[00:00:02] Hey folks, welcome to the what the Futures podcast where we break down complex market trends into simple, actionable advice. It's your quick guide to better farming decisions.
[00:00:16] Hey folks, welcome to episode 52 of the what the Futures podcast. Recorded as always in the UPL studio. I got a new sign this week. It's not hung in its proper spot yet, but I wanted to plug it in. I wanted to see how it would show on the camera here for tonight and I think it's pretty cool. It's gonna move around, but got a new studio sign here with the UPL logo on it. Welcome into the show, folks. Of course, the what the Futures podcast. It's where we talk about crop marketing for Canadian, Western Canadian farmers. And I've spent my career working with farms, of course. My name is Ryan Denny. I was a grain marketing advisor analyst, led a team of advisors. You know the story. Already spent my career in grain marketing and here I am on the what the Futures podcast trying to help farmers make some better crop marketing decisions. If you could do me a favor. We are trying to increase our subscriber base here on YouTube. So go and hit that, hit that subscribe button or wherever you get your podcast. Go give us a like over there or subscribe, give us some ratings. I. We got a 4.9 going on right now. We still got that one two score. I kind of figure that one out. But 4.9, go give us some love over there. And of course you can go to Ryan Denis Ca and subscribe to the weekly email blasts. And we're on most of the social media stuff. We're still, we're not on TikTok yet, but we're, we're gonna make an attempt there soon. I promise. We will get on Tick Tock. I need to get on Tick Tock. I'm gonna interview the millionaire farmer here like shortly and he's a tick Tock sensation. So I gotta get on there before I interview this guy.
[00:02:13] Anyways, episode 52. We'll talk about Green Gateway Canada for just a moment.
[00:02:20] I feel like I brought up the eggfinity thing a long time ago. And you know how you just want to park that stuff eventually you just want to move on with your life and not have to circle back to this stuff. Well, there's an update and I just, it's one of those things. It's like I want to tie it up nicely in a bow at the end of the day and say, okay, this is done and out of our way, but there's an update. So I'LL talk about that one last time. Maybe. Hopefully. Yeah. And then today's a mailbag episode. No guests. It's a solo episode. It's a baby monitor episode.
[00:03:01] I got the kids asleep. It's late at night. And I wasn't gonna. I wasn't gonna record this week. I thought I'd take the week off.
[00:03:10] But my editor sent me a message, inspired me to get behind the microphone here on Wednesday night. And we'll get to the mailbag. We'll answer some questions. I'm behind. I think there's eight questions for me to answer and have some dialogue on. And you guys seem to like the mailbag solo episodes. They, they hit well in the past. So we'll get some stuff cleaned up here in this episode. There's a bit of conference update as well, and just odds and ends. An odds and ends episode for you. All right, so let's get into it. All right, folks, so let's take a second here. Let's give a shout out to show sponsor John Deere. If you think about it, you've got a lot of connections. Connections to family, the community, your land. Well, here's a connection you may not think about. How's the connection to your machines?
[00:04:01] You know, your tractor, your sprayer, your combine. With a JD Link modem, you can easily connect them to John Deere Operations Center. There you gain valuable insights into your machines, know where they are and what they're doing at any time, monitor speed and fuel levels, even compare machine performance if you're not already. Get connected by heading over to JohnDeer CA. I actually 1 other thing it was useful for this fall is one of my consulting clients. I was bringing them a meal in the field and I actually used the JD Operations center to track them down in the field. I knew where they. Roughly where they were, you know, general sense. But it got me right to the field. And so that, that was kind of neat bringing them supper that one night. All right, I'm going to combine what's Cool in crop Marketing into the Mailbag segment because we have.
[00:05:00] I have a hodgepodge here of questions. I've got all sorts of things, but it kind of.
[00:05:06] They kind of go together.
[00:05:09] So let's start with Mailbake. Let's get caught up here.
[00:05:14] His first one was about crop share.
[00:05:18] And the question was, what, what does it look like these days? What does crop share look like and how do you handle it? And I think this is a big discussion for. I don't think I'm the guy to Answer this. I think you, the farmers, will do a better job answering this across the prairies. But I did think about this a little bit and I did come up with some of the stuff that has happened in the past and where I think we're at now when it comes to crop share as a rental.
[00:05:55] And I'll just, I'll share that for today because I think it is neat to talk about and get some perspective around this. And this would be a great time for you to message me as well and say, hey, this, these are some of the things we've done. And so traditional crop share, back in the day, when I first got into the industry in my area, it was one third of the yield, you know, went to the land, to the landlord, and then one third of the expenses. So I remember them coming in and, you know, trying to figure out all the math and buying their inputs and figuring everything out. And so one third to the land owner, 2/3 to the person farming the dirt. And that was the traditional crop share.
[00:06:43] The bushels, the bushels from the one third to the landowner, they would market it themselves back in the day, they'd have their permit book, right? And it would be wheat, and they'd have their permit book and fill all that out. But they would market it themselves and didn't matter what it was, what crop it was. They'd get their bushels stored on farm and they delivered it when they wanted, they marketed how they wanted. And gee, some of those farms would hold that stuff for years and years as well, all sorts of different scenarios.
[00:07:17] And then it got. You get. Some farmers would come in and they'd say, hey, I'm hauling on this contract 2/3 to our farm, one third to the landlord. And this contract is made for this land or this arrangement.
[00:07:34] And I never, back then, I didn't pay attention to price. I don't know if it was the highest price contract the lowest, or an average or what it was.
[00:07:43] But I think that that's changed in my experience now it's no longer a 1/3, 2/3. I get a percentage, 20%, 25%, no expenses at all. That's the agreements that I tend to run into in my consulting meetings. It's a percentage off the top and sometimes the landlord will market it themselves, but more often than not, they, they don't. It's all marketed kind of together. So I'm curious what the splits are out there. I've seen as high as 25%. Maybe there's some higher than that, but 25% right off the top. I've seen those deals in the past. I'm not a fan of those ones, but I've seen them and you know, at 25 or 20%, like, are there, what bins are involved? Is it hopper storage? Is it big storage? Is there a shed? Is there infrastructure? You know, all that stuff comes into play. But, and from the marketing side, you know, I think that with a landlord year, it's interesting because, like, when the market, you know, if you, in your mind, you've sold their stuff at $10, but the market goes to 12 or 14, and you're like, oh man, I kind of thought I sold theirs at 10, but if I do that, then what are they going to say about, you know, the moving forward? So maybe I should give them the 12 or the 14.
[00:09:18] It's, it's interesting because you can play with that and you can manipulate that around. And I know for, you know, for, from past experience, you know, you're, you're trying to do right by your landlord and you're trying to do right by the relationship, so you're going to give them the benefit of the doubt and you're certainly going to lean towards some of the higher contracts as well. So that's, that's what I've seen. That's my experience. And hey, you know, as a, as a landlord out there, you're looking at who's going to produce the bushels and who's going to market it at the highest price and, you know, work backwards from there. So, you know, I personally, I, I love the idea of some type of flex rent agreement where the landlord participates in the upside, but also takes on some of the risk in bad years and also has a capped.
[00:10:13] That's what I would like to see.
[00:10:15] I know it's just not out there. Like in my area of Alberta, it's cash rent, the highest bidder, cash rent. And you know, it's 120s, 130s, 150s, 170s, an acre and climbing and that's it. No flexibility? No. It'd be nice to get to some flexibility in the Prairies. And everyone wins on good years and everyone takes on some responsibility on PO years. I would be the best. You see it a lot in the US A lot of it in the US doesn't seem to translate here. It's, it's always competitive. Right. And everyone's scared to take that leap because if you do, are you going to get beat out? Because it's simple. The other way was more Simple. Yeah. So I. I'd love to hear from others about what they do for crop share. And hey, if you think anything I says out to lunch, let me know. All right, second question.
[00:11:10] Well, let's go to Carl here next. So Carl. I actually don't have.
[00:11:16] I don't have an answer for Carl. And it's about. So Carl. Carl farms up north, Northern Alberta, and they have sprouted canola. Sprouted canola has been an issue for some farms. So what happened is Carl brought his load over to Cargill and they called it sample at 28% sprouted or damaged canola. Of course, nobody wants to take on that discount.
[00:11:44] And the crazy thing is that load went across the road to the competing elevator, which I believe in this situation was a Richardson.
[00:11:53] And they got. Oh, man. I think it was like 2.8% sprouted or damaged.
[00:12:00] And that's gotta be. I should just pull it up. Cause it wasn't a decimal thing.
[00:12:08] But the point here is that this stuff, when it comes to grading, there's a human element to this, right? And so, yeah, here we go. So we had 31% sprouted at Cargill, 2.8% sprout at Pioneer, graded at number one. So Carl made huge money by bringing it across the road. But when it comes to the grading system here in Western Canada, this stuff happens all like, regularly, consistently. And it can be a dockage thing. You know, I had a big dockage discussion with some farmers a couple weeks ago, and, you know, one elevator consistently 2% higher than the other one. Like, what's going on? You know, and it. But it's been like that for 10 years in that area. It hasn't changed. Even our farm, same thing, three elevators, and you kind of know who's got the highest dockage. But as farmers, we. We know it and we. I guess we would accept it.
[00:13:11] You know, we accept.
[00:13:13] Accept that it's gonna be higher there no matter what. And I don't know why. I don't know why we have to accept it. But there's a human element here to grading that hasn't changed. And stuff like this happens all the time. Carl, I just have to say, good on you going across the road, you know, taking your load and moving on with it. I know that's so painful to do when you've done the work, to bring a load to the elevator, just to keep going, not knowing what's going to happen or by bringing it home. It's brutal, right? Absolutely brutal. But good on you to go across the road. All right, next question here. Let's go to Evan.
[00:13:55] So Evan says, hey Ryan, I saw your YouTube reel.
[00:13:59] Where are you seeing eight and nine dollar wheat? I farm in northeast Saskatchewan and the best I can see is 775 for March.
[00:14:09] Great question, Evan. I appreciate you sending it in here to the what the futures podcast.
[00:14:14] And so if you've saw that clip from a couple episodes ago, you know, I was referencing actually the fall of 2025 when I, when I was talking about those bids, I went and listened to the clip as well just to make sure that I wasn't, wasn't out to lunch on that one. And so I was looking at fall of 2025, seeing some pretty good offers. And even now, like if you look at wheat prices for next year, you know, if you take Minneapolis spring wheat, currently trading, December's at 641, March is at 6:50. You know, we're 75 cents a bushel ahead of the December futures here.
[00:14:56] You know, you go and say in my area of the prairies, I throw a two dollar basis on that. So I'm an 840 to 850. Is that a guarantee? No, it's not a guarantee. It could be a little bit less than that. It could be less than that. It could also be better than that. It could be north of $2. Right.
[00:15:18] What's going to happen with the Canadian dollar? What's going to happen with exports? What are we growing next year? There's lots of factors, but I'm pretty confident that I've got something around the eight and a half there.
[00:15:28] And so, you know, if you go to Saskatchewan and grab your basis levels or Manitoba and grab your basis levels, you know, even using what's out there today to forecast into next fall is not that far out to lunch. You know, I think you'll find yourself in the, in the mid sevens to high sevens to low eights depending on where you're at. And then portions of Alberta in the mid to high eights for next year. You have to do a little bit of dreaming, a little bit of thinking here about basis and what that could look like. But you know, as I was talking about that futures were 30, 35 cents higher than where they're at today. And that's where I saw scenarios in the nines. And you know, October when spring wheat futures were 7, I was like, yeah, that's going to be a 9ish for a lot of people next year. So that's where those numbers came from. Now the wheat markets, we're under the gun here, like, we are under pressure. Futures are falling. We are approaching support on our Minneapolis wheat contract.
[00:16:34] It looks like it's going to get a little bit nasty here. I don't know if the, if the trade is trying to, you know, put a resolution between Russia and Ukraine. I know that winter week conditions have improved, not gotten worse. So that's definitely playing a factor into some negative price action here. Bezos levels come and go depending on when elevators need to fill cars. So posted basis levels aren't spectacular. They just get better when they come up with those specials, which they've been doing regularly.
[00:17:08] But futures here, you know, December's at 573. We hit a low of what, 562 in late August.
[00:17:20] So that's going to be our low going back a while. The 562 is, you know, we fall below that and we're staring. I know at one point I was staring at that 470 level. Let me just double check. There is some, there is going to be some support in between there, obviously, but.
[00:17:43] So 562 is our support line.
[00:17:47] And then from there, yeah, the 490, that's the number. 490. A little bit of support at 530.
[00:17:59] It gets. It's not fun. It is not fun. So, you know, if you're sitting here today, you got carry in the market, really good carry into next fall. You know, if you're penciling out a profit, do your basis homework, see where your basis levels are at. You know, not to say, you know, go guns a blazing here for next year and pricing a bunch of wheat for next fall.
[00:18:22] But if you can pencil in a profit here and if you're, you know, to me, it. To do a little bit doesn't hurt. I don't think it hurts, especially if it's profitable. All right, what else do we have here? Cole brought in a question. This was about Trump and, you know, about trade and about tariffs and domestic supply. So Cole, he had a great question, but it's about, you know, could we see a bullish rally here in corn and wheat? You know, the way that Trump is talking and coming into, coming into office here in January.
[00:19:02] And so, you know, I was thinking about this today, preparing for the episode, and, you know, I thought that, you know, when you look at Trump, it's about, you know, America first and a lot of talk about tariffs and anything coming into the country, you know, being taxed. So to think that the, there'd be more domestic use, you know, that you know, I could be on, on board with some of that for sure. I should probably call a friend to talk this out here in the next couple of weeks as well, because I think it's on everyone's minds. But I was thinking, like, if China did stop the Chinese used cooking oil from coming in, then I would expect soybean oil to rally significantly on that demand.
[00:19:54] And so that's a situation where that local supply could really tighten up there. But if he treats Canadian canola the same way for some reason, which that's being talked about in the trade as well, then, because I'd normally say canola would rally in that situation, but it wouldn't if we're on the sidelines here, not able to ship canola oil into China. But if soybean oil rallies, then canola could be along for the ride here a little bit if we're still able to ship our canola oil into the US Biofuel market.
[00:20:29] When it comes to wheat, I don't view the US as a. Like, they are a player, an export player. But yeah, I would say there's.
[00:20:42] I don't. I'd have to really dig into the numbers there to get a better answer for you on that one, because to me, it's very neutral. I don't feel like it would provide a whole bunch of price upside. But maybe I'm missing something. Maybe the usage would be significant and would help that supply dwindle down. And then on the corn front, that's an interesting one because corn is. Has certainly become a little bit more bullish here, the last number of couple of months here, at least a little bit more supportive.
[00:21:09] But, yeah, it's a great question, Cole, and I think I'll try to get you more answers here in future episodes because I just, I'm just missing it just a little bit here. So I'll try to get you something better.
[00:21:21] All right. Okay. I got a question here in regards to bull call spreads.
[00:21:27] So I think what I'm going to do with that one is I'm going to bring in next week, I'm going to bring in JGL Capital, going to get Quinton on the show to talk about this in more detail for you, Garth. And I guess we could look up the definition for you. Number one for those listening, but a bull call spread consists of one long call with a lower strike price and one short call with a higher strike price. Both calls have the same underlying stock and the same expiration date. So let's say.
[00:22:11] And I'll get Quentin to come in here and help me out on this case. I say this wrong or butcher this, but I'll get him involved here next week. The guys over at JGL Capital.
[00:22:23] But it's for me, it's a way to participate in a rally and spend a little bit less, invest a little bit less getting in. So let's say you're, you're, you know, you called this, this rally, this latest rally here. We've gone from, oh, let's go find a low real quick. Let's say you just called it from 610 bucks here from October, mid October to now, it's 660. Okay, so you buy a call, a 610 call, not the money call. You buy that one and then you say, you know, I believe in this rally, but I'm not. I think it's gonna have, you know, some limit to it. It's, you know, it's gonna have some limit. So, you know, I'm gonna buy the 610 call, maybe that's 40 bucks. And I think the limit on it is 700. So I'm gonna sell the 700 call and maybe I get 10 or 15 bucks back for that. So I'm what did I say 40? Because I. 40 is what I bought it, you know, bought the 610. I sold the 700 for 10 bucks. I'm in this for 30 bucks now. And my upside is from 610 to 700. If the market were to shoot above that and go to 750 or 800, I wouldn't be participating in that upside. With this strategy I have, I have a limit. I have an upside of 700 after that. I'm not making anything additional on top of that. And so G's question was like, you know, what's your thoughts around these? And especially in bearish markets, you know, I like selling calls. We've been talking about that on the podcast the last couple weeks with the line companies. They call them premium offers or bonus offers, stuff like that in a bearish market. I certainly don't mind that with the caveat that it can burn you. It has burnt you. It has burnt me in the past when canola was $400 a ton. I remember some of those. It's not perfect by any means, but in this environment here, things are expensive. And so if I could sell that and collect the money and cash in on that, that's great, right? But you know, I think that a bull call spread in this environment makes sense because what you can do is you can set up your first one and let's say it hits max potential. You hit your max potential and the market's giving you more, but you hit your max potential. If you cash that out, you know, you get out of that position and say job well done, you know, and you can do it again to the next leg up. Yeah. At 700. You buy the 700 call and you sell a 760 call or something like that or a 780 or an 800, whatever it's going to be, and you can always do it again. That's the cool thing about having brokerage account. So I like it. I've done it quite a bit.
[00:25:22] And yeah. So, Garth, I don't know if that helps, but I'll get quitting on and we'll get the professional to talk about it because, yeah, he'll do it more justice than I can. All right, number are we at number what, six? Is Canola going higher? Why or why not? All right, so Canola prices pulling back here a little bit this week.
[00:25:43] Soybean oil pulling back as well.
[00:25:46] More about Trump and who is going who's been, you know, nominated for some of these positions and their stance on, on, on fuel policies and stuff like that. Like all speculation and trying to figure all this out. Now we know that Trump is, the trade is thinking lower, higher crude production, less environmental stuff.
[00:26:11] Yeah. So it's been a little bit negative here. The oilseed complex, palm oil also pulled back quite aggressively as well because I believe it was Indonesia that said they had a very aggressive biofuel program starting in January, a higher blending rate. And they said they were going to slow that down and not increase it as fast.
[00:26:37] And then so the market just tanked. And then the next day I said, no, no, we're going to continue on. Like we said, recovered. Anyways, some outside factors bringing Knoll down.
[00:26:49] I think Canola here today.
[00:26:51] I have not made any recommendations to sell Canola to like the Lunchbox crew over the last week or so. We did some stuff not long ago and got a few sales on custom 2025 stuff done as well. And I'm happy with all that. That's all been really, really good. I have not extended yet and I know it's been pulling back here and I'm definitely top of mind for me.
[00:27:19] But I still look at the stats can report in early December and I still wonder where in the 17s is that number going to be. We're going to go from 18.9 to what, 17.9, 17, 16.8. I. I still believe in a bullish run with the stats. Can.
[00:27:41] Bean oil, super important.
[00:27:44] Palm oil, super important. Rapeseed, super important. Rapeseed, though. Rapeseed's been doing a little bit better. I should just double check that.
[00:27:53] Rapeseeds did a little bit better than the others this week.
[00:27:58] And again, the problem here. Yeah, rapeseed's only down just slightly. So the problem here is, is China. And when is this announcement gonna happen? Right. Again, I got the Friday afternoon. I'm doing you a favor. I'm just letting you know they're coming out with something this afternoon. This weekend. Right? I'm like, really? A weekend, A long weekend. I. That's not usually what happens, but okay. And I just put that out in the email to you guys. But anyway, I didn't. Didn't see anything. And I. It's. It's going to come eventually. At some point someday it's going to come, but when? I don't know. I'm not going to guess.
[00:28:45] And I just. I'll let everybody else guess and try not to freak out as they do their guesses, but they'll be right. There'll be a day where they'll be shouting from the rooftops. You see, on the sixth time, I got it right for you. Anyways, it's. It's not easy, folks. They're doing the best they can, so that lingers.
[00:29:05] So for me, I've. I've got my. My sales targets. I. I know where I'm gonna make my next canola recommendation.
[00:29:14] I know when I make the next canola recommendation. I'm doing a little bit of 25 crop as well. I'm doing a bit of both. Do I think this thing can go a little bit higher yet? Sure. Pending a China announcement. So there. All right, last one. 2025 acres. Has your opinion changed lately? And how have you approached crop rankings for 2025 lately? Okay, lately. Lately. So when I've been meeting or talking with farms and meeting with clients, we've been going over our crop power rankings and I. I've been trying to, you know, just have conversations around, you know, if we're, you know, if we're growing peas, you know, is there a way to turn like, I view a yellow pea acre as a negative margin acre for next year.
[00:30:11] We can argue that all year long and it'll be fine, but I view that as a negative margin. So I'm trying to turn those yellow peas into something else.
[00:30:21] Can we look at a forage p. A green pea maple Pea barley. Can we go with a malt variety that yields, like a feed or whatever? Like, can we figure out how to gain that extra buck a bushel in the malt market, turn that acre from a negative margin to a positive margin?
[00:30:40] You know, we've been looking at all sorts of wheat scenarios as well, but I have not landed on anything. I just. When it's profitable, we've been trying to sell some. Right. Because the wheat acre isn't.
[00:30:53] Isn't easy to pencil out either right now. So I've been doing some research on some new. Some other crops. Not some new crops, other crops. And, you know, this will be an. Eating your veggies, but faba beans surprised me the other day when we were looking at a faba bean scenario and margin. I'd say that one caught me. Caught me by surprise at how much better that looked in comparison.
[00:31:18] And, yeah, I think growers across the prairies, I don't, I don't know what you're going to plant, obviously, but I wouldn't be surprised if 2025 is a heavy pulse a year. And yeah, so I, you know, nothing really drastic there. I. Power rankings are so funny. Like, you know, we were stuck in with a farm about yellow peas and green peas and the difference between the two and, you know, yellow pea seeds in the bin, green pea seed you have to go and buy. You start doing some of the math and it's like, man, you know, we might be doing a lot of extra purchase or expense or work here for not actually that much gain. But I've just been drilling down into some of these scenarios and just trying to see how to. How to impact the overall balance sheet a little bit, how to impact the margin at the end of the day. And, you know, you don't want to grow flax, but should you look at it? Or we even had some farms where, you know, they haven't grown lentils, but it's been so dry the last while. We're wondering if some of the land will work here for lentils and what those scenarios could look like.
[00:32:26] All sorts of things. But, you know, yeah, you start digging into it and making it more complex and complicated. There's a cost to that, too. And yeah, I wish there was a silver bullet out there, but I have not found it yet. If you found it, let me know. I'll get you on the podcast. All right, that's it. I. That catches us. Catches us up pretty good here. And geez, what is that? 30 minutes of mailbag. All right, well, I hope you guys like the mail bag this week? Because there we go. We are caught up. A little bit of follow up yet on a few of them, but pretty much caught up. All righty, let's go to pods of moments for the week here. This is the baby monitor episode. I got the little guys here sleeping away. So my positive moment of the week is that. So my wife is. So this is. It's aggro trade this week. I would normally, I would be at aggro trade and doing, doing some stuff around that, but my wife, she's done a lot of the sacrificing here the last, you know, five years, five, six years when it comes to raising our family.
[00:33:32] And so she's been doing some work getting back, you know, into the workforce and she's working on a great project and she had an opportunity to travel this week for work. So I get to stay home with the kids and be full time with the kids all week, which from sun up to sundown, which is great. I've only done it once before, just once before.
[00:33:57] And so she's on her, she's on her way on her. On her business trip, traveling away. I get to connect with the kids on a different level. And she also gets that time and I hope this is the start to more of that for her. So I wasn't at aggro trade this week. I didn't have any, no commitments. I didn't have any promises made to anybody. I just got to just kind of step back and it's good. We, we've had a lot of fun at, at home this week. We, we built a gingerbread house. It's full on Christmas at my house. Okay. It is full on Christmas. And so we're. I'm embracing it. I'm embracing it. You know, the Christmas music this week was, you know, that was a bit of a stretch for me, but I'm, I've embraced it. And we built a gingerbread house. I, I got some Christmas lights. Sorry. It's a cardboard gingerbread house that we have to color. You know, we've installed Christmas lights on the inside of it now and all over the outside as well. And yeah, we're just full on Christmas mode. So it's been a fun week. We did some baking as well. Made some not ginger snaps, but I don't know if maybe sugar cookie. I don't know what we made, but it's the ones that you form. You know, we had Christmas trees and snowflakes and. Yeah, but we've had a lot of Fun with the kids here this week. All right, folks, episode 52, I'm wearing, I'm wearing a very special shirt here for episode 52. I've been waiting for this one the last couple of weeks. And you know, of course, the. I'm not sponsored to wear anything on the, on the podcast. I try to wear, I don't know if you guys noticed, I try to wear a different hat every episode. Driving my wife bananas with all these hats. But I haven't done it. It's almost every episode I have different hat. Not quite goals, life goals. Anyways, back to the important stuff. So this shirt, this says once small, always strong. Fight like a preemie. Hashtag Gabriel Strong.
[00:35:53] Our friend, listener to the show, listener of the show, member of the lunchbox crew, Taylor Wallace and his wife Caitlin, their family, they've been at the Ronald McDonald House since the end of August. Little Gabriel was born 16 weeks premature. 1.35 pounds, I believe.
[00:36:15] And the great thing, the great news is that Gabriel is doing phenomenal.
[00:36:22] He's over £5. He apparently. The last update I got, the team at the NICU in Saskatoon are over joyed at how well he's doing. Putting on weight is the due date. He was supposed to arrive in mid December, right before Christmas. Right. And he's doing great. He's doing great right now. Taylor and his wife and their other little one, they've been living away from the farm at the Ronald McDonald House in Saskatoon, you know, to be with Gabriel each and every day.
[00:36:57] And these shirts are a little fundraiser for the family. It, you know, there's the stay, the, the costs associated, you know, the food, the accommodations, travel, fuel, all that stuff. And so Freckledhoney Ca, that's a little business here in Unity. It's two sister, a sister in laws, maybe from Unity and Cut Knife, but it's their shop. They're doing this, they're doing these T shirts. They're fantastic. 100% of the proceeds go directly to the family, Taylor and his wife and their little one. And they're great. I've been wanting to wear this on the podcast. I've been waiting for it to come in. And again, you can go to Freckledhoney Ca. You can help support a what the futures listener and his family.
[00:37:47] Again, Gabriel's doing fantastic. And Taylor, to you and your family, man, you know, get that little guy home for Christmas. And I know it's obviously been a go here, but you guys are doing great and you know, just keep it up. You're you're almost there. Of course, this stuff, you know, hits home for me as well, having gone through experiences like this. And again, go pick up a shirt, folks. They are, they're a great color. They're wonderful. And let's go and support Taylor and little Gabriel heading into Christmas. All right, let's get to a little housekeeping here for episode 52 conference update. Okay, so first off, for attendees, we're going to do a zoom call here, a pre conference zoom call just to get some of the, some of the little stuff out of the way, answer some of the questions that folks may have maybe even set up just like a base knowledge.
[00:38:46] Heading into the crop marketing made cool conference. I'm getting questions like what do we wear? You know what, what do we wear for a tire? Stuff like that. We'll talk about it on, on the call. So the zoom that invites going to go out here this weekend for attendees to join that zoom call. Of course we'll record it, but it's now going to be Friday, November 22nd.
[00:39:09] All right, now we've had a couple of ticket cancellations.
[00:39:17] Life changes, plans change for various reasons.
[00:39:21] And you know, I had a few people message me like, hey, what's your cancellation policy? Like we had a change here. What's your policy? And I was like, hey, the policy is that I still could tweak my numbers with caterers.
[00:39:36] The end of the day, you can't attend. Let's get your money back. And it gives someone a chance that wanted to buy a ticket they didn't get to. Just gives them a chance to buy that ticket now. So we have a couple of tickets available for the conference.
[00:39:54] We're also giving away tickets to the conference which by the time you listen to this episode that has been drawn or in the process of being drawn Friday.
[00:40:09] And yeah, so we're giving away tickets. So here's what I want to say.
[00:40:14] I think the best way here to do this and I emailed applicants already and so if you've applied and you didn't get to buy ticket yet, you know, you, there's a couple here to buy. Okay, so there's that. If you are waiting to see if you win, totally get it. I just don't know if the couple tickets will still be available by them. But whatever, figure it out. So if you're, if you're sitting here today listening to the podcast and you're like, man, I didn't get to apply.
[00:40:43] I kind of want to go, all you have to do is email
[email protected] I'll let you know if there's still those tickets available or not. It's just a couple cancellations and you know, shoot your shot. Maybe there's the tickets there and you could snag it. Maybe not. We will see. The what? The Futures podcast is also giving away the pair of tickets, so you might be in on that too. But yeah, I hope that kind of makes sense. We have a couple tickets available if you're interested in going. Best thing is just email me ryanifarming.com and we'll see how we can get this figured out. Again, I've already emailed all the applicants here on Wednesday and said, hey, you applied, you don't have a ticket. If you want a ticket, there's some. And we'll see, right? We'll see what happens. But that's where we're at the giveaway. So we're going to give away two tickets to a farm here. The what? The Futures podcast is going to be on social media Friday afternoon. We have about a dozen entries as of recording the podcast Wednesday night. I'm sure we'll get a few more here on Thursday, but pretty good odds, right? Nothing too crazy. So pretty good odds and we'll pick a winner here. You'll see that on our social medias and I'll throw it in an email as well so you guys get some exposure knowledge of that. All right, last thing on housekeeping, the Grain Gateway Canada fiasco.
[00:42:04] I'm going to call it a fiasco because on the show we've talked about Eggfinity for a while. Last week I talked about a new company coming out that was going to potentially be a spin off of Eggfinity. And if you're following along on social media, it's intense. It's intense out there. Okay, now do we know what all the facts are? No, I'd say we don't. But here's my.
[00:42:42] Here's what I've seen, here's my perspective, and here's my unsolicited advice that nobody has to pay attention to. But I guess I'm just going to say it anyway. Okay, so you're part of an organization that owes farmers a bunch of money.
[00:43:07] You continue to work for that organization and for the greater good. Okay.
[00:43:16] The statement says that they thought they were helping get it. I understand that, but there's three people that have started this Grain Gateway Canada Update or Crane Gateway Canada company brokerage company. And one of those individuals was part of the marketing team over at Eggfinity. And so the person responsible to answer all of the messages on social media, the, if you remember them, it was the, hey, we see that you're upset. Please reach out to us. We don't have any. We're. This is new to us. No one has complained about late payment. You know where. Please reach out. We've been very transparent, blah, blah, blah, that, you know, that's how it kind of started. And then it was, hey, you know, we are clearly communicating with you, so on and so forth. But every answer on social media, okay, the answers that I received, the messages and emails I received were from the marketing person as well. And so my, what I want to point out here is that if you're in a marketing role and because they're trying to say that they didn't know how bad it was, they didn't know what was going on. But if you're in a marketing role and this is starting to happen and you have to respond to these messages on social media, I'm going to make the assumption that you're in pretty close contact with the CEO, CFO type individuals in the organization and that you're kind of make the assumption that you're well versed and well educated on what is happening.
[00:45:08] Because even as a person, you know, how do you, how do you go out there and for your job, go and defend this?
[00:45:20] You kind of have to know what's going on, right? I don't know, maybe I'm out to lunch on that one. Okay, so that, that's kind of the first thing. The second thing here is that Eggfinity has a very successful portal where all the buyers and all the farmers are in a system. Okay? And two people that I spoke to said, man, I wonder if they would sell that because people in the industry in this type of business would pay money for that system, pretty significant dollars for that system.
[00:45:58] If there was an asset left over there, that was the asset. Okay? And so this, this Grain Gateway Canada now spins, I don't know, spins off and basically says, so pardon me. Basically what I learned today is that buyers could go in, log back in and see all their old stuff. So it was Grain Gateway Canada, but it was Eggfinity through the Eggfinity portal. So somehow they've acquired this now, have they purchased it? Was it given to them?
[00:46:33] Again, they're trying to distance themselves from Eggfinity, but you can see what I mean here, that that kind of stinks. And then there was a, also a social media update and it basically says that they've We've gone through a rebranding phase, and due to conditions outside our control, we have gone into a rebranding phase. That was an official statement they put out. Okay, doesn't that kind of stinks a little bit too for me? All right. Okay, last thing.
[00:47:13] Nobody has to listen to this advice, but it's a bit of a. It's a bit of a thing going on social media right now. And like I wrote it in the email, we don't know what the total dollars are. We're going to see them eventually here through bankruptcy filings, but we hope it's tiny. You hope it's nothing. But it's rumored to be pretty big.
[00:47:37] So my advice here to these individuals that are starting up this corporation is that you gotta read the room a little bit. Okay?
[00:47:50] You need to read the room because you were part of an organization that just left millions of dollars out, took millions of dollars from farmers pockets with no answer, no reasoning, you remained employed there.
[00:48:10] Oh, I have a sidebar as well. You remained employed there through all of this.
[00:48:15] Okay, I'll say right now, in a proper customer management system, a CRM tool, you see, and you guys know this, but if you call in, it's recorded. If you text in, the message is recorded. If you email, it's all recorded to your file, okay?
[00:48:38] And within an organization, you could see all the files.
[00:48:44] So as the stuff was coming in, you could see all this kind of happening. You as an employee there, you saw this going on. To not know this was going on is insane to me. Anyways, you got to read the room.
[00:49:01] You come out here with. We have an exciting new announcement.
[00:49:07] Exciting for who?
[00:49:09] Why is it exciting? And then you've got a mission statement and a vision and all this stuff. And Green Gateway Canada, you may be as legit as the best of them out there. You may be, but you have to prove it and you have to earn it.
[00:49:26] You really have to earn it. And you're starting at the bottom for earning it.
[00:49:34] And I get why you come out with enthusiasm, but nobody has answers from what just happened, from the organization that you just came from with questionable updates. Questionable? I don't know, like getting your hands on this platform, like all this stuff. There's question marks, there's unanswered stuff out there.
[00:49:59] And so the. I sent an email, the body's not even cold yet, and you're out there saying, boom, Latest, greatest. This is what we're doing. This is what we're all about. My piece of advice would be Go and partner up. If you're a broker and you want to stay in this industry, go partner up with some of the best out there. Go to Market Master and work with Suzanne.
[00:50:23] Go over to Giddyup and work with Jared. Go to Johnston's. Go work with some of these very good companies and build yourself back up and build your credibility back up.
[00:50:37] I.
[00:50:39] What you guys are doing is insane. Insane. And the lack, the lack of awareness is.
[00:50:47] It's comical in a way. It's also very sad. Very sad.
[00:50:54] And so I don't have any sympathy for you guys at all. I know everyone is owed, you know, a second chance and all this stuff, but read the room. Let the dust settle on the other stuff. Go figure out your career somewhere else. I don't know. I hope I don't have to talk about this anymore. It's getting a little bit too much. All right, folks, I'm going to wrap up housekeeping. A little bit upset with that. All right, folks, we have eating your veggies here. Eating your veggies for this week. Got a couple things here for you to consider. If you're a malt barley grower. Let's start with that one. If you're a malt barley grower, you know, you. You gotta convince me here on why you wouldn't be 100% sold on your malt barley.
[00:51:39] I look at the domestic market, I don't see any panic or fear in those folks right now.
[00:51:46] Again, it's only November. It could change into next spring or next summer. But I like getting my malt barley gone priced and gone. The export market, eerily quiet. Ah, it doesn't have a good feeling for me at this time. And our malt quality isn't spectacular. So if you're not going to get it gone here in the next couple of months, I just wonder what it looks like as you get towards spring. So I'm a big malt barley seller. I know that some of the prices were adjusting lower here this week. Yeah, I'd get after the malt, if you haven't already.
[00:52:22] Second thing, it's a great time here getting into the end of December to update your cash flow planner. Of course, we'll talk about this at the conference. More detail. But I'd be updating cash flow into the spring now. You know, there's heavy cash flow months coming up here. And for many of us it starts. Well, it started already. But, you know, January, February, March don't get any easier. April, it doesn't get any easier. So, you know, what are you going to do from a crop marketing perspective? And how is cash flow going to impact that? Know what you need.
[00:52:56] Know what you need. Because, like, marketing wheat right now isn't a lot of fun. Do you have to meet cash flow requirements? Do you have to sell weed? Right. Go and update it. I would update it all the way to April, April, May if you can.
[00:53:10] And last thing, and this goes back to the power rankings. But, you know, I wonder for this week if you could go and learn about a crop that you haven't thought about for a while. Like, go like. Faba beans is the one that kind of blew me away this week when I was doing the scenarios. Not that it blew me away that, hey, you know, go acre corner to corner and hammer in these faba beans, but, you know, when we looked at the scenario, tweaked some of the numbers and kind of dug into it a little bit, you know, it ended up being a very positive margin, a positive return on the farm, and something that. That basically triggered us to say, okay, let's go do more research now. Let's go do even a little bit more here on the agronomic side and let's circle back to see if this is going to pencil out like we think. And, you know, it was just like, hey, what about fava beans? What have we seen? And we started looking at prices, started looking at, you know, some of the. Some of the demand out there, and, yeah, yield expectations, agronomy costs. And it looked a little better than it. Yeah, it. I honestly was like, wow. I. Yeah, I haven't thought about this one a whole bunch lately. And it looked good. Maybe there's one for your farm, you know, maybe it's a lentil, maybe it's mustard, maybe it's chickpea or something. Maybe it's out there. So take some time this week to check that out.
[00:54:39] All right, folks, well, thanks again for hanging in here for episode number 52, the solo episode. If you found it useful, please share it with a friend in the egg industry, other farmers, neighbors, and hey, I really appreciate when you reach out to me as well and send me messages and comments. I know this week the tickets were mailed out and people are getting their tickets and taking pictures and sending them to me and emailing me about the conference and stuff. And that's really cool. I really appreciate it. Certainly helps. Helps guide the show, helps fill my cup up as well, and it's great to see. Of course, prices can change here. We record most of this on a Wednesday, and goes on Friday. So things change, things happen. Go seek the advice of the professionals out there as well, folks. You know, if you're looking at different strategies, looking at different ideas, lots of great people across the prairies to help you out on that stuff. And hey, if you made it all the way to here, go pick up a T shirt. Let's support Taylor and his family and little Gabriel here as he gets. Gets his weight up and gets healthy to make it home for Christmas. So, yeah, thanks again, folks, and I'm out.
