Hi. My name is Doug Gooker, and welcome to Outstanding in the Field. I work for University of Illinois Extension here in East Central and Central Illinois, and here we are approaching the thanks giving, 1st December part of the year. Harvest is over, and I just wanted to bring up some topics, particularly thinking about marketing and long term budgeting. First topic is the long run, a USDA price forecast, and they came out with those about a week and a half ago.

And what they're saying is is that they feel that the long term price for corn and long term average price, that's from 2020 to 2025, they feel it's gonna be about $3.55. For soybeans, they think it's going to be $9.80. And for wheat, we have a few wheat producers, $5.10. And remember, this is an average. The ag economists at the U of I are recommending that you also run the prices of 3.40 for corn on the low side, $9 for soybeans, and $4.80 for wheat just to make sure that on those lower years, you can still have yourself covered and won't be in some type of a deficit situation as far as your budgeting.

Next thing is is Carl Zulof. He's a pharm economist at the Ohio State. He did an analysis comparing world corn production from the beginning of the 2000, 2000 to 2004 compared to 2017 to 2020. He came up with some, rather interesting information, and part of that is is that the US still has the highest corn yields per acre. However, the United States and South America, Brazil and Argentina combined, now produce the same amount of corn for export as each other.

And so now South America is right on board. Another interesting thing that he pointed out was the black soils region of the Ukraine and southern Russia, another corn growing area, corn and wheat growing area, has had the largest per acre yield increases. They're really adapting technology not only in South America, but also in the Ukraine. All the corn hybrids and technology that we have are available to them as well. And so this technology is coming on rapidly.

Right now, China has more acres in corn production than anyone else in the world, but their yield per acre is still behind. But, supposedly, according to Carl, they are also rapidly adapting new corn breeding technology and production technologies. So this is gonna be something to watch in the future, and I'm just pointing that out. That that's it. Just so don't be surprised if 5 years from now we're beginning to see that other parts of the world are becoming more dominant far more dominant in corn production.

Keep that in mind. Last, we've been enjoying these good prices for corn and soybeans. Soybeans this morning on the day I looked at the Chicago Board of Trade for January futures option, it hit $12. I don't know what it'll be by the time this is up and on the air and maybe above that if it hasn't rained yet in Brazil. But if you're holding out for higher prices, keep an eye on whether it rains in Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil, the largest soybean producing region in Brazil, because if when it rains there, the market's gonna break.

So just keep that in mind. I'm not saying sell now, but just watch it. Also, keep an eye on fall delivery. Right now here in Central Illinois, we're getting, $10.20 off the combine for soybeans across the scales at the elevator. While that is a dollar 50 less than the current prices, it is still 40¢ above what is expected to be the long term average.

So just kinda keep this in mind as we're moving ahead because, things can as we learned in 2020 with the COVID pandemic, things can change so rapidly. And speaking of changes and what's going on in the farm economy, the Illinois Farm Economic Summit is once again gonna be held this year. But instead of being 5 regional meetings across the state, that isn't going to happen. There are going to be the same speakers giving the same talks, but they're gonna be doing it on 5 separate days. The registration is free because there is no meeting place rent to pay for.

You can register for this at farmdoc, but the thing to keep in mind is is there's these are gonna be scheduled for 1 on December 1st, another on December 4th. The third is on the 8th December. The 4th is on 11th, and then the last one's gonna be on 15th. And so you won't have to suffer through 5 hours of Zoom fatigue. They've broken it up so you can take it all in nice, digestible, 1 hour segments.

And there'll be a question and answer with each of the webinars, so it isn't going to just be, do you have I economists talking heads to you? You'll be able to ask questions of interest to you as well or where they got their numbers. So once again, you can register for that at farmdoc.illinois.edu forward slash ifes. That stands for Illinois Farm Economic Summit. And it's free, but if you register, you get links to the meetings.

You'll also get links to all the recordings after they're done. So if you can't attend at that moment, you can watch it later that day. So that's about all I've got to say other than thanks to all of our hardworking farmers as we're approaching this thanks giving season. 2020 has certainly been a tough year, full of ups and downs, and right now, it looks kind of up, except we're still in a pandemic. But as far as prices, things are looking up.

And so hopefully, this is a sign that 2021 is going to be a better year for us all than 2020. So thanks again for listening to outstanding in the field. This is Doug Gooker.