Morning Coffee and Ag Markets

Hunter Biram and Ryan Loy look at how ongoing shipping disruptions from the Iran conflict continue to raise fuel and fertilizer costs for Arkansas row crop producers. Ryan explains how problems in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea have pushed farm diesel far above the price used in the University of Arkansas 2026 Crop Enterprise Budgets. He also explains why urea costs hit corn, rice, and cotton growers harder than soybean and peanut producers. The two walk through an analysis Ryan built with Scott Stiles estimating the added cost per acre for each crop and the total impact on the state.

 Hunter Biram and Ryan Loy walk through the Southern Integrated Risk Management Tool (SIRM), a free web-based decision tool that helps farmers, county agents, crop insurance agents, and ag lenders build a crop insurance portfolio. The tool covers insurable counties in 13 southern states for principal row crops like corn, cotton, rice, and soybeans, estimating producer premiums for buy-up coverage and area plans such as SCO and ECO, adjusted for premium subsidies and land tenure. Hunter also demos how producers can use the tool to fit coverage to their own operation. 

Scott Stiles and Hunter Biram discuss the latest September 2026 WASDE, where the balance sheet held few surprises but the price changes stood out. Scott opens with a primer on how FSA certified acreage feeds into NASS production estimates and why the numbers firm up once the summer surveys are behind us. 

The conversation then turns to yield, with drought driving USDA's corn yield cut, and to a counter-seasonal rally that led USDA to raise average farm prices for corn, soybeans, and cotton. Hunter and Scott finish with the global factors in play, from strong Chinese soybean demand to a rocky start for Brazil's planting and the smallest French corn crop in 50 years. 

Ryan Loy and Hunter Biram sit down to discuss the crop insurance chapter from the newly released Surviving the Farm Economy Downturn: 2026 Update. Hunter walks through the basic decisions producers face when selecting federal crop insurance, from choosing between farm-level and county-level coverage to how unit structure and the differences among Yield Protection, Revenue Protection, and RP with Harvest Price Exclusion shape both premiums and protection. The chapter is meant as a starting point, and the episode points listeners to the full publication and other University of Arkansas resources for going deeper. 

Ryan Loy is joined by James Mitchell, Associate Professor and Fryar Price Risk Management Center Associate Director at the University of Arkansas, to dig into the new Beef Cow and Heifer Investment Analysis tool. 

With cattle prices at historical highs, this free online dashboard lets producers plug in their own numbers to compare buying a bred heifer against raising one of their own, returning net present value, breakeven price, and payback period in real time. James and Ryan explain how the tool treats a cow as a long-term investment and why the opportunity cost of holding a heifer calf back matters at today's prices. 

Hunter Biram, Scott Stiles, and Breana Watkins to look at why attractive winter wheat and canola prices may draw Arkansas acres this fall. With row crop margins still squeezed by high input costs, they dig into the newly released 2027 University of Arkansas enterprise budgets for both crops, walk through a side-by-side return comparison, and explain why canola holds a gross revenue edge on paper. 

The conversation also covers the fundamentals driving the wheat rally and the practical realities of canola's closed-loop marketing, limited delivery points, and the learning curve growers may face with a new crop. 

Ryan Loy sits down with Matthew Marchant, a PhD student in agricultural economics at the University of Arkansas, to discuss how highly pathogenic avian influenza moves through the Mississippi flyway. They explain why the current strain spreads mainly through wild waterfowl rather than farm-to-farm contact, and how that ties bird flu risk to a predictable seasonal pattern that widens across the flyway from fall into spring. Marchant walks through what that seasonality means for producers, from timing biosecurity efforts to preparing before peak exposure arrives each year 

Hunter Biram and Scott Stiles walk through the August USDA WASDE and Crop Production reports, where a recurring theme of more acres but lower yields shaped the outlook for soybeans, long grain rice, corn, and cotton. They dig into the surprising jump in corn and soybean acreage, the drought driving yield cuts from Texas through the western Corn Belt, and why cotton comes down to what gets harvested rather than what gets planted. Hunter and Scott also cover Arkansas' record projected soybean yield, a 50,000-acre increase in long grain rice, and a record soybean crush forecast. Even with tighter supplies, they explain how improved price expectations for the 2026/27 marketing year offer a bright spot against still-elevated input costs.

Hunter Biram and Ryan Loy dig into why global cotton mill use is projected to reach its highest level since the 2017/18 marketing year, the fourth consecutive year of growth. They explain how the gain is concentrated in China, India, and Pakistan, which together account for nearly 75 percent of this year's increase, and why demand happening thousands of miles away shows up in the price an Arkansas producer sees. Ryan unpacks how rising crude oil prices have made cotton more competitive with polyester, and how tighter supply is pushing world ending stocks to their lowest point since 2018/19. They close on what stronger demand and a projected 73-cent season-average price could mean for cotton growers heading into the new marketing year. 

In the third and final episode of our series on USDA's Expanding Access to Risk Protection (EARP) rule, Ryan Loy and Hunter Biram dig into what the rule means for rice producers' premium costs, with a timely twist, since USDA moved to reinstate the prevented planting "plus-five" buy-up just before recording. Hunter breaks down why a seemingly small change could carry meaningful consequences for producers, why those effects vary so much from county to county, and what the reinstatement means for rice farmers going forward.