Market to Market - March 7, 2025

Program recorded Thursday, March 6, 2025

Brooke Kohlsdorf: Coming up on Market to Market -

President Trump makes good on his promise to impose tariffs

A late winter storm strikes back with a vengeance

A school that won’t let agriculture be secondary, even at the primary level.

And commodity market analysis with Shawn Hackett, next. 

Announcer: What's next doesn't happen by chance. It happens when researchers and farmers work together to solve tomorrow's agronomic challenges. We're committed to creating what's next because at Pioneer our name is our mission.

Announcer: Family owned and operated for more than 60 years. Sukup Manufacturing is a full service provider of grain handling, storage, and drying equipment, helping farmers feed and feel the world. 

Announcer: For over 45 years, Steiner Tractor Parts has shared your love of antique tractors. New parts for old tractors. Learn more at Steinertractor.com or at (877) 559-7887.

Announcer: Tomorrow. For over 100 years. We've worked to help our customers be ready for tomorrow. Trust in tomorrow. Information is available from a Grinnell Mutual agent today.

[Announcer] “This is the Friday, March 7, 2025 edition of Market to Market - the Weekly Journal of Rural America.”

Hello. I’m Brooke Kohlsdorf. Paul Yeager is on assignment.  

The week began with President Trump imposing sweeping tariffs on goods imported from the nation’s top three trading partners. The president cited the need to stop illegal immigration and fentanyl smuggling from those nations. During his joint address to Congress, Trump also stated that these nations were taking advantage of the United States.   

In the wake of the new duties, President Trump answered the pleas of U.S. automakers, whose products regularly cross our northern and southern borders multiple times, giving them a 30-day reprieve from the tax. 

Trump is also holding off on imposing tariffs with Mexico that fall under the USMCA Agreement until April 2nd. There is no word on what might happen with Canadian products governed by the same agreement.  

Peter Tubbs has more.

President Donald J. Trump: The tariffs will go on — agricultural product coming into America and our farmers starting on April 2, may be a little bit of an adjustment period.

This week, the Trump Administration placed 25 percent tariffs on the country’s #1 and #2 trading partners.

Canada and Mexico, which represent a combined $1.5 trillion dollars in cross border trade, protested the tariffs, arguing that the new duties are unjustified.

Analysts believe the new tariffs are in violation of the USMCA agreement that was negotiated by the first Trump Administration in 2018. 

The reaction from commodity groups was downbeat:

The Iowa Soybean Association wrote: “Mexico and Canada are local and important markets for U.S. farmers. Heightening tensions with these two countries is counterproductive to the needs of Iowa soybean farmers with markets already below the cost of production and going lower.”

The National Corn Growers Association stated:

“We ask President Trump to quickly negotiate agreements with Mexico, Canada and China that will benefit American farmers while addressing issues important to the United States.”

The U.S. Meat Export Federation commented: “USMEF is obviously disappointed that no agreements have yet been reached that would avoid or postpone tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, as well as the tariff increase on goods from China.”

Canada announced retaliatory tariffs on $100 billion worth of imported goods from the United States that will go into effect over the next three weeks.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum will announce her country’s retaliatory tariffs on March 9th.

Tariffs are paid by the importers of the tariffed products, and the costs are routinely passed on to consumers.

For Market to Market, I’m Peter Tubbs.

Brooke Kohlsdorf: Thoughts of the rites of Spring may include planting and calving. The change of seasons are about two weeks away but storms across the country this week reminded everyone that winter is far from over. 

What began as rain in the Midwest quickly turned to a blizzard with white out conditions, knocking out power across several states and slowing traffic to a stop. Hundreds of vehicle accidents were reported across Minnesota, South Dakota, Kansas and Iowa. As much as nine inches of snow was recorded in some locations with drifts piled even higher.

Three people lost their lives to storms in Mississippi while tornadoes ripped across Texas, Oklahoma and North Carolina. 

A project for a Vocational Agriculture class is often part of only one period during the day with a lot of after hours work to get everything done. However, for one school in particular it’s all about the connections to the land that are found between the first bell of the day and the last click of the gate after all the chores are done.

Colleen Bradford Krantz has more in our Cover Story.

Colleen Bradford Krantz: Instead of heading to a sports field or music room after school, many students at Academy at the Farm near Dade City, Florida spend their afternoons caring for nearly 100 farm animals.

The pre-K through 8th-grade public charter school  integrates agriculture into its science curriculum from an unusually early age. Elementary students participate in monthly lessons and there’s an option for daily agriculture classes starting in sixth grade.

Robin Carter, Agriculture Science Teacher, Academy at the Farm, Dade City, Florida: “A lot of kids automatically have the idea that agriculture is just playing with animals all day, or feeding animals or having pets or something like that. And we want to expand their horizons and have the knowledge that agriculture is actually giving us life. So it’s providing us with food, it’s providing us with resources and commodities that we need….And our goal is that by the time they leave our school, they go into the world as more informed consumers so they are then able to then inform other consumers.”

Opened 23 years ago, officials say the school was already performing well academically before expanding its agricultural focus a decade ago. As of 2024, it had again earned Florida’s “A” school designation, landing in the top 12% of the state’s public schools.

The school, located 40 miles northeast of Tampa, has 825 students and a waiting list of over 3,000. With that kind of interest, Academy at the Farm has decided to open a high school next year.

Robin Carter, Agriculture Science Teacher, Academy at the Farm, Dade City, Florida: “When I came here 10 years ago, academics and high expectations were the things that were drawing kids…Today there are people that absolutely want to come to our school because of our agriculture program.”

Newly-retired School Director Ray Polk, who was raised nearby on what was then a 6,000-acre cattle ranch, laments the decline of local agriculture as urban sprawl replaces livestock and citrus groves.

Ray Polk, Director, Academy at the Farm, Dade City, Florida: “Tampa is moving our way and it’s coming 4,000 homes at a time….I felt like kids needed to know where their food comes from. Less and less kids are educated with that. And, I found that kids thought that, you know, their hamburger came from McDonalds.”

Polk says they have always have always had high expectations related to behavior and the agriculture component has played directly into that.

Ray Polk, Director, Academy at the Farm, Dade City, Florida: “It’s an interesting phenomena to me when you can take kids that are struggling or having trouble, and you take them over to the barn for 15 minutes and it can change the whole day….You can go hand them a baby goat and their life changes. It’s almost like magic.”

The after-school agriculture program is self-sustaining through fundraising and agricultural product sales. Despite the focus on agriculture, the school still prioritizes core academics.

Ray Polk, Director, Academy at the Farm, Dade City, Florida: “The state doesn’t test whether the kids know how a pig has piglets…What they test on is their math, reading and writing.”

Polk credits the agriculture program’s success to the wife and husband teaching team of Robin and Tim Carter. Robin, who previously taught in one of the grade school classrooms, developed the curriculum after building a highly successful after-school 4-H club, while Tim, a former P.E. teacher, now manages the barns.

Robin Carter, Agriculture Science Teacher, Academy at the Farm, Dade City, Florida: “I integrate a lot of the Florida science standards into the elementary agriculture lessons that I do. So that’s how I support the elementary teachers. …I talk a lot about what it means to be a scientist. I talk a lot about what it means to research something and not just believing everything you hear but to actually go to a good source …to get your information from.”

Students also have the option to care for animals on the school grounds, many of them preparing to show at fairs, events which boosts parental interest and community support.

Robin Carter, Agriculture Science Teacher, Academy at the Farm, Dade City, Florida: “They see how our kids work together at the county and state fair, and they love the camaraderie and teamwork they show to each other.”

Agriculture is also used as a way to teach resilience as the school allows the students to directly face hardships when they arise.

Robin Carter, Agriculture Science Teacher, Academy at the Farm, Dade City, Florida: “In education sometimes, the expectation is everything is done perfect all the time. And in agriculture, that’s not how life goes. You could have a project or a crop or an animal that suddenly passes away or suddenly dies or there’s a hurricane or something happens. And you have to be able to roll with the punches.”

Families whose children want to show market animals through 4-H or FFA typically buy their animal and cover most costs associated with raising them on-site. Other students can be assigned to care for a non-market animal, such as a dairy cow or hen, for a year.

Grants and donations have enabled the Academy to expand the outdoor facilities.

Tim Carter, Barn Manager, Academy at the Farm, Dade City, Florida: “After school, if you have an animal here, it has got to be fed, it’s got to be taken care of, and on the weekends .…They are responsible for feeding and any changes. And we work on showmanship practice and get ready for fairs and shows… Most of the kids that we get, we’re very lucky. They don’t grumble about the work at all. …And these projects are also family projects. You know, a 10-year-old can’t drive themselves here on a Saturday to feed their animals.”

Seventeen-year-old Christiana Williams, a former student, still keeps pigs on site and helps younger children with their projects.

Christiana Williams, Former Student, Academy at the Farm, Dade City, Florida: “So the really nice thing about this is everything is hands on. …When I first started, I told the Carters that I would never ever give a vaccination to a pig. It freaked me out. I didn’t like needles, I didn’t like anything like that. Flash forward a couple months later and I was giving almost all the injections in the barn.”

Eleven-year-old Connor Groover sees the program as life preparation.

Connor Groover, Student, Academy at the Farm, Dade City, Florida: “Having to stay responsible to feed them and, like, being responsible with my money, having to pay for their food and all their equipment and stuff.”

Robin Carter, Agriculture Science Teacher, Academy at the Farm, Dade City, Florida: “We need to create students who are feeling confident at an early age to be outside, getting their hands dirty, being hands-on. If I can get a kid to pick up a drill at home instead of a cell phone at home, that makes me really, really happy. And middle school kids are at an age where I feel like they’re not given a lot of trust so, when you give them that trust, they just shine.”

For Market to Market, I’m Colleen Bradford Krantz.

Brooke Kohlsdorf: We are recording this program on Thursday due to a change in our production schedule. At the beginning of the week, the tariff news pushed prices lower in the grains only to rebound at the end of the week when Trump agreed to temporarily drop some duties on Mexican agricultural goods.

For the week, the nearby wheat contract lost 2 cents and the May corn contract dropped 6 cents. 

After spending a few days moving lower, the delay on Mexican tariffs kept the soy complex relatively flat for the week. 

The May soybean contract gained 2 cents while May meal added $4.70 per ton.

May cotton contracted 9 cents per hundredweight. 

Over in the dairy parlor, April Class Three milk futures cut $1.08.

The livestock market was up. April cattle put on $3.63. April feeders added $1.43 and the April lean hog contract rose $2.97. 

In the currency markets, the US dollar index plummeted 344 ticks. 

April crude oil fell $3.56 per barrel. 

COMEX gold gained $66.70 per ounce, and the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index subtracted nearly 7 points to settle at 548 - Ten.

Well, joining us now is our regular market analyst, Shawn Hackett. Hi, Sean.

Shawn Hackett: Hey, Brooke. How are you? No place I'd rather be than right here with you.

Brooke Kohlsdorf: Well, we thank you for coming to Iowa from sunny and warm Florida, especially right now. Let's talk tariffs. Right. So we've had a lot of questions coming in. Obviously farmers just unsure, know where, no one really knows what's going to happen. And we want to start with one of the questions that we got sent, which I think is a good one.

It comes from Tim in Minnesota. And he says with the threat of retaliatory tariffs announced, should we hold our nose and sell all old crop wheat, soybean and corn?

Shawn Hackett: I really don't believe reacting to these headline risks are the way to market your grain crop. we believe if you look at the first President Trump's presidency, we had a lot of these back and forth headline risk actions. And what you want to do is be proactive when they get excited about what he says and get excited when he to the downside of their livestock industry needing to buy corn. We just had some very good cash selling opportunities a month ago. Now we're getting some good buy side opportunities for the end user. I would use the headline risk as being proactive instead of the other way around.

Brooke Kohlsdorf: Yeah, and it does seem like they, the commodities really did react to the headlines. Was that what was happening with the wheat or was it just following corn and beans?

Shawn Hackett: Yeah, I think it's more was just following, soybeans and corn. you know, wheat still also has what's going on with Russia, Ukraine, this is war going to get resolved. Some feel that means Ukraine gets back on line with their wheat production. That could mean more supply later on in the next few years. I think it was a combination of those two things that brought some sellers into the wheat complex.

Brooke Kohlsdorf: We don't know yet exactly what's happening with some of these tariffs. Specifically with Mexico. Is fear of retaliation also part of what's happening in the wheat market right now?

Shawn Hackett: Yeah, there's fear is everywhere right now. But also remember fear gets priced into the markets very quickly and then we move on to something else. When I look at the calendar I see the planting season right in front of us. So what we're talking about with tariffs is demand side fears. But we need to be also balancing that with is supply side fears. As we move into the planting season and into the growing season. We think that's going to take center stage here before too long.

Brooke Kohlsdorf: Okay. Well speaking of planting and corn, Mexico is our biggest importer of corn. Could the trade war put sales of old corn? at risk?

Shawn Hackett: It could. The way I look at it, they are in a multi-year megadrought. They're in another mega drought this year. They have a desperate need for large quantities of corn. Brazil does not have a lot of corn. They're having another poor crop. Russia, Ukraine had a very poor corn crop. We are really the only place that they can buy large quantities of corn cheaply, without a lot of transportation costs. I don't believe that they're going to stop buying our corn in this situation, because they absolutely have to buy it. They just need the product.

Brooke Kohlsdorf: Okay, so with the new corn crop, same, they have to keep buying it.

Shawn Hackett: They will have to keep buying it. As far as I can see, this mega drought that they're involved in is going to continue for this growing season. You know I wish better days ahead for them, but for right now, they're going to be relying on large quantities of U.S. corn to fill that gap until they finally get a good weather crop year.

Brooke Kohlsdorf: Okay. Is dry weather in Brazil a major concern right now?

Shawn Hackett: I call it a minor concern. That is to say that they got the crop planted late. Second crop corner. it's going to go push further into the dry season in Brazil. we have some dry weather. Not as bad as last year. It's not going to be a top end crop, but I do think it's probably going to be a little better than last year. So I don't think that's going to be something that moves the dial. What I think moves the dial on price is the planting season. We think we could have a very cold, wintry spring, something I know everyone does not want to hear. And we could be looking at a late spring frost. All our indicators say that we have some of the best probabilities for that happening this planting season in a very, very long time.

Brooke Kohlsdorf: Which is the opposite of what happened last year.

Shawn Hackett: Right. Exactly opposite.

Brooke Kohlsdorf: Yes. Okay. Well, let's move on to beans. Will China start buying fewer beans from us because of what's happening.

Shawn Hackett: This time of the year with Brazil harvesting their crop? they always buy less from us this time of the year, because Brazil has all kinds of soybeans to sell. So this would be a time that they wouldn't be necessarily buying a lot from us. I would not expect them to be buying a lot from us, not because of tariffs, just because the nature of the beast. Brazil has a supply and that's going to be your lowest, most economical price right now to buy.

Brooke Kohlsdorf: Is there a weather story with soybeans right now?

Shawn Hackett: I don't really see that down there. The crop is almost done harvesting in Brazil. Argentina had some dryness, had some heat, but they've been getting a lot of rains. You know, I don't see the story down there. I think that's not something that's going to drive the soybean market. I think what could drive the soybean market is a bullish planting intentions report we might get at the end of March, where we could be looking at less intention to plant soybeans versus corn. That could be a trigger that maybe bring some short covering into the market and an opportunity to see a higher price.

Brooke Kohlsdorf: You talk about cotton. cotton is at a four year low right now. What's behind that? Is it the tariff war?

Shawn Hackett: Yeah. It's that. And plus it's a very cyclical commodity. I mean, the economy is very, very important. We have a lot of fear over the U.S. economy and the global economy going into recession. The GDP now from the Atlanta Fed showed a -1.5 number potentially for the first quarter here. And then you throw the tariffs on there and lack of Chinese demand.

Shawn Hackett: And it just it's just struggling looking for demand. Having said that, we are expected to plant the lowest amount of cotton acres in the U.S. in ten years. Any weather issues in western Texas that increases abandonment of that crop? And the supply side could take hold here. And if we have any, any interest or any change in the demand side picture at all to the positive, we could have a mismatch.

Brooke Kohlsdorf: All right, let's move on to cattle. How has, what's been happening the past week with tariffs been impacting the cattle market?

Shawn Hackett: Well, cattle is on the opposite side. Tariffs help cattle prices. Because if we're not bringing animals in that we normally do, we could have a shortage of animals. So that's kind of an opposite reaction to the grains. And we've seen how the cattle market rallied on this worry over the tariffs. And of course it goes the opposite way. It looks like those tariffs are coming off. The other factor for cattle is the economy. We've cut out prices have really started to crash here in the last 2 to 3 weeks. and so you know, at the end of the day, if we pull back, if the consumer pulls back from this high priced beef, even with snug animals coming to the market, is still could be a place where we could be looking for some potential corrections along the way, despite tariffs providing the opposite force.

Brooke Kohlsdorf: What about feeders? Is it just low inventory right now or is it more fear?

Shawn Hackett: It's fear and it's low inventory. It's all the above. you know, like I said to me, the cattle market is in a nutshell is this we've been able to increase the weights in cattle over the last couple of years to offset lower animal numbers. I don't think we're going to be able to keep doing that. And those animal numbers are going to keep coming down. We're retaining heifers now. If we have a cold, wintry spring, the calf season is not going to be very good. The only way that I really feel that you can knock this cattle market down is you really have to have extreme fear over the consumer pulling back. Absent that, one would have to be constructive. The price of cattle later on in the year.

Brooke Kohlsdorf: Should farmers be locking in feed prices right now.

Shawn Hackett: On this correction in corn and on this correction in soybean meal and such? Absolutely. We feel this is a great opportunity. Like we said, being proactive with these headline risks. This is an opportunity to get some physical purchases bought. Great opportunity for the end user to get themselves buttoned up here.

Brooke Kohlsdorf: Poor hogs. We only have about 15 seconds left for them. What would you say?

Shawn Hackett: Well, I mean the hog market. You know what I would say is this I believe ultimately, like we said on corn, Mexico needs to pork supplies are going to buy those pork supplies. And I don't see any real indication that we're going to increase that production in the U.S. going forward. So I still think the hog market as a constructive price outlook into the back half of the year.

Brooke Kohlsdorf: Okay. We'll finish our conversation in Plus. Thank you, Shawn.

We are going to pause this analysis and continue our discussion about these markets in our Market Plus segment. You can find both Analysis and Plus on our website of markettomarket.org.

A reminder for the next few weeks we may be airing in different time slots as our stations will be airing special programming during our annual pledge event.  

If you value this program, please call or make contact with your public TV station to offer your support. You are the key in our continued coverage of rural America.  

Next week, getting help from a small insect to battle a big problem in corn country.

Paul Yeager returns next week. 

Thank you so much for watching. Have a great week.

Announcer: Market to Market is a production of Iowa PBS, which is solely responsible for its content.

Announcer: What's next doesn't happen by chance. It happens when researchers and farmers work together to solve tomorrow's agronomic challenges. We're committed to creating what's next because at Pioneer our name is our mission.

Announcer: Family owned and operated for more than 60 years. Sukup Manufacturing is a full service provider of grain handling, storage, and drying equipment, helping farmers feed and feel the world. 

Announcer: For over 45 years, Steiner Tractor Parts has shared your love of antique tractors. New parts for old tractors. Learn more at Steinertractor.com or at (877) 559-7887.

Announcer: Tomorrow. For over 100 years. We've worked to help our customers be ready for tomorrow. Trust in tomorrow. Information is available from a Grinnell Mutual agent today.

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