March 01 | WILLAg Newsletter

March 01, 2020

The WILLAg.org All Day Ag Outlook is Tuesday. I'd really like to see you at the Beef House. Buy  your ticket now or just show up. (FYI it is way easier on us if you purchase ahead of time).

You may buy your tickets online today or by calling 800–898–1065 by noon Monday. The $30 ticket price includes Beef House rolls and coffee in the morning and your Beef House Lunch! The doors open at 8am central / 9am eastern Tuesday, March 3, 2020, at the Beef House in Covington, Indiana.

walk-ins are welcome!
Todd Gleason, Farm Broadcaster
ILLINOIS Extension
tgleason@illinois.edu or 217–390–1858

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Purchase Tickets Online | $30 Each | Click2Buy
- or call 800-898-1065 by noon Monday
- the ticket price includes Beef House rolls and coffee in the morning and your Beef House Lunch!

Tuesday, March 3, 2020
Beef House
16501 Indiana 63
Covington, Indiana 47932

Registration
9:00am eastern / 8:00am central

Opening Remarks
* Todd E. Gleason, ILLINOIS Extension

The Future of Agriculture
* Steve Maulberger, Vice President Crop Risk Services, Inc.

Cash Grain Panel
* Matt Bennett, AgMarket .net
* Aaron Curtis, MID-CO Commodities
* Brian Stark, The Andersons
* Chuck Shelby, Risk Management Commodities

Global Weather
* Eric Snodgrass, Nutrien Ag Solutions

Soybean Panel
* Dave Chatterton, Strategic Farm Marketing
* Merrill Crowley, Midwest Market Solutions
* Ellen Dearden, AgReview
* Chip Nellinger, Blue Reef Agri-Marketing

ARC/PLC, Crop Insurance SCO & NASS
* Gary Schnitkey, ILLINOIS Extension
* Lance Honig, USDA NASS Crops Branch Chief

Corn Panel
* Curt Kimmel, Bates Commodities
* Wayne Nelson, L&M Commodities
* Mike Zuzolo, Global Commodity Analytics & Consulting
* Jacquie Voeks, Total Farm Marketing
* Dan Zwicker, Zwicker Consulting

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Listen to WILLAg on the Radio & Online.

Radio - Draw a north/south line from Champaign across the whole state of Illinois. If you live somewhere between 50 miles west of that line or a 100 miles east then you can likely hear the live broadcast. Those are (central time) at 8:55am, 10:58am, 12:58am, and 2:06pm daily. They include eighteen different commodity analysts weekly and six meteorologists specialized in agriculture.

Web - If you visit or webpage willag.org you’ll find much of that programming in full. The content is updated not long after it airs on the radio station and in the case of Commodity Week before it airs. You’ll find the daily Opening, Mid-Morning, Mid-Day, and Closing Marketing reports plus Commodity Week. If you look at the top of the page on your desktop (or in the hamburger tab on smartphones and tablets) you’ll find a way to listen to all of these live, too. Choose the WILL-AM Live live button.

Podcasts - Pick your favorite app and you will find the podcasts. Mostly just search for Closing Market Report (CMR) or Commodity Week (CW). Here are some direct links.

Apple Podcasts
CMR - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/closing-market-report/id1033017980
CW - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/commodity-week/id78616414

Google Podcasts
CMR - https://play.google.com/music/m/Ipwniphmbezak6hbc7j66txe42y?t=The_Closing_Market_Report
CW - https://play.google.com/music/m/Ilv6ww7upenw4g5lu4binszay4i?t=Commodity_Week

Spotify
CMR - https://open.spotify.com/show/5gzoTEuKrOVezUYAGQPPNA
CW - https://open.spotify.com/show/4gqun3iXpg4ymF0S8D3mLP

SoundCloud
CMR Playlist - https://soundcloud.com/narrowrow/sets/willag-futures-archive
CW Playlist - https://soundcloud.com/narrowrow/sets/commodity-week

NPR One
Either set the app home station to Illinois Public Media or search for Commodity Week and the Closing Market Report.

URL
You may copy these URLs into your favorite podcast applications in order to add our content.
CMR - https://will.illinois.edu/closingmarketreport/rss
CW - https://will.illinois.edu/commodityweek/rss

Video
The farmdocDaily team operates a farmdocvideo YouTube channel. It includes videos I produce under the Illini Farm Report heading. More importantly you’ll find the farmdoc team’s videos.

2020 All Day Ag Outlook

Purchase Tickets Online | $30 Each | Click2Buy
- the ticket price includes Beef House rolls and coffee in the morning and your Beef House Lunch!

Tuesday, March 3, 2020
Beef House
16501 Indiana 63
Covington, Indiana 47932

Registration
9:00am eastern / 8:00am central

Opening Remarks
9:25am eastern / 8:25am central
        • Todd E. Gleason, ILLINOIS Extension

The Future of Agriculture
9:30am eastern / 8:30am central
        • Steve Maulberger, Vice President Crop Risk Services, Inc.

Cash Grain Panel
10:00am eastern / 9:00am central
        • Matt Bennett, AgMarket.net
        • Aaron Curtis, MID-CO Commodities
        • Brian Stark, The Andersons
        • Chuck Shelby, Risk Management Commodities

Global Weather
11:00am eastern / 10:00am central
        • Eric Snodgrass, Nutrien Ag Solutions

Soybean Panel
11:30am eastern / 10:30am central
        • Dave Chatterton, Strategic Farm Marketing
        • Merrill Crowley, Midwest Market Solutions
        • Ellen Dearden, AgReview
        • Chip Nellinger, Blue Reef AgriMarketing

Lunch and Trade Show
12:15pm eastern / 11:15am central

ARC/PLC, MFP, & Crop Insurance
1:15pm eastern / 12:15pm central
        • Gary Schnitkey, ILLINOIS Extension

Corn Panel
1:45pm eastern / 12:45pm central
        • Curt Kimmel, Bates Commodities
        • Wayne Nelson, L&M Commodities
        • Mike Zuzolo, Global Commodity Analytics & Consulting
        • Jacquie Voeks, Stewart Peterson
        • Dan Zwicker, Zwicker Consulting

Let us know if you are interested in sponsoring the All Day Ag Outlook.
download sponsorship form

Submit Input to NRCS on Easement Rule

The Natural Resources Conservation Service has posted a new Agricultural Conservation Easement Program rule to the Federal Register. The Assistant State Conservationist for Easement Program from Illinois NRCS explains just how easements work and what the new rules offer. Listen to Todd Gleason’s interview with Paula Hingson.

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USDA NRCS Press Release

Champaign, Illinois – USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) seeks public comments on its interim rule for the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP). ACEP is USDA’s premier conservation easement program, helping landowners protect working agricultural lands and wetlands. The interim rule – now available on the Federal Register – will be in effect until the final rule is published. These activities will make changes to the program prescribed by the 2018 Farm Bill.

“Through easements, agricultural landowners are protecting agricultural lands from development, restoring grazing lands and returning wetlands to their natural conditions,” said Ivan Dozier, NRCS State Conservationist in Illinois. “The new changes to ACEP under the 2018 Farm Bill make it stronger and more effective and will result in even better protection of our nation’s farmlands, grasslands and wetlands.”

NRCS is investing more than $300 million in conservation easements for fiscal 2020. NRCS state offices will announce signup periods for ACEP in the coming weeks. Changes to ACEP for agricultural land easements include:

• Authorizing assistance to partners who pursue “Buy-Protect-Sell” transactions.
• Requiring a conservation plan for highly erodible land that will be protected by an agricultural land easement.
• Increasing flexibility for partners to meet cost-share matching requirements.

Changes to ACEP for wetland reserve easements include:

• Identifying water quality as a program purpose for enrollment of wetland reserve easements.
• Expanding wetland types eligible for restoration and management under wetland reserve easements.

“Conservation easements have a tremendous footprint in the U.S. with nearly 5 million acres already enrolled. That’s 58,000 square miles,” NRCS Chief Matthew Lohr said. “This is a great testament to NRCS’s and landowner’s commitment to conservation.”

Submitting Comments NRCS invites comments on this interim rule through March 6 on the Federal Register. Electronic comments must be submitted through regulations.gov under Docket ID NRCS–2019–0006. All written comments received will be publicly available on regulations.gov, too. NRCS will evaluate public comments to determine whether additional changes are needed. The agency plans on publishing a final rule following public comment review.

Applying for ACEP ACEP aids landowners and eligible entities with conserving, restoring and protecting wetlands, productive agricultural lands and grasslands. NRCS accepts ACEP applications year-round, but applications are ranked and funded by enrollment periods that are set locally.

For more information on how to sign up for ACEP, visit your state website at nrcs.usda.gov or contact your local NRCS field office.

Gary Schnitkey on the ARC/PLC Decision

Farmers will be making two government program decisions on or before March 15th. What to do about crop insurance is one of them. The other is to enroll in the updated farm safety net programs.


The 2018 Farm Bill included some changes that require farmer to do a couple of things. First, they'll want to update their yields with FSA, if and only if the current set is higher than those already on record. Second, a decision must be made about which farm safety net to use for the crop harvest last year, and the one that will be harvested this year. Gary Schnitkey from the University of Illinois has some advice, "If you have a farm that is complete Prevent Plant, I think you are going to want to do ARC-IC. One FSA farm. If they are yielding at all, you'll probably lean to PLC for corn, ARC-CO for soybeans and PLC for wheat".

You may learn more about ARC-IC on the farmdoc website. ILLINOIS has developed a set of tools farmers can use to help them make the best possible ARC/PLC decision no matter where they live. It includes, says Schnitkey, a calculator that runs on a super-computer, "The calculators are online. The Gardner ARC/PLC tool will allow you to look at the probabilities of these things making payments. Again, corn is not likely to make payments in 2019. Soybeans similarly. Wheat will make a PLC payment for 2019. So, you can look at the Gardner ARC County / PLC calculator for that. There is a 2018 Farm Bill Tool that is a Microsoft Excel speadsheet and you can use that to look at different prices and yields to see what ARC-County, ARC-IC, and PLC will do in those situations".

The ARC/PLC safety net decision is due to be made at the Farm Service Agency office by March 15th. The ARC/PLC calculators are online at https://farmdoc.illinois.edu/2018-farm-bill.