You decide where you want to start, but it's...

Yeah, well, you know, we were speaking of harvest for the beets, guys.

So, you know, we're right into the beginning stages of the grains market, starting to look at their traditional harvest period, which, you know, typically starts down in the south-southeast portion of the United States.

And then we work our way to the ice states and in the Corn Belt.

But, you know, early beginnings of harvest, there's been obviously a lot of talk about potential yield reduction there.

to the corn crop, and the good to excellent positioning is a little bit below where we would like to see it.

I think it's 7% or 8% below where we were this time last year.

So that starts our discussion is

And I'm sure I'll have some, questions in there too because uh i try to stay in my line of traded commodities as much as i can uh and let let you experts that's all good sugar do your thing but uh i'm gonna turn it over here and i i just yeah sure again i i thought it was really exceptional and uh and i think everybody will find it uh enlightening for sure so yeah

i appreciate it you know it's one of those things where sometimes you got to look back and understand where you were to understand where maybe you're headed um and with the domestic sugar market it's really tough for a lot of people to understand that we hit a patch here for this particular uh calendar year uh that was not anticipated by any stretch to see a market decline like it did as far as the refined sugar prices And I think with what was going on currently for negotiations for the next year, there was a little bit of this surprise.

Why are we seeing prices on such an inflationary move year over year? And I've looked back and I said, you know, what's really interesting is if we looked at the prices that people contracted for in 2025, there are right about the same as where people are contracting for 2027.

So I thought it would be good for everybody that and particularly on that call yesterday and for all of you listeners out there today is to kind of recap some of the things that impacted the market.

to change the direction back towards maybe really what would be looking like 2025 market conditions.

The first of which was we had obviously some concerns over demand base that was sticking in everybody's brain for what was anticipated for this year.

And it started creating a snowball effect where people were extending the length of time that it took for a contract to get through.

how the suppliers... effectively eliminate supply.

And maybe you can talk a

little bit about corn sweetener that's so near and dear to your heart.

That's true.

It is the time.

We've got the corn crop pretty much planted, which is fantastic.

We had a pretty good pace of getting everything in the ground.

Now, is everything perfect? No.

But is there anything that you're looking at where you're like, ah, that could really, really impact things that we're not expecting?