- Hello everyone and welcome to Sunup.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We hope you're having a great holiday season.

It's the time of year when we like to look back on the past 12 months and look ahead at what the new year may bring.

Today we're covering crop in livestock markets as well as agricultural policy.

Let's begin with Sunup's, Kurtis Hair and OSU, extension livestock marketing specialist, Dr. Darryl Peele.

- It's that time in the show where we talk to livestock marketing specialist Dr. Darryl Peele for the end of the year wrap up segment.

So Darrell, it's been quite an interesting year.

It - Has been a very eventful year for cattle markets.

You know, we've continued to see prices develop strongly in the face of ever tightening supplies of cattle through the year.

But we've had lots of issues along the way.

We've had drought, we've had lots of rain at times.

We've had all kinds of things impacting these markets as we go.

- So let's kinda start just here locally with Oklahoma drought really kind of reared its ugly head in the summer.

So how did that really impact cattle prices here?

- Well, I think what happened in Oklahoma, because it was so dry in July, August, September, and through most of October, we saw early movement of feeder cattle this fall.

And so we had big runs in September and October, and then that led to tighter runs after that because the cattle moved.

And so it changed the timing of cattle.

It, it put some additional strength in the markets late in the year.

And, and again, we've continued to see, you know, we've had record prices across the board for cattle at some time in oak in, in 2024.

And, and we're finishing the year very strong and, and maybe back close to those record levels.

- And for stocker cattle that had a, the, the drought had an impact, especially when it comes to wheat pasture right here.

Yeah.

- You know, we had very late development of wheat pasture, looked like we weren't gonna have it.

And, and then with the rains we got starting at the very end of October, you know, some wheat pasture comes on and so there was some additional demand.

Then after that, kind of relieved producers from the standpoint of, of the stocker cattle and the wheat pasture grazing and also provided a lot of relief to cow calf producers by refilling some ponds and replenishing their water supplies for the winter.

- It was definitely much needed.

So let's kind of take a step back.

One thing we, we talked a lot about was herd rebuilding.

And has that, have you seen that that's happened at all?

And kind of talk, walk us through why the herd was shrinking.

- Yeah, we've been in contraction mode in the, in the cattle industry, sort of cyclically for several years.

We peaked in 2019, got a little bit smaller in 2019, 2020, but then the drought kicked in on a national basis and sort of around the country in 2021, 22,23 that prompted additional liquidation.

So we find ourselves coming into 2024 with the smallest inventory of cattle, depending on which category you look at, but all of them are multi-decade lows in cattle numbers.

And so, you know, that that has set up the, the strength that we're seeing generally in markets.

Obviously it has implications for beef production as well.

Now interestingly enough, beef production fell in 2023, but then in 2024 we expected additional reductions, but we really didn't see as much as we thought.

In fact, ended ending up the year we're gonna be about equal to last year.

And that's because feedlots have been able to not see their cattle inventories drop as far as we would have expected.

But it's a temporary thing.

It's kind of, you know, they're trying to hang on to numbers as well as best they can.

And so they've been able to avoid the reductions in inventories that would lead to tighter beef production in 2024.

- And so, and for the world, how is that impacting things as well?

- Well, you know, we've had pretty strong global markets as well.

You know, our trade situation, it's, it's evolving as expected in, in the, in the, given the US situation, we're seeing increased beef imports because we've got tight supplies and high prices in the US We're also seeing some reduction in exports because we don't have as much beef and it's very expensive.

But at the same time, markets are still pretty strong.

In fact, late in the year we started to see some sort of recovery in some of our markets so that they either were not down or not down as much as they had been earlier.

So all in all, you know, the global market has held up pretty well, continues to be very supportive of the US market.

- And sticking with this and, you know, shifting towards policy, which I know is not necessarily your specialty when it comes to US politics, but with a new administration coming in and the, you know, the, the, the word tariffs is floating around, how is the market reacting at all yet to that and what do you expect going into the new year?

- Well, I think the, the main issue right now is just uncertainty, right?

We just don't know what's gonna happen.

You know, tariffs have the potential to be a significant negative impact on much of agriculture, including the cattle and beef markets.

But right now the biggest issue is we simply don't know what the new policies will be.

So I think there's gonna be a lot of uncertainty.

There will continue to be a lot of volatility in the markets.

And so even though we have a very bullish outlook in general from a supply standpoint in the cattle and beef industries, there's also a lot of potential for markets to be very volatile.

That means producers need to sort of continue to do risk management and protect those points in time when they have to make marketing decisions.

- Well, in all that, we actually had kind of an interesting year and a really great year for this summer.

'cause me and you, we went to Scotland together and that was a great time.

- Yeah.

You know, as part of a study of abroad course, we got the chance to go to Scotland and, and look at agriculture over there.

We were able to visit the University of Edinburgh vet school and, and do a number of interviews and see a lot of things as well as to be part of the student when they first arrived in, in the year.

So another good trip.

- Yeah, and just seeing how, you know, cattle production works over there was really, really interesting to me.

'cause we get to talk about it here in Oklahoma in the cold, but over there in the wet and the muggy, it was just a little different experience, - Very different, you know, lot to learn about these markets.

They are very global in nature.

So a really good experience for us as well as for the students.

All righty, - Thanks Daryl.

Dr. Daryl Peele, livestock marketing specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

Did you know OSU extension supports Oklahoma farmers and ranchers with mental health resources and programming?

If you or anyone you know is experiencing mental health challenges called the Comprehensive Crisis Response Lifeline at 9 8 8 or go online to the OSU extension website dealing with farm stress.

For more information about local resources, suicide prevention, finances, or disaster recovery, just go to sunup.OKstate.edu.

- We're talking now with Dr. Amy Hagerman, our OSU extension AG policy specialist.

And Amy, as we kind of reflect back on the year, that was quite a lot happened this year in terms of, of news cycle, but in terms of policy, not so much.

- Yeah, we definitely had a lot happening in terms of using policy in Oklahoma because we had a very disaster intensive year here in the state.

But in terms of new policy development, not a lot happened in this year.

We came into it with high hopes of having a farm bill in this year and actually there was some really good signs that that would happen in May with the markup of the Farm Food and National Security Act and the House Ag Committee.

But then as we got closer to the election, really the, the focus just shifted over onto the election for many of our congressional members.

And then all eyes were of course on the presidential election and that slowed down the whole process.

- I know we're really waiting to see kind of how things shape up with the new administration, but in terms of the election though, those months when there was a lot of discussion between the candidates, really vastly a different approaches to ag policy.

- Yeah, very different priorities in terms of how they would address the challenges that we are facing here in agriculture.

Challenges like inflation, labor shortages, international trade market price dynamics, these are all the things that were part of the discussion when it came to agriculture and not just for our presidential candidates, but also for our various congressional members that were running for reelection across the country in how that would shape our agriculture committees going forward into 2025.

- As we wind down the year and look ahead, you know, at some things that we can start talking about for next year, there's some framework in place already that may influence the next iteration of the Farm bill.

- Yes, absolutely.

So with the leadership in the House Ag Committee remaining pretty consistent, but then having a turnover into Republican leadership and Senator Bozeman taking over in the out committee on the Senate side of things, we can expect that to be a pretty solid framework because Senator Bozeman was quite supportive of the house bill that passed.

And so we could kind of look at that and say, okay, this is what we might expect from a Farm bill going forward.

So increasing reference prices to reflect higher costs of production, lifting up that safety net to reflect what producers are really needing to cover on their operations, looking at maybe some expansions in crop insurance and the area coverage options under crop insurance.

Also, you know, some of the other provisions around conservation, making sure that we have adequate conservation dollars to address some of the conservation challenges that have resulted from some of these big natural disasters that we've experienced in the last year.

These will probably all be conversation points that I would expect to form the framework of whatever our farm bill looks like in the next year.

- Is there any way to, to think about what a possible timeline will be?

Obviously there's a lot to discuss and I know you'll be keeping a close eye on it updating us along the way, but - Yeah, - Can you, can you, I hate to use the word speculate, but - Yeah, - Can you - Kind of predict how that might roll out?

You know, I think it'll be in the new Congress.

I, I think at this point probably there are a number of things that need to be addressed in this lame duck Congress that it's gonna, the farm bill's gonna get probably pushed.

So I'm anticipating an extension throughout till September 30th, 2025 and that that timeline will somehow lead up to that September 30th deadline.

But the pressure is on in terms of a need for a new farm bill updates, the world is much different than it was in 2018 when the last farm bill was put into place.

So I am anticipating that the pressure is there from agriculture groups, from our state secretaries of agriculture as well.

They have all emphasized the need for a new farm bill in 2025.

So I do expect to see something happening prior to that September 30th deadline for whatever extension is passed on the Farm Bill - In addition to the farm bill.

There's some, there's some other possibilities in terms of policies that have been stated that, that are coming, or at least will be debated and discussed that could impact agriculture.

- Yeah, there's some key provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that will need to be reviewed again in 2025.

They would expire in 2025.

And so I expect there to be some discussion around taxation.

I also expect there to be some discussion around trade.

You know, we're all watching this potential for tariff situation very, very closely.

The impacts that could have on agriculture and especially the potential for retaliatory tariffs as well in the coming year.

You know, also the debt ceiling is being discussed in 2025.

It's going to be a very busy policy year - And so you will need to come on Sunup a lot it sounds like, and, and keep us all informed and obviously be a resource for, for folks in Oklahoma.

- Yeah, I look forward to the discussions.

- All right, Amy, thanks a lot.

Thanks for all you do for Sunup throughout the year and, and happy New Year to you and your family.

- Thank you.

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- Good morning everyone.

This is state climatologist, Gary McManus with your Mesonet weather report.

Okay, we're at the end of the year.

That means it's time for one of our favorite Mesonet graphics and that is the 2024 year in extremes for the Oklahoma Mesonet.

So we go through all of our 120 sites, find the craziest extremes, and for Oklahoma, you know, that could be just about anything.

Every year we have crazy extremes and we put it on a map and show it to the public.

So let's take a look at that map and we can go through a few of those that really stand out.

Okay, here you see the Oklahoma Mesonet extremes map for 2024.

Let's start out in the panhandle.

We see those rainfall amounts, you know that 7.67 inches of rainfall from Goodwill on June 19th.

That 24 hour rainfall total is a thousand year rainfall total.

So really a lot of rainfall during that event.

And you know, the day before we had 3.62 inches of rainfall at hooker in an hour.

So that rainfall was the extreme of all extremes.

We had water and Lake Optima, lots of flooding out in that region, especially in Texas County.

And I can show you the rainfall map for that timeframe.

Again, this does point out that was a thousand year rainfall.

We had lots of seven inch amounts, six inch amounts in that radar.

derived product.

You can see 7.55 inches at goodwill.

Again, that's a 24 hour.

I can actually show you a map of that rainfall event.

Again, you can see out in the the eastern and central panhandle, we had five to close to eight inches of rainfall.

So, and again, a lot of that fell in just the 24 hour period.

In fact, much of that fell in the 12 hour period.

Staying on rainfall, we had the greatest statewide average November rainfall in state history was 7.84 inches.

We just went over that a few Sunups ago, but we can talk about it again.

You know, our previous highest November rainfall total was November, 2015, was 6.05 inches.

We absolutely blew that out of the water.

One of the differences between 2015's record rainfall total, and I can show you that map right now, the difference between 2015 and 2024 is this rainfall was much more widespread, at least on the heavy side.

Whereas in 2015, that was really across the southeastern half of the state where they had extreme rainfall amounts a little bit higher, but this one was more widespread across the state.

Now it is winter right now it just doesn't feel like winter.

But boy did it feel like winter back in January when we had the lowest windchill value for 2024 at Bonita, basically minus 27 degrees.

And the lowest air temperature on that same day was minus 15 degrees at Bonita.

So Bonita had a couple of unwelcome records at least for those folks.

You know, we, we did actually see some of the coldest weather we had seen in Oklahoma since that February, 2021 deep freeze.

So we're not having winter now, obviously, but we definitely had it back about 11 months ago.

We had a lot of us mild weather in summer, just like we're having mild weather in the winter.

So cooler in the summer, warmer in the winter so far.

But we did have those high temperatures really getting the extreme range.

Once again, we had the highest air temperature of 113 degrees from Freedom on August 24th.

So not a shock that we had extreme weather in 2024.

I guess we'll just wait for the next year when we have more extreme weather and we'll show you that map a year from now.

That's it for this time.

We'll see you next time on the Mesonet weather report.

- Continuing our year end discussions now, Sunup's Elizabeth Hokit catches up with OSU agricultural economist, Dr. John Michael Riley.

- We're continuing our end of year discussions this time with John Michael Riley.

So John Michael, it's as every year has been a bit of an interesting year in the market.

So tell us a little bit about what's kind of happened from January up to now.

- Absolutely, and I, I think what you said there is that was a hundred percent correct.

Every year is interesting in its own rights and you know, if you think about just even a larger perspective than just this year, if we go back over a 20 year span, I mean our, our agricultural markets have, have really been, you know, shaping and changing in a lot of respects, largely due to, you know, just how fast information is flowing from, from one sector to the other.

The, the connectivity of all of our markets is just, it's, it's hard to really put it all into, into scope, but I mean, it's, it's happening and it's continuing to happen.

So every year is very interesting this year, absolutely no different coming into the year.

A lot of, of, of expectations of, you know, improvements from the past couple of years.

And so we started the year with, with a little bit of a shakeup when we got the prospective plantings report much lower corn acreage numbers than what the market was thinking was gonna be higher soybean acreage number than what the market was thinking was gonna be about 4 million more wheat acres between winter wheat and then expectations on, on spring and, and summer wheat.

So all of that kind of put a little bit of a damper on the marketplace, largely with, with beans and with wheat.

Corn, a little bit of a, a little bit of a ex higher, higher coming outta that.

And then we get to move forward, plantings are happening, we actually get the numbers from the producers and as opposed to what they were thinking about doing.

And then everything kind of went back to what we thought was gonna be corn numbers were up soybean acres about the same wheat acres about the same.

So that put a little bit of a damper on the corn market.

And so, you know, but still the, the, the expectations were that we're gonna have a strong gear that, you know, we're gonna kind of continue to see some, some good trade numbers and that, that we were potentially gonna have, you know, a decent crop, but nothing too, you know, overly abundant.

And then we start seeing the, the, the growing season throughout the summer, really just ideal conditions for pretty much everybody except for the southern plains.

And so, you know, where most of our corn and beans were grown, just really good conditions and that just continued to put added, added pressure on the market throughout the, throughout the growing season and prices continued to decline.

- And with wheat planning, you know, the drought obviously has had, had a lot of the producers on the edge of their seats for a while and then we got a bunch of rain.

So talk a little bit about that.

- Absolutely.

You know, some people are planting just because the calendar says we plant and I think others are, we're on the edge of the seats a little bit more.

We're, you know, trying to, to make sure that the, the soil conditions were more, more proper for putting the seed in the ground.

And you know, with those rains we have seen plantings kind of get back to a normal pace.

In terms of total acreage, I think we're gonna see probably about the same number of acres here in Oklahoma.

Not real sure about nationally yet, but I think here in Oklahoma probably gonna be very close to to, to numbers that we're typically at just because it's, it's kind of what we do, right?

And so, but with these rains we're starting to see the crop emerge and I think we are seeing conditions really improve for, for the crop that's currently in the ground.

- Yeah.

And so with this being an election year too, how does that typically affect the markets?

- Well, the election year brings a lot of uncertainty and unrest with all markets, you know, not just ag, but but so much and our agricultural markets were, you know, anticipating what might happen and, but now that we kind of have a, a better understanding of, of what the administration is, who, who the administration is, we have a little bit of better understanding about what they may be, you know, trying to implement from a policy standpoint.

And so with those, with, with now that that uncertainty is not necessarily completely subsided.

We do have a, we do have some expectations there and a lot of talk right now from the Trump administration about how, what we're gonna do with trade.

And so some talk of increased tariffs.

Anytime you get tariffs, you know, that's just a tax on, on goods and services that we bring or goods that we bring into the U.S.

So oftentimes that's met with some retaliatory policies from, from our friends overseas.

And so there that, that is one that we are watching very closely.

We export quite a bit of our, our grain crops, you know, about 60% of our corn well over, you know, 80% of our cotton is exported, not nearly as much on the, on the beans and wheat side of things, but still, you know, significant enough that those markets are, you know, to, to use your term earlier on the edge of their seats to kind of see how those, those policies moving forward to this new, new administration are gonna be.

- And another really interesting part of our year was our long time market analyst, Kim Anderson retired and you were able to come on with us in August, right in the middle of the growing season.

So talk a little bit about that experience.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And it's, it's been a fun time.

I've really enjoyed, you know, getting to the opportunity to come visit with you every other week.

And so Dr. Anderson, you know, it's hard to fill those shoes and I'm by, no, by no way am I feel like I am in any, any adequate measure, but it's something that I've enjoyed, it's given me an opportunity to, you know, kind of visit with the, the folks in Oklahoma more, more on a more intimate basis through the TV, obviously.

But it's given me that opportunity when I've first, my first episode we kind of went into a little bit of my, my background and my history.

So prior to coming to Oklahoma State, I had some extension experience and did some similar, similar conversations about markets in general.

And so I've really enjoyed kind of getting back to that in a lot of respects.

Getting outta the getting off campus every so often has been really nice as well.

So I've, I've, I've really enjoyed it.

I hope that I have been providing enough information and insight for, for our, our folks out in the state to, to, to utilize in some fashion.

If nothing else, you know, just time to, to mute the TV and, and, and go get a cup of coffee or something.

- Yeah.

And we've definitely enjoyed getting to know you and talking with you too, John Michael, and we look forward to next year as well.

- Thank you.

- Good morning Oklahoma, and welcome to Cow-Calf Corner.

As I always say at the conclusion, thanks for joining us on Cow-Calf Corner and as we draw 2024 to a close and look ahead to 2025, I thank you all for watching, reading our newsletter and being with us whenever you can.

This week we reflect back on 2024 in the cattle business and look ahead to what the promise is of the year 2025, heifer retention, corn prices, a hay supply that keeps prices moderate.

All those things as we look into 2025, offer a lot of promise for those of us fortunate enough to be in this business.

And we should expect that we're gonna continue to see great prices for all categories of cattle, modest feed prices that are gonna unlock the profit potential for us.

And so it is in fact a very encouraging time in this business and particularly for the cow calf sector.

What can we do as we look ahead to 2025 and think about what we can do to be planning ahead?

Well, depending on when you start your spring calving season, take inventory, the body condition scores on cows.

I know some of us have already started spring calving season, some are looking at it a few months down the road, but we'd like to see those bred heifers and a body condition score six at the beginning and those cows at a five to five and a half at the beginning of our calving season.

As I always say, make sure you know where your calf puller and your OB chains are prior to your calving season starting.

I'm the world's worst at having to find them after we've identified a heifer that could use a little assistance monitor those hay inventories, stay on top of that long-term forecast.

Looks good, looks like we ought to continue to receive some moisture.

Those of us in the cattle business in Oklahoma know that's always a dicey proposition.

Again, thanks for always being with us on Cow Calf Corner.

Let's look forward to the year 2025.

It looks to be very promising in the cattle business.

- That'll do it for our show this week and for this year, for that matter.

From all of us here at Sunup, we wanna thank you, our viewers and all of our friends at OETA for supporting us throughout the year.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

Happy New Year everyone, and we'll see you in 2025.