April weather sets the tone for market direction!

[00:00:21] Speaker A: Hey, folks, welcome to the what? The Futures podcast. This is, of course, episode number 21, recorded in the UPL studio. UPL has a whole variety of great products to use on your farm for this growing season. I want to shed a little bit of light on rancornitrio, which is their seed treatment fungicide. The reason I want to bring this one up is that it has some, some suppression of aphenomiaces. And I'm probably butchering that name because I'm not an agronomist grain marketing guy. But I know that that's a big issue in peas and pulses, and Rancona Trio is there to help you with that. We're going to talk about India. We're going to talk about pulse prices here. We're going to talk about potential great margin opportunities. So why not protect that crop with Rancona Trio? Get it off to the right, start with that seed treatment. All right. What the Futures podcast is your weekly dose of clarity in the complex world of agriculture. Of course, I'm your host, Ryan Denis. I've spent my career, the last 14 or 15 years on the grain side of farming. I was a grain buyer, a grain marketing analyst. I worked with growers across the prairie provinces trying to help them make better crop marketing decisions. And I've taken the show on the road here with the what? The futures podcast. So I hope you enjoy it. For this week. We're going to get into, it's a bit of a hodgepodge episode because, of course, we didn't record last week with Easter, I took the week off. So we have some catching up to do when it comes to market news, price perspective, latest price trends. Want to talk about that? Uh, also, uh, Brett waltz is going to join me from Bam WX to get the latest on weather. Uh, I've got, uh, a whole bunch of things to. To cover off here for the month of April. Important things for you to keep an eye on. Uh, I've got three questions coming at you in the mailbag sponsored by pioneer seeds. And of course, folks, we'll get to our eating the veggies, uh, at the very end of where we do our, our hard work. And in closing today, we've got this little trip to give away. Trip for two to Nashville, Tennessee. We're going to give that away here at the very end of the episode. A quick word from our sponsor here, John Deere. Great show sponsor. There's a whole new John Deere lineup that's out right now. New tractors, new combines, there's a new air cart too. All with built in intelligence that keeps getting smarter. Check them out at John Deere dot ca. All right, folks, let's get after it with my positive moments of the week, of course, for positive Friday, couple things here. We spent the week in Kenmore, Alberta. Great Easter week. Spent every day, multiple times at the pool. Went for some hikes, had some great food. It was, honestly, it was just a great time. I laugh, you know. Do you remember when you were like, you know, 18, 1920 years old, you'd go and rent a hotel room and the, the front desk would kind of look at you and say, ah, we're gonna, we're gonna want a few, you know, another $500 deposit or something like that. Like they'd look at you as a young person and say, hey, you know, we think you're gonna wreck something or steal something, so just give us a bit more money up front. And I laugh at that now because I travel with a one year old and a three year old. Okay, we are a miniature tornado. When we go somewhere, I have the one year old. So the last day I'm doing a summary of the damage we've done. We've spent a great week at this Airbnb. And I'm like, hey, Michael, just letting you know, uh, yeah, we broke a couple glasses. Yeah, that the one year old, you know, he was on the island and I turned my back and boom, broke a glass. And, oh, and by the way, that area rug, our three year old was unsupervised for two minutes with a pink marker. So we just had her keep going because it really tied the rug and the room together. But here's a picture of it. It's got a lot of pink in it now, you know, and even things that we misplaced or whatever, like, we are a miniature tornado now. If anyone's at a working a front desk and sees a family walk in, that's you need to get the deposit from because, yeah, we're that family. Anyway, so anyways, it was a great time. Of course, we leave Canmore. We're looking back and saying, oh, we'd like to get there again right away. So, of course, I think many of you probably have done this in the past, but you start looking at, oh, what could you buy? You know, what could you buy in Canmore and have a little vacation spot? Well, a million bucks doesn't get you much in Canmore. It gets you a two bedroom condo built in 2010. Not the nicest thing. It's just incredible, though. You take that million bucks, you look at Canmore and say that's what it gets you. Come over to Strathcona county where I live. A million bucks gets you a very nice acreage, a very nice house. And then you take that million bucks over to like Dormy, Saskatchewan, my hometown. And that million bucks would buy you. There's like a twelve room, twelve suite, uh, like apartment complex in Dormy. And uh, I think you could buy that thing like six times over, uh, with that million dollars. I don't think it's sold yet. I'd have to look, but it's been on for sale for many years now. And uh, anyways, I probably a great investment for a farm and your hired staff could, could hang out and live in that apartment complex. But anyways, it's amazing what, what, what values are across the country and what that million bucks can get you. My second positive moment of the week. I've got the kids out in rubber boots and their splash gear, which is just a great time of year. It just means we'll be planting crops here in short order and it's muddy out here, so we'll take it. We, we like the mud for now. And my third positive moment of the week here and I'm going to project a little bit. I'm bidding on a Ritchie brothers truck this week. Okay. I can't say too much because I'm. One of you is probably going to outbid me. If you outbid me this week, I'm not going to be angry, not going to be mad. I'm just, I'm going to be disappointed in you. Okay, let's just leave it for me. I'm looking for this truck. So I'm going to project, say it's going to be a positive moment. I'm going to get my hands on this thing and we'll see go from there. But I love auction season. It's obviously different than it used to be now. Um, but used to get the rubber boots on and head over to the local, uh, farm sale and, you know, grab a burger and it was good. It's a little different now, but I think there's still moments like that out there. Uh, all right, folks, um, my hot topic of the week, I, uh, I wanted to talk about farmland values, but there's really no point in doing that. I just saw some stuff trade at, again, some new highs here and anyways, I'm gonna have to park it for now because I know we're spending money that was earned in 2022 or so on and so forth or past years, but yeah. You know, values are starting to creep down in a few areas of the country here. And I just, I shouldn't be surprised to see land trade at these values. But it was, it was new highs and honestly, it was for ground that was just not, not spectacular. So it was fine. But, um, I don't know, folks, just keep your pencil sharp and, um, we'll revisit farmland another day. Uh, so I've got, um, my hot topic of the week is just the month of April. It's the month of April, and we're entering the growing season. Okay? So it's a time of year where anything can, can happen. The northern hemisphere weather is just top of mind. We tend to have little issues or bursts of rallies that happen because there's a dry couple of weeks or some excessive moisture or something happens that just has us look at the crop and say, geez, this thing might not be perfect. More often than not, we get these little seasonal weather rallies, these little upward market trends. It might be a couple days, might be a couple of weeks, you know, once the weather changes or the rain happens or dries out enough, whatever it is, the markets relax. But for you folks, the ones tuning in here, these are pricing opportunities for you this spring, okay? They're pricing opportunities until a real, you know, longer term production issue presents itself. So if the corn yield actually does start to decline in the US due to weather conditions, then you pivot your strategy, your selling strategy a little bit here. But until then, you are looking at these little rallies as pricing opportunities. And of course, Brett Waltz is going to join me here shortly to cover weather. So that's a big one here for April. The other thing that, the other stories or headlines I'm watching for April is that are important for price direction, in my opinion. But it's what's going on in Ukraine. The war there is intensifying. So what are the implications? Are there any implications? How does this develop this spring? I've got, I'm watching this russian quality issue. I don't know exactly what's all going on, but shipments have been halted. There's rumors of maybe a little export ban in the past. These rumors haven't led to a lot, so I'm not going to hang my hat on it right now, even though I want to try to get bullish wheat, you know, future spring wheat futures have climbed a little bit the last couple days here. But I don't know, I'm just really watching Ukraine and Russia to see if there's anything there that, that results in further premium in these markets or some type of rally situation. Now India's got their duty free on yellow pea imports. That has been extended here to the end of April, but they're considering extending that into May. Month at a time isn't sustainable. But is April the month where they say, hey, let's, let's go duty free on yellow peas into the fall? I don't know, but we certainly want to keep an eye on that and use that as a pricing opportunities. Pulse growers would be thrilled to see that. La Nina, you know, how does La Nina, how does this pattern develop? Do we find out in April if it's a strong la nina or a weak la nina? And of course, what can that do to the crops in Australia? And then the other one here is just avian flu in cattle. I believe it was avian flu. I'll get Ryan Copathorne on the show hopefully next week to talk about it. But cattle futures have pulled back. You know, are we in for a bit of a rougher April here? From a cattle perspective, is this a short term pullback? Not a lot of appetite to buy this market at this time or to go long and. Yeah, so I, you know, my hot topic is just the month of April and there's a lot going on, a lot of hopefully, excitement from a pricing perspective. I attended a couple of webinars and seminars here the last little while, you know, with market updates. I'd say, you know, a kind of couple things surprised me out of that. Number one, not a lot of grain sold for fall from these firms or companies or consultants. Like, it's quiet out there, which I get, like, I don't have a ton sold either. But I have a bunch of stuff sprinkled out there and I've got a pretty good base going. But they don't have a lot sold. But also they're, I'd say they're, I got like an optimistic feeling as well. I didn't get like a big bear feeling, which I'm still a bear. Like, I'm bearish. But for them, after listening to some presentations, I just felt a little bit more optimistic. So not sure if that was their goal or result. But hey, we all want markets to go higher. I'm just, I'm not there yet. I'm still a bear. So, April, a whole bunch going on for us. So anyways, let's park that for now. Let's bring in Bret waltz with bam WX. After that, of course, we've got some prices to update you on some headlines to update you on, we've got eating our veggies and of course, we're going to give away that trip, so stay tuned. But here, let's turn it over to Brett waltz. All right, folks, I have Brett waltz with Bam WX joining me here once again. Brett, how is. Well, early April. How's early April going for you? [00:13:36] Speaker B: You know, it's been busy here with this big storm system across the midwest. Some severe weather yesterday, snow, heavy snow up in the upper midwest. So weather wise, it has been a very busy start of the month for us here at Bam. [00:13:49] Speaker A: All right. Sounds good. I, we're not going to talk basketball march madness because I know you're probably hurting a little bit right now, and I'm not a basketball expert, so we can skip past it all. But, you know, better luck next year, right, Brett? There's always next year. [00:14:04] Speaker B: Yeah. My Hoosiers didn't quite make it this year, so it is a weird scene. Purdue in the, in the final four for the first time in my life. But I do give congratulations to our boiler maker neighbors up to the north. So good for them for getting to the final four. [00:14:21] Speaker A: It's almost like we have to rally behind it a little bit because it feels very agriculture based, you know, with Purdue. So. [00:14:27] Speaker B: Yeah, we do, we do have, we have a nice little battle in the office. We've, we've got a mix of IU people and Ohio state people and purdue people. So there's some, some friendly wagering, some, some friendly gamesmanship, I would say, in the office here when these teams are playing each other. [00:14:46] Speaker A: Awesome. Lots of fun. All right, let's get into this, this latest weather here, this latest storm moisture event. Anything kind of stand out for you? [00:14:59] Speaker B: Yeah. This storm itself has been a challenging one to forecast just because of how strong it is for this time of the year. It's dropped several inches of snow up across the upper midwest. And here where we're at today in the Ohio Valley, getting a big mix of some rain and snow and what we call grapple, just these little frozen ice pellets. And so it's a reminder that this time of the year it only takes one storm even, it's, even though we've been in really a warmer than normal pattern, it only takes one storm to, to bring back winter briefly, even at this late in the, the spring season. [00:15:36] Speaker A: So, yeah, we experienced that this week in, in my area. It was just gorgeous yesterday, you know, beautiful day. And then today it's just absolutely cold again. It just feels like winter again. So, um, so a little bit of precipitation, some moisture. We're seeing that across the prairies as well up here in Canada. Um, is this something that we can continue to expect over the next couple of weeks, or what are you seeing? [00:16:08] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, I think as a whole, the first half of April for. For many areas, offers up precipitation chances. I will say that this storm system that went through the midwest and the storms we've had just over the past week have been very helpful for the drought conditions that are still in place for many areas. And so I do think that more opportunities are there over the next, I don't know, ten days or so. Let's say maybe the areas that get skipped out a little bit, the far southeastern canadian prairies, North Dakota, parts of Minnesota, but many areas are going to get moisture over the next couple of weeks or so, let's say. [00:16:47] Speaker A: Yeah, it's very welcome for us. Again, like you mentioned earlier, the warmer pattern, but it's been a dry winter, a warm winter, and to see that, you know, this little precipitation roll through has some people feeling a little bit better. Yeah. Um, now, I know that X, or formerly known as Twitter, is, uh, you know, it's its own beast at times, but I saw a meme, uh, a bit of a joke around, uh, the market, looking now at being worried about planting delays. I thought we were all worried about, like, drought. Um, but now they were worried about planting delays from excessive moisture. Anything, anything with that? Yeah. [00:17:31] Speaker B: You know, I think certainly I can understand why people would be concerned about that right now because it has been a little wetter lately. It's been right now it's colder. The next several days are going to be colder than normal. But I do see good news for people looking to get out in the fields and plant. The second half of April, I think the pattern warms up above normal for many areas, especially the north central United States and the canadian prairies. I think it can be even at times much warmer than normal. And I also think the pattern starts to get drier again. And so it might end up being a situation where it's still a little early for some people and you needed the moisture, and so the timing may actually end up being pretty decent, I think, for a lot of people with the weather risk or the weather conditions that happen late March, early April, transitioning into maybe a little bit warmer and drier mid to late April. I would keep an eye, though. Eastern ag belt and of course, the far northern portion of the United States and the canadian prairies in these coming off of these el nino years into la ninas. Sometimes there can be, even in warmer patterns, sneaky cold fronts that work through late April, early May. I wouldnt say that were 100% out of the woods for frost and freeze potential. So certainly the warmer and warmer than normal and the drier conditions will help. But were not maybe 100% done with that just yet. [00:18:51] Speaker A: Okay. Thats been, you know, freeze frost events. Um, it's been on the radar here quite a bit the last number of weeks. Um, how about uh, you know, like mid, mid may on? How does it look that far out? Is it still sneaky out there or does it, uh, are we a little safer? [00:19:12] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, I think mid may you're probably okay. Across the, the far northern plains and into the canadian prairies, um, in terms of like the eastern ag belt where we're at in Indianapolis and Ohio, and maybe like parts of Iowa and Illinois, uh, you're probably going to be better off towards the end of April and into early May. That, that'll be kind of when we're looking for that last threat. Normal around here, where I'm at in Indianapolis, I think is around the 18th or 19 April in terms of the last freeze. Um, and so I think we may be just a little bit later than normal in the eastern ag belt areas that maybe are earlier than normal. Uh, you know, Nebraska, Kansas, um, maybe south Dakota. Uh, where further west you go, you're more above normal with temperatures. [00:20:00] Speaker A: Okay. Um, perfect. Now you mentioned la nina. What are we, what are we looking at here for, you know, the, the remainder of spring or maybe into summer, has, has anything changed on, on your end when you look at the long range forecast? [00:20:17] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. And uh, you know, into the summer months, the transition from El Nino to La Nina historically is the biggest pattern driver in terms of how the growing season pans out. And so looking at some historical examples, if we could get into a stronger La Nina, some of the model data, especially the american and the canadian model data right now, are trying to hint at a stronger La Nina. That would open the door for what I call northwest flow and storm clusters. They can be severe storm clusters, but more of those across the midwestern United States. As we work into the middle part of summer, middle to latter part of summer, especially now, years that are a little bit weaker with La Nina still transition into it but are weaker, tend to have more dryness issues. And so that is what I'm really keeping a close eye on is how far, how deep, how strong into La Nina, do we end up getting. Right now, we're kind of between the two, I think, which will probably ultimately lead to periods of dryness and periods of wetness this summer. Maybe not an extreme one way or the other. I think maybe the bigger concerns for dryness would be where it's maybe been drier, and that would be the far northern corn belt, the upper midwest, the canadian prairies. Those would be the areas that I'd be a little bit more concerned about just from a persistence standpoint, let's say. [00:21:44] Speaker A: Right, right. Okay. Well, you know, get us some good news for. For up here, because we don't. We don't want this dryness anymore. We'd like some moisture to. [00:21:52] Speaker B: Well, the. The good news. The good news, I'll tell you up there, is that into winter, a lot of times, La Nina years can be beneficial for moisture up where you all are at. So maybe you can, at the very least, look, looking well out ahead should improve down the road. [00:22:08] Speaker A: Yeah, you bet. All right, well, appreciate that, Brett. I have been enjoying my clarity weather app from Bam WX. I did a little onboarding with Alyssa a couple weeks ago, and I have to tell you, here's my three favorite things so far. Chat function number one. Sometimes I just throw something out there just to see how fast you guys will respond. And it is quick, so that's fun. I, you know, we're not doing any spraying or anything super fun out here yet, so, you know, there's no urgency for those responses. But it's good. It's nice to see that come back real quick. Yeah, I like the long range weather forecast. The videos are all there as well, so I really appreciate that. Just being able to check in. It tells me when it's been updated. Is it 3 hours old? Is it, you know, ten days old? You know, depending on what long range forecast you're looking at. And then I really like the radar. I've been going down, looking at historic, you know, 24, 24 hours, you know, three days, like, looking at what's happened for precipitation. And I've gone down to, like, the winter wheat belt and just checked what's going on there for wet moisture, and it's. I don't know. It's powerful. I've enjoyed it. So keep up the good work in that app and getting that, having that available. [00:23:41] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I really appreciate that. I know the team has put in a lot of time and effort into trying to make that as valuable for people in this industry as it possibly can. [00:23:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I know Alyssa pointed out a whole bunch of stuff to us for some of the features to help us make decisions. And I won't get into all of it right now, but as it comes up in the spring, I'll certainly highlight that. But as always, appreciate your time. Brett, is there anything else before we let you go? Anything else, top of mind from a weather perspective? [00:24:12] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, I think that as we work over the next several weeks, I think the big thing I'm keeping an eye on is just those sneaky frost and freeze risk east because people will want to be getting out in the fields as it warms up. And I think that's one of the key things to keep an eye on. But real quick, before just real quick, solar eclipse in our area on Monday. I don't know if anybody is traveling down to see it looks like maybe trending a little sunnier around here and just to our west. So that'll be a big thing, big United States thing people are going to be keeping an eye on next week. [00:24:49] Speaker A: So, yeah, honestly, it's all over the headlines here, the solar eclipse, but I have not read or dived into it at all. But I saw like something about concern about the solar eclipse and people have to be very cautious and I don't even know what it's all about, to be honest. [00:25:08] Speaker B: But, yeah, we're, we're in the totality. So we are expecting thousands and thousands of people to come into our hometown here and, yeah, so we're actually going to work from home on, on Monday because we're just worried about travel concerns. There's going to be that many people coming in, so it's going to be pretty crazy. Schools are off. It's, it's wild. [00:25:29] Speaker A: Wow. [00:25:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:31] Speaker A: All right, well, I'll check in with you then and maybe later next week or in a couple weeks and see how it all panned out for you. So awesome. All right, Brett, thanks so much. [00:25:41] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:25:42] Speaker A: All right, folks, always great to have Brett give us a perspective on the weather. We're hoping to get him in a bit more regularly this spring. I know I sound like a bit of a homer at the end, but honestly, I do enjoy their weather app. I'm not paid to say that I'm not, you know, not sponsored by them or anything like that from the folks at Bam WX, but I paid my subscription just like anybody else would. And I don't know, I'm just really enjoying it from, from a weather side anyway. All right, folks, let's get into our mailbag segment now, sponsored by Pioneer seeds the great folks over at Pioneer, you ask a question and you get entered to win a bag of p 516 L. Okay, and we have our winner here. I'm going to go through the three questions that I want to answer for this week, and then we have our winner to announce. All right, so number one, first question comes from Donna. And Donna's question is, when is it a good time to sell on a futures contract rather than a basis contract? I know what to look for in a good basis. Um, where do I get information that shows me what the futures are doing? So let's say two questions in there. Number one, when is a good time to sell on a futures contract? And the second one is, where do you find that information? I'm going to go to, where do you find the information? First off, because I have an easy answer for that one, there's multiple areas to go and find, you know, what the futures are doing with a ten minute delay or whatever the delay may be. I like using the bar chart app. So I go to bar chart. I've created my favorites. So I've got all my favorites on here. It's quick and easy to use. I don't know if you can see that that well. But again, it's the bar chart app I pick. I've got all sorts of commodities on here. I'm tracking all sorts of stuff. But you can customize your list, keep it updated. Again, there is that ten minute delay on there, but it's got some great functionality as well. So if you're, you know, if you farm and you're looking for some. Something to watch futures, you know, kind of quickly or regularly, I would check out that bar chart app and create your own watch list. If anybody else has a suggestion, I'd certainly be open to that as well. Okay, so when is it a good time to sell on a futures contract? Well, you know, traditionally, if I'm going to do a futures contract, futures only, futures first, whatever it is, you, it means that I am. I'm not satisfied with the current basis, and I'm optimistic or bullish or that basis will improve. Right. And so a lot of times what I'll do is if I'm looking at, you know, selling to a crush plant in the fall of. Fall of, you know, 25, let's say. Let's say, in the next couple of weeks, I'm selling canola in the fall of 2025. You know, I'm usually just taking a futures only contract because the basis that they toss out there is traditionally not very good. It's not necessarily a real number per se. And, you know, we know historics, we know, or I feel comfortable what a good basis is or isn't. And so that's when I would leave that basis side open. So you're looking for an improvement. Same thing with like, like a wheat market right now. You might lock in futures first on some new crop wheat, but you also might be sitting here saying, hey, I believe the canadian dollar is going to trend lower and quite often that leads to a better basis. Carryover stocks on wheat are going to be maybe the same they've been the last four years, but maybe a little bit tighter. So hey, maybe that improves baseless levels for fall as well. Um, you know, a couple things there, but you want to lock in futures when you've had a nice move in futures, you're, you're, you're happy with that pricing opportunity, but you, you are a little bit more bullish on basis. So hopefully, Donna, that answers your question. There's no, uh, you know, necessarily, uh, you know, right answer there per se. I'd say it's, it's as simple as just being a bit more bullish on, on the basis side of that contract. The, otherwise you'd lock the whole thing in and create your deferred delivery contract or whatever it may be. I was, I was just going to check here. My, my marketing folks, they actually have a little graphic here. Pardon me, I'm trying to do this on the fly, but we've got a little graphic. I'm just going to see if I can find the, the date on it. It's going to be on April 10 is when this post goes out. But it's got, it's basically got four, four boxes. So when do you do, what do you do when futures are strong and you have a weak basis? What do you do when you have strong futures on a strong basis? What do you do when you have weak futures on a weak basis? So on and so forth. But anyways, strong futures week basis, you price the futures and target that stronger basis. That's, that's what you got in there. So anyways, kind of relevant for this conversation. All right, second question is from Kurt and he says, hey, Ryan, if the bank of Canada cuts interest rates, the value of the dollar is going to fall. How is that going to affect western canadian egg commodity prices? Also, I would assume the US presidential election will affect the value of the US dollar. Can we predict what this is going to look like based on previous elections and that impact to egg commodities. Well, I'm going to tackle the first part for today. So in the US, economy is doing better. You know, they're still talking about interest rate cuts this year, but I don't believe we're going to see that. I think interest rates in the US are going to stay flat, but we'll see. Maybe they will cut them at the end of the year here in Canada, not as rosy with the economy, not as good, still very resilient and reluctant to cut rates at this time. But if we cut first when we probably will cut first in Canada, I can't see why that wouldn't be the case. The canadian dollar is expected to trend lower and trend in a downward pattern. Now, I'm not a currency expert by any means. I'm not really an expert in much anything but the canadian dollar. You know, I could see that trending lower here for this year. And with that, you have stronger, you know, potentially some stronger demand, right? We're a little bit cheaper to buy from. You've got wheat basis levels tend to improve or at least hold. You've got, you know, maybe a little more export demand for canola, something like that to help you, you know, move product along. It doesn't necessarily translate into higher prices all the time. But if you have a lower currency and your commodities are cheaper, well, maybe you get to move a little bit more and maybe basis levels improve because of that. As it sits today, for myself, I don't view the canadian dollar dropping as a big enough benefit to not price grain. If that makes sense, it can be helpful. But yet when you get a 50 cent rally or a dollar rally in a commodity, I'm still, I'm still selling that and pricing that. The five or $0.10 or twenty cents I might gain from a lower canadian dollar is just not, not enough at this time. But it's good. It helps. There will be some benefits from it. We'll just see what exactly that looks like in the next year or so. But anyways, Kurt, hopefully that gives you a little bit of an answer on the US presidential election. We're going to come back to that another day. I got to do a little bit of research now and check what happened the last go around. Okay. My last question for today was an anonymous question. Yes, you can send in an anonymous question if you'd like. So this farmer asks, why don't farmer, why don't more farmers tender purchases, including seed, fertile and machinery? That's the first question. And then the second one is, why will they spend more at Ritchie Brothers auction than new with warranty or used with a green light inspection from a dealer. Okay, you guys can answer this for me better than I can. Especially the second question, like, why will they spend more at Richie Brothers? I. Why would you spend more at Richie Brothers? I don't know what that answer is. I, I also think that, well, we know emotion gets involved, right? But having, you know, buy it today at Richie Brothers and go pick it up, that's got to be part of it, being able to access it right away. Where is that equipment going? Right. Maybe someone is buying it with a currency advantage as well. I don't know. And sometimes there's emotion, an emotional purchase in there that you'll see. Like when I'm bidding on this three quarter ton this week, I'm not all emotionally invested in it yet, but I, you know, I've started to think about it and plan around it, right. So I might pay up a little bit more than what it's worth. We'll see. I'll let you guys know next week. And then going back to why don't more farmers tender purchases, including seat for chem and machinery. I I think a lot of it goes back to relationship. You know, back in my past career days, you know, I would meet with farmers and say, hey, I just want to let you know that your canola seed is, you know, x amount of dollars higher than what I normally see or your fertilizer or your chem, whatever it was. And, you know, everyone had their reasons. It may have been service, it may have been, um, relationship. It, you know, from, from my perspective, you know, we get multiple quotes on the farm on, on everything. Keep everybody as honest as we can, keep the relationships intact as well as best we can. But it is a business, right. And I think the, the point here is just doing your due diligence and, and making sure you have a few different prices to review and, and look at. Again, folks, I. Everyone has their own reasons. I know a lot of it comes down to relationship supporting local as well, your local retail. It, you know, it never fun when you have to drive further for, for stuff, for products, so. But, yeah, that was an anonymous question here for, for the last part of the mailbag segment. And our winner for the month of March is Donna from Thorhild, Alberta. Donna wins herself a bag of p 516 l and we are gonna run this contest for one more month. We're gonna give away one more bag of canola seed here in the last part of April, early part of May, and again, thank you to pioneer seeds for sponsoring the segment. All right, folks, next thing here is just some crop price updates and maybe some news or some market trends. Market updates here to, to maybe take stock on again. A bit of a hodgepodge episode here for today, but just a couple things that I wanted to highlight. So number one, crude oil has been on a bit of a tear here. It's a three month, three month rally at this time. We've hit a fresh one year high on the May contract, I believe. Thought I looked that up. So crude oil continuing to climb. Rumors or headlines now of, you know, it reaching $90 a barrel, west Texas reaching $90. You know, it looks like it's definitely on its way to do that. Hopefully you've got some of your diesel secured. I going to be in our. Eating the veggie, eating our veggie segment as well. But diesel prices obviously on the, on the rise here across the prairies as well. So that, that's an important one. The crude oil rally. It can be supportive towards, you know, canola and other commodities as well. So if it's going to keep running here higher, that should lend some support in other areas, I would think. Flax prices. I know Chuck and I talked about it here couple weeks ago, but flax maybe has a bit of a Cinderella story that could develop behind it with that european demand. It's a little bit of a wildcard at this time. But I did read one update where european demand had picked up a little bit for canadian flax. New crop values, $16 a bushel picked up with act of God. I'm still not seeing a whole acre increase because of that, like acreage climb because of that. But, you know, if we see that trend a little higher yet, maybe there's some more acres that can, can go in. But from a margin perspective, flax could turn out to be something very, very strong, very powerful. So I don't know, I know it's late in the game to make changes to eight acres and plans, but if you're a traditional flax grower and you've taken those acres out here for 2024, I don't know if you can get them back in there. [00:40:19] Speaker B: Certainly. [00:40:20] Speaker A: Take a look at it. All right. Feed barley prices have backed off here as well. I don't have the exact numbers. Still seeing some commercial demand or some demand from those line companies. Right. But there's been a snow event now in Feedlot alley is moisture events as well. In southern Alberta, the commercials seem to have been covered off here as well, they kind of led to that last rally, according to David, with marketplace from last month, we covered that off. So feed barley values have backed off if you are, if you have barley in the bins. Just remember, folks, we're going to carry over a tremendous amount of barley year over year. And I know, you know, maybe you want to be bullish corn now and, and maybe bullish barley with that, but just be cautious. I'd be still be a seller of feed barley at this time. If you haven't done anything yet, I'd be taking advantage before it backs off even more. Again, weather is key, but, yeah, take advantage while you can. Malt barley. Every new crop offer that comes out declines. Right. You started malt barley at 675 and then 650, and now I think it's like 635 or 640. Sadly, I'm still a seller at all three of those values, right. I sells them at 675, sells them at 650, sells them at 640. I'd still be selling in those mid sixes if you could get it as well. I just, I'd like to get more bullish on, on mo barley, but it's, again, the wrong reign at the wrong time gets you bowled up on molt barley. But I just wouldn't change chance that I would, I would secure some of those margins. Oats, super quiet, the odds. Special in Alberta, nickel here, nickel there. Actually won't even, shouldn't even call it a special. They have the price and nothing with it, just the price. And then like three days later, they have the same price and then they have the word special beside it. Drives me bonkers, right? I'm like, wait, guys, like, that's the same price as, like a couple days ago. Like, why is that a special now today and it wasn't on Monday. But anyway, just a pet peeve of mine. We overuse the word special in, in western Canada. From a grain buying perspective, everything's a special. I know it buys tons. When you throw that word in there, drives me bonkers. All right, canola. Pulling back here a little bit on the futures. Palm oil, again, was, has been helping support this market. Canola on the make contracts trading right around 630 as of recording. And it gave you two shots at it. Right. So we, we were promoting some canola sales a couple weeks ago, and then even on Friday, I kind of put out in the email, or Saturday, I guess that was that. You should, you know, if you haven't done anything for old crop canola, new crop canola, you should still do something. And of course, Monday rolls around and you get that chance. I guess it was Monday, Tuesday back to 645 on the May contract. So hopefully you got something tidied up there on, on canola. Now, when it comes to the, the direction of, of canola, it looks like export demands picked up a little bit, but crushers aren't scrambling anywhere, folks. The crushers seem quite comfortable with what they have on the books for spring and what they have on the books for, for summer. Um, we're going to carry over, you know, 3 million tons of canola. I heard Vitera was out at 6 million tons again, but, you know, shame on them. Um, but that number, if that was a real number, these markets would be much lower. So anyways, I should just say that canola carryover is going to be zero. And then, so I'll put a zero out there. They'll have their 6 million, we'll divide it by two, and we're back at three. So let's just do that. Let's say their numbers right, my numbers right, and we'll be back at 3 million tons canola, though, folks, from a direction side. Again. Let's keep an eye on the weather here and what that does for a pricing opportunity. I'm still a canola seller. I still have my plan in place. I, I know what I'm going to do here as these markets, as the days tick off or go by, and I hope you have that figured out as well. All right. Spring wheat. Um, I know I'm trying to get bullish spring wheat, folks. Shame on me. The spring wheat market owes me nothing, but I'm trying to get bullish spring wheat, I know that demand still there for old crop and g three and some Viteras have been, you know, a bit more aggressive. I know that targets are hitting above posted bid, so old crops not as scary. Still saw some nines in Alberta, high eights in Saskatchewan. New crop, though. When you're staring down seven and $8 a bushel for new crop spring wheat, there's just the appetite to price that is just not there. And I don't blame you. Right. It's a loss. You're pricing at a loss. But we need something to happen here in Russia. Is southern Russia dry? Is it going to have an impact? What type of impact will it have? You know, is Russia actually going to have an export ban on wheat again? I don't think that amounts to hill beans or anything at this time, but, yeah, you know, wheat marketing is going to be fun this spring. It's going to be fun because it's going to be so challenging. I'm going to enjoy it when, when we do get something done here. All right, yellow peas. Just want to highlight $14 bids for old crop, especially up in the peace region. That seemed to be the highest value that pulled in here for yellow peas. A new crop. Yellow peas, 1050 to 1150. Again, watching to see what India does here, will they extend this demand into the fall and give us a little bump in new crop values? Time will tell. What else do I have here? I guess from a downside or a lower price warning. Green lentil values pulling back. A big increase in acres in the US, I think up by 40% was that last acreage report from the USDA. So green lentils growers, again, this will be in eating your veggies, but make sure you get a sizable amount of that crop priced. I guess from a price perspective, that's the one that's shown the largest amount of downside here over the last couple of weeks. Okay. So again, green lentil growers, you're on high alert right now. Okay, folks, is there anything else that stood out? I know we had that little, you know we had that rally, um, that USDA rally, um, on corn that's kind of pulled back here now. Um, yeah, I think that's about it for now. So let's, let's leave it at that and we'll see what pops up here for next week's episode on, on things that stand out. So for, for eating your veggies, folks, um, I'm just going to say three things here to focus on. I know I had five last week, the email, but you know, diesel purchases, if you have capacity to store some diesel. I take a hard look at that right now. I know that I've purchased one large tranche of diesel already for the farm, but I take a look at that here as well. I just, I'm not getting super, I'm not bearish diesel prices at this time. I guess maybe recession into next year might get us a bit more bearish, but yeah. So diesel for summer here, I buy some of that green lentil growers. You're already on notice, folks. Get after it. Sell that darn crop with act of God. Okay. As much as you can with act of God, you might be able to convince them to do your whole crop with act of God as well. And my third thing is just getting those yellow pea targets out there at $12. I think we talked about that a couple weeks ago. But once India makes that announcement, I'd like to have the target in. I might miss it, right? I might. I, I might have that target set a little bit too low, but I'm trying to pick up that dollar. The announcement goes out. Pick up that dollar and get something priced on the announcement because I don't like, I don't like the scenario. If India is not buying yellow peas from us, I china's buying less. And if India's not buying, it's going to be an ugly market. It's either. It's going to be feast or famine on the lop market in 2024. Uh, all right, folks, um, one last thing before we draw for this trip. So I just, uh, I wanted to highlight just a guy three real quick here. Uh, Kyle's going to join me next week for, on the episode, but, uh, um, he's the lead broker over there at a guy three. But from a risk management perspective, the folks over there, you, you have to, um, get that insurance in place before you plant your crop. But their deadline to buy is May 15. So if you're sitting here next couple weeks and you have, you know, looking, you're looking for alternatives from a risk management perspective. Now there is only so much capacity, but it's worth reaching out to those folks because they will, you know, potentially get you a policy all the way to May 15. That is their deadline. Or once capacity fills. So just keep that in mind with agai three. In the notes section of the podcast, you'll find their latest newsletter as well. Alrighty. Okay, so let's give away this trip to Nashville. That's right. What the future is. Sending two of you, or, sorry, a trip for two. One winner. Two people covering flights and hotels with Marlin travel angel Denis, my mom, travel agent extraordinaire, will help you get organized for the trip. And I'm just going to. I still can't figure out how to show you guys the wheel of winning here. So I'm just going to record it. So I have it as well. So this might look a little bit strange here, but I'm going to hit the button. I'm going to shuffle the deck. I've got my video evidence started. I'm going to shuffle my deck. There we go. All righty. Now, every once in a while you get a weird situation like this. And I actually don't have a name to go with this winner. I'm going to get the name here in just short order. Hang on one sec. Okay. I had to pause it there and get a hold of the winner. Cooper Galbraith from Irma, Alberta, you have just won a trip for two to Nashville, Tennessee. Congratulations, Cooper. Thank you, everybody, for participating. We had over 50 entries, multiple ways to, multiple ways to get entered here from January, February, March and so on and so forth. I'm going to get Cooper on here on the show in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully, Cooper and Harold Farm out in Irma and we'll get him hooked up with Marlin travel and, and the, the trip to, to Nashville, Tennessee. So again, folks, really appreciate everyone, you know, spreading the word of the what, the futures podcast and getting the show out there. It's always a lot of fun to do these contests. And again, congratulations to Cooper here once more. I had like four people that I had their cell number but not their name and from entries. And so anyways, I had to pause and text and make sure I got that figured out. So that's, that's great. Of course, we'll be launching a new contest next, next week. Okay, folks, again, subscribe to our YouTube channel, hit us up on social media, and hope you enjoyed this week's episode. I'm.