's something that they're looking forward to.

You know, we've gotten some really good safety nets that have come out and helped the producers to help be able to lock in floors and lock in production so that they're protected for a certain level of crop production because of the crop insurance side.

And we've got demand back.

You know, we know China's going to be buying from us for the next three years.

So we know demand is there.

We know our renewable fuels is still moving forward.

So there are good bright spots out there that are helping to make next year maybe a little bit better.

(chuckles) - Well, and you mentioned crop insurance, but what resources can farmers use to help overcome challenges that are brought on by drought or too much rain or rising diesel prices or things like that?

- You know, like in our business, we help them protect those prices.

So I mean, I would look for somebody, an advisor that can help give you advice on when to look at taking advantage of prices when they're optimum for you.

And once you know your breakevens and what your cost potentially could be, then we can help kind of protect those and lock in those input costs or some of them anyway.

So that's one thing.

I think there's tools available to use to help protect yourself and to make it so that you're not as exposed to the higher prices.

- Well, I know when I talk, some people would say farmers are some of the biggest gamblers in the world.

It may not be like going to Vegas gambling, but they're taking a big risk when they plant a crop.

- You know, there's a lot of truth to that.

I mean, because you're throwing millions of dollars out into a field and you're basically dependent on what Mother Nature's going to bring for rain.

And if she decides she doesn't want to cooperate, you're in trouble because there's nothing you can do about that.

So yeah, I mean, it is a big gamble.

You know, there are tools to use to help limit that gamble a little bit.

And that's kind of where my company comes into play is we kind of help with that.

But overall, yeah, it is a big gamble.

- Yeah.

Well, with that said, if people are interested in learning more about the agriculture market or anything like this, where's the best place for them to go?

Where can they find out information?

- Well, they could go to our website.

You know, it's just martinsonag.com.

And we got a host of things out there, a lot of educational things, a lot of different things with crop insurance, with marketing, and just some good educational tools out there.

- Well, Randy, thanks for joining us today, and thanks for all the information.

- Yes, thank you.

- Stay tuned for more.

(lighthearted music) The Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile Site in Cooperstown, North Dakota consists of two Cold War-era nuclear missile facilities: the Oscar-Zero Missile Alert Facility where skilled technicians worked around the clock in anticipation of a launch order, and the November 33 Launch Facility which housed the missiles themselves.

Both of these facilities played an integral role in deterring enemy nations from attacking the United States.

They also served as a chilling reminder of a narrowly-avoided catastrophe.

(dramatic drumming music) - You know, to come here to Oscar-Zero, you have this long travel time out here to kind of a remote area of the United States.

We like to think we're not too remote, but just the feeling out here is the feeling of awe that you have this house behind me here, and then there's a hardened nuclear bunker beneath it that's one of the toughest nuclear bunkers that were ever built by the United States that we're aware of.

My name is Rob Branting.

I'm the historic site supervisor of the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile State Historic Site.

The November 33 Launch Facility and the Oscar-Zero Missile Alert Facility were Cold War installations of the US Air Force supporting the Minuteman Missile Program.

These sites were built out here north of Cooperstown, North Dakota between 1964 and 1966, just after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

We are at Oscar-Zero, and we're about an hour and a half northwest of Fargo from here.

- This is our protagonist, Minuteman.

A new muscle in this country's armament of peace-preserving force.

(dramatic music) - So at this stage of the Cold War, we're looking at a little bit of a stabilization of the American nuclear strategic deterrent, where the American nuclear force is stabilizing, whereas the Soviet force is still growing a little bit.

But both sides are realizing during the 1960s, because of the instant retaliatory capability of the Minuteman Missile Force, and then later on with the Soviet nuclear forces kind of on the opposite side, there was no win scenario about attacking a nation that could utterly destroy them.

(bomb explodes) North Dakota in the early days of the Cold War, there wasn't a lot of prominence up here, but the air defense mission during the 1950s is what really put North Dakota into the spotlight.

They started out with Air Force stations near Finley, Fortuna, and Minot.

Beyond that, they went to interceptor bases up there at Minot and Grand Forks Air Force Bases.

At the same time, the late 1950s, Strategic Air Command was looking to disperse their bomber fleet.

They pretty much had a too many eggs in one basket type of scenario, and then the US Air Force realizes North Dakota is an ideal location for locating the Minuteman Missile Force.

(elevator whirring) They really wanted to make the Minuteman Force well protected, so they wanted it to last a little longer during a nuclear conflict.

So you're looking underground here, you're 50 feet underground, you have these thousand pound per square inch over pressure protected buildings.

They wanted to ensure that if you had this stable nuclear force, you can commit to what was known as a second strike, that if even under surprise attack conditions the retaliatory force could still fly and basically avenge a nuclear attack.

Now, at the time, there were normally 10 people here.

There could be more with remain overnight crews with maintainers and extra security forces.

Top side, you had a facility manager, a cook, and then two teams of security personnel.

So their average day, they might be responding to alerts.

Other times, they're doing maintenance and basically getting ready to support the missile crews downstairs as needed.

(dramatic music) So if a launch was ordered by the president, essentially, it's coming down the channels of nuclear command and control.

Telephone lines, if the telephone lines are not working, they had satellite communications, radio, a number of ways to get the message.

So you're down there in the launch control center, many alarms, many printouts are going on at the same time, but they're going through the paces to authenticate that message, to unlock the missiles, and then go about the launch sequence.

We still actually don't know where these missiles are headed.

A lot of that targeting information is still classified as far as we know.

The thought here though is that some of these Grand Forks sites were the closest Minuteman installations to the Moscow region.

So the thought is many of these missiles were probably landing in the Soviet Union.

(rocket roaring) The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991, there's a decision on both sides that inspectors will be sent to both nations to see, oversee kind of the drawdown of nuclear forces at the end of the Cold War.

So in 1997, this site closed down.

The missile wing was deactivated in late 1998.

But in 2008, the State Historical Society of North Dakota negotiated basically a deal with the US Air Force to take this site on as a historic site.

And by July of 2009, they were already starting to give tours out here.

(lighthearted music) We've had a lot of interesting visitors over the years.

We've had folks from Norway come through.

We had a gentleman from the Netherlands.

We've had tours from Russia.

They've been very interesting to engage with the conversation about looking at these sites and realizing maybe they might have been pointing the missiles at them.

When we have international visitors, they're kind of just interested a lot of times in just the wide spaces of North Dakota, of course.

But then they come out here to Oscar-Zero and they're really amazed to see how the American nuclear deterrent worked, especially folks from Western Europe who understood that they stood underneath the American nuclear umbrella, and this is the home base of it.

(dramatic drumming music) We feel it's important to preserve this facility because we like to think this facility out here in North Dakota represents kind of a history of just that second half of the Cold War period where things are starting to stabilize at least in terms of strategic nuclear weapons.

You know, I'm out here sometimes by myself in the wintertime, and it's still awe-inspiring to go underground to see these launch control centers, to see where the launch keys were, and to understand the consequences of that key turn that luckily that never happened.

We try to get across the notion that, of course, if these missiles were ever used that represented mission failure, they're here to preserve the nuclear deterrent, the status quo of the Cold War to try to keep the peace between the major world powers.

We still live in relative peace between the major powers today, but these weapons ultimately represented a cataclysm that we never wanted to see.

- Well, that's all we have on "Prairie Pulse" this week, and as always, thanks for watching.

(lighthearted music) - [Announcer] Funded by the members of Prairie Public.