Episode 39 The Southern Risk Management Education Center (SRMEC) and its Role in Agricultural Risk Management with Dr. Ron Rainey

This morning, we’re shining a light on the Southern Risk Management Education Center (SRMEC), led by Dr. Ron Rainey at the University of Arkansas. SRMEC is helping farmers across the Southeast tackle the everyday uncertainties in ag—from weather to markets—through risk education, crop insurance navigation, and financial planning tools. Whether you're just starting out or have decades in the field, SRMEC’s programs, including the Crop Insurance Navigator, are designed to help producers make informed, financially sound decisions for a more secure future.

For more info, visit srmec.uada.edu or call 877-866-1848.

Transcript

00;00;07;12 - 00;00;08;21
Dr. Ron Rainy
Yeah.

00;00;08;24 - 00;00;14;27
Riley Smith
Yeah. Okay. We're good. Yeah. Well. But, Anyway. So, you ready to go?

00;00;14;29 - 00;00;16;01
Dr. Ron Rainy
I'm ready to go, man.

00;00;16;04 - 00;00;27;17
Riley Smith
All right, let's rock and roll. All right. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to another episode of Morning Coffee and Ag Markets with your host, Riley Smith. And today we got a special guest, Dr. Ron Rainy . Dr. Ron, how are you?

00;00;27;19 - 00;00;33;19
Dr. Ron Rainy
I'm doing great. Riley, I appreciate the opportunity. And, doing doing well, man. Doing well.

00;00;33;22 - 00;00;58;18
Riley Smith
I'm glad that you, I greatly appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to sit down with us. And visit a little bit. And today, what we're gonna be talking about is, kind of your baby? We're going to kind of target a couple programs that you deal with, but mostly with, SRMEC and, I believe the acronym stands for Southern Risk Management Education Center.

00;00;58;18 - 00;00;59;03
Riley Smith
Correct.

00;00;59;11 - 00;01;00;26
Dr. Ron Rainy
It does, it does.

00;01;00;26 - 00;01;20;10
Riley Smith
And, I am a part of that. On a on a small scale. But Dr. Rainy is the director for SRMEC. And, if we just right out of the gate, if you want to just introduce yourself a little bit, kind of the background of you and, and, what you'd like the public to know.

00;01;20;13 - 00;01;39;26
Dr. Ron Rainy
No. Good. Well, well, thanks for the opportunity to be here and, to visit with you. With your listeners. But I'm Ron Rainy. I'm a, my title is assistant vice president within a division of AG. But I am, professor of agricultural economics and extension economist. And so one of the hats, I wear a couple of hats.

00;01;39;26 - 00;02;14;15
Dr. Ron Rainy
But, my focus as a professor is risk management and marketing. And in that risk management space, I direct the Southern Risk Management Education Center so that center serve the entire southeast U.S., including the states from Oklahoma and Texas, all the way over to the water and includes Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. So, 13 state two territory region, a lot of collaborative work that we do with both not just other universities and colleges, specifically our land grant, but with community based organizations.

00;02;14;18 - 00;02;58;10
Dr. Ron Rainy
So, doing a lot of outreach and, and technical assistance in that space of those spaces of risk management, marketing and, one of the things that we do within our center is we our tagline is that we empower producers, we empower our farmers and ranchers to to manage the risks that they face daily. And we use that term in power because we provide grants, roughly about 2 million annually to these, inflow answers or educators, whether they be within the land grant, our education system, or they be in a community based register system, those organizations that serve to help train and educate our farmers and ranchers, we give grants out to allow

00;02;58;10 - 00;03;11;28
Dr. Ron Rainy
them to reach out, to do some outreach, to do some technical assistance, to help farmers both understand, build strategies and basically to, to manage and maneuver in these risky times.

00;03;12;00 - 00;03;31;04
Riley Smith
You know, I think you kind of answered my next question. It was going to be what is SRMEC? But I did notice I was going through. You sent me kind of a briefing on, on on it. And I mean, besides me knowing, to give our listeners kind of an idea, he did state that it was 13 states.

00;03;31;06 - 00;04;08;16
Riley Smith
But projects are typically 18 months in length. And, as you said, they're they're designed to help producers learn new strategies and to manage the agricultural risks they face. And in today's time and age and in the economics, the economy in the way it is that is becoming more and more, sought after and used, these risk decision tools that, Dr. Hunter Biram, Dr. Ron Rainy and, and Dr. Ryan Loy and, and a lot of others that are making these shiny apps, as we call on to, help litigate that risk.

00;04;08;18 - 00;04;16;26
Riley Smith
So, Dr. Rainy my next question would be, what kind of impact does SRMEC have on producers when we're talking about risk management?

00;04;16;28 - 00;04;47;20
Dr. Ron Rainy
Yeah. And it runs the gamut because the way we define risk within our center is it aligns with USDA Risk Management Agency. And that we have risk across five broad areas in agriculture, production, marketing, finance, legal and then human resources or HR. And so across those areas, we have impacts across those areas, be the type of risk that farmers are facing.

00;04;47;20 - 00;05;28;22
Dr. Ron Rainy
But then we also have impacts at different depths that we're working with beginning farmers, new and beginning farmers and then and, and we may be working with a new beginning farmer. Just explain what is crop insurance or what is USDA Farm Service Agency? Or who should I reach out to within the land grant system to help me understand production costs or production systems so we could be talking to those beginning farmers, or we could be talking to a very experienced, seasoned farmer of 25 years that's either changing their production system, changing their marketing strategy, or maybe they're looking at some type of employee training or new new system that they're trying to bring into

00;05;28;22 - 00;06;04;05
Dr. Ron Rainy
their operation, and they're trying to understand how to what are some strategies and what are some tools and what are some, some, experts that they can collaborate with to help them better manage that? So we have, impacts across a broad stretch of spectrum of areas. So it's really hard for me to really nail it down. We try to come at it from an economist perspective and say that we keep farmers on the farm, we enhance their sales, we enhance their profitability, we enhance their economic viability and some of those numbers are hard to get to.

00;06;04;07 - 00;06;42;03
Dr. Ron Rainy
But, some of our best success stories are we hear, from farmers that talk about how we help them. They get from a legal risk that they put together an estate plan or a transition plan to transfer their farm for the next generation or the next two generations. They laid that plan out to to remove the uncertainy from that, another space will be is is helping a, one of our success stories is that we, had a, had a farmer that that was going into agritourism, and we help them navigate the legal, liability, risks that they were going to face going into that.

00;06;42;03 - 00;07;13;17
Dr. Ron Rainy
And they've helped them on pricing and marketing, using online and social media marketing to try to think through strategically. How should they engage or position their farm versus the other competitors that they had in that space? So those are some of some successes that highlight that that that jump out to me. If you go out to our center's website, which is at srmec.uada.edu, you could go out there and look at the the news because we we highlight top projects that we call our projects of excellence every year.

00;07;13;19 - 00;07;39;23
Dr. Ron Rainy
And I think we leave up the last three projects of excellence winners. And those projects are awarded because of the program materials that they developed to teach the farmers the promotional materials they did to promote their outreach. And equally as important is the evaluation that they did. So I call it the so what? So you can have a meeting and have 500 people at and I will say, okay, so what what happened?

00;07;39;25 - 00;07;59;15
Dr. Ron Rainy
What happened to those 500 people that attended that meeting? And we asked them to evaluate down to say, well, they developed a new marketing plan, or they developed a transition plan, or they understood and started using a better resources to understand what their cost of production were so that they knew what their breakeven was. And we try to get evaluation down and with extension.

00;07;59;22 - 00;08;25;04
Dr. Ron Rainy
So we're the southern center. We're part of a national program called the Extension Risk Management Education Program. And it's national in that there's three other regional centers that that we serve nationally. And our competitive grant programs are very similar. The only difference is we managed to do programs the same. We manage the grants, we promote the grants the same.

00;08;25;06 - 00;08;52;05
Dr. Ron Rainy
The only difference is that regionally agriculture differs. So each one of us have an advisory council made up of both public and private stakeholders people from industry, farmers, people from government or risk management agency, people from universities. They actually evaluate the proposals that are reviewed. And so they also come up with what we call our regional priorities, which really highlight what's really going on across the southern region.

00;08;52;11 - 00;09;23;24
Dr. Ron Rainy
What are some things that we really want to focus in on and, and currently, a huge issue nationally and within our region is financial stress because of the very, thin profitability margins that are out there. So how do we help farmers identify ways to understand and compete in this challenging and very thin profit, profitability top how do they, can we strategize on reorganizing or refinancing or to get financing?

00;09;23;24 - 00;09;30;18
Dr. Ron Rainy
And so, that's it in a nutshell. Sorry if I'm going to broad, but we do a lot.

00;09;30;20 - 00;10;01;15
Riley Smith
Oh. You're good. Just see a few statistics here. Sorry. We see $2.2 million invest in projects across southern region just during 2023 to 2024. Within that there were 32 funded projects. In $776,240 were awarded to the projects focused on producers, underserved by crop insurance during that time frame. Now, can you off the top of your head.

00;10;01;15 - 00;10;12;19
Riley Smith
And I'm not trying to put you on the spot. Is there any kind of, special projects as of right now that you're doing that, that you that, you know, of that that's going on?

00;10;12;22 - 00;10;44;28
Dr. Ron Rainy
Yeah. So across those projects annually, we have two pools of projects. So a grant portfolio, we call them one is producers that are underserved by federal crop insurance. So any farmer that's under utilizing federal crop insurance either that's because of limited product availability or limited knowledge or awareness. That's what that program is for. So in that in that space, we get wonderful successes in terms of growing the number of specialty crop growers that understand that.

00;10;44;28 - 00;11;10;29
Dr. Ron Rainy
Yeah, there's some there's some products out there for you, like whole farm revenue. A number of our livestock producers, we've helped them understand not just what are the products that focus on. And, in that space, but what are some products, especially for livestock producers like pasture, range, or forage. And so we've got a lot of projects focused in those spaces trying to serve small specialty or livestock.

00;11;10;29 - 00;11;35;25
Dr. Ron Rainy
Farmers are traditional farmers. They're well versed. But even in that space we have some. So sometimes there's some nuances, there's some new innovations or some products that that, that a project will come out to address that. And so an align project that we have that we've done that, is the center, as the major flagbearer forward is what we call our federal, our crop insurance navigator program.

00;11;35;28 - 00;12;02;12
Dr. Ron Rainy
And so basically I brought in a cohort of program specialists. We trained them up, what federal crop insurance products were trained them up on the risk Management Agency website, including where RMA has an agent locator. And they're just I would call them information brokers to help explain what are the products of crop insurance, how they work, what they cost, and worked with, my colleague that, baron.

00;12;02;15 - 00;12;31;03
Dr. Ron Rainy
And he's got a decision aid that actually will estimate the cost for whole farm and microphone. And we collaborated in some areas to really just help do a lot of train the trainers of the help the educators and, and the community based organizations understand how to mitigate. And so within that project, one of the biggest, myths or misunderstandings that's out there that a lot of farmers confuse Farm service agencies Nap program with federal crop insurance.

00;12;31;05 - 00;12;53;14
Dr. Ron Rainy
Nap comes from Farm Service Agency. It is more of a disaster, a catastrophic insurance, very, very low cost but very, very low return. And in terms of what it returns, if there is a disaster, crop insurance is another level. And we've been explaining the difference in those programs, the difference in those cost in a difference and what that means for their business.

00;12;53;14 - 00;13;12;16
Dr. Ron Rainy
Because the most important thing that we talk about, what our farmers and ranchers, if they're not using a federal crop insurance, they're handling the risks that their farms face on their own balance sheets. And when they when they handle those risk on those balance sheets, those payments, those disasters are coming out of their equity, they're coming out of their profitability.

00;13;12;19 - 00;13;29;14
Dr. Ron Rainy
And what we want to do is with risk management, we say that risk management is the full range of tools beyond federal crop insurance, but including federal crop insurance. So we talk about crop insurance, but then we talk about some of the other things that farmers can do to help manage their risk.

00;13;29;17 - 00;13;40;12
Riley Smith
I think at Red, you kind of led into the next question, because you talked about them a little bit. The trainers that you have, you know.

00;13;40;14 - 00;13;41;13
Dr. Ron Rainy
The navigators.

00;13;41;19 - 00;13;52;12
Riley Smith
The aka the Risk Navigators, I was going to ask you, what is risk navigators and explain their role. And you kind of already did. But if you want to, where did risk navigators come from.

00;13;52;13 - 00;14;22;23
Dr. Ron Rainy
It's actually it's actually a it came up over a lunch, I was talking with an RMA official, and we were just talking about some things that are needed. And, in my words, as I said, is there is there within the crop federal crop insurance space, there's not really someone there to help the farmer navigate what their options are to navigate, what are the choices that they need to make, and what are some things they need to consider when making those choices?

00;14;22;25 - 00;14;45;11
Dr. Ron Rainy
I say, yeah, you have to crop insurance agent. They're promoting the products that they want to move. Yeah you have RMA but they're really not engaged in that education space as much as I think they should have been. And so and in this discussion, I was asked to put pen to paper and when I would from that term from navigate to a navigator.

00;14;45;13 - 00;15;08;16
Dr. Ron Rainy
And so that's why, that's why I wrote out my plan to work, was that we hired these programs, specialists that are navigators, crop insurance navigators, and that is their role. And so when I talk to my navigators, I'll tell them, you're not a crop insurance expert. RMA And these companies and agents, they know their programs and policies much, much better than you do.

00;15;08;19 - 00;15;31;25
Dr. Ron Rainy
What I want you to do is to be an information broker to help dispel myths, transparently communicate the program, and transparently communicate what are the products that are available for these farms and ranches that they can go out and? And what are the differences or the distinctions or what's what's the pros and cons of using this product versus this product?

00;15;31;27 - 00;15;55;15
Dr. Ron Rainy
And so we've dispelled a lot of myths because a lot of one of the examples is that we have one of the navigators and currently have five of them operating across the region. And again, these navigators are serving across the entire southeast region. So they're covering multiple states. But we started out by going through our land grant universities, both the just going through our land grant universities across the states.

00;15;55;15 - 00;16;16;16
Dr. Ron Rainy
Most of our states in the southern region have two land grants. They have an 1862 founded land grant, and they have an 1890 founded land grant, which is our historically black colleges that that have a college of agriculture and, and and an outreach and extension department. And we started leveraging those institutions because of their extension departments. And then we moved that.

00;16;16;16 - 00;16;39;26
Dr. Ron Rainy
We got our name and our footprint out there with them. We moved to community based organizations. So now if you go to any of those institutions, they know who the navigators are. And now not only are they calling on the navigators to come to, presentations, they're also having some of their clients and colleagues, individual farmers call and saying, hey, can you give me some feedback?

00;16;39;26 - 00;17;00;24
Dr. Ron Rainy
I'm interested in this, and they'll guide them. Navigators can guide them through a product selection or more importantly, got them to an approved insurance provider. One of the companies or one of the agents that's providing those services to have them walk them through how to get these insurance products, because that's how a farmer is going to get the insurance.

00;17;00;24 - 00;17;30;24
Dr. Ron Rainy
It's got to come through the agent. We're just trying to help navigate the process to make it more transparent and and provide a feedback loop up to RMA into education institutions about how well Crop insurance is being used in the respective states or respective sectors. And, there's been some growth. I'd say the biggest growth over the last five years has been with, livestock sector, with pasture. PRF (pasture, range, forage), because a lot of farmers did not realize that there was this program out there.

00;17;30;24 - 00;17;55;26
Dr. Ron Rainy
And then I think that there's a lot of of interest in the whole farm revenue in the microphone. But that brings up another hurdle, and that is the recordkeeping that the farmers need to have, because they have to be using. What is the tax form of a schedule F to get those crop insurance products. So then that leads us into another technical assistance space of helping farmers understand how did they know how and why they need to use a schedule F?

00;17;55;26 - 00;18;22;27
Dr. Ron Rainy
And what are the benefits of a schedule F, which is a tax issue. But again, it's risk management. And we're proud to help lay these tools out and lay out the benefits of doing that. So got some wonderful success stories of some farm say, hey, we now have a whole foreign policy and that takes them, from a risk management perspective to another level, but it also takes them from a, a probability of having cash flow challenges.

00;18;22;29 - 00;18;40;24
Dr. Ron Rainy
It takes them to another level. But whatever income their projecting or covered for in their whole farm. They know they're going to get that income. And so hopefully they can just continue to grow that level of coverage and grow their business activity along with their farms, without him facing that risk.

00;18;40;27 - 00;19;09;18
Riley Smith
Risk navigators. I have been, a part of them since June I guess, it's been and I can tell you that the information that these guys are taking in terms of worrying, they're almost becoming multi it's almost like a multiple language, like they're learning the language of different things in order to talk to a farmer or a producer or grower and be able to explain to them the fine print of what they're getting theirself into.

00;19;09;20 - 00;19;18;16
Riley Smith
And so it is it has been really a, blessing for a lot of producers to have that kind of outreach.

00;19;18;19 - 00;19;55;20
Dr. Ron Rainy
Well, and the rewarding place for me is to see. And I've heard from farmers where we have those conversations because the navigators are almost from outside of the industry. It's non-threatening. So if a farmer says, hey, tell me what this PRF is? They're free to tell a navigator this, although they may not want to tell the agent that because that agent may put them in a position, say, oh, depending on the ethics in the character of that age, they said, hey, well, I've got somebody who I can sell a whole lot of stuff to, or I got somebody else say, hey, you don't need it.

00;19;55;23 - 00;20;23;08
Dr. Ron Rainy
And they just go along. And so to have that unbiased perspective that they can come back to and more importantly, build a relationship and build trust has been really rewarding for me to see the navigators on an individual level have their impact grow exponentially as they build out trust and build out success stories. Because I've been in extension for 30 years in a number one place that a farmer will learn is another farmer.

00;20;23;10 - 00;20;45;02
Dr. Ron Rainy
So every time we create a success story, it allows our success to grow exponentially. And the navigators start at two years ago. So right now we're in a place where we have a lot of farmers that know the navigators or will be in a meeting, and they will bring, a farmer that they've worked with in the past.

00;20;45;02 - 00;21;01;07
Dr. Ron Rainy
That farmer will bring some of them up and say, hey, I need you to help my friend. Help them just like you help me explain this policy to them and explain why they need this, to show me where the agent is in their area. They're in a different state. We show them like you. Show me how to find an agent.

00;21;01;09 - 00;21;22;06
Dr. Ron Rainy
Show me where the agent that they should be talking to in their state, and to have that level of comfort that they're being sought out. It's really rewarding for me as a program manager, but it's rewarding for them because I hear these sentiments echoed from my navigators about how exciting that they love their job, because the farmers come at them with the excitement.

00;21;22;09 - 00;21;43;17
Dr. Ron Rainy
Sometimes the farmers are sad. And I'll give this instance. So we had, one of the navigators was going out to help the farmer go and visit to figure out what his issue was with his claim. And the farmers like, I've got a crop insurance issue and they're not following up with me. So on the way to this farm, the navigator says, who is your crop insurance agent?

00;21;43;20 - 00;22;07;20
Dr. Ron Rainy
Because we're they're collaborative to build this Win-Win relationship. Well, the farmer says FSA. He goes, no, no, no. Who's your agent? Who's your crop insurance agent? The farmers say FSA has my policy and he says FSA. If you if the FSA has your policy, your policy is Nap the non insured ag products. It's not crop insurance product. It's Nap.

00;22;07;22 - 00;22;15;01
Dr. Ron Rainy
And that farmer became very frustrated because all they knew about was Nap. And this he said well maybe you should have microfarm.

00;22;15;01 - 00;22;15;28
Dr. Ron Rainy
Or Hay side.

00;22;16;05 - 00;22;36;29
Dr. Ron Rainy
Or PRF. Yeah it wouldn't get out of any of products that that farmer should have been aware of. That farmer was, was appreciative to know what the tools were. But that phone was also very frustrated because that farmer operated farms in two states. And he said nobody in either one of those states ever had that conversation with him.

00;22;37;01 - 00;22;58;00
Dr. Ron Rainy
And to me, that's a great success story to tell, because and and that's one of the things why I bring up that that's the big issue, because I was in a meeting for educators and I said, it's FSA is your policy, your FSA is your crop insurance agent. What kind of a policy do you have? And I said, some people pause, half the room said Nap, some say, I don't know.

00;22;58;00 - 00;23;22;26
Dr. Ron Rainy
I said, it's not a farm, it's not a crop insurance policy, it's a cat pile. It's a catastrophic policy which they will require you to get. But it is not the the level of returns of a Nap policy is going to be so low that you may get some of your input costs back. And, and to help a farmer see that and say, yeah, there's this low cost, but there's also a low return.

00;23;22;26 - 00;23;45;27
Dr. Ron Rainy
So you're transferring very little risk. You're transferring some risk because that may be your best option if you're that small. But the other thing is, is to show a farmer, say, hey, so here's a here's what the trade off would be. So here's what your premium would be. But let's go back and look. So if you had a crop failure because with whole farm and Micro-Farm you're covering not just yield.

00;23;45;29 - 00;24;09;12
Dr. Ron Rainy
You're transferring the price risk as well. And you have those conversations about transferring risk because that's the other deal. The farmer will say crop insurance doesn't pay. And my answer to that is, well, I have insurance on my car, but I'm not looking to go total my car. So the my my car insurance will pay. I'm just looking at I can give a car in case I total my car.

00;24;09;17 - 00;24;29;06
Dr. Ron Rainy
So I'm not trying to get a payment. I'm not trying to get a positive return on crop insurance every year. It's going to come at a cost, but that cost is transferring my risk of operations from my balance sheet to someone else, and I'll have to pay a small fee. But the companies that get I'm not having a detrimental loss.

00;24;29;08 - 00;24;42;26
Dr. Ron Rainy
It is worth that fee. It's worth that cause. And you can look at the different coverage levels and different options to get your cost down to give you a lower coverage level, but still be you adequate coverage that you it won't put you out of business.

00;24;42;29 - 00;25;05;25
Riley Smith
It is definitely when you talk about crop insurance. And that term has been I think if you talk about like back in my dad's day when they were farming in the in the 80s and the 90’s crop insurance, you know, that you had what was called insurance farmers. Yeah. Now, now everybody needs crop insurance in the, in the.

00;25;05;28 - 00;25;06;29
Dr. Ron Rainy


00;25;07;01 - 00;25;13;16
Riley Smith
Looking from, from a 30,000ft view because that could save your operation.

00;25;13;19 - 00;25;15;09
Dr. Ron Rainy
Absolutely, absolutely.

00;25;15;09 - 00;25;36;01
Riley Smith
And if not, now it takes one year. One year bad farming. And so people are running on two years of that. Not necessarily bad farming, I should say. Bad prices in bad, bad market prices, that they an input cost or output that you know what the market value of crops are being right now two years worth.

00;25;36;08 - 00;25;56;01
Riley Smith
I mean, we've seen it already. I mean, you know, how many producers in the state of Arkansas just talking about Arkansas now, we've lost just this year. I've seen so many family farms, fifth, six generation farms go under sale or have to lease. You're going out to somebody else because it was they couldn't do it. So that insurance.

00;25;56;01 - 00;26;13;29
Riley Smith
It's just like you said, transferring risk. Yes, it is a payment. But at the time it's like either doing a price risk, or price insurance where you kind of cover in the cost that if it below falls below the market average. Yeah. For the county average and or yield protection, whatever it may be.

00;26;14;02 - 00;26;38;17
Dr. Ron Rainy
Yeah. And and that coverage and, and having that conversation with them about the importance and the role of crop insurance is just it's a good conversation to get farmers and ranchers to just start to see, you know, with the weather variability, the increase in that in the incidence of drought. So pasture range of forest becomes a lot more valuable and important.

00;26;38;20 - 00;26;57;07
Dr. Ron Rainy
So talk to a farmer and look look at what that is. And so and the beauty of the PRF policy is that you don't have to have a schedule F, you don't have to have a schedule F so, because it's an area coverage. And again, we can go on, we can recommend a company or an agent to an individual farmers.

00;26;57;07 - 00;27;22;15
Dr. Ron Rainy
Those navigators can work explain out what these policies do and how they work. And for some of our beginning, a new farmer or even a farmer that a farmer never had insurance, we have some resources to kind of help them walk through the process of how do they get access, what's the paperwork that's needed. Hunter Biram’s got a nice chapter, in his little booklet, but we talked through those process as well about how do you get signed up?

00;27;22;17 - 00;27;28;28
Riley Smith
Well, Dr. Rainy hate it, hate it that we gotta cut it short, but I'm running a close on time.

00;27;29;00 - 00;27;30;15
Riley Smith
But I.

00;27;30;18 - 00;27;54;27
Riley Smith
I greatly appreciate you, taking the time today to talk about SRMEC, I think our listeners, I think a lot of people, I don't know, you know, you you mentioned that a lot of producers know, but I wonder how many producers don't know about SRMEC and Risk Navigators. And so I'm hoping that this will allow, more producers to get the bug in their ear.

00;27;54;27 - 00;28;00;16
Riley Smith
And so maybe they'll reach out to you. Is there is there contact? We could get to you at?

00;28;00;18 - 00;28;23;15
Dr. Ron Rainy
Yeah. And, apologize I don't know. So it's going to be easiest to go through and just call our center. We have an 800 number. It's on our website. But, that website of srmec.uada.edu is the best way to reach out. You can contact me via email at rRainy@uada.edu as well.

00;28;23;18 - 00;28;47;20
Dr. Ron Rainy
And so those are the best ways to reach out to me. My office number is (501) 671-2175. I'll repeat that (501) 671-2175. But, it'll be easiest to go through our system on our website. And if you're interested in the crop insurance, just go to our navigator page where we actually have an 800 number in there for the navigator page.

00;28;47;23 - 00;28;54;20
Dr. Ron Rainy
That I think people will find helpful, and it'll get them to the specific navigator that they're gonna want to have a conversation with.

00;28;54;22 - 00;29;20;18
Riley Smith
There you go. I appreciate it, Dr. Ron I'm going call it a quits and everybody stay tuned for my market report. Thanks. Back with you. Market report May 25 Corn Current prices at $4.74 per bushel. Month agos prices at $4.72 per bushel. That's up $0.02. And a year ago prices at $4.34 per bushel. That's up $0.40. May 25 Rice.

00;29;20;18 - 00;29;45;14
Riley Smith
Current prices at $13.55 per cwt, month agos price is at $13.94 per cwt. That's down $0.39 and a year ago prices at $17.15 per cwt. That's down $3.60. May 25 soybeans current price is at $10.13 for bushel. Month agos prices at $10.14 per bushel. That's down $0.01 and a the year agos prices at $11.65 per bushel.

00;29;45;16 - 00;30;12;01
Riley Smith
That's down $1.52. July 25 wheat. Current prices at $5.56 per bushel. Month agos prices at $5.77 per bushel. That's down $0.21. And a year agos prices at $5.74 per bushel. That's down $0.18. May 25 cotton current prices at $0.67 per pound month agos price is at $0.66 per pound. That's up $0.01 year goes prices at $0.85 per pound.

00;30;12;01 - 00;30;49;20
Riley Smith
That's down $0.19 weekly. U.S. average peanuts current price is at $520 per ton. A month ago, prices at $496 per ton. That's up $24 and a year ago price was at $542 a ton. That's down $22. And that's your weekly commodity futures this week. Your input prices this week still haven't seen any change. Suspect to see that change next week, however you're oh excuse me, Urea $539.75 per ton ammonium nitrate, $494.67 per ton, ammonium sulfates, $539.80 per ton.

00;30;49;22 - 00;31;20;27
Riley Smith
DAP is $759 per ton, triple Super phosphate, $665 per ton, and potash about $452 per ton. Ag lime $50 per ton and pellet lime this week is $237.65 per ton diesel prices this week. Off road diesel is $2.36 per gallon. Our diesel is $3.30 per gallon and your Mississippi River level and Memphis, Tennessee this week. Current levels at 36ft in a year ago was at 21.82ft.

00;31;21;05 - 00;31;47;06
Riley Smith
I want to thank you all again for joining in on another episode of Morning Coffee Night Markets. We hope you enjoyed it and enjoyed your morning coffee as you tune into another episode. So until next week, we'll catch y’all on the flip flop, bye bye now.