I got this letter as an equity-holder from Little Sioux Corn Processors ethanol company: "Dear Owner, For the first time in 20 years — 20 years!!! — in 2018 ethanol use in the U.S. went down. And it went down as a direct result of small refinery exemptions from the RFS granted by former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. ...

President Donald Trump does not want inflation or higher commodity prices. Those things bother the Federal Reserve and cause them to tighten monetary policy, increasing interest rates and we know how he feels about that. He has been doing a very good job of holding commodity prices down as every time the price of oil recovers, he jawbones it back lower again. ...

It was 2015, when Eric Branstad, Gov. Terry Branstad's son, was head of America's Renewable Future, a pro-ethanol group that lobbied candidates running for the nomination for president in Iowa. Trump wanted to win the Iowa caucuses and knew that Terry Branstad was a strong ethanol supporter. ...

I have been surprised at how many times that Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley's name comes up in my report. He is very much engaged in the legislative and political process in Washington. He is the president of the Senate and chairman of the Finance Committee which gives him much power in Congress. ...

President Donald Trump uses vinegar to get what he wants but rarely any sugar. He is more inclined to use a sledgehammer to beat what he wants from whom he wants it from, and then if they resist, he beats them again. That is why agriculture and ethanol groups are afraid to challenge Trump in spite of his having the most damaging RFS and trade policy for the agriculture sector in modern history. ...

One characteristic of the Donald Trump presidency has been the challenge of American institutions in some of the most heretofore bedrock ways that they operate. I am not a guardian of the status quo when they find something better, but that is not what has been challenged. ...

Percentages can be misleading. Talk of 500 farm bankruptcies, a 90% increase from last year, attracted attention but there were over 11 times that many annually during the worst of the Farm Crisis of the 1980s. It wouldn't sound so bad if they said that farm bankruptcies in 2018 were just 8.6% of 1987 levels. ...

I was told by a director of the Iowa Corn Growers that at a meeting they discussed my recent reports where I had noted that the National Corn Growers Association is dropping the ball in pushing back against President Donald Trump personally on renewable identification number waivers. ...

I heard an interview with New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio where, referring to wealth disparity in the U.S., he said “There was plenty of money ... It was just in the wrong hands." That is a pretty categorically strong statement that if you have wealth somehow you hadn't earned it, and it was wrong you had it while others did not. That is a profound statement of socialism...

The U.S. Commerce Department says that the economy grew by 2.9 percent last quarter and 2.6 percent for last year. President Donald Trump was disappointed. Anything less than 3 percent "was not his fault." He set the economy up for faster growth with a tax cut as fiscal stimulus and then the Fed pushed on the brakes with higher interest rates countering the fiscal stimulus with monetary policy. ...

Billionaire Warren Buffet never got excited about farmland investment but his son Howard did. I think that Howard Buffet liked being called a farmer after writing the book "Forty Chances Finding Hope in a Hungry World." He was a bit off though or I am above average. He was referring to most farmers who grow crops for 40 seasons in their lives. 2019 will be my 46th crop and I had just as well go for an even 50...

One revelation highlighted by the recent government shutdown is just how many Americans are on the edge of being broke. Many get paid every other week because they need to be paid that often and if they miss one or two paychecks they have no money. They have no savings, they have no credit line, they have no banker to talk to, their parents may be just as tight on cash, they probably can't even get one of those high interest payday loans with no paycheck as collateral. ...

Part 2 of 2 Farmers do not want to hear that they may have to endure a few more years of tight margins before corn prices break out of the current trading range marked near 4.50 at the top of the range to become more profitable again. The 29-year corn price cycle suggests that a new base equilibrium period that can take a decade to form is required before supply and demand adjust to one another to become the next bull market in corn...

The chart that I have included in my annual outlook presentation longer than I can remember is the Purdue University 29-year corn price cycle. The corn price cycle starts with a base equilibrium lasting about a decade, followed by a launch when prices respond positively to having built a demand base, and then a spike higher when a drought or some other fundamental exacerbates supply and demand tightness stetting the price high for the cycle. ...

My wife, Jane, has gotten me to occasionally watch the HGTV shows "Fixer Upper" with Chip and Joanna Gaines and the "Property Brothers" with Drew and Jonathan Scott. What fascinates me about those shows is the lack of imagination that people have who cannot picture something that is not explicitly in front of them. ...

Is the economy real? President Donald Trump describes it in historical terms as the greatest economy that the country has ever experienced and then takes the credit of course. There are good numbers on the employment front, both high employment and growing wages. The tax cut is a windfall to those making money. Sure wish that we (farmers) could put it to better use...

Growing up in Iowa, I was relatively unexposed to the regional cultural differences of this great country. There was no racial diversity in Royal 50 years ago when I was a young man with a total white population here, mostly Danes and Germans. Everything we learned about race relations we saw on TV or experienced only by traveling to other regions of the country. ...

U.S. Rep. Steve King got more infamous while I was gone on vacation. He was one of the dominant story lines for a couple of national news cycle. It was his racist white supremacist comments that continued to bring the heat. He is the product of the openness that I believe was encouraged by Donald Trump for racist white supremacists to come out of the closet, making their views public. ...

Over the Christmas holiday I watched Smirnoff vodka television commercials touting a new non-GMO label for its vodka. First off, Smirnoff is Russian vodka and Russians are drunks and lying S*!s. Smirnoff vodka was developed by Vladimir Smirnoff after escaping Russia after the October Revolution. Vodka nearly destroyed Russia and maybe still will. Smirnoff vodka is actually owned and distributed today by a British company but that conflicts with my narrative. It is still Russian...

From a subscriber: "I asked my local Cenex manager why the price of E85 was still high. E10 has dropped 43 cents in the last couple of months and E85 hasn't changed from $1.94. He told me that the RIN price has often been close to 60 cents but now is only 9 cents. ...

Time may be running out for both sides in trade talks between the U.S. and China. The Chinese economy is weakening and there are many bubble aspects to it that Beijing is aggressively trying to manage so they do not burst. What they are doing is attempting a soft landing from what has been a historic period of really unprecedented economic growth in that country impacting the world. ...

How can I say this without sounding too "liberal?” Santa Claus is sexist. I know because I have done my research on the subject. Last year I gave my wife a really sharp Santa Claus statue for Christmas. She loves Christmas decor and a local store had a first-class Santa Claus that stood about 2 feet tall. ...

Agriculture input suppliers are worried about the sour mood that many farmers have regarding the outlook. That makes them more reluctant to open their pocket books and spend. Commodity market outlook meetings can be a rather dismal exercise that can cause some long faces. I like to add some humor to it as a saving grace which is why I have a couple good slides in my outlook presentation that give rise to a few chuckles. It may be a slog but we will get through this...

What was officially known as the Fourth National Climate Assessment report, which is a multi-federal agency congressionally mandated report, was released last Friday. It elicited a broad varied response, much of which was predictable. It in general supported the premise of there being a human contribution to climate change and offered that an aggressive response is needed in order to mitigate the risks. The president's response to the warning was "I don't see it.”...