Fertilizer retreats from highs as low probability, high impact situation looms - Josh Linville

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Hi, everybody, it's Paul Yeager This is the MtoM Show podcast, a production of Iowa PBS and the Market to Market TV Show. New episodes come out each and every Tuesday. We like how you have subscribed or that you have found us, we are both in audio form, and video form. So if you want to subscribe to the YouTube channel, you can watch these discussions or if you're a traditionalist podcast listener, the audio is always available for you. Today we are revisiting with a guest on a topic that doesn't go away. In fact, we're probably coming up to the peak, we're talking fertilizer, Josh Linville, of Stone X is our guest. We've had him on before to kind of get some of his background, but we're gonna find out today what products he's tracking the most in the sense of where's the volatility? Where's the stability? And what does the market look like ahead in some of the big fertilizers. Also, we're going to find out some areas that you need to watch where weather stories happen, and how that impacts fertilizer and not just in your backyard. We'll talk about that. And of course, at the end of this discussion, or maybe early, we're gonna get into a very important regional topic. If you have any feedback for me, Paul.Yeager@IowaPBS.org is the email, send me a note to tell me what you want to hear. Russ is always good about saying, Hey, I like this. I don't like that. I also hear from Jeff, thank you very much you two for your regular contributions. Join the discussion, we might just read your comment here on the podcast. Now let's get to Josh Linville and talk fertilizer. 

[Paul] I guess the first way to say this is your job. I mean COVID changed everybody's world. COVID didn't necessarily change your job. But the last two to three years have been off the charts, or am I being too general and too flippant about the world of fertilizer?

[Josh Linville]  Now you're being absolutely right. It's not only do we have to learn how to stay on top of things, you know, talk more electronically rather than being next to each other and things like that. The fertilizer industry, for example, was going through an unprecedented amount of volatility, price hikes, things like that. I mean, I've got PowerPoints where my presentation literally the first couple are nothing more than just listing out all the black swan events that happened throughout the marketplace during that time. So yeah, it was, you could say is a little bit of a stressful time in the fertilizer industry.

[Paul] When you say black swan events, that is almost, is law, we've almost become desensitized to the phrase, because so many things have happened. If you had to say just three, Josh, that have been the biggest of the big your world in your seat, what have they been?

[Josh] I would say the leading one was the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which a lot of people sit there and say, Oh, well, that must have really hurt Ukrainian fertilizer exports. And that's not the case, because Ukraine is not a major exporter of fertilizer. What happened, it was a secondary event, Russia, upset with Europe. But first on the Nord Stream pipeline situation and of course, their support of Ukraine stopped shipping natural gas to Europe, European Dutch TTF value started to skyrocket, all of a sudden, then we had, you know, the price of the input was so high, they could not make nitrogen fertilizer and it disrupted global supplies. That to me is the single biggest event, just because it wasn't a direct fertilizer situation, it was one of those secondary events that had a major impact on the fertilizer markets. The second one is starting to see a lot of the government's during the height of the pricing around the world government stepping in and saying you will not export. We saw it by multiple, the biggest impact on the world market was China. During the height of it, they sat there and said, listen, we produce a lot of phosphate we produce like urea, we're gonna keep it home because it keeps enough for our own farmers. And it keeps our prices down to meet those are the two biggest single events that have happened in the last few years. By far, and we're not anywhere close to the big list, like like you had mentioned, there were so many of them. You just get to the point. It's like okay, what's more unique than the black swan? You start looking for the next thing.

[Paul] I go back to a discussion we had on Market to Market and I'm pretty sure it was October of '21. Matt Bennett sat there in the chair and said before we aired, he goes, 'Hey, I'm going to talk about fertilizer. I had a conversation with someone....' And I so I set him up and I said 'Matt, what are you hearing about fertilizer? He says, You better be booking it now.' And that was '21 was before the invasion of Russia. So what was that all still tied to derecho at that point or just still kind of a COVID tail.

[Josh] At that point it was actually a little bit of fear that was starting to get ramped up in a lot of the world marketplace. When you look back, global, in here, as well as the rest of the world, we topped out on most of our prices. It was early April 2022. So obviously, to his point, he was absolutely correct. October all the way through to April was this huge rally in prices across the board. One of the major events was the fear of losing Russia exports. Like I said, Ukraine isn't a major exporter. Russia is. And what happened when they finally, I mean, for a while we sat there and speculated will they invade? Will they not? Are they just jockeying for position within the actually invaded, Starbucks pulled companies out and McDonald's pulled companies out and when those two won't sell you coffee or hamburgers, you know, you've done something really, really wrong banks around the world started to say if you're doing business with Russia, we will not bankroll you. And so while the Ukrainian side wasn't as big of a deal from a strict fertilizer standpoint, Russia was and we were very, very scared that we were going to lose Russian exports, phosphates, potash, nitrogen. Fortunately, we found out that wasn't the case Russia continues to blow and go. But there was a period there when we truly felt we were going to lose one of the leading world exporters of all fertilizers.

[Paul] So now Josh, we sit here and look at the market and say, Okay, we still have Russia trying to invade Ukraine still there, that issue hasn't gone away. China's having, whether it's an up or down economy, you pick what bold service you want to believe. And we've seen a relaxation in most of the fertilizer prices, why?

[Josh] We have normalized a lot of the situations. To your point, the Russian stoppage of natural gas flows to Europe. At first, that was a major event. Oh my gosh, what are we going to do? We're going into winter, there's not enough supplies, we saw that Dutch TTF go from 4, 5, 6. dollars and MMBtu to 103. Today, 15, 16 bucks. Are we back to absolute normal? Absolutely not because the world is still messed up. But we're not back at that high end. Because we figured out normal, we figured out imports and exports and things like that. An open and free market finds a way eventually, there's always gonna be a little bit of a scary period, there were always everybody's like, Oh my gosh, I don't know what's going to happen. And in fear generally drives prices higher. But as we start to figure it out, and that's what's happening around the world, we figured out oh my gosh, we thought we were losing Russia. We didn't lose Russia. Oh my gosh, Europe will never turn their nitrogen production back on. By now 75 to 85% of their production is now online. So all these events that we're scared of, we figured out.

[Paul] But did we also use less product?

[Josh] To a certain extent? Yes. High prices cure high prices, demand always ends up having a say in the S and D, right? So yeah, there's a little bit of the scaling back. But ultimately, this seems as though it was more of a rationale of the new world. To me at least.

[Paul] Do you anticipate, or did you anticipate that price alone would reduce some of the demand on limited supply?

[Josh] Yes, at least on the phosphate and potash side of the marketplace is. Now nitrogen, when you start to look at it, is a very fixed rate. Right? If you want to raise X number of bushels of corn, for example, you have to have a certain amount of nitrogen there you can't scale back the nitrogen without hurting that, that overall yield potential. Now phosphate, potash, you can mine that soil, you can reduce your application rate you can you know, delay it if you're a fall applicator, you can wait till winter, you can wait till spring, actually something I talked to my dad, as we're going into that '21 period into '22. and beyond. So they said, listen, we need to look at these a little bit differently. We need to look at changing practices if we can, so did the soil test those things? This last fall, I said if we can wait, I know you like going in the fall. But if you can wait until winter, if you're comfortable with that, I think there'll be a better situation, luckily played out in Christmas was a little bit easier this year.

[Paul] Well, I know you're not totally in the business of I guess answering the question you just did there at the family discussion. But did you get the sense people were locking in or not locking in prices, like they used to. Had they changed habits?

[Josh] They had changed habits during that time. And we have seen several examples of that. The supply chain, your distributors, your retailers, we're looking at the high price and most of us were around for 2008 and 2012. The last time we saw the super cycles, if you will, we remember the pain of the backside we're looking at those numbers saying this is not comfortable. So we were much more conservative on their buying patterns. Same thing on the farmer side and I don't like these prices, they don't quite make sense. I'm going to hold off a little bit longer so it was a much more conservative and delayed reaction to the marketplace.

[Paul] Okay, so is the top slide in your presentation about the black swan events?

[Josh] It was.

[Paul] So what's it now?

[Josh] It is. The worst of it is behind us. That worst of the high prices seem to be behind us. Of course, we can always repeat it. And we always got to watch for that. But it looks like that cycle, for example, is done. Just because we put the high prices behind us does not mean volatility does not still exist. And that's one of the things people sit there and say, oh, you know, phosphate was $1,000 a ton. And now it's, you know, five, $600 a ton. Oh, we're not gonna see volatility. That's not the case, we're going to continue. These are commodities prices move up and they move down. So don't think that just because we've gone down, this is going to flatline there will still be events driving these markets and don't get lackadaisical.

[Paul] So what's going to be the big driver now then, on the volatility? 

[Josh] Well, right now, it depends on the market. When we look at nitrogen, a lot of it is centering around China again, the government continues to sit there and step into the export market, making dictations 'you can do this. You can't do this.' Right now the big fear of the world is the government came out and said we need to fill Chinese warehouses first, we are going to stop exports. Well, then we started to find out it wasn't exports to the rest of the world. It was exports to India, they're really zeroing in and saying we're in slowdown going to India. So that's disrupting global suppliers’ global trade. On the phosphate, it is dodging two bullets, you know, that major hurricane that went up to the Gulf of Mexico and went just north of Tampa. That thing missed a lot of phosphate production by a hair. And in the earthquake in Morocco, right? That huge devastating effect on the population. Fortunately, the phosphate production kept on churning along so it's missed two major bullets, but still dealing with very, very tight supplies here in the US countervailing duties are keeping three of the world's largest global exporters from accessing our country.

[Paul] If I remember correctly, Josh, you've more than two decades of doing this, with fertilizer?

[Josh] Yeah, it's the hairline starting to show it

[Paul] I wasn't trying to call that out. Come on.

[Josh] This is experience. This is good. I started back in, it would have been spring of 2002. I actually started my last year of college. I had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday classes. So I would drive to Kansas City and work Thursday, Friday. But yeah, I started full time, I believe it was May of 2002 and ever since.

[Paul] And the reason I asked that is to set up this question. So in those decades, we'll just do it kindly. That way in those decades, has it always been has fertilizer always been global? Like this?

[Josh] Yes, but it's been much more quiet. When I first started in the industry, we were just getting off of a cycle where a truckload of potash coming from Carlsbad, New Mexico, the cost of freight was just as much as the cost of the product. And if a price moved three, $5 a ton, that was a major event. I had people that were upset with me that I didn't give them a heads up that this was coming. Now, I if I called up somebody said, Hey, the price is moving five bucks a ton. They'd be like, Dude, I've got stuff to do. Why are you bugging me right now. I mean, we had when India last endured this most recent, this time, the price of global urea went up $100 a ton almost overnight.

[Paul] So the end user, to an extent is just, I guess immune, numb to these swings now?

[Josh] I think so. And the farmer doesn't typically see the swings nearly as much as the retailer nearly as much as a trader. Because those prices move much, much more slowly. I always compare it to lumber prices when they skyrocketed and go to Lowe's or Home Depot. You show up now when the price of replacement lumber went up where that price was up immediately at the stores. But what happened when all sudden we started to see the price of lumber futures drop? Well, that was real sticky. They want to get rid of that high price. So with the further down the supply chain that you get the little bit less of the day to day volatility isn't this it's smoothed out a little bit more the further down the chain you get.

[Paul] You mentioned New Mexico, and you mentioned the weather in Florida. How much domestically has fertilizer production distribution helped or hurt this discussion?

[Josh] It has helped. It has been a steady situation. That is not to sit there and say that there haven't been some production hiccups, issues, things like that. But when you look at it, we have not had near the disruptions that a lot of other global major manufacturing points have had around the world. It has been steady.

[Paul] Where have those growth spots or stabilizations been

[Josh] in terms of the...?

[Paul] U.S. Yeah, in the U.S. Sorry.

[Josh] It's you know, we've got a major phosphate production that sits up in the northwest of the country, obviously the majority of the production is sitting down in Florida. Both of those just continue to churn as if there's no issues. Nitrogen plants throughout the Midwest continue to roll along. Now there are, you know, planned downtime to make repairs. It's a very high temperature, high stress situation on the equipment they have to make repairs. But for the most part, given the margins that they're making, they're running as hard as they possibly can without actually breaking the equipment. 

[Paul] We are recording this and I would call it the middle of hurricane season, we're approaching some pretty tough times ahead. Is that still a major volatility causer?

[Josh] It is a way I like in it, I always like to say it is a low probability high impact situation. And the reason for that is you've got two major points that I watch when it comes to hurricanes, and they're both in the Gulf of Mexico. Number one is the one that we just missed that hurricane and we had just north of Tampa Bay. Now I wasn't overly concerned in terms of damage to the facility and things like that. It's Florida, they know how to build equipment, and build facilities with high wind and rains and things like that in mind. My big fear was at that hurricane push right up into the bay, he would disrupt those channels, and they have to go do a bunch of work to dredge them out. And you would be able to move product for a while and you'd see a couple of weeks of disruption from that point. So that's one major point what was watched the second being the mouth of the Mississippi River, NOLA, New Orleans, Louisiana, if you have another one that impacts there, and we saw that how many years ago. It ran straight up there. And it destroyed grain facilities and it destroyed ports and it messed up the river channels and hurt barges and that so those are the two main points whenever you see it. Houston, to a lesser extent is a third point that we would add into there. But Tampa, and NOLA are the two biggest points we'd watch from a hurricane point of view.

[Paul] Let's get into Nola, then they're dealing with an issue right now of low water. That is a longer tail event, not a storm that comes in in three days there for a day out and in for. Yeah, what's the long term tale of low river levels on the Mississippi in the fertilizer industry?

[Josh] Yeah, it's funny. We're repeating this after only a year ago. Last year was the exact same story - low river levels, what are we going to do? We got to spring all of a sudden it was flooding the Mississippi and here we are, we're right back to low waters again. And the story is it's going to disrupt traffic. And this is probably more of a grain situation today with harvest going on. But obviously, there's gonna be a fertilizer impact. The fortunate part of it is these barge captains, the crews, the Army Corps of Engineer and the dredging operation. These crews do a phenomenal job, they have done a phenomenal job, they continue to do a phenomenal job of doing everything they possibly can to keep these channels open and you see it every single day, especially now. But what the impact is today is let's say you can typically take 16 barges on a tow. Well, maybe you only take eight, if you can typically take 1600 tonne per barge, maybe you can only take 13. So all of a sudden you start to see where these rounds are just a little bit more efficient. And yeah, there's going to be a little bit of an additional cost because those guys all got to make their money. But it's that ability to move probably from point A to point B in a timely fashion. We're more inefficient today than where we were.

[Paul] Because the stories that I'm reading or seeing that hit more of the mainstream say, oh well yes, grain going down, but it's the fertilizer and then the big one now is the salt that's going to be used on your road that's coming that comes up because you don't send a barge empty in either direction, if you can help it so is that a little bit misleading on the fertilizer is is greatly impacted.

[Josh] It is greatly impacted. It's going to be more so on the phosphate and nitrogen side. Just because those are two more two products that are more reliant on the barge system, your potash, because it comes from Canada because it's something from Carlsbad, New Mexico, places like that. It's much more rail dependent. There's a little bit that goes by barge, but it's not nearly as big a percentage. Nitrogen is going to be okay-ish. From the standpoint that we got a lot of production throughout the Midwest, it's more reliant on truck and rail. However, when the biggest one that I'm watching right now, it's phosphate. Number one that follow application season is less than 30 days away. In number two, all that product is produced in Florida. There's some that hits the East Coast by rail, but a lot of that gets barged through the Gulf of Mexico and then up through the mouth of the Mississippi.

[Paul] So that is going to be absolutely because time is critical. I mean, yeah, there was a little bit of rain last weekend, but that's not going to filter in and raise the levels. It doesn't hurt, but it certainly doesn't help and again, that long term tail is going to be felt. Okay. You've mentioned several products. Let's do a quick outlook on each. I think we've said there's been a relaxation in volatility. But is there still a, and to an extent price? Is there one market, which one do you want to start with, you want to start with phosphate?

[Josh Linville] We're gonna start with phosphate. He's done significantly less price work, versus its highs back in April of '22. I actually ran these numbers here a week or two ago. And I look at the percentage drop from its high to where we were. And where we had seen nitrogen down. I think it was 55 - 60%, potash was down about the same percentage, Phosphate was really only down 35 to 45%. And a lot of that has to do with the inability to access three of the biggest exporters of phosphate in the world. Now, there are challenges to the case against Morocco. And hopefully that will open up a lot more productive flow here. But that's not the case today.

[Paul] So what's the three to six month outlook? Am I into the position of locking in or deferring some of this, playing the market for a few months?

[Josh] If you are a person who is looking at phosphate and saying I am absolutely going to go this fall, I think your time's run out. We've got 30 days before we start to hit the fields. What is in place is largely what is going to be in place, we've got logistical issues, we've got tight supplies out there. If you want to guarantee the product is going to be sitting there - the highest degree of certainty, go talk to a retailer today, longer term, there might be some more chance that these things start to scale off. We've got challenges on the Moroccan countervailing duty case, which could start to affect the price ideas. But again, that's a little bit of a flip of the coin. But there's at least more time on our side there.

[Paul] Let's move to nitrogen. What's the story there? What's the headline?

[Josh] Well, it's weird, that really you break it down to three cycles of or three versions of nitrogen. When we look at anhydrous we've only really got fall prices accessible to us. And we still see them very aggressive. We're expecting a major fall application demand run for anhydrous. The price looks phenomenal, versus grains, urea, UAN historical values, you know, here recently, everything about anhydrous looks pretty good. I can tell you, I told my dad to go ahead and buy it. So I better be right on this one.

[Paul] Otherwise, you're not gonna find somewhere for Thanksgiving to go.

[Josh] That's right. And then if I if I miss a meal, I'm gonna get very, very upset

[Paul] When it comes to okay, but I know this isn't necessarily directly there's other people, it's still an X that helps you and you help them with information. We're already looking ahead. I'm already getting questions about '24 acres, you're making a decision to plant corn or beans. Now, if you're applying anhydrous, you're anticipating more fall application henceforth, more corn acres, right? Or am I reading too far down into the book?

[Josh] We are forecasting right now in our demand models, we are using 92 million acres of corn and 88 million acres of beans next year. Now that is actually a little bit less corn acres than what we did this year. However, last year anhydrous is a little bit overvalued. And we didn't quite know there was gonna be 94 million acres, right, we didn't lead into the season thinking there's gonna be that much. But as we look at it, we actually think that anhydrous is going to take more of the overall nitrogen demand, assuming mother nature allows us to get out there, because it has been so well priced.

[Paul] Interesting. So that is part of the factor, not necessarily the price that's going to be achieved with the sale of a bushel of corn?

[Josh] Yep, it's, nitrogen is always interesting, because not only do you get to figure out what is your overall nitrogen demand look like? Well, now you've got to start sitting there saying, Well, how much of the pie does anhydrous get? What does urea get? What is UAN get? And that those numbers change all the time? Because right now, we're forecasting that boy, anhydrous is gonna be great. It's gonna be 2.5 million tons applied. What happens if it's November 1, and it finally starts raining? That's great for the Mississippi River. That's terrible for anhydrous application, and well floods in stat freeze, and we can't run toolbars anymore.

[Paul] Well, I guess I'm going to kind of throw a little wrench into that thinking is, we've been so dry. I cannot remember the last time we've had this much corn and beans out before we've even hit October, Josh. So does that thinking have to change a little?

[Josh] It might. There are some areas that we're watching. In fact, we're doing a quarterly webinar here this afternoon. And we've got a drought map on every single one of the products and hydrojetting. Very, very big deal. Because I'm talking about what if it's too wet? What if it's too cold? Well, most of the farmers will sit there and say, Yeah, once you go out there smart aleck and trying to play anhydrous wants to dry, you grab a pretty little fog in that field, because nothing is going to seal it. So I'm going to take

[Paul] Right, right. It's a waste. And I've heard that discussion before. And that's happened. And so you have to have that factor in so now enter in a little case of volatility, right?

[Josh] Yes, yep. The expectation is it's going to be major demand. But if any of those three situations pop up and it hurts demand, now all of a sudden we go into Christmas saying well, anhydrous fell short. What does spring look like? Now? What does anhydrous capture? What is urea? Capture what did you do, that's why it makes it such a difficult market and the nitrogen side to figure out what's going to happen.

[Paul] So I get the sense, Josh, that your and my Thanksgiving discussions are always different than Christmas because so much changes in those family chats about people. And it sounds like this will be the same this year.

[Josh] Yeah, that's one thing I like about fertilizer. If somebody can come up to me and sit there and say, Well, Josh, you were wrong with this point of view? Well, the market changed, it wasn't me it was the market.

[Paul] Alright, let's look at urea. What do you see is the headline there.

[Josh] We're expecting a little bit of a pop. And actually, since we've been talking, I've had a couple of alerts come through, it looks like India's getting ready to step back into the market for another purchase tender, when you take their demand stepping forward with the fact that China is sitting there restricting exports, this should have been a little bit of a bullish event. But longer term, we're struggling with the price idea. We feel like the global s&d is relatively normal. Prices today are not normal, any farmer although today, it's still too high priced. So we're really questioning what later Q4, Q1 looks like. We're a little bit afraid we're gonna get into the pattern of last year where we spike early. Maybe we do that death by 1000 cuts on the price through winter. Nobody wants to bring product in. And also we get spring, everybody's looking around saying where's my product? Sorry, everybody's scared to death. Nobody wanted to bring it into the country. We're short, we're tight.

[Paul] Oh, and then there goes the price spike. And no, you were at it again. It wasn't the market. It was Josh this time. That's right.

[Josh] That's right. No, the markets change. Remember, I just said that.

[Paul] Do you see? Okay, you've mentioned India a couple of times, it used to always be, and I've kind of discussed this on Market a little bit. India's more of a discussion point than it used to be or am I just because I wasn't listening before?

[Josh] They are a bigger discussion point because of the price finding ability of the way right, India does it. So in India, for anybody that might not know, most of the countries will just buy product, nobody says a word about it. In India, in order to make sure that everything is on the up and up. They call a tender, and whoever wants to participate sends in an offer. At the end of the process, they will show every offer every ton. Every single number has to negotiate down to the lowest - West Coast and East Coast price. It's a fantastic snapshot of the marketplace. Now in the past, that system worked really, really well. That was a situation where they were buying a lot of times you get a discount for that. And you find out what kind of a discount is available out there. Well, today that system is actually working against them when they're out there buying a million ton. The world is much more of a tight s&d. So now suddenly you see prices rally. So it's a little bit of a, how much will the price react to it? And then at the end, what are the actual prices who's willing to undercut the market to make sure they get to sell? So it's a great, open and honest way of finding out where's the market right this second? It's a new starting point.

[Paul] Are you saying that not all markets are that way?

[Josh] It might come as a shock. But yes.

[Paul] Sorry. That was too easy. Okay.

[Josh] Just saying what we all think.

[Paul] Right? That's what you're supposed to do. I'm not supposed to say that we're supposed to set you up to say that Josh. What do you see, what other fertilizer market should we be paying attention to?

[Josh] If I say it's still got a lot of volatility in front of it. phosphate, it's going to hinge a lot on the Import / Export situation. It's going to have an impact on what the demand looks like this fall. You know, like I said, we dodged a couple bullets globally. There's still some things we need to watch there. I don't think volatility is done for phosphate. Potash feels pretty good. We feel like the price has done a tremendous amount of work to drop. I think that the manufacturers did a great job with their summer field programs. We've seen a little bit of appreciation, but nothing to the extent what we've seen on phosphate nitrogens potash, actually, for me is the one I feel the most comfortable about. I think it feels comfortable. I think we'll see a little bit of appreciation going into the fall that probably has more to do with logistics and does the actual price but potash is a very slow moving methodical beast that sometimes can take months or years for a price cycle to complete. And right now it's just kind of sitting sideways.

[Paul] I guess I'll ask one more weather question. When you see areas come out of drought that traditionally are in drought, I'm thinking of areas south of you and west of you that have emerged. And then the areas around me that are in drought and don't look anywhere close to emerging. Does that have any influence on what you do?

[Josh] Absolutely. And it's having the conversations with our clientele in those areas, it gets very difficult, because pull yourself, obviously a lot of folks are listening in from a farmer's perspective. It's hot, it's dry. What's your approach to it? I'm not putting anything on this ground. I'm not gonna plant anything. If there's no moisture, it's stupid. I'm not gonna spend the money. So your feedback to the retailer, I'm not going to buy, I'm not going to buy, I'm not going to buy... what happens when the first rain comes through. Well, I need to buy.  Retail center is saying that you sat there and said, You're going to need anything. Every farmer in the area was saying I, you are going to need anything, I was going to take that price risk. So now all of a sudden, demand goes from zero to 100 miles an hour in a matter of a couple hours when a rainstorm comes through. So that's it, all of a sudden, you start trying to figure out those regions, you can have an overall market that's falling through the floor. But if that region is sitting there desperate for whatever can get its hands on, that number can actually start to rise. And those little opportunities are the risks that we look for.

[Paul] So in that sense, we're back to the discussion of where the hurricane goes versus where the Mississippi river goes. We're now a lot closer than what you initially would have thought at least that's what I think you're trying to tell me. Yes. Okay. A couple of very important things to close with. Does Kansas beat Kansas State this year in football? 

[Josh] No, no. I'm a Missouri guy. I don't ever want Kansas to win a single football game.

[Paul] Well, but Mizzou and KU played this year right.

[Josh] No, K State, Missouri, Missouri. 

[Paul] Oh it was K State. That's right.

[Josh] This is it. We're okay with K State. We don't like K State doesn't like us, but we share the common interest of not liking KU.

[Paul] Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Everybody dislikes KU. And the last important question in your region. Did anyone say, Did you see Taylor Swift somewhere this weekend? Anywhere? Did she come to the Missouri side? Did she come to the Kansas side? Supposedly she was in Lawrence. Is she touring around your neighborhood right now?

[Josh] The rumors were that she actually, she and Travis actually had dinner very close to our office. We sit next to a decent little area. And they supposedly ran out to a restaurant very close to where we work. So if I'd actually spent some time in the office, I might have seen them. Maybe I want to go over and have a beer with them. But I missed out.

[Paul] And now you miss out on actual work when I ask a ridiculous question, but that's why Josh it's fun to have these chats.

[Josh] Absolutely. Listen, the next time they reach out saying Josh, what's your thoughts on fertilizer? I was like, listen, Travis, you know, Taylor, I've got things to do.

[Paul] Yeah, right. I could easily put in a line right now. Just say check it off, but I won't. Josh Linnville from Stone X. Always good to chat. 

[Josh] Thank you so much for the time. Appreciate it. 

[Paul] Hey, thanks for having me on. But thank you for watching this installment of the MToM Show podcast. New episodes each and every Tuesday. We'll see you next time. Thank you.

Contact: Paul.Yeager@IowaPBS.org