Hunter Biram, Scott Stiles, and Breana Watkins to look at why attractive winter wheat and canola prices may draw Arkansas acres this fall. With row crop margins still squeezed by high input costs, they dig into the newly released 2027 University of Arkansas enterprise budgets for both crops, walk through a side-by-side return comparison, and explain why canola holds a gross revenue edge on paper.

The conversation also covers the fundamentals driving the wheat rally and the practical realities of canola's closed-loop marketing, limited delivery points, and the learning curve growers may face with a new crop.

Ryan Loy sits down with Matthew Marchant, a PhD student in agricultural economics at the University of Arkansas, to discuss how highly pathogenic avian influenza moves through the Mississippi flyway. They explain why the current strain spreads mainly through wild waterfowl rather than farm-to-farm contact, and how that ties bird flu risk to a predictable seasonal pattern that widens across the flyway from fall into spring. Marchant walks through what that seasonality means for producers, from timing biosecurity efforts to preparing before peak exposure arrives each year

Hunter Biram and Scott Stiles walk through the August USDA WASDE and Crop Production reports, where a recurring theme of more acres but lower yields shaped the outlook for soybeans, long grain rice, corn, and cotton. They dig into the surprising jump in corn and soybean acreage, the drought driving yield cuts from Texas through the western Corn Belt, and why cotton comes down to what gets harvested rather than what gets planted. Hunter and Scott also cover Arkansas' record projected soybean yield, a 50,000-acre increase in long grain rice, and a record soybean crush forecast. Even with tighter supplies, they explain how improved price expectations for the 2026/27 marketing year offer a bright spot against still-elevated input costs.