Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I'm going to level with you this week, folks. This is the least bearish I've been in the last three plus years when it comes to Western Canadian grain prices. We also have to find out if Brett Waltz with BAM weather did he see his shadow on Monday? Of course, it was Groundhog Day earlier this week. And Mark and David with Global Ag Risk Solutions, join me to keep the conversation going about some of these private insurance offerings and how they can be incorporated into your crop marketing plan here in 2026. All right, folks, you ready? Coming at now.
Hey, folks, welcome to the what the Futures podcast, your quick guide to better farming decisions.
All right, folks, welcome into episode 110 of the what the Futures podcast, of course, recorded each and every week in the UPL studio. I've been talking about the Smart Buy rewards deadline. It's coming up February 15th. It's coming up quick, folks. It's what, less than 10 days away. That's the deadline to, to get in for those maximum rewards. The big rewards, guys. The big ones. All right, that deadline's coming up. Our farm, we did meet with Julie and Amy this last week and I'd say one of my biggest takeaways, one of them I, I actually can't share yet on the show. Had to do some thinking, but we did learn some agronomy tips. So, you know, you have a cup of coffee, you have a meeting, you talk through a portfolio, you talk about what your needs are as a farm. But we also picked up a couple of agronomy tips to incorporate in the growing season. That, to me, was a pleasant surprise. All right, so anyways, you reach out to them, talk to your local UPL rep. I encourage you to have a cup of coffee with those folks and just see how they can work for your Farm here and 2026. Now, if you could do me a favor, like the episode, share it. If you do enjoy the content today, you know, hit that subscribe button on YouTube. I do appreciate it as well, and I appreciate that you guys continue to share this with your farming friends and neighbors. I notice it in the emails that come through the messages on social media, the comments on the YouTube videos. It's a lot of great conversation happening and I really appreciate that. That's why I do this. I don't do this to. I don't do this for anything else but for trying to figure out how to dissect this grain market, how to figure out what's going on. Can I provide any helpful tips that I've learned over the last Decade plus years, I guess. Getting a little older now, so it's been a while.
But it's the conversations. All right. It is the conversations.
Now as I go into that, my Facebook personal Facebook memory pops up. I don't look at these that often, but when you have kids you look at em more, right? Cause there's usually some dandies that come through on the kids side.
But it was a picture of me. I remember we're at our acreage, our first acreage in 2011, no, pardon me, 2014, we're at this in Beaver county and. Cause the picture is like the only neutral wall in the house. I have no idea why it's this yellow wall. And anyways, I'm standing, my wife takes the p. And it was to go out. I was joining an independent crop marketing organization. It was to go out and promote that. That was a picture to go out there, right. And so that memory popped up and I was like, oh, I guess it's been 11 years now since I've went out in that independent crop marketing world. I've.
Yeah, since then. That's how it's how it's been. So time flies, I guess, when you're having fun. Speaking of having fun, cup of coffee was sure fun. Earlier this week we had John DePape join the Tuesday show. Now, I want to talk here about something I said right off the hop about being the least bearish I've been in three plus years. Because it's a bit of a statement that needs some context.
Now I sit here today and I can say this statement because I believe that you're in the thick of it right now. I believe you're in the mud right now. You're in the thick of it. You're in the, in this world of depressed prices already, look at some of these crops. It's not terrible across the board. And it can get worse. Don't get me wrong. I'll talk about that in a second. But you're, you're in it. So like the drop, and I've talked about this on the show the last couple of weeks, but the drop of 30%, 20%, 10%, like those drops should be less in 2026. And I feel like when I read stuff out there and I read articles and social media stuff, like I feel like the stuff that we're reading now is kind of like old news or not a representation of the actual times today. Like don't get me wrong.
And I'll tell you why I think it can get worse here. But I Also believe that everyone listening to the show, every farmer in Western Canada or wherever you're tuning in from, is going to have an opportunity to price grain at similar or higher levels than last year. A neutral market is not bearish.
A neutral market is sideways neutral.
Right? So that's what I mean by the statement, like, I believe you're in it now, I strongly believe that you're in it now. And I believe that the stuff that you're getting kind of spoon fed from an article's perspective in a headline and a tweet and so on and so forth, it's kind of like we already know this. Like, we're already in this thing and we've been in it for a little while now. Now, my word of caution here for you tuning in is that, and I don't know anything about growing a crop, you guys know that I don't know anything about growing a crop. Don't ever listen to agronomic advice from me, all right? I got lots of friends that you can reach out to instead.
But I know, like for our farm and for the farms that I work with, like this, this isn't a year we're going to be sharp with our pencils. We're going to be sharp in our negotiations. We're going to buy and apply the correct necessary products. We're not going to do something on a whim or do something without, you know, good information, good research backing. Like, this isn't the year where you like, ah, let's throw the, let's do another 20 bucks. Who cares? 20 bucks a day, let's just do it. It's not, that's not the year for that. Right? But we do need to grow the bushels. We do need to, you know, kind of floor it this year. You know, Mother Nature's gonna hold, hold the cards and just determine, decide what the outcome is.
But it, it's, we gotta get it all.
And so if, yeah, if the mentality out there is prices are depressed and I gotta go get it all. Like, you know, I, I believe that we set ourselves up for, you know, if we get good weather, that we do add to the supply situation and we do add and make things worse. I, I don't believe, and I know fertilizer prices have gone bonkers here lately, but I don't believe that people look at the markets and say, oh, I'm going to not plant this acre. I'm, I'm, I'm going to put in summer follow this year. Like, I think everyone just as goes forward on every single acre, unless mother Nature says something different in the spring. And that's where these markets can get a little bit more bearish. Yeah, they can get a little bit worse if the stars align, the weather's good and we sat there and grew these bushels. All right.
The other thing that just kind of nags at me right now, it's just in like the back of my mind that just kind of sits there is when you see appreciation and strength in the Canadian dollar.
Like to me we have the last number of years strong US dollar index.
That's maybe just a blank general statement. But the Canadian dollar, if it's strength strengthens against the US Dollar, then that's not good for, that's good for, for maybe buying something, but not great for selling commodity. And so my kind of, my watch out. When the Canadian dollar was trading, you know, not, not far from the one year highs here the other day, just a watch out of. What is that trend?
What is that trend in the Canadian dollar?
Where do we expect it to go over the next year? And you know, if that, if you are looking at that trend and thinking this thing's got upside, I, I don't see it. I see it fairly sideways, you know, when I look at a two or three or five year chart. But I, I also see the, you know, going back here to the last year, you want to start building a bit of an uptrend.
It. Yeah, it's there. Right. So that's my watch outs is what do we produce here as, as the globe in 2026? Because everybody's in the same boat.
And what happens locally Canada, like if we see this trend higher for the Canadian dollar, what does that do to some of our pricing? So that's where I do think it can get worse. But a general, you know, my general final kind of comment on this is that we're in the muck here. We are in the muck today and all we get, we just keep getting told that things are bad and we know things are bad, but they have been bad for a little while. That makes me the least bearish I've been in three years. All right, now before we get to Brett with bam weather, I do want to talk about canola here and get some canola thoughts out there. It's as I told the lunchbox crew on Wednesday, there's not a lot of crops that we can talk about. Don't like, don't get me wrong, the 25 cents red lentil for old crop. Hey, I'm excited about that.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: Some of the, the old crop feed barley bids we've talked about the last few weeks, the yellow pea price climbing, that's all fine, but canola is the one that's actually doing something out there.
And so as we were talking on, on Wednesday, kind of two things that I would point out here. Like, for me, this rally to date, it's been a slow rally. The technical traders, technicians love, they've loved this thing.
As John mentioned on cup of Coffee on Tuesday, they love this rally. It's been such a healthy rally and I hope, knock on wood, that this isn't like the kiss of death in this by the time you hear this.
And then, you know, we've had some fundamental events that have come out that last year were quite negative, but have, have turned positive. You think about 45Z and in the US you think about that big soybean move higher. Now, that's just a tweet from Trump on Wednesday, so who knows if that has teeth yet? But, but maybe a bit more demand. I'm not a big believer in that demand right now, but, you know, it's there. The tweet was there. The market rallied. Yeah. And then, of course, China buying Canadian canola. Like, there's been some positives, some fundamentals here that have been helping us out as well.
Now, what I want to say about this market, two quick things. So number one, I was chatting with a farmer the other day and I said, and the lunchbox tree is getting annoyed with me because I'm just slowly like, hey, guys, we're still hanging on. The reason we're hanging on is because we made the sale already like this. This rally hasn't done anything to impress us yet. We did this one, we did this one in November. We did two of these in November. We're just getting back to that now.
And so I was kind of telling the lunchbox crew, like, as a marketing person, you're trying to make that next sale just a little bit higher, right? You're trying to say, like, okay, we did this one, and let's sell something at a higher value when it gets there. So only now, today, Wednesday evening is the first day that I was, I got a little bit excited, like, oh, all right, another five, ten bucks and we're, we're there. We're getting to that level that we sold out in November.
All right, now, the two things I want to mention in a rally like this, like, my preferred strategy, it drives people bonkers, but, you know, I'm picking out my resistance level. So I'm setting targets at those resistance levels. Again, anything below the Wednesday trade was not really on the radar. It was looking. Cause we did this one, so looking above that anyways.
But putting those targets and being disciplined on the sale, like when it gets to that target, I'm happy to be a seller.
The other thing I like to do, depending on what you're doing, you know, if you need to make a bigger sale or you're trying to get a, you know, inventory off the farm by a certain date, is to wait for that market correction.
But it. That's a down day or two usually or three quite often.
And that's when you sit there and say, oh, the. The trend is changing. Okay, this is pulling back now, and I'm going to reward this rally with a sale. It sucks.
Those are the worst. You know how hard it is to make a sale after a rally and the market pulls back and changes trend to sit there and say, mission accomplished. I'm going to sell this now. When it's dropped 20 bucks a ton from the high, Almost impossible.
But that's what folks are looking for. Even think about guys. Like, not this week. Was it last week when the market had one negative day, it was one negative day. And all of a sudden, pop, pop, pop. The recommendations came out, right? I get it, Totally get it. It's a scary day. But bam, bam, bam. The recommendations came out to sell. That's pretty common, right? It's pretty common practice in Western Canada. Anyways. I'll wrap it up here. But selling in that decline, a strategy that can be considered if you have that discipline to pull the trigger. You say this rally has maxed itself out. Now I'm ready to sell. And often, if you think about it, you do better overall. The last thing I just want to mention about this is that in my opinion, this is the time. February 2026.
This is the time. Right now, right here, right now, listening to this podcast, for you to set yourself up for success for your canola crop, your Canola marketing for the rest of this year.
What I mean by that is if you take a chart and look at what the market has done the last number of years and start to identify levels of resistance, you're going to find that we're kind of entering a time or an area in the chart that, you know, we haven't. We've visited a few times, but we haven't spent a lot of time up here. This isn't where we live for the year. We don't live A above 650, 670. That much. Right. And so the time is now, in my opinion, for you to figure out your strategy if and when this all goes for, not when this all goes to, you know, to crap, but prepare your strategy now. Because let's say this thing runs and you can set yourself up. Imagine new crop, Canola gets to $700.
And you could set yourself up where you have a floor established on your entire canola crop at $700.
And you could say, and look there and say, you know what if it goes below that, I'm protected.
And the cool thing is if it goes above that, you can participate in that further strength, that further rally.
So now is the time to figure out your strategy, how you're going to execute that.
Because it's February, as you get into March, you're going to have less time.
As you're going to get into the end of March, you're going to have less time. As you're going to get into April, you'll have no time. And what if this market goes for to absolute crap when you had a chance to secure your margins for the year, secure your canola margins for the year on what is a very, very important crop for your farm in 2026. Now is the time to figure out the strategy so that you can execute that. Not in the thick of it. Not. Imagine trying to figure out your strategy after the market has turned some bad, fundamental changes happen, whatever it is, and you're sitting there saying, all right, I'm going to figure this out now. It's too late. It's way too late. You got to figure it out now before the tide turns.
It wouldn't surprise me if we make a market high here sometime in February, get a pullback for March, Just keeping it simple, guys, and then maybe go and find that ultimate high later this spring. But that is weather dependent. And you got to have, you got to have a little bit of.
I don't know what to call it. Courage isn't the right word, but imagine sitting here saying, I'm gonna get bowled up on Canola to higher than it traded at last year, let's say against the second or third highest carryover, even with the China deal.
Right?
Third highest carryover. Maybe I don't have the stats in front of me. And then to top it off, the largest Canola acres in.
I'm gonna go with history, I think. I think that's what we're setting ourselves up for.
I'm not here to say that number to scare you like it's not my job here. That's not what I'm here to do. But imagine sitting here being like, I'm gonna, this thing's trading way higher because we're gonna get, we got all this carryover, but that's fine. And we're gonna plant more, but that's fine. We're still gonna go make some new highs. Hey, crazier things have happened. It could happen. I'm just saying. I wouldn't bet that way myself. All right, I wouldn't take, I don't have the, the courage to do that one.
All right, folks, that's it on Canala for right now. Let's, let's get to Brett Waltz with Bam Weather. But before we do that, I want to give a shout out here to John Deere. It's a Harvest Profit. Haven't talked about this on the show before, but Harvest profit has a 14 day free trial. You can go and sign up, check out, take a test drive on their farm financial software. That's harvestprofit.com.
and after those 14 days, you can decide if it's a program that you want to use here in 2026.
Now, just a bit of a pro tip here. I did chat with a farm in Central Alberta earlier this week and they did save 25% when they signed up at Harvest Profit as well. So some nice little savings there on that first year.
But anyways, folks, farm financials, you know, it, it's important and we'll leave it at that. Let's bring in Brett Waltz with Bam Weather.
Alrighty, folks, I've got Brett Waltz with Bam Weather joining me once again. It's, it's been a minute. Brett, man, Happy New Year. How's it going in 2026?
[00:19:42] Speaker C: I've had a great start to the new year. I think we've maybe talked about it a little bit.
IU football, we live in Indiana, won the national championship. So I'm an IU alumni. So it's been a, a really fun start to the year. And then it's been cold and snowy here in Indiana.
[00:19:59] Speaker A: I don't want to offend you, but aren't you a basketball school? Like, isn't that a basket? Like, when did football happen? Like, where did that come from?
[00:20:08] Speaker C: Two years ago?
Yeah, no, you know, when I went there, I mean, football was, was miserable. To be completely honest, I sat through many football games where we got absolutely killed and in the cold and rain and it was always miserable. And yeah, we were always a basketball school, but I was always a Football fan. We just didn't really have anything to cheer for. And so it was really, really cool to see everybody like me go out to California, go out to Atlanta and then Miami. So many IU fans and really write a storybook ending. I never in a million years would have expected it.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: So, like, walk us through, like, you know, watching these games. Let's focus on the championship game here. Like, the Waltz household, like, or the. Even the office over at Bam Weather. Like. Like, are you guys shutting down early for the day or. I know someone's got to watch the weather, but, like, run us through game day here. Like, how you guys participating in this or enjoying this?
[00:21:08] Speaker C: Well, we had a ton there. You know, not all of us are IU fans here in the office. We have a couple Purdue fans. I use rival, but a lot of IU gear in the office. That Monday of the national championship game, we did have a group of meteorologists that did stay overnight to monitor weather and answer questions and whatnot. I know one of them went to IU as well. So there was some loud cheering at the office, from what I understand. But in the Waltz household, it's really for every game. It's pretty chaotic.
I am not a quiet sports fan. I am very loud.
It was fun. I had my parents over, my wife, my daughter somehow managed to sleep through all the tail.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:52] Speaker C: But it is not for the faint of heart when it comes to IU sports fans.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: Awesome. Good stuff. You got a favorite dish that you prepare for the game? Do you guys have a top one or is that. Zach.
[00:22:05] Speaker C: I don't have that tradition and partly because I got season tickets. So I was down in Bloomington a lot last year for the football game. So we just really haven't come up with a. A game day tradition. I'll have to think about that for next year.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: All right, fair enough. Now I want to get to what I would. I don't know if I would consider this, like, a Super bowl type event for you, Brad. I'm kind of football themed today, but can you walk us through this. This storm from a couple weeks ago? Because what I saw on social media during the. The event itself, the storm itself in the aftermath was that, like, you guys nailed this thing. Like, you guys were on top of this from very early on and a lot of the other folks out there weren't, and you guys were on it. Like, can you just walk us through the kind of that development real quick?
[00:22:55] Speaker C: Yeah, we. We made a bold call really early on. The model data was all sending the storm down really more so into Tennessee, the Carolinas, Virginia, Southern Kentucky rather than Illinois, Indiana, Ohio. And we made a bold call early on that the storm was going to trend north. And the reason for that is because ahead of these storms, model data very often will overdo the strength of what we call the Arctic high or the very cold air that ushers in behind the storm.
Most of the time, not always, but most of the time, as we transition patterns from what was somewhat of a little bit of a brief milder period to a much colder period, the storm always ends up going a little bit further to the north. And so we just were not on board with the south solution. We had a year that had a very similar winter storm, very similar setup all around the globe that put the storm further to the north than what the models were indicating. So we went out early and made a call and said, hey, this thing's probably going to come several hundred miles to the north. It's going to be a heavy snow event across Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and the ice is going to be more so into Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas rather than even south of that.
And we got a little bit of flack for it when we first called for that, but it panned out. It was a great call. I'm really proud of our team for picking up on that so quickly.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: You know, my little world here. Like, we were going to record last week and, and you know, we're messaging back and forth and you're like, I'm in the thick of it right now. Like, I'm, I'm. I'm full out here. Can we do this another day? And. Yeah, absolutely. No problem. But are you putting in, like, some extra hours and really watching how this is developing or like, what's kind of going on in the office?
[00:24:46] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, anytime there is a winter storm, and it's really for everyone, not just the meteorologists, it's. It's really all hands on deck. However, anybody can help trying to make sure that we are on our A game, because that was a general idea of the storm. But we're talking to clients on the northern periphery, on the southern side, trying to make decisions on whether to cancel school, whether to cancel events over the, over the weekend.
We've got inquiries coming in. It's always, whenever there's a winter storm is always when we get the most engagement on social media, the most inquiries that come in through our website. So it's really. You have to be very, very on it at all times.
And if you're not, then things can slip through the cracks. And so it becomes just a company wide focus on the storm to make sure that we are all hitting everything that we need to hit.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: Obviously the, the decisions that are people are making based on this. Right. You just sometimes, you know, maybe I don't think about it, but yeah, there's real decisions, real human lives or economic decisions as well that all come into play. So. All right, well, good on you, on you guys there and good call.
[00:26:04] Speaker C: I appreciate it.
[00:26:05] Speaker A: I want to talk winter weather here for the Canadian prairies a little bit and I want to spend most of our time thinking about the future. But it has been either, and this is weird for us, but put on a T shirt and hang out outside. It's phenomenal out nice and warm or you can't wear enough clothing. It is so cold. There's no in between. Brett, what is happening for our Canadian prairies?
[00:26:29] Speaker C: Yeah, it really has been. And that pattern has just been in place throughout the entirety of winter and it's what's led to such consistent cold in the eastern part of the US but for the prairies, you're right on the border between the mild Pacific jet stream and the polar vortex which has been set up over the Hudson Bay all year long. And so what happens is there's been a little bit of a battle up in yourall's neck of the woods up there across the prairies between the coldest, literally the coldest air on the planet and what is a very mild Pacific jet stream.
And what we're going to see, what we've, what we've seen over the, you know, the. Throughout the end of January, a lot of cold air that has dove down across the eastern part of the country.
That mild air is going to start to creep back in for a time. I think that you're going to get back into the pattern, especially the further west that you go, where you're going to have some abnormally warm days through the first half of February. However, I don't think that it is a sustained change. I think that the back half of February, that polar vortex is going to migrate back over the Canadian prairies again and we're going to have a lot more cold to deal with late February and probably into the start of March as well. So that has been the battle all winter long. It's led to a lot of ups and downs for you all. And for the eastern part of the country, a lot of consistent cold.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: Okay. As we get to the, you know, later part of March, have you guys taken a look at how the rest of winter is expected to play out or looked at some extended forecasts. Like do we think that there's a chance of an earlier type of spring or, or is it too, a little too complex right now?
[00:28:22] Speaker C: Unfortunately, this year, and I say unfortunately because I personally am ready for the warm weather, maybe some people aren't, but I'm sure a lot of your followers are itching to get out into the fields as we get further into spring. But I do think it's a delayed spring this year.
From what I see with the polar vortex in the stratosphere, it's in what we call a disrupted state. And so it's weak. It's sending cold air down south across the mid latitudes that is especially prevalent in the eastern half of North America, which is. But you all are getting bouts of it as well.
As we work into March and the jet stream shifts a little bit, I think it's going to allow for more frequent, colder than normal shots across the Canadian prairies throughout the month of March. So I do think that it is a slow start to spring. It's a delayed winter. We're going to continue to deal with winter weather as we work throughout March. And I think that March opens the door because the jet stream does naturally shift the further into spring that we go. I think March opens the door for bigger winter storm potential even across the prairies, especially the southern prairies as we go throughout the month of March in.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: The far north of the prairies, it's been lots of snow and lots of snow events. And as you get to the southern part of the prairies, no snow cover and precipitation would be, would be welcome.
So they'll be interesting to monitor.
Just switching. Let's do one more Canada question.
There's, I don't know what pattern are we in today? Are we El Nino or La Nina? Where do we sit today? And yeah, there's been some talk about where this is evolving right now. Am I correct? Like correct? Yeah, correct.
[00:30:11] Speaker C: Yeah. So we've been in La Nina all throughout the winter time that's slowly beginning to show some signs of fading.
The influences of La Nina will probably linger around at least through April.
But I see signals as we head into the summer months that we can get into an El Nino. And so the pattern really can start to completely flip as we work into, into the summer months. I think El Nino becomes the more predominant driving force as we roll into the warmest part of the season following La Nina forcing as we go throughout spring.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Okay, okay, now switching gears to the Us And I want to focus in on where, you know, where they grow winter wheat.
[00:30:58] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: Obviously that storm brought some, some ice, but also some precipitation. There's been talk about dryness.
Is this a change now where more precipitation events are expected over the next month or two, or is there a drier tendency in the long range, you.
[00:31:16] Speaker C: Know, for that particular region, the winter wheat region? I think that with the La Nina continuing to have a little bit of an influence March into April, that's an area that at least to start out, spring can start drier. Now, I do think that as we get further into spring, especially later in April and into May, number one, I think severe weather season ramps up pretty big time in that area. But I do think better moisture opportunities along with that, the back half of spring. So a dry start in that area and then a more active end is what I would anticipate.
[00:31:52] Speaker A: Okay. All right. And do you guys have any long range webinar weather webinars coming up or. Probably a little too early yet for the spring one, but. What?
[00:32:02] Speaker C: Yeah, the spring one. I'll have to double check the date. It'll probably be in about a month's time. So I would say that our, our spring webinar is going to be towards the end of February. I'll get some more details on that and send it over to you all so you can share that with folks. We'll also talk about summer with that as well. I've already started doing a little bit of preliminary summer research.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: All right, sounds good. And just to wrap up here, you guys have been, have launched a couple weeks ago now, maybe even longer actually, but you're doing some shorter weather videos. I don't know what you guys are calling them. Blast. I can't remember what you said, but it's like 60 seconds. Yeah, yeah. Reels. Yeah, yeah. Is that's on, on the Clarity app or where do people find those?
[00:32:49] Speaker C: Yeah, so the 60 second weather reels, those are going to be on the Clarity weather app.
Really just quick hits of key weather over the next 24 hours.
A little bit more of a localized feel right now, really focusing on winter weather and some of the key areas that will become increasingly important for agriculture, Key storm clusters, storm systems, timely rains, things like that as we get into the, the spring and the summertime.
[00:33:19] Speaker A: All right, sounds good. I, I've been a little checked out weather wise. You know, we freeze over up here and there's not, not much going on. You're just trying to make sure you keep the shovel nearby and keep Warm for the most part, so I kind of glazed over weather, but I'm starting to get. I'm starting to feel like I should get dialed in and get Brett, so appreciate you coming on the show.
[00:33:41] Speaker C: Spring and summer, it'll be here before, you know.
[00:33:44] Speaker A: Will be all right, man. Any other parting words for us today?
[00:33:48] Speaker C: No, not right now. You know, get through the rest of winter. I do think it's a delayed start. March into April, watch out May into June, especially across the pernicious prairies to get a little bit warmer, a little bit drier as we head into the start of summer.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: All right, sounds good, man. Appreciate your time this week. Take care.
[00:34:05] Speaker C: Yep, thanks. You too.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: Well, I'm gonna keep moving. I'm gonna move into positive moments now for this week because this warm weather, I know Brett's talking about seeing the shadow and seeing that delay heading into spring. I know my.
My farmers up in the peace region, not. Not wanting to hear that. But, hey, as I record, it's like plus eight here tonight.
My positive moment is like, my kids played in the mud today.
In the mud.
All right. Covered in mud. That's pretty fun for the first week of February. I'm not going to complain. So that's positive moment for me this week. Also, I talked about when Chantal got the flu. She started the bathroom reno. Well, the bathroom Renault is at its finishing stages, so that's good for me. Gotta hang up a few things, and we're done.
Shower curtain, hand towel thing, ring. Yeah. So, yeah, we're good. Bathroom Renault is on the last stages here, so that's a positive moment. And we also. We had date night. Date night last Friday. All right. Last weekend at date night. I'm for a pedicure. And I know you're tough. You're tough, strong farmer out there, guys, but take care of those feet, all right? I had a great pedicure. I've. You don't have to hear about my feet on the podcast. But anyways, I had a great pedicure, and then we went out to the keg. Old Reliable went out to the keg for a steak, which I don't know how they do it. So consistent, but it was great. All right, that's it for positive moments for this week. Now let's get into the nitty gritty. Let's bring in global ag risk solutions again, folks. I don't know why I keep wanting to say this to you guys. I don't. I have no financial implication here. No one's paying me to say this stuff and on, frankly, you got to figure it out for yourself. But I do believe that there are tools out there that can help you with your risk, managing your risk, managing your crop marketing in 2026. And I believe some of these folks hold the key to some success. All right, this isn't a paid sponsorship. This isn't, you know, any kickback to the farm or anything like that.
I think that's actually not even legal to do that. But anyways, this is just open conversation, and maybe there's something there that you hear that helps you just do better in 2026 to have a better year. All right, that's why we do this. So let's bring in David and Mark with Global Ag Risk. Sol.
Alrighty, folks, welcome back to the what the Futures podcast. Here we've got David and Mark from Global Ag Risk Solutions joining us here this week. We've been talking insurance here the last couple of weeks because from a farm perspective, you know, 2026 has its challenges looking a little challenging.
And I think it's important as growers to just review everything that's available and bring everything to the boardroom table, the kitchen table, get things figured out, and just put yourself in the best position here for 2026. So, Mark, David, thank you for joining me this week.
[00:37:22] Speaker B: How's.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: How's it going this week, guys?
[00:37:24] Speaker D: It's going well. It's. We're kind of in the start of our main part of our season here, meeting farms and getting information together. But yeah, it's. It's going well.
[00:37:36] Speaker A: Awesome. Mark, you're kind of Southern Alberta, south of Calgary. David, where are you patching in from today?
[00:37:42] Speaker B: Yeah, just outside of Regina and White City. The office, head office is in Moose, John. So I'm about an hour away from my office.
[00:37:50] Speaker A: Mark was bugging me before, before he got on David about what? You know, what does this m mean? And Mark, I should have said just Moose Jaw instead, but I got hooked on this brand because I was. I was shopping at Close Encounter and downtown Moose Jaw and picked up this municipality brand, and all of a sudden I got more of this stuff showing up. So they got me. They hooked me in. So.
But great little shop in downtown Moose Jaw.
[00:38:16] Speaker D: Yes, it is.
[00:38:17] Speaker A: So you guys are getting into the, into the thick of it here. It's, you know, things are happening.
We've had farm shows going on. How are these early conversations going with growers? Like how, what. What's the temperature out there? What are kind of the themes that pop up?
[00:38:33] Speaker B: Crop production show at Saskatoon and then ag days in Brandon, I think guys are, are nervous is probably the, the best word to use. Worried about commodity prices, trying to figure out what's the crop mix that's going to make some money and having a hard time getting anything to pencil. Then some nervousness around what's Trump going to do in the next, who knows what tariff is going to come our way.
But I think optimistic from, you know, they, they saw some big yields last year, so they know they can grow a big crop and they've got a good moisture start. We've got decent rains in the fall in most areas, decent snow to start the year. So feeling optimistic on one side, but maybe a little nervous on the other.
[00:39:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Mark, I know you've been, you know, I got invited to a, a meeting. It was for more of like the ag professionals, maybe the accountants. And I kind of stumbled into that meeting. I messaged you like, I don't know if I'm supposed to be here, but is this all right?
What, what are you sensing from that side from like the egg professionals out there? Is it, you know, go grinding right now, like business as usual? Like, what's the temperature over there?
[00:39:39] Speaker D: Yeah, it's part, part of the great things about trade shows too is you're able to go and visit all the industry and, and I made my way around a crop production show and Anagra, the Red Deer show there, talking to some of the professionals. And it's, it's a little bit, I guess they know the landscape, they know the economic situation right now with farms and, you know, tight margins and, and all those things that everybody kind of knows about. So it is, I mean, I think everybody's eternally optimistic. That's one of the great things about working in ag is a lot of people are that way generally, and they are as well, but they do notice it and, and, you know, kind of want to talk about what are you seeing out there? What are some of the things that you feel that you can do as a, as a company to, to help the situation. So it is, it's a mixed bag. But most is, you know, how can we work together for these farmers to help them through 2026?
[00:40:40] Speaker A: Awesome. Good stuff. Now, David, I saw when, I don't know if it was in Brandon or in Saskatoon, but you guys were wearing some matching, matching clothing there. What was it? Dirt on? Dirt on your boots or hand? What'd you guys have on those?
[00:40:54] Speaker B: Probably got one. It's. Yeah, might have some dirt on my boots.
There you go. Mark can explain the whole premise behind it. There you go.
[00:41:04] Speaker D: Yeah, no, it was just a little fun that we were trying to have. We had a, a luncheon, a customer appreciation luncheon for one of our bigger advisors around Saskatoon and put about 20, 20 people to the luncheon and we, we gave him a bunny hug here and they wore it to the, to the show and came by the booth. They got a little bit of a prize and, and so just a little bit of having some fun and some free marketing walking around the show. And it was amazing how many, how many people during the show were asking like, how do I get one of those? How do I get one of those? So it was, yeah, it was, it really worked. And it was a little fun with, with everything too.
[00:41:46] Speaker B: So same thing in Brandon. We had about 40 guys in Brandon. And the best part is we have 40 bomber spans walking around in Ryder Green.
[00:41:58] Speaker A: Nice. Especially this year. This is the year to do it. So. Yeah, nice. Well, certainly caught my attention. I'm a big, big swag merch guy over here as well, so it caught my attention. But that's cool. I, I got a, maybe a short story about, about how, how dirty you guys get out there in, in a, in a good sense. All right, so before I get to that though, I just, I want to let the listeners know that, you know, from our farm's perspective, we are, you know, Saskatchewan Crop Insurance was on. We elected that in 2025. We do the agristability program. We had a little bit of AGI3 on our farm last year as well. Just a little top up. We have worked with Global Agris Solutions in the past as well for a couple of years.
Insurance for us, you know, we, we work to get every quote, every scenario, everything every year. I just want to bring that to the forefront for listeners. This isn't a paid thing. You guys aren't paying me to say anything. I'm not paying you guys to say anything today. Um, this is about, you know, learning about how we can use some of the products out there to just hit it out of the park here in 2026. Do as best as we can. All right, my short story here. So I live just outside of Sherwood Park, Alberta. Megan, Mass, she lives just to the east of me. All right, so in 2021, the jar to 2021 in this region.
I'm working, I'm leading a team of grain marketing advisors in western Canada.
And of course we have the buyouts, the buyout situations of 2021. And I'm part of These conversations with farmers and grain companies starting in July and it is taxing and stressful. I remember I was on a call with one company where I was just vibrating. I just had to leave the call, go for a walk, like, just calm down. I was just so worked up about what was being said. But Megan kept popping into, into the, into the story, into the situations and it was like, and, and this maybe has changed now, I don't know. But you know, farmer would be faced with a buyout, they were in a claim position, I, I would assume whatever the, you know, particulars were. And she would just be like, hey, let us handle it, we'll talk to the grain company and, and you know, it's part of what we're, what we do and we'll get back to you, we'll figure this out. Right? And to me it was just like the weight of the situation just got lifted. Just like she was like the, like the hero coming in like with her cape and just like I'm here to solve this for you. And it was just quite the thing actually.
So I don't know, I was going to ask like, what did you guys learn that year? Is that still a part of your kind of offering at Global Agris Solutions? Like part of that buyout scenario? If it comes down to that, is that still in the mix?
[00:45:00] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely.
It's an expense that we cover when, in our claims process, if that actually happens. And kind of a funny story too that in about year five of the company, one of our farmers came up to us in a trade show, whatever, and told us about, well, do you know what is it part of our revenue that or revenue drop when I, when I'm in a situation where I can't produce the yield to cover a contract and we're like going, well yeah, that's, that's part of it. Not really knowing it was part of it until that time.
We, you know, we anticipate a lot of different things but, but in the end they kind of brought it to light. And then we said absolutely it is. And he goes, well this is what that helps me do.
It helps me become a lot more aggressive when that profitable price is there. And, and trying to, trying to get as much of my forward looking target as I can get locked in. And, and since then we've been, you know, really encouraging farms as a behavioral tool, a marketing behavioral tool to understand how that works. But absolutely, and in 2021 we did see a large number of farms do trigger that part of the, of the.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: Claim yeah, it's quite something. And you just, we learned what some extremes were that or I don't know if maybe extremes the wrong word but some extremes or it was quite the.
[00:46:35] Speaker D: Thing that was extreme.
[00:46:37] Speaker A: So you guys have a pile of data to back all this up, right? I know in our quote process like you guys show us scenarios that we aren't always thinking of. Right. Or numbers that we aren't always thinking of. You guys have a pile of data behind the scenes.
[00:46:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we've got every customer that applies provides us with 10 years of data and 10 years of financials and and then we combine that with now we're using what we call synthetic yields and we're generating farm as if scenarios to help us do the underwriting. But then we're also turning that around and handing it back to the customers. They can see their part, their farm's performance over the last number of years and so they can look at how, how the product would work historically. But also what if scenarios that our, our customers may experience based on you know, these combination of things that are, are occurring. And the volatility that we're seeing today is not like the volatility that we saw you know, 10, 15 years ago because of commodity prices jumping around the way they are not necessarily always tied to supply demand, sometimes more tied to geopolitical events, wars, whatnot. And there's opportunity in that, but there's also risk in that. And so help them understand how to use the policy for all of its parts and pieces rather than just worrying about yield because yield is only one of the factors and we've been unfortunate for the farms but I guess fortunate for us in that we're able to help them through some of those years like 2021, those big buybacks and we're running into 2026 right now where the average farm is penciling a below break even revenue like we're seeing depends on where but 25 to $50 loss on an average, that's a real tough place to start. So you're going to have to find those marketing opportunities and take advantage of it when so you got to know your numbers and we help the farm understand that for their business and then help them make more confident decisions is that's the goal is farm constantly have a plan and execute it rather than being reactive.
[00:48:57] Speaker A: Well and I live in a like a warped crop or a warped crop insurance like world because I like if, if I go back to like my you know, initial learning and actually just paying attention to crop insurance like it was influenced by AFSC with spring price endorsement and variable price benefit, which I just kept thinking grain marketing through, through that the whole time, right, the crop insurance side. So I've got like this warped view. Like I look at insurance as like a, a way to help me market and, and maximize as. As best I can. That's where I go to right away. Like, I'm sure my dad looks at it and is like, all right, we're going to make these payments and this is our worst case scenario and let's give this to the banker and everyone's going to sleep. And I'm just like, okay, how can I get aggressive here when the market rallies? So anyways, just talking about markets, you know, I don't have my crystal balls broken for some reason. It's just on the corner and on the floor there. But in these types of environments, you know, especially geopolitically, when you have a positive headline, a spike, you want to figure out how do I take advantage of that darn thing because I don't know how long it'll last. But then you also have supply, a lot of supply globally again. Now the South American farmers are going to harvest a massive crop. Like we have supp supply. And so when you get weather premiums, little things that happen that spike these markets, you know, how can I take advantage of that and then even look forward and grab the carry in the market? Because that's a big thing right now, especially in wheat. There's carry if you want to go a year out or two years out. So anyways, I want to come back here now.
Of course we covered the harsh realities of 2021, but 2025, you know, that's not for everybody. For the majority of folks, a good, phenomenal, you know, growing season for many. And what did you guys learn as Global Agri Solutions, like, what did you guys learn in 2025 that you're going to carry forward?
[00:50:56] Speaker B: Well, we learned there's you can grow a lot of crop, but not a lot of rain.
Even, you know, with all of the data that we have going back as far as we have it and all the modeling and everything, you know, we missed on our estimates for lentils being a big one that we missed on, especially in parts of Saskatchewan where guys grew, you know, 60, 70 bushel crops of lentils. We weren't even aware that genetically it was possible. And there's really this combination of we got some perfectly timed rains and we got some really, you know, critical cool weather during July and that led to the, you know, these fantastic crops. But we were, we were then undersold right as the, the crop was developing. We weren't as, as an industry and even us as, as advisors, we weren't advising farmers to sell as much crop as they were going to have. So what when they thought they were 30 sold, they were only 10 sold because they grew this massive crop and you know you get to sell those bushels for 20 cents a pound instead of 38 cents a pound because we didn't, we didn't go ahead and keep marketing into the year as it was developing. And so it's, I think we're working to be better is to make sure that we're informing our customers throughout the season of those opportunities where we believe your area is growing a decent crop. You know, what are you doing to take advantage of it? We saw guys miss on several hundred thousand dollar million dollar price that they didn't take advantage of because they were nervous because we didn't have a lot of rain up until sort of that mid July.
[00:52:39] Speaker A: I was banging, banging the drum on the podcast like the second week of June. Like if we don't get a rain here on our farm, you know, it's kind of, kind of it for the year and, and then it started to rain and then the high of the.
[00:52:51] Speaker B: Market, like we were, we were one missed rain away and there wasn't. So we have customers that are, are in claim because they missed the rain completely or, or just didn't get as much as their neighbors and they are in a claim with us because they're, the yields weren't there for them or they seated really early. And by the time the rains came it was, it was too late. The crop had already set its yield. So we saw some of that where early, the earlier guys got hurt. A lot of guys had two crops, the early crop and then the later crop because we had that rain and in early May that delayed everybody for 10 days, two weeks in the middle of seeding there. That actually was, it's good that it did because it pushed some of that crop into what ended up being the more, you know, more profitable window. I don't think that's the norm. We probably shouldn't shoot for seeding at the end of May, but this year.
[00:53:41] Speaker D: You'Re going to cross your fingers for a long fall. Like we had that.
[00:53:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that. Yeah. Buckle up.
Yeah. It's incredible how you got to go with, you got to go with history, you got to go with what works more often than not and do that first.
[00:53:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:53:56] Speaker A: But yeah, quite, quite the incredible year. Did you know Canada and the U.S. and the South American farmers and actually the whole globe like producing some bushels, maybe less problem areas. Like did that impact like the, the guys in the background like the folks with the briefcases that you guys work with, like the. I call them reinsurers. I don't know if that's the right way to say it, but those gu.
Has there.
Has it changed at all for them where they're like oh I'm feeling comfortable now, like things are going in the right direction or does it not really have an impact?
[00:54:30] Speaker B: It's, it's slower than you think. So one year doesn't really change it as much as you might might hope, but it does improve it slightly overall. So globally we are a MGA managing general agent. We're. We use Aviva as our fronting paper for our insurance. So they're ultimately the risk taker. And then we go get reinsurance. So the largest reinsurance around the world, the same guys that reinsurance, they reinsure the AFSC and scic, most of the hail companies, it's all the same group of people and they're taking a slice out of us and all the other Canadian crop insurers and then they're also going and getting a slice out of the U.S. brazil, Asia, all over the world.
And those people. The market is soft essentially is the word that we use. So the. Which is a good opportunity for us to go negotiate better terms so we can, we can make more money but also lets us offer better pricing for our, our farmers so that we can be more aggressive in the marketplace because there's more supply of reinsurance capacity than there is okay currently.
And that's so combination of factors. One, the good year. So agriculture is, is currently in the good books because we had a good year basically around the globe. And then second, there's some changes to some policies that are happening in India and Brazil, China to a certain degree where their, their programs are getting smaller, which means that there's capacity that was going into those programs that isn't going to be, isn't going to be used. So it's trying to find a home in North America and we'll, we'll all be the benefactor of, of that when you know, you want to be standing there ready to take advantage of it. When the market is what we call soft.
[00:56:21] Speaker A: My next question was going to be about, you know, the changes to the, the industry in Western Canada like the insurance industry. But I Think you, you kind of covered a lot of it there, but I'll, I'll just throw it out at you anyway David, like from, you know, just from a Western Canada perspective, any, any changes here in 2026 or anything that kind of stands out?
[00:56:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's, it's more of a lot of the same. We're developing new products.
You know, our Competitor, Private competitor AGI3 is coming out with new products trying to meet the demands of, of customers.
We're seeing the crown corporations SDIC just announced their program on some cattle pasture insurance. They're changing how they're doing that. So it's a bit of a, you know, iterative approach where people are adopting and adding new products to the, to the suite. We've been actually lobbying the provincial and federal governments to treat private companies the same as they treat crown corporations and looking for risk backing essentially. We could offer a lot more insurance, we could offer a lot of more coverage to more farms.
If the federal and provincial governments wanted to take a piece of the, the pie from, from a risk perspective the same way they do for the crown corporations, we could offer. You know, our ability to create innovative things is limited by our ability to, to get reinsurance and price it.
[00:57:48] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:57:49] Speaker B: If there was you know, some public dollars for those types of things, we could move really, really quickly and address problems, you know in the year rather than having to you know a lot of times by the time if the government comes up with a solution that problem's already been and gone. It's the money comes too late. That's the, the knock on. On agristability and, and the different products is that by the time you get your money from agristability or aggregate recovery it's, it's the Richard Brothers auction already happened in an.
It's too late now.
So we're looking to try and be proactive and participate in this but that's a long road. There's a. The BRM renewal is in 2028. So trying to participate in those conversations now.
[00:58:37] Speaker A: Not to offend anybody listening but I'm going to say this out loud anyway.
Nobody from a provincial crop insurance organization like a government organization has ever asked me or advised our farm on selling more crop or has looked at our financials. Right. Like you know, not to say that they have to but you know earlier you said, you know the as a global agris solutions you're talking to your clients and working through yield potential and selling or not selling maybe I would say the desks over at SCIC are not to pick on anybody. Afsc they have never asked us anything along that line or guided us in anything financial. They have just done paperwork.
[00:59:24] Speaker B: Right.
[00:59:24] Speaker A: So I don't maybe that's not fair.
[00:59:26] Speaker B: But they do yield really well and they you know they're a big program essentially at a monopoly for a long time private companies are here. We you know we sort of disrupt things and, and create some chaos that I'm sure the monopolies maybe don't always like. But yep, we're trying to find solutions that the farmers need. That's now there's a gap in the market. That's why global Aggress was even able to exist is that the gap was in the market to cover margin in a better way than just yield which crop insurance does a good job of. We didn't, we didn't copy crop insurance and, and just do more yield. We found a way to do margin which is ultimately the bill's got to get paid using dollars not with bushels.
The, the crop insurance can cover how many bushes you grow but the price that they, they use is static and so you don't get a lot of protection if we see market volatility or if you make a contracting error, you know, sell too much or your input costs go up. None of that is part of their calculation and yeah it is part of the agristability calculation but that thing is a black box. Nobody quite understands exactly how it's going to work or when you're going to get your money. So it's not dependable and that's where you know, global eggs able to slide in and carve out our, our niche and we think we do it better than anybody else. That's why we you know we pound our chest pretty loudly and, and Mark and I are proud of what we do because we get to help farmers every day and it's. We have guys that really love what we do. They wish they other lots of guys would buy us but they can't afford us because it's, it is more expensive because it is private. That is the one is that we are unsubsidized. So it makes it more expensive but in that more expensive is a lot of value.
[01:01:15] Speaker D: Yeah. And our big, big, big part of our passion and our directive too is just the service part of what of what our independent advisors do being crop insurance professionals. Not just in not just the global agris solutions but also as you said Ryan, I'm going to take a hard look at your crop plan. Take a look at what is Offered by Richard Crop insurance companies do. Do a look at agristability and reference margins and, and how that will affect your farm going forward and really kind of bring it all together and have those conversations at the kitchen tables every single year whether you buy a product from Global Agris Solutions or not.
And so that is, you know, that is those conversations are, you know, where are the most fun is sitting down. Might not be a lot of fun this year because I think, you know, we're trying to figure out crop plans and all those things that are, that are going to be close to being profitable for everybody. But I think that's, that is you know, a big passion of ours is to be able to, to talk, you know, beyond and really get the farmer and their family and the best frame of mind going forward with the, with a positive attitude of doing what is in their, in their control. Right. And that's.
[01:02:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
Okay, so I wanted to go Back to. So 2009. Right. 2009 is, was the first year. Is that, is that correct that I.
[01:02:38] Speaker D: 2011.
[01:02:39] Speaker A: 2011. All right, so 2011, the first year.
I think a lot of people know about your portfolio of products but why don't you give us just the, the Kohl's Notes version maybe something nice and easy because we don't have the visuals with us today. But just give us a little highlight of, of the portfolio here.
[01:03:00] Speaker D: Yeah, it's always not, I shouldn't be laughing, it's not humorous but it always amazes us at, at the trade shows of, you know, farms coming up to us after being in the marketplace. We're going on our 16th year now stop and kind of say what are you and who are you? Kind of humbles us a little bit. And then we find out there are, you know, 15,000 acre farm who don't know really what we do.
So a lot of work to do there yet. But just, yeah, just to give you kind of Coles notes here where we're a revenue margin based company but I like to explain it revenue because gross margin means different things and different people. Depends if you're an accountant or a bank or a farmer. So. So we're a full farm revenue based product. We cover the, we ensure the revenue that equals your actual costs of all seed, fertilizer and chemical plus a margin over and above that that you can choose as a farmer to cover off, you know, any extra cost that you want. So, so what we do as a company is we place a floor revenue, predictable flow revenue before you jump on the tractor in the in the spring to start seeding based on what your, what your plan is for your seed fert and cam plus that margin over and above. So really simple example, 10,000 acre farm that might have 200 an acre of seed for chem and wants to cover another 200 over and above that $400 an acre, 4 million dollar floor revenue that we are providing. The margin based thing kicks in because if you spend more on inputs throughout the crop year, your coverage will go up dollar for dollar every step of the way based on what you're actually using in the end. And so that's why, that's why it's very behavioral type of, of insurance. And and it is, it is a niche product covering a lot of the things that the other, other companies federally provincially are not covered.
[01:05:02] Speaker A: Okay, okay, now you're, you're looking at, at the whole picture here. So who in the office puts their hand up and says I got the price side of this guys, I'm going to handle the, the price of, of the Canola. Are we projecting that or using the, the provincial numbers? Like how do you guys come up with that site?
[01:05:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, we just put them on the table and yeah, we actually pay for a third party marketing service that helps us forecast. So we're looking at what the price is this week, what we're thinking the price will be next fall. And so we're forecasting out looking at supply demand the same way you are in your business is looking at what the price in you know, call it November 1st of every commodity. And it's all localized. So when we're doing the underwriting we're considering, you know, are you, you know, in northeast Saskatchewan near the crush plants or are you in southwest Saskatchewan, long ways away from anybody that wants Canola and you know, Feedlot Alley or near, near processing. All of those go into the, the consideration and, and we update it.
Generally it's fairly static through the underwriting season because it's a fairly bold time of year. Last year it was not so boring as China was in wild. So that was, we were being more updating it more on like a weekly or multiple times a week at that Last year when it was as wild as it was.
But hopefully we can kind of set it and forget it if nothing is major is happening through the underwriting season. But yeah, we pay a third party to make sure that I'm not biasing.
Mark and I, we both come like, we come from the sales side. So you got to be careful. If you let the sales guys.
[01:06:48] Speaker A: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Green lentils, 40 cents, 50 cent. Yeah, that's got to be, that's the number. Yeah, fair enough. All right, you guys have a new product here for 2026 and I believe it's called Yield Plus. Do you want to walk us through, you know, where that came to be, why that came to be and, and kind of dive into that one for us today?
[01:07:12] Speaker D: Yeah, definitely. First thing, it's, it's called Yield plus, but it's not a yield type of product. Okay, get into that in a second. It's still margin based. We're still in, in our lane of protecting gross mar farms. Gross margin. Depending on that.
Before I get into what it is, I'll just go, you know, talk about the why behind it. Yeah, we found, we found the last couple years with farms, you know, cash flow is tight. Margins are squeezed a lot by, by the current price structure and especially here in 2026, wishing that we probably could have had this yield plus to bring a lot of value to farmers in 2025.
But we know it's, it's definitely going to be something that we can farms will consider this year.
So, so what, what that means is that farms just don't have the cash flow sometimes who want to buy our full coverage program but don't really don't have the cash this year anyway to, to spend the extra 25, 30, $35 an acre and, and, and you know, mirror that with whatever else they have. So we thought, okay, we need to change, we need to be innovative for the sake of the farmer. We interviewed a lot of farmers over the summer saying hey, I know that you for customers for, for many years in the last little bit, but last year you had a, you didn't purchase and found out the reason why obviously because of cash flow and, and, but they all do want to still be involved in the program and want to get back in the program somehow.
So we went, we went to work and, and Yield plus was created.
So still margin based, still guaranteeing that floor revenue. But now instead of in our, in our other options, we just consider when it comes to revenue just what the farm grew.
So that yield at the end of the year times the price that, that they're going to get for that farm. That is the revenue that we're basing whether they're in claim or not.
Yield plus now brings in a crop insurance claim as revenue included with whatever that they grew on their farm.
[01:09:27] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:09:28] Speaker D: Claims position. So, so they get the benefit of having a, still having that subsidized program and crop insurance, but also having a revenue based product that mirrors and marries with their crop insurance and for, for a lot less price. So it's covering.
[01:09:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:09:48] Speaker D: Any extra yield event that we might be able to insure over and above. Crop insurance definitely covers price, any kind of price softening which of course crop insurance doesn't and then, and then has all the benefits of a behavioral part of our program. Meaning that if you spend more money Sievert and Chem, you get that benefit as well. And of course the marketing side and in penalties. So, so the only difference between the, what we've done before and this is that we're just adding a crop insurance claim as revenue. And we do that, we take away a lot of the yield risk from our, from our portfolio. So it really drops the premium into a more affordable, affordable level.
[01:10:33] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:10:34] Speaker D: That's a little bit about crop insurance. And until I can, you know, show kind of a mathy mathy example, ultimately it just brings in the revenue that would have been created with a crop potential crop insurance claim as revenue situation.
[01:10:48] Speaker B: I think the easiest way to describe it is we basically turn your crop insurance into a GARS policy.
So you get all the benefits of your crop insurance crop by crop coverage and it stands alone. And then get your guards policy benefit of being margin based but you get the combination of the two because a lot of guys wanted, they don't want to leave their crop insurance. They got big discounts because they haven't had a claim in a long time.
[01:11:13] Speaker A: Yep.
Worked on that history.
[01:11:16] Speaker B: Their history is good. They've got their by crop coverage which they like.
There's also some benefits if you're using it for your cash advance. It's, it's works in a lot of different ways. They want to buy Gar's policy but the full coverage is, you know, 25, 30, 35$40 an acre for the full coverage at the attachment points that they need it. Well this we can buy your crop insurance for you know, 10, $15 and buy us for another 10 to $15. But you get the benefit as if you had a full global ag policy that might have cost you 35 or 40 or $45, right?
[01:11:54] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. So you're, you've got some, some dollars there that are as, as global Ag. You're, you're not, I don't know if underwriting is the right word here, but you know, taking care of those dollars, the Saskatchewan program is. And you're going to handle these dollars over here. Yeah. And so we're just gonna charge you that premium for those.
[01:12:16] Speaker B: Yes. We don't those dollars on the hook for the whole claim because their crop insurance is going to take those yield claims and that means that we've got, we need to charge less premium and it is significantly less premium. We're, you know, we're in the neighborhood of depending on where on every farm is going to be different but somewhere between 40 to 70% discount from our full coverage price. So drastic price decrease that's, that's available and you can, you can use the policy to do all the same things that you could. As Mark described, your inputs go up, your coverage goes up, your buyback are included, your, your quality issues. That's all part of the calculation.
So it's, it's there in the same way essentially as a wrapper around your crop insurance.
[01:13:06] Speaker A: Now just to confirm, you know, within that, that full coverage kind of portfolio there was fcmc, I think fixed cost margin coverage. There was a band of coverage.
I think there was one called Ag Wrap. Shared risk options. Another one are all those, you know, when we get our quote this year, is it all that laid on the, on the table as well or has, has Yield plus kind of taken those ones away or. Yeah, replace those.
[01:13:38] Speaker D: Yeah, you're still going to get the whole suite of products and the quotes for every single one. Now there's a lot and there's, there's a lot of options because it's, you know, that's what farmers kind of want and depending on the year, depending on their agristability, reference margin, whatever it is as to what they want. And that's where the advisors will, will, you know, after they really get to understand the farmer nail risk, they'll bring, you know, to them the proposal of 3, 4, 5 different options that they think would, would really fit the farm. But the farmer is obviously, you know, in full. Right to see everything that they want, it just gets a little bit much. But Yield plus is going to be a part of that, that quote package that farmers will get along with everything else.
The band is going to be, it's going to be on request, on request this year. We can, we can do it. It's not going to be automatic, but everything else will be within their quote package.
[01:14:39] Speaker A: Okay, you're just very early into your season here. You're just in the, the early days of, of this window.
But how has it been received? Have you had a chance to present this to a grower or two? We don't have to say who it is, or put words in their mouth or anything like that. But how has the conversation gone so far?
[01:14:59] Speaker D: You mean with, with the new option?
[01:15:02] Speaker A: Yeah, with the new one?
[01:15:03] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's gone very well so far, both at trade shows and, you know, reaching back out to some farms that may have not been quoted for the last little bit because it is, you know, starting to get a little bit too expensive, especially in southern Saskatchewan, southern Alberta and, and others, you know, around the west here that, that were thinking, you know, maybe, maybe not this year because, hey, I think I'm just gonna roll a dice with my crop insurance because all I thought it's all I can afford this year because of the, the cash flow issue. It's getting a lot of people now excited about, okay, there's something else here that, that can, that I can use my crop insurance with and at a premium that I can afford.
And they, they really are really appreciating the, and again, not to pat ourselves on the back, but the innovation that we're trying to bring, moving with the times, responding to the market and because of that, they, they wanted to, wanted to get quoted. So we always, we're always saying like, get the information in front of you.
Information, you can't make any decision, so get the information. Whether you purchase or not, you know, it's there. And this, this is definitely something that I think a lot of farms are going to take a hard look at this year.
[01:16:22] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, I, I know a lot of, you know, many options can get confusing at, at times, but we want more options. Right? You never hear anyone usually ask for less options. We want more options. So, so kudos to you guys for, for putting this one out here for, for 2026.
Just two quick ones for you. We're a little bit over time here, so thanks for, for still hanging on, if that's okay. I just wanted to ask, you know, as we get into 2026, like, why is insurance, you know, in your words, why is insurance important in years like this?
[01:16:54] Speaker B: And we, you know, every farm is different and so everybody buys insurance for, for different reasons. And you have to understand your, your farm situation.
Nothing, nothing derails a plan like a problem with your cash flow. And we think over the next several years cash flow is going to be the, you know, critical piece of the puzzle here. And so you need to protect that cash flow. You don't want to be stripping out your equity from your land to then try and get your cash flow back re. Re upped.
So well insured Farms are able to make decisions. They're able to make decisions confidently about the grain marketing. They're able to, you know, be proactive with their agronomy. But we're also seeing that those farms are actually executing on their plans. If they're looking to grow, they're looking to add more acres, they're able to, you know, make that rent agreement or make that purchase decision on those farms that are, are in the middle of a succession plan that they're able to continue on with their succession plan because they're, well and the, the parents know that their nest egg is, is, you know, it's basically covered because Global Egg got it and they can't, their nest egg can't go backwards. So they can let, let the young, the next generation take over and not, you know, still hold on to the checkbook.
All of that is sort of every farm has their reason.
And you know, we've, we talked about it briefly, but it's really that stress and oftentimes people don't realize it until they've experienced it. Once you know what it feels like to farm with the guards policy, understanding what it's like to have that sort of weight lifted on your shoulder when you figure out oh, that buyback is going to be covered or oh that you know, that extra pass that I just put down and then we got wiped out with hail. It's covered, you know that, yeah. Place of like moments when you're, when you're in it change the way your, your attitude is towards the farm and we, you know, it's kind of soft and, and it's not hard numbers. So oftentimes doesn't get a lot of attention but, but it really changes, changes people's how they feel about their farms because the business, the farming becomes fun again rather than being so stressful.
[01:19:12] Speaker D: Yeah, it's, it's, it's important to take a hard look at, you know, all this, all the programs out there and how they, how they work and how they can help you on an annual basis. But I think one of the farmers that I talked to at Crop Production show a couple weeks ago said it best. He came up and, and he pretty much like he sought us out, heard about, never has, hasn't ever been quoted, but he goes, listen, I need to put a really good insurance plan together this year so I can react with full confidence without stress when the situation arises that I can react whether it's for anything that is in my control and because it is, you know, because it's that type of a year.
And so it was, you know, again, this is a plug for all insurances out there and the different things will cover different parts of your farm. But put something together, don't. It's, it's, it's definitely one thing that you should not do without this year or do less of because going forward, if there is a wreck or something does happen, that that farm, as Dave said, that is insured well, is going to really move into 2026, 2027, a lot better than a farm that isn't. And so that's, that's the advice that we try to give though.
[01:20:33] Speaker A: Other thing I'll add to that too is that you guys are, you're a numbers company. You have data and like you guys can see behaviors and tendencies and results from some of this stuff. Like it's not like you're just picking it out of the air. And that's what's really interesting is that you guys, you have the data like a farm wants to get together with you and figure this out. Like there's numbers there and data that you guys can look back and say, well this is how these guys did it or these farms back then. Like this is the difference. Like I don't know that that's really powerful stuff that you guys have the numbers.
[01:21:13] Speaker B: So the benefit of, of hindsight, you know, we get the luxury of being able to look at about 1500 farms a year and then we get 10 years of history on each of them. And then you think about which one of those were customers and which one of those are just new.
And we can look at behaviors of those farms that were buying a global ag policy versus the ones that are their neighbors but weren't buying the policy from us. And we can see the differences of, of behavior, their ability to market their grain, how much they're spending on inputs and what their yields are. We're seeing management ability is, is affected by insurance. It's, it's real. We talk about it and it sounds it. We actually back tested it with a, one of the major chemical seed manufacturers and, and they, they saw the same thing. They saw that there was an increase in, in input usage. And you know, they're, they're buying the best seed, they're buying the best genetics, they're using premium products, they're spraying essentially more fungicides, they're using better herbicides that all ends up in higher yields. And, and it's shows out in the numbers. Over time it starts to spread the good from the great. And when you're in a year like 2026, you have to be great. There is no other option to. To arrive. You don't want to be the, the bottom 25 percentile because that's, that's a really dangerous place to be. You need to be in the top 25 percentile and give yourself every opportunity to do it.
[01:22:41] Speaker A: Yeah, you got to be, you know, the best. Best out of the group. Like the best out of the group. Put yourself in. In that position. So I'm sure the agronomist folks listening to this, you know, love to hear it as well with the firms they work with when they see, you know, outperformance. And as a crop marketing guy, you know, if you want to swell my head up as well as when an accountant phones me and says, hey, some of the farmers we're working with are really standing out here that work with you like so you know, it just one of those things. But.
But it's. Yeah, the data shows it on your end there. So anyways. Okay, guys, I kept you over time. Anything else you want to cover before we hit the stop button? How anything we missed?
[01:23:21] Speaker D: Yeah, no, I just appreciate being invited on to the podcast here today, Ryan. I think in the end, you know, we are, we are an organization that, that wants to do business with farms. And if the best way to. To really get a hold of us, the easiest way is to go to our website and click on get a quote. And it's. It doesn't lock you in to get a quote. It just shares your contact information for to us that we can reach out to you and starts just with a conversation. We like to talk.
We. We think that we have value that we can bring to most, if not every single farm. And our passion is. Is next. You know, I call it next level. And I'm talking about not just the two of us here, but our company and especially the independent advisors out there that are. That are sitting at the kitchen table. So would love to sit at more kitchen table.
[01:24:16] Speaker A: All right now website folks, is AgriSolutions CA.
All right. AgriSksolutions CA. Well, thanks again guys for coming on the show. I really appreciate your time and you know, have a great season and a great 2026. I hope, I hope your checkbook doesn't come out because that means everyone had a great crop and prices rallied. So let's hope for that, right?
Cheers, guys.
[01:24:41] Speaker D: Thanks, bro.
[01:24:45] Speaker A: Oh, man. Just like last week, right? There's so much knowledge here that these folks hold and just gets. Gets the head Spinning here a little bit. But great, great conversation with Mark and David and certainly appreciate them coming on the what the Futures podcast. All right, let's, let's get to the end here, guys. Thanks for hanging out with me again. I know these episodes we got the short ones on Tuesdays and the extra long ones on Fridays now.
So we're working on it. Folks, I know you want shorter ones, but we're working on it. So for eating your veggies this week, I want to talk about malt for just a second here. Now, this is going to sound crazy to you, but it's on theme with me being not as bearish compared to the last three years, but I would not price my new crop malt. When you get the 560 offer or the 580 offer and it's below your break even using average yields, five year average yields. Whatever it is, honestly, I wouldn't price it at that level. The feed market is very, very strong. What I would do is look at signing the production contract site, getting those acres and the buyer lined up, but not actually pricing anything. All right, I'll talk about that more over the next few weeks.
Number two. Hey, David and Mark, Lisa. There's not a lot of private insurance offerings in Western Canada. Yes, they have capacity constraints at times. So I just say to you, to get the ball rolling, you know, reach out and figure out the strategies for your farm. I think that's a good one right now. While it's a little quieter and doesn't mean you're, you're committing to these folks, it just means that you're going to do your due diligence, figure out if there's a fit or a need for your farm here in 2026. Figure out how it's going to, if it's going to help you in your crop marketing and your farm business and just get that done and out of the way. Don't worry about it in March, in April, just get the paperwork side done. Right.
And my last one here is just, I know we feel really good about this Canola rally right now. Right now, guys. We all do. And that's great. It will find a high. It will pull back. Just figure out your, your defensive strategy. All right?
If you're like, Ryan, I don't want to figure out a defensive strategy. I need someone to do that for me. Well, then hit us up at the Lunchbox Crew. All right, Ryan, Denise, ca Because earlier today, I'm assuming. But Friday morning, anyway, Lunchbox Crew went through two defensive strategies. And how to execute those on our. On our Q and A. Our Zoom Q and A. So anyways, could check that out. Ryandeni CA all right, folks, if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend, neighbor, colleague, spread the word, guys. I really do appreciate it. Prices can change, strategies can change. It's an evolving market, right? So always reach out to a professional. Get the latest from them. For the what? The Futures podcast. My name is Ryan, and hey, I'll see you on Tuesday, but for now, I'm out of here.
