Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] I can't find historical moments where the blow off top led to higher prices in the next days and weeks. Fertilizer production, I do think that's the biggest wild card that can lead to the potential for higher prices here in 2027. I look back at crude oil when it spikes and what tends to come down the pipeline is recession talk. Want to just keep in the back of our mind, I'm just going to lightly cover some of the themes that I find important here as we get to planting this crop in 2026.
[00:00:32] Hey folks, welcome to the what the Futures podcast, your quick guide to better farming decisions.
[00:00:45] All right, folks, welcome into the what the Futures podcast. Of course, recorded each and every week in the UPL studio. They've got a new fungicide called Teleron. Reach out to your local retail or contact your UPL rep. You can find those details on our website with thefuturespodcast.ca a great new fungicide for your farm here in 2026. I'm on holidays this week, so this is a little different. We're gonna go through a market outlook. Now. I've done this presentation. It's taken me between an hour and an hour and a half in person. Obviously I've removed some slides for copyright reasons. YouTube doesn't like when you kind of show some of the content that others have created. But I normally I'll bring in movie clips, music, you know, a few different things to spice it up when, when it's in person. So this one's going to be a little, a little drier. Not as many laughs I would say. I'm just going to lightly cover some of the themes that I find important here as we get to planting this crop in 2026. Why don't we just get into it and you guys let me know if this is something that you think is a good way to put out this type of information. Because realistically, you know, we could do, you know, outlook quote, unquote, outlook type conversations or outlook type material and put it out to you guys on a more regular basis. But let me know. Ryanothefuturespodcast Ca that's my email.
[00:02:13] Let me know if we're onto something here or if we're missing the mark. So just imagine that I'm standing in front of you, you have grabbed yourself a hot cup of coffee, you're at your local community center along with 25 to 40 of your peers, and I come up on stage here to the front of the room and present this outlook. Now, I've been having Some fun with this one.
[00:02:41] This is Finley's birthday present. The reason I put this up on the screen, number one, I ask the folks, you know, how old do you think this picture is? If Finley got this brand spanking you for his birthday, how old is this picture? And I get a variety of answers, but most are pretty short term and they're right. Like this is after a day, a day of use and my joke in front of the, in front of the room. And this is tongue in cheek, of course. I don't want anyone to get offended, but you know, I say, well, if this is what happens to a case combine in our living room, I can't imagine what your combine looks like after a week in the field. So usually get a couple of laughs in the crowd and you know, trying to offend anybody with the red combine. But anyways, there's lots of good machines out there. But of course you got that beauty John Deere tractor sitting in the background. I talk a lot about family, I talk a lot about perspective when it comes to, you know, my day to day and what I do when I get in front of a crowd.
[00:03:41] And I want to keep that one in. That's a pretty good laughs this time around.
[00:03:46] Of course, if you're looking at all of the projects we have on the go here, uh, you're tuning into the podcast. You can like subscribe, leave comments on YouTube, certainly appreciate that, or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And of course tell a friend or a neighbor that you enjoy this content. The Lunchbox Crew. I've talked about that a lot. If you want more details, there's a QR code there. Or you can go head to Ryantanini CA the conference in Brandon, Manitoba, December 1st and 2nd this year. So crop marketing may cool. Looking forward to getting a few more of those details out here. While you're planting a crop, I'm going to be talking about some of those details. And then of course cup of coffee, which has been hosted by Brian Como with ICL here as I've ventured out on on holidays. So thank you, Brian for that presentation in front of a group of people.
[00:04:38] Is is similar to a podcast layout, right? We got positive moments, market, talk strategy, and then of course eating your veggies.
[00:04:47] Now we were playing a couple different songs for eating your veggies, so I did have to delete that slide. Amanda's done a great job of making me laugh on that one, but I don't think YouTube would have liked the Eminem song that we had overlaid on eating your veggies. So let's not forget about that one. Towards the end of today's conversation and positive moments, honestly, for me, it's just being able to get the chance to get away here, you know, you know, get away for a few, a few weeks and go and recharge before, you know, a busy, busy spring. So nice to get away with winter lingering in my portion of the Canadian prairies. Nice to get away and dodge that here for a little bit. Now, there's a lot to talk about. Obviously, you can talk about Iran, you can talk about Trump, you can talk about oil recession, biofuel policy, market manipulation, AI. We're going to talk through some of that here in this segment. We won't get to it all, unfortunately. We'll kind of get to the big ones that I think you need to pay, you know, most attention to, particular attention to. Now, there's a couple charts in today's slide deck, but not many. I use lots of memes. I use, like I said earlier, music video clips, pictures. That's how I walk through a marketing presentation.
[00:06:05] And today is actually more about strategy than, than anything else. But you like to have some fun with it. And when you have a hedge account, and this is just a side, you know, friendly fact, I asked a lot of growers if they had a hedge account and very few put up their hands. I probably got in front of 150, 200 farmers and a handful of people put up their hands. But that's besides the point. The end of the day, when you have a hedge account and you have a market rally, yes, the positions are offsetting. Your hedge account may be declining in value in a bull rally, a climb, but your physical bushels are offsetting that climbing in value. But it still feels like you're getting hit by a train when you see that statement come through. So a bit of a poking a little fun at the old hedge account, if I may. Now, if we're going to go through some of the bigger themes today, we all know about the big crops. We're not going to spend a lot of time on that. But as you look at the and what you're growing here in 2026 and those plans are basically baked in now.
[00:07:11] But you know, there's specialty crops when you, when you over produce or produce a lot, I shouldn't say overproduce, but if you produce a lot, you need to work through that supply situation. You need the market to react with less acres, you know, maybe lower price, more demand.
[00:07:26] And I view marketing and the commodities that I cover in like in three baskets, I put those commodities in three different baskets in, in the one basket. I'm going to call that patience.
[00:07:37] And that's going to be your specialty crops. It's going to be your peas, green peas, yellow peas, maple peas are in there. It's going to be maybe your lentils to some degree. Green lentils specifically, it could be canary seed that's in that, in that list. You know, malt barley I would kind of put in there as well. Right now those maltsters kind of struggling to come up with a, a realistic premium for malt over feed. So I'd put that in that basket. But it's, it's a crop that is, you know, heavily adequately supplied and you're just looking for time and looking for less acres this year, but maybe back to normal production and then from there recovery in price. All right, so I'd put those in there. The next basket I would have is, I'd call it like, you know, opportunistic. I look at what's happening in the wheat markets right now and of course I'm recording this on April 19th, it's a Sunday.
[00:08:38] I expect we're going to see a decent pop higher in wheat, higher. By the time you listen to this pretty big frost event in the US winter wheat belt here this past weekend. Of course, lots of war stuff going on.
[00:08:52] So fingers crossed, you know, by the time you listen to this, that we've got, you know, achieved some more upside. But you're, you're looking for opportunity on wheat. I'm looking for an opportunity to sell at a break even, which sounds weird to say that out loud, but when you stare down a negative margin number for 4, 6, 8 months, then you get a chance to sell it at a profit gets very exciting. Right. And so that's a big one. You want to be opportunistic on that. Same thing with, with feed, barley. Some great values out there, I believe. Great values that you should be considering against a backdrop of lots and lots of acres. And then I think a market that I would put down is, you know, forgiving and I should knock on wood for this one. But I just think the canola market, yes, there's a lot of acres going in. Yes, production, you know, we're going to try to grow as much as we can, but I think you're going to get some chances, a couple different chances. I think if you miss one, you know, you are going to get another shot. Now, as, as I, as I write or Record this. I'm a little bit of a short term canola bear, but again, some stuff's going on in the war in the Middle east that could cause a bit more of a explosion here or higher. Canola commodity markets, I should say, but removing that. I see that the chart's been kind of turning over here and I'm not worried about it having a significant drop, but I have put in some defensive type strategies and have worked with the folks, you know, that are really good at putting these together, these strategies together. Just have had that dialed in for the last week or so. Just making sure that if it does want to pull back, that we've got that protection in place. So I think Canola is going to give you a couple chances is what I'm trying to say there.
[00:10:47] Now stat scan numbers. We don't have to go through these. We produced in Canada. We produced a dandy of a crop globally. We produced a dandy of a crop in 2025. We're on to the next production cycle though. Now, like this is old news. Nothing here is new. But when I, when I chat with Gers, I say, you know what, like, we grew a lot of stuff. And I, and I ask them, like, where in the globe did we have a production decline or a production loss in 2025? And no one can really come up with an answer. It doesn't matter if it was Australia or Brazil or South America as a whole. Europe. The crops were, were pretty darn good. Now that's old news. I understand that. But it is driving some of your decisions this year and it is driving some of that basket if you need to be patient or, or opportunistic.
[00:11:36] Now, Canola carryover, you know, I have it as in the top five of, of historic carryovers for Canada.
[00:11:45] Not as bad as it could have been, certainly not a terrifying number by any means. But there's just some extra kicking around. There's extra peas, all the specialty crops. There's extra of that wheat. We've done a good job exporting wheat as a, as a country here. Yeah, there's, there's going to be, I don't know, maybe a bit more normal wheat carryover the way it, the way it looks. So we'll see. But this is just stat scan from December. You guys know all this stuff already. There's nothing really new on here.
[00:12:12] These next two slides just highlight, you know, friend of the show, Chuck Penner. This is left field commodity commodities. Chuck sent these over to me and just highlighting if you want to isolate A couple of specialty crops like peas using this example, I think that's about 46% stocks to use ratio like quite a bit higher than the past number of years.
[00:12:35] Lentils as well within that, you know, probably more greens than than anything carried over. But a few of these crops have significant carryover and that' that's going to impact how you market this year. And that's where that patience thing comes into play.
[00:12:50] Now I'm more excited about 2026 and what to what's going to happen here. We already have drought issues and portion portions of the winter wheat belt. We'll talk about that a bit more. We have some questions around fertilizer availability and that impact to yield. Lots of different weather stuff going on. The prairies, depending on where you're at, has been delayed this year. Cold temperatures all the way to the end of April causing some, some delays especially when you look at the last couple of years. So there's lots of different things, war stuff, lots of different things going on impacting us moving forward. But we got to start somewhere and where we start with is which crops were heavily supplied moving into this next growing season. Now just a little bit of fun here on this meme. You know, prairie farmers holding up attention I guess to the canola margin. Especially looking at 2026, that canola margin's been the only one that's hung around positive territory for the entire time. Maybe there's a few that were close, but canola's kind of stood out there. Wheat and barley margins are hanging on by, by a thin, thin, thin margin, no pun intended, but just hanging on there trying to stay afloat. And again that's where you want to be opportunistic when you can be profitable.
[00:14:09] And then I've got pulses and I put maybe oat margin which is just down and out under the water. I could pull red lentils out of there and say that's okay. My red lentil growers that I talk to aren't are starting to take some of the pricing and see profitability here. So that may be an isolation maybe $10. Green peas are getting close, but not on my farm. That's still a loss.
[00:14:34] And oats as well. The oat guys, it's improved. Organic oat prices have climbed.
[00:14:41] You know, conventional oats are climbing as well. But a little late to the game in that oat margin has not looked very favorable on too many operations here this year. Now as I go to the next theme here of a blow off top like this is the one slide I've been kind of the most excited to cover and kind of the neat thing now is as of recording this like we are, we have a few markets that have traded above this blow off top. But in my chats, in my discussion with, in front of growers here, I'm looking at Minneapolis Wheat on my phone here like we are right, right, right above it now. That's good. When I look back at a blow off top and market action, I struggle to find a new high in the days, weeks and months after a blow off top. Now the wheat markets, Minneapolis Wheat is right there now, hopefully by the time you listen to this, it's much higher. That would be a pretty good bullish signal for me.
[00:15:46] Kansas City Wheat just below the blow off top as of recording.
[00:15:50] And so Canola also has not reached above it. To me, I looked at this and said, man, I can't find historical moments where the blow off top led to higher prices in the next, in the following days and weeks. And it took many months and in some cases years for us to trade above that. And so it's been part of my marketing discussions and conversations with growers. You know, when are we going to see the market trade above the blow off top? And the blow off top is the market opens skyrockets, but by the end of the session it's closed at a lower, lower than where we opened, lower than where we started.
[00:16:29] And so in the past, I remember blow off tops as being like, oh man, this is it, this is the spike in the market. It's over here. I gotta take advantage. And looking back 2008 banking crisis though, 2022, there was one. I couldn't find the rallies. All I saw was either moments to take advantage. And then in some cases we had weeks, we did have weeks to sell it near the blow off top, not at it, but near it. And that's how it's kind of setting up right now in the Canola market. So we'll see, we'll see. But this one has caused me to do more digging and try to find some answers because I can't find too many examples where we trade above the blow off top. Now as of recording here, as of this last update, illustrating at 718, the blow off top hits just north of 7 60.
[00:17:22] And we've had weeks now over a month to take advantage of this blow off top or price as high to it as we can. And as of recording, we're not near it, we are nowhere near it. So hopefully we get a reason to rally. But Again, in the past, the blow off top, it's hard to go and trade above that. I don't know what it is, but if you have perspective, I'd love to hear it again. Folks, Ralphie here with this meme checks canola futures, I'm in danger.
[00:17:53] I put this slide into this presentation back on March 14th.
[00:17:59] All right, March 14th.
[00:18:02] I've had it in the entire time.
[00:18:05] And canola futures maybe haven't been dangerous the entire time. Dangerous meaning lower.
[00:18:11] But also, you know, we've been wanting to take advantage of the climb. Now, I said earlier, I think the canola market gives you many chances. I still think that's true.
[00:18:21] I'm treating it probably the most cautious out of most markets that I'm working with. But I think there's enough around it that can allow some couple of rallies in that same vein, that same level. So, you know, I talked to growers, we set targets in that range and we feel confident that we'll get more done even if there's a pullback here for the rest of April, which like I said, position myself for Spongebob. You should sell some Knoff 2027 canola. Now my only comment on that today would be as you're planting this crop, you should be taking a peek at wheat canola, any offer into 2027. The fall of 2027, of course, what's fertilizer going to be? What are your expenses look like? Getting a sensible around that at the same time, but just making sure that you keep your ear to the ground for 2027.
[00:19:15] Unfortunately, I'm going to have to skip most of the Iran slide here. What I tell growers, the reason I have to kind of skip it is there's a lot going on as I record this. So I don't, I really don't know what's going to to play out here. But what I, what I mentioned to growers is that the big thing that I'm watching here is damage to infrastructure, damage to the actual facilities that require days, weeks, months, years of repair.
[00:19:44] I think fertilizer is obviously the big a, big storyline that we all want to figure out and pay attention to.
[00:19:52] As of this moment, the Strait of Hormuz is open door closed. Hard to say it's. They say it's closed here at this exact moment, but that's going to change a bunch here over the next while. I wouldn't really worry about that though. I wouldn't really worry about opened or closed. What I want to know is what happens to urea what happens to fertilizer here? Fertilizer production, availability?
[00:20:17] Because I do think that's the biggest wild card that can lead to the potential for higher prices here in 2027.
[00:20:24] But I also ask growers, especially the older guys in the room or the older folk, you know, when was the last time that you saw this type of disruption and this impact to a lack or the potential impact to a lack of fertilizer available to grow crops across the globe? Like, when's the last time you saw that? Nobody has given me an answer yet.
[00:20:45] So if we go through this, it's going to be the first time we do.
[00:20:51] I believe maybe somebody from this levels through the 70s will correct that. But anyways, that's what I'm more focused on coming out of this war event. Crude's trading like $80 a barrel as of me recording this. Right. I got quoted like a buck 35 a liter for diesel today. And then that's going to go down this week. A little less tax on it anyway, so. All right, we'll keep moving Fertilizer.
[00:21:21] My big key message here is just to control your logistics as best as you can. We've, we've had some great folks on the show here the last number of months. But selfishly, if you have 90% of your fertilizer on farm in storage and you need to go and get that 10%, you know, go and get that first, right? Control your, your destiny when it comes to fertilizer.
[00:21:43] Lots of talk and lots of discussion around how do we buy for the next crop. Like that's what's been happening in my circle. I'm not willing to, to step out and give a great big opinion yet. I want to see values, I want to see if they're a pre war value or post war value. I want to see what type of crop we have coming. I want to see what is in the soil for the next crop year. But I think for us, unfortunately for the foreseeable future here, we're going to be talking about in more detail about fertilizer availability and how to manage around that. You know, I got asked in some of these meetings, like, you know, should we put our hands up to buy stuff? And I did buy some pre war stuff, pre war value stuff for the farm. But overall we need to work the numbers back, right? If we're going to go and buy expensive urea or foss or whatever it is, what are we getting for prices for the next year? Because there should be some type of correlation there.
[00:22:46] So lots going on in this space. We've talked about it enough here already today. It's been a hot topic though, getting in front of growers for sure on freight.
[00:23:00] I just caution folks like if the price of diesel stays, we're in the second month here of higher prices. If this continues into the summer, you're going to see that impact some of your specialty crop prices for fall, you're going to see an impact to your wheat basis. So I just ask growers to just keep that in mind as they look to make some of those decisions here for the fall and beyond. There is going to be, I don't understand how freight costs would be lower with, with where energy has gone. So there may be a bit of. I don't know if sticker shock's the right word, but there's definitely an impact to. If you're going to fill, you know, imagine, you know, filling my truck with, with diesel. That change. Well, imagine filling a ship with fuel.
[00:23:47] Anyways, it's just something to keep in mind here as we get into the next crop year.
[00:23:55] This is a pretty big one here. You know, drought in the US and the drought map as well. Now the, the corn belt, you know, there's even delays in planting in the US Corn belt right now. Maybe some potential delays here in the northern Canadian prairies. We'll see.
[00:24:14] We're watching the drought in the western side of that winter wheat belt that, that is the one that is causing or supporting wheat markets as of recording this. And of course a frost event now over the last couple of days here. And of course this is from the, the NOAA is where we grabbed, grabbed this. So the drop monitor folks in the U.S.
[00:24:37] it's, it's something that when I look at the weather forecast that we got from a few of the folks, some of the meteorologists out there, I do see some stress points for sure. Don't get me wrong. I think today the biggest one is the western growing region.
[00:24:54] And I was mentioning to farmers face to face just to be ready to take advantage of this and potentially market some cereals here in Western Canada if this continues. Right.
[00:25:08] The forecast looks to me like it could be changing. But of course anything past three, four, five days, yeah, evolves. So something to continue to keep an eye on folks is obviously the weather and growing season. Biofuel policy next.
[00:25:26] All I have to say about this at this time is that in 2025 we had lots of bad news and lots of concern around policy. Like as a Western Canadian farmer, you were looking at policy and, and it could have been a tariff with China, it could have been a biofuel policy within the U.S. but there's clarity around a lot of that now.
[00:25:49] And so certainly it's not bearish or negative news. It's been very, very positive.
[00:25:56] But I just want to let you know that the positive news is in here now. Is there going to be more? Maybe, but it's in, it's baked into these values, at least what we know as of now.
[00:26:07] So.
[00:26:08] Yeah.
[00:26:11] And then kind of my last one for themes here before we talk some strategy and some crop rankings is just recession. I'm, I'm not an economics expert by, by any means, but I just, I look back at crude oil when it spikes and what tends to come down the pipeline is recessionary themes or recession talk. It's just something we want to be hyperfocused on, not hyper focused, I should say. We want to just keep in the back of our mind the opposite of hyper. As you're working through the year, just continue to keep tabs on recessionary type news and headlines.
[00:26:52] Now, if you're following along on YouTube, you can see that we're going through a bunch of different charts here in quick succession and we're going to end it there on the 2016 Corn Chart.
[00:27:03] Now this is, I'm kind of reaching here a little bit on this recording because if I'm standing in front of a crowd, I kind of ask for a safe space. Maybe everyone put their phones down. Allow me to put my tin hat on my tin hat theory.
[00:27:20] But I just really, I find it interesting. The first six charts, there's two canolas and then two wheat charts and then two cotton charts.
[00:27:30] The one is from 2015 and the next one is from 2025. And I just, I find it really interesting. You can even go back into 2014 and 2024 if you're bored. Just look at what happens. A one year chart, look at what happens over that year. And just the crazy similarities between 2015 and 2025. It's really, really weird. Okay? Different years, different events impacting markets. It's just really, really weird. But I end this one on the 2016 Corn Chart and just highlight, you know, the spring peak and then where we sit in the fall, a big move lower, significant move lower by the time we get to fall. Is that going to be the case here in 2026? Who knows? It's already different with the war in the Middle east. It's already different than what this chart shows.
[00:28:20] But it wouldn't surprise me it wouldn't surprise me if you grow normal crops in North America and across the globe. Again, let's say just normal, not above, you know, I guess the fertilizer thing will be. But yeah, let's just say normal for now. Fertilizer is in there as normal, where the prices sit. This fall, I think this chart would be pretty darn close. So something to keep in mind.
[00:28:45] All right, now, this crop ranking, most of these, all these meetings lately have been up towards the northern part of the prairies here. So we are missing some. Some key crops in here for some of the decision makers out there. I've raised my wheat budget a little bit here. I know I have a lot of hard work, heavy lifting to do. Kept my canola budget basically the same. My pulses have been the same the entire time.
[00:29:11] Nothing's really changed. Not much has changed here since fall. But, you know, it just highlights to me how important it is when you do get a wheat rally and get to profitability. Like growers across the prairies.
[00:29:23] You're gonna. You wanna grow more canola and more barley. That's what you'd like to do. That's what you're. You're telling us anyways. You're putting in quite a bit less oats, quite a bit less wheat, quite a bit less peas.
[00:29:37] The lentil guys seem quite content to grow very close to the same lentils. And we're going to put in some more flax now. Is there anything there that's kind of scary from a production standpoint? I guess the barley is the one that I sit here and say, how much higher can barley value go in a normal production year? So I would put a star around barley or feed barley. I should isolate feed barley would be the one. Canola to some degree as well. But canola has given us all the chances, all the opportunity in the world. Right. Like, it's given us a pile of opportunity. Some very good averages are established and hedged out there. And so to me, it's not that scary, you know, I think even with where Paul's values are at, I've got yellow peas, green peas towards the bottom end of the scale, low protein wheat towards the bottom end of the scale.
[00:30:28] And here I've got durum on the bottom end as well. The durum growers, though, are going to say, ryan, you're way out to lunch. And I am on this one. The Durham and hard red values are much closer, but hard red is leading over Durham in most scenarios. And so that would be the one to highlight There.
[00:30:47] All right, we're in the, in the thick of it now. Crop plans aren't changing a whole bunch, but some of those themes are my expectations. And there you go. Western Canadian farmers. Canola, barley, and of course, wheat. A little bit jealous.
[00:31:01] Oats and, well, I'll take lentils out of that. Peas. Definitely jealous of the success of, on the acreage side anyway, of canola and barley.
[00:31:12] All right, folks, just a couple strategy things here for, for you. You, of course, reach out to your local experts to talk these in in more detail. But, you know, I go through the example. The first thing highlighted in strategy is no price established.
[00:31:27] And that's just a contract offering that, that we saw growers execute on in 2025 with great success.
[00:31:34] No price establish is buying a put option through Cargill, leaving your basis unpriced and leaving your futures unpriced. And what that did is allowed the grower to lock in a worst case scenario, buy a put option, lock in a worst case scenario, and then left themselves exposed to upside down and also left themselves in a position to not face a buyout. In the example I use for 2025, a grower ended up selling like 103% or committing to 103% of his canola crop. We had to reduce our no price established contract by three or four loads. I believe it was three or four. It's a tool out there. You can reach out to Cargill to talk about it with them. But if you get to a spot here in the spring wheat market or in the canola market in the next few weeks, months, where you're like, man, I can, I can't let this fall behind. I can't let this slip. I need to take advantage. I have to grab this price.
[00:32:34] That is one contract that you should know off the top of your head. And you can chat about it with them to get more ins and outs. But it was fantastic. The, you know, we actually ended up with a bit of a Cinderella run on it because we ended up pricing our futures after harvest, pricing our futures on what we knew we produced, locked in the basis price, the futures, and then we let the put run all the way to Christmas. And if you look at a canola chart, you guys know what canola did that month?
[00:33:08] We ended up doing quite well on this strategy and it was just great because we were able to reduce what we owed them. We had to deliver what we produced that had to go to them to fulfill the contract.
[00:33:21] But because there was no basis and no futures established, there was no buyout.
[00:33:25] Then we got to lock in our basis. That's the first thing we did once we knew what we had for production and then we set a target on futures and then do we call it luck? Maybe we were able to sell the put option and extract some good margin out of that as well.
[00:33:42] Okay, forward protect. I've talked about it on the show with AG I3. Reach out to them. I believe you have till the end of June to consider that. But it's grain contract insurance on wheat and canola again.
[00:33:54] They're the experts. Talk through with AG i3. It's the only grain contract insurance in the marketplace through the brokers. I've done lots of bare put spreads with my broker over at rbc.
[00:34:07] Again, those are just defensive strategies. I've used them more on canola than anything. But as you get market spikes and you, you don't feel comfortable selling physical grain or, or canola. Bare put spreads have been effective. If we're doing this in person, I'd go through more examples, but it, it's just a little bit of price insurance. Yeah. And then of course re ownership's been a hot topic on cup of coffee here.
[00:34:30] But re ownership strategies, what does that mean?
[00:34:33] Basically means that hey, I've sold. Maybe I've sold, I've maybe delivered already, but I'm bullish.
[00:34:40] I think this thing, it's showing signals, technical signals, fundamental changes happening. I want to reown these bushels. You can certainly do that. I have many growers that sell aggressively in the fall, get majority of the cash in the bank and then just look at reownership strategies throughout the winter. The downside is gone and they just look at how to reown in a bull market. And then of course futures first contracts were a huge win in 2025, especially for wheat.
[00:35:13] Some of the highest price wheat values. You know, when you get 9, 950 hard red and CPS in a year where we spent most of the time under $8, it was a nice big win. Locked in the futures in a rally, spring rally, weighted on basis. Doing a little bit of it now. But as I said with freight, not as bullish basis at this time. But yeah, just another strategy that, that you can work through. And of course your crop marketing portfolio is calling here folks. And just remember to pick up the phone. Spend some time on your crop marketing now. Kind of our final theme here and we'll wrap it up. You know what's worked well, you know, funded futures account. I talked through the futures account quite a bit, but just the ability to protect and not expose yourself to additional risk or buyout risk. Building a Team I'm a big, you know, a big supporter of having multiple people involve multiple people that you trust. Doesn't mean that everyone needs to be a paid type consultant or analyst or anything like that. But just building a team that helps you make better decisions, that's worked so well the last year.
[00:36:27] I can't stress it enough. There's just some really great folks out there and just building your team. You know, maybe it's crop marketing stuff, that's where I live. But it could be farm financials, it could be agronomy, it could be all encompassing. But just building a team is just so important right now and just realizing you don't have to spend a pile of money on one consultant, you know, you can get a bunch of great people involved for very little or no charge. Technical Analysis Trent him and I chat regularly. I'm not a technical trader or an analyst by any means, so I rely on the folks like Trent and even Dwayne as well at Grain Metrics. But it's worked so well. The technical analysis has given growers just so much confidence in markets that have been feeling very panicky. Those tech guys are invaluable, just phenomenal. And Targets Targets have worked so well as well in this environment. Well, I don't know going forward if it continues to, but Green Targets have worked so well.
[00:37:36] All right, folks, we're at the end of today's version of of my market outlook conversations. Of course, if you want to talk to me about coming out and presenting your organization this summer or, or next fall, by all means, I'm I'm happy to have a conversation.
[00:37:55] I do keep the schedule pretty tight so. But you never know. Certainly wouldn't mind the conversation. I promise I bring way more laughs and a lot of energy to to the stage for you. But if you haven't already, guys, you are planting the crop out there. I don't want to bring up winter this fast, but Clarenbeck Como de Pap Vance crows joining us and Brandon, but we have a heck of a crop marketing agenda that will be released here shortly, so take a look at that Ryan Den for details on the conference.
[00:38:28] And lastly, of course I got to put this slide up a whole bunch in front of growers. UPL gave a little discount here for Batallium if you purchase a minimum of 400 acres of battalion, save an extra dollar an acre. If you're listening to the podcast, all you have to do is Text your UPL rep and say, I don't know how or what you guys are doing, but how you're pulling this off. But Ryan said from the what the Futures podcast, reach out and extract a little bit more of a discount there. All right, I'll probably get in trouble for this one, but great product, great company and certainly appreciate their support on the podcast.
[00:39:12] Of course, a little different this week. I'm on holidays. Let me know what you thought of that, guys, or some advice. It's a little tricky.
[00:39:22] Certainly tricky, you know, having this, having this conversation or this presentation like this, but if you thought that was neat, let me know. Look forward to getting better at it. Getting.
[00:39:36] Yeah, maybe a little more fluid and, and seeing how we can get some of these type of outlooks out to you. Happy to figure it out. But yeah. So, yeah, I'll be back from vacation next week. Big thanks to Brian Como for hosting cup of Coffee. Big thanks for you to you for tuning in here once again. I'll be back with fresh material here the first week of May for the what the Futures podcast. My name is Ryan and I'm out of here.
