Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: What do pirates and crop marketing have in common? Well, not really a lot, folks. Not a lot, if I have to be honest, but I'm rolling with it here at Egg in Motion. We are going to be flying the crop marketing pirate flag for this year's show. If you want to get your hands on one, stick with me here. Episode 84 of the what the Futures podcast coming at you right now.
Hey, folks, welcome to the what the Futures podcast, your quick guide to better farming decisions.
All right, folks, welcome into episode 84 of the what the Futures podcast. Of course, recorded each and every week in the UPL studio. And of course, we're going to be hanging out with UPL next week at Egg in Motion. That's home base. Come say hi. Of course, Trish joined me on the live show earlier this week, and I hope you had a chance to catch that. Live is always a little tricky. Trish did a fantastic job. All right, let's get to housekeeping. There's a bunch of stuff I want to get. Get in front of you here for. Well, egg and Motion and. And some fundraising activities we have going on. So I want to get to that. I want to get to some crop marketing stuff here as well, because it's damn important. Yeah, you got to make it a priority right now, folks. Of course, we also have Ryan Copperthorne with Cows in Control is the Calgary Stampede this week. Ryan's going to give some. Give some advice to some of the young ranchers out there. Things to think about and ponder while that cattle market is still. Hey, let's. Let's face it, it's still on fire. All right, Good times for. For cattle producers out there. I want to start off here. Let's get through some of this housekeeping. We've got a lot going on next week when it comes to egg in Motion, but one of the things I want to get out there right now is that we have these amazing flags. Okay, going to hold it up here for you.
Anyway, if you're checking it out on YouTube, the flags are fantastic. They're gonna look great behind the grain. Carter, the combine here this fall, I'm proclaiming this. I don't know if I. If proclaiming is the right word, but I'm declaring that this is your crop marketing pirate flag. All right, now, we think about pirates and we think about the ships colliding.
You know, we think about in present day, we think about what we hear across the world with vessels getting attacked. There's still pirate activity going on out there. Even in 2025. But the definition that I want to pull out here is that it can also refer to someone who operates outside established systems. And the example is, like, pirate radio broadcasters. Okay, we won't get into a pirate radio is. But operating outside of the established systems and you listening to this show, we talk about crop marketing in a little different way. Different way to tackle things, different way to look at things. And I consider each and every one of you a crop marketing pirate out there. So if you want to fly the flag, we have a limited number of these things. They're fantastic quality. I'm super pumped. A lot better than the first run we did here last year. You have to come to the booth again. You can't miss us. We're right in there with upl. And you gotta find my pal Cash, all right? That's his name. That's this young fella's name. It's Cash. And you have to go up to Cash and say, I'm a crop marketing pirate. I want to fly that flag. I want to fly the flag. I want to fly that flag. I'm not going to get too picky, but we want to hear that you're a crop marketing pirate. Okay? So Cash is the man.
He's the only person who has access to these flags. He's gonna be hanging out at the, what, the futures tent in the upl?
In the UPL plots there or the UPL booth. And that's the man. That is the man with. With these gray flags. Okay, now just a side note here. I don't know if you guys. If your family does a song of the summer. I was going to. I was gonna save this for positive moments, but I'll just get it out there because it's on theme. So my wife comes to me a couple weeks like, hey, you know, we gotta pick, like, a family, like, song for the summer. And I'm like, what? What do you mean? Just like a rally song. Like when we take off camping or we're taking off on a road trip, like, this is kind of the song that we play, and it's going to be our family song of summer. Well, I have basically manipulated the kids here.
I'm. I'm not a. I'm not a good person. Because what I've done is any time that it's me and the kids in the truck, we crank Captain Tractor. Captain Tractor, Saskatchewan pirate. That is the song that I. That I play for them. I even have them yelling, you know, that point in the song. So it's the last. The Last Saskatchewan Pirate. But the point of the song where he yells, I don't pay my income tax and screw the gst. And then they shout, screw it. I even have the kids shouting that which my wife does not appreciate. And so what I've done is every time we go into town for groceries or whatever, I got the kids. We were at the park. We were going to the park here last night and we played that song five times in a row. Five times. And this morning at breakfast, we played it again. So that has turned into our family song of summer. And my wife is not happy about it, but honestly, she's the one who put this out there. This wasn't on my mind. But I have manipulated the kids. I have worked with them, masterminded our song of the summer from Captain Tractor, the last Saskatchewan Pirate. So I don't know if this, if this flag and all this kind of worked in the back of my mind altogether, but it sure seems, seems that way. Okay. The other thing going on at Egg in Motion, I went through my schedule here, but I'll do it one more time quickly. So I am Tuesday, bright and early. I will be in the UPL booth. Big day Tuesday. We're doing well. We got swag number right off the hop. Like each day we have a limited amount of T shirts. Okay. So we're going to give away, you know, it's probably going to be somewhere around 80t shirts a day maybe. I don't know. I found an extra two boxes today, so it might be more than that. Whatever it is, might be a hundred. We have kids sizes. We go all the way up to triple xl. We've got long sleeve, short sleeves. We got you covered. We have these great colors as well. And if I move my flag over, of course I got all my shirts in the order here as well. They are just fantastic this year. So I got a couple left over from the, the old design as well. So there'll be a few of those floating around. This is the back of the T shirt and then. And then the front, the front right here. So nice and crisp T shirt for you. Nice and bright as well for the summer. All right, so those are bright and early. The flags, of course, are going to be there as well. Limited quantities on those. And then of course we have these great hats. So these hats, $35 donation. Mine is signed, came and signed my hat this week. We took some pictures. We had a great conversation. All the money, the, the, the proceeds here are going to the CCAW. So minimum 35 donation. Gets your. Gets one of these hats or the great folks at upl, they're also ponying up as well. And they will you talk to the reps over there at upl. They may buy your hat for you if you're just thinking, hey, you know what, I love those folks at upl. A conversation gets me a hat. UPL does the donation on my behalf and I could save my, my 35 bucks for, hey, for a hot dog or, or maybe an adult beverage. Whatever, whatever you want to do. But the hats are there. Again, we're gonna have a big countdown going on. So we've got, well, we started with around 500 of these things and we're just crossing them off as we go. So we got a big countdown looking to raise north of 7,500 bucks as well. So, yeah, so we're excited about that. So I'm going to be in the UPL booth all morning on Tuesday, all the way to 2pm I'm also giving a little bit of a talk. So we got a little breakfast sandwich going on. You want to come get a breakfast sandwich at 10am and a little coffee. And I'm going to do just a bit of a crop marketing talk. It's not going to be, you know, slideshows and charts and small numbers and boring. It's not going to be that. It's just going to talk about the journey of crop Marketing here in 2025, the journey of going through the highs and the lows so far this year and my approach and how my approach has changed. And then at the end, yeah, I'll give you some perspective on markets that are a watch out and markets that are a bit more exciting. So we'll definitely throw that in the mix here as well. So that's Tuesday only Tuesday at 10am that's the only time they're giving me a microphone. Tuesday afternoon I'll be in the John Deere booth with my treasure chest from 2:30 to 4:30. You can find me in the technology tent over there. Come say hello and see what you can snag. I've got pens, notepads. If you've seen my notepads, folks. Well, Wilhelmina was doing her ABCs today as she was recording her version of the podcast. Both my kids are podcasters now. Apparently they play podcasting every day. But I've got these notepads in here. I've got some great pens. I've got some what the futures hats.
We threw a couple flags in there. I've got some leftover Underwear from the conference in there, socks, stickers. And then also a chance, a chance to.
Well, we're giving away a vacation to the Canadian Olympic Curling Trials. They're in Halifax in November. Last week in November we're giving away a trip. This isn't just any trip. This is a VIP experience. This is something that I accidentally got my hands on. But anyways, won't go to great detail but there'll be a couple chances for you to, to win or to enter that contest as well. We'll get into more contest details after Egg of Motion, but there'll be some of that. Maybe we'll throw a couple conference tickets in there. We'll see. I'll have some fun with it. But that's only 2:30 to 4:30 at the John Deere booth in the tech tent. That's it.
You're not going to see that treasure box at all after that Wednesday UPL booth for me all day like 9 to 2. And then UPL has customer appreciation that afternoon. They have it Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon. So those are fun. And then Thursday I'm a free agent. Thursday I'm going to go do some farm stuff. But if you want to connect, if you want to go grab a natural beverage, if you want to go grab a sandwich, if you want to talk markets, hey, like don't be a stranger, stop by anytime. But Thursday I could definitely have a bunch of flex flexibility in, in the schedule there as well. All right, so that's Egg in Motion. You'll see the what the futures tent, the flags, it's all there. We got signage if you want details on the crop marketing Make Cool conference. We're going to be talking about that.
If you want to talk consulting lunchbox crew, hey, we can also chat about that as well. You can see behind me I've got my backpack ready to rock and roll for tomorrow. I'm like a kid going to the, the first day of school, but I'm going to meet at a new farm. I got a four hour drive ahead of me here, so a big, big travel day but going to do a little consulting work in, in northern Alberta. So that's looking forward to it. It's gonna be a new highway actually for me. And yeah there's, there's a few highways left but I've traveled a fair amount of them. So let's do this, this last thing here. And I know I've kept you long already but we're raising some money again. Lots going on here at what the futures, but raising some money it's for my. The care home in my. In my hometown.
Well, in my. It's a neighboring community, I guess, from my hometown. But you know, when you're five miles apart, it's all. It all seems together. But that's where the care home is. Okay. It's a Bellevue, Saskatchewan.
We're raising some money. My grandpa spent well over four years there. My wife's grandmother's in there right now, just moved in. They're doing a kitchen renovation.
And we're just trying to raise some money to help with that kitchen reno. And so look, you can check it out. Go to Ryandani Ca. You can find the details there or on our social media or we've been emailing it out, so check your email, please. But you can bid. It's an auction.
You can bid on a conference ticket with hotel for Moosejaw. We got that in there. We've got a Lunchbox Crew subscription. That's the only way you can get in to the Lunchbox Crew is through that auction right now. And then we've got a little one on one consulting package. If you want to work one on one together here this year, we've got that available as well.
Winning bidder gets it. And all money raised is going to this kitchen renovation at the Bellevue Care Home. And if you say, you know what, Ryan, that's all great, I don't really have a need. I'm already in the Lunchbox Crew or I've already got a consultant or whatever it is. I've got my, my ticket for Moose Jaw. You can go and drop a donation in there as well. There is a link where you just toss in your, your donation and hey, if it's five bucks, ten bucks, whatever you got, it'll help. It'll help out that, that cause for my grandpa. I've said it before on the show, but super important for him to go to a place with great food. And I think you can, you guys can relate to that as well. For, for the folks, the old folks moving off the farm into town. That's one of the things that, that is a concern. And so they took great care of him there and, and he just raved about the food. So why not get a little kitchen upgrade for, for the next group of folks that will be using that facility. Let's keep the show rolling here. Let's talk a little crop marketing. All right, let's slow it down here a little bit and breathe. Obviously, the last, I don't know, week or so, I think we've recorded you know, three different things now with the big, beautiful put on Canola.
And, you know, I wish. I wish I was smarter.
I wish I was smart enough to see this, you know, coming a little bit sooner. Because as we were talking about it, Canola futures were trading, you know, as high as 730, 740, close to that.
And then now, as I record, we're at 684. We've even.
Yeah, we fell through some. Some support here. We might be in for a little bit of a rougher ride over the next couple weeks now, you know, is this market over?
I don't think so myself, but I again, I don't have that crystal ball fired up for you this evening. But the put option. What I want to say about the put option is that, you know, I talked about going through the, you know, line company like Vitara actually.
Do we have to have, like, a moment of silence for Vitera? Like, should we maybe five seconds or something?
Yeah. Vitera is no longer right. It's all bungay now. It's all happened. I just saw, though, you know, how I found out is I saw people that I used to work with just saying, I've accepted a job at Bunge. And I was like, oh, congratulations, you've moved on to Bunge. And I'm like, wait a second. No, this is the whole Vitera thing. So I told the lunchbox crew guys, I told my dad, my brother, I said, save your Vitera sample bags. Save your Vitera pails. I'm going to save my. My Vitera. My Christmas present From Vitera in 2009 was a Christmas ornament. I'm going to save that. Save your hats, your coffee cups, whatever you got. It's going to be like the Saskatchewan wheat pool stuff. You know, I'm always looking for sasquite pool stuff. So my first job at a. At a university, during university, actually, with sasquite pool. You know, this is Agricore United, whatever it is. Oh, man.
Vitera 5 seconds does not do it justice. But there we go, I guess. Bungie. Now, Bungie is who you can call Cargill, you can call them to talk about the put option. The. The thing about it, folks, is that the strike level here that you're looking for, remember, it's a put option. You're leaving yourself upside potential. You're leaving yourself some futures exposure for upside. You're just committing to a strike price on a put option, saying, hey, I may exercise this or I may go and lock in futures at a higher value. So What I want to say is, if you're sitting here today, say, Darn it like 680, 676, this isn't great. And then all of a sudden it rallies back up to 700 or 710 or 720. Take a look at it and what you should do or what you could do. I guess I can't force you, but what you could do is you could look at your yield potential. You could look at a strike value of 700 minus the cost of the put, throw in a basis scenario, see what prices per bushel for you. What's the worst case scenario? Factor that, multiply that by your yield and see if that gives you any peace of mind or not. Because if it does, if 700 does, that could be your put option. You can do that. And if it goes to 750 again, you could physically sell some at 750. Right.
It doesn't have to be, hey, I gotta buy the strike at 750 or 775 or whatever it is. The game may be changing in front of us here. I don't know for sure, but I'm not a big bear when it comes to canola as of July 9th. But this may be changing and evolving here. Okay? And so you could go and just lock in some worst case scenarios. That's all I'm trying to say here is you can lock in worst case scenarios that keep your upside open. And so it may take a few days to get organized, it may take a few days to get comfortable with the strategy. But what I, what I told the farmers I've been chatting with the last couple of days, you know, I said, it looks to me like 730, 740, 750. Canola, like that's kind of special. Like you want to treat that with gently. And sure, you might be bullish to 800, but maybe that's on the cash side. Maybe make a sale at that level instead. But to me, that 730 to 750 level is special. 750 happened when World War 3 was about to erupt. So I think you got to take that one out a little bit for now. In my way. Out to lunch here.
Yeah. Let me know if I am. But you can buy yourself peace of mind. Yeah. You know, maybe it is 700, maybe it's 710, 720, I don't know. But think about it, all right? Crop marketing, Obviously, Canola has been the exciting one here. I don't want to go into yield predictions. US Yield Predictions, a whole bunch. I'm very curious to see who does a crop tour across the prairies this next week and puts it on social media. Very curious to see what that, what happens with that one. I have, I'm just going to guess it's going to be very quiet. We're not going to get a lot of, hey, I drove 2,000 miles and this is what I saw. I got a feeling it's going to be a little quieter this year. But us, corn and beans, the yield number, whatever it is, the models, how they figured all this stuff out, good on them for going ahead and doing this, I'm not going to look at it in that very specific scientific way. What I'm going to say is look at the growing conditions, look at the forecast and figure out for yourself how you feel about yield potential within that. I love it when someone says, hey, the corn is going to be 185. And then somebody in a county that is super drought it out sits there and says, oh yeah, well, look at this.
I get it. We have the same thing going on in the praise. I have the same thing going on on our farm right now. I look at one end of the farm, I'm like, woo, that's a dog's breakfast over there. Like that's not gonna be great.
And then I look at the other side of the farm like, oh, all right, you know, show me a little, little something. We're gonna give you a little fungicide over there. Like it's, it's happening on the farm. So like just look at the growing conditions, okay? Look at the big picture. Look at 95 million acres and try to figure out where that yield's gonna fall right now what I'll say here is as Ryan joins us here with cows and control in a moment.
They got a whopper coming in the U.S. they got a whopper of a crop in the second part of, of July here, the first part of July leading into the second half. Is it in the bin? No, it's a long way from the bin yet. Things could change, things could get worse. In fact, that's what I would bet if, if you forced me to make a bet right now, I'd say, well, I'll take not perfect conditions. I'll put my, my money over there because it's hard to stay perfect. So I'll just put my money over there, right? But there's a, there's a whopper of a crop coming and you gotta be sensitive here towards what that can do to your crop marketing. Plan. If you're feed grains, you know, feed wheat, feed barley, like, what does 90 some million acres at 181, 182, 185. Like, what does that look like? How does that impact you? And you may have to make some marketing decisions here based on, on what's happening in the U.S. what, what, how things look. You know, you might sit here on the flip side and say, hey, as Chuck Penner said last week, Mustard acres are concentrated in one area. That area is suffering significant drought.
Yeah, you know, maybe mustard prices have some positivity to them based on that. Like, it can be, it can be to that scale as well. But the second corn crop in, in Brazil to throw that in the mix, look at the Black Sea region, look at Europe, you know, what do we have going on from a production side there?
You know, it looks like everyone's rebounding here quite, quite friendly from a production side.
Now we've got a demand story and bean oil and canola with biofuel policy.
We've got, you know, countries coming to the US Saying, we're going to buy more of your wheat. You know, we're making a trade deal with you. We're going to buy more of your wheat. You know, there's, there's some things there that can be positive as well. But your crop marketing plan is evolving here right now, and it's evolving to the spot where as people get more comfortable with what they're going to grow, some of that selling can pick up. And then you, you get into. All of a sudden, you, you just wake up one morning and say, man, I guess I'm in harvest pressure already now. I think prairie wide.
You're not going to like me saying this out loud. Well, I'm going to say it. I think we're coming in around average, guys. Oh, boy. Hey, bold statement, bold statement, but I think we're coming around. Maybe it's slightly below average, but it's not 21, even 21. The worst drought since 02 for the Prairies. And even then we still produce. What do we harvest? 30 million ton of canola, 40 million ton of canola that year, Something like that. Like even in the worst droughts, there's still people that aren't and that do get some type of crop. So I'm saying average crops. Now, am I going and chasing this thing a whole bunch, you know, worried about overproduction? Well, you know, maybe the barley market. I'm starting to chase that guy a little bit right now for feed, barley, maybe a little Bit in the yellow pea market. I'm kind of chasing that, but we'll get to why in just a little bit. All right, folks, let's get into it now. Ryan Copperthorn, Cows in Control.
Every time I talk to Ryan, I just realize I need to learn more about cattle and marketing, cattle, raising cattle. I just need more cattle talk in my life. So let's get into it here with Ryan.
All right, folks, welcome to episode 84 of the what the Futures podcast. I've got Ryan Copperthorne with Cows in Control.
Join me once again. It's been a minute. We got Calgary Stampede going on this week. Thought it'd be a perfect time to chat cattle markets with Ryan. How's it going today, sir?
[00:24:25] Speaker B: No, it's going pretty good. Sun's shining. Had a little bit of rain last night, so we're feeling a little better.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: Yep.
Yeah. How are the pastures holding in?
[00:24:34] Speaker B: They were slow this year because of the late start, but, like, we got four inches of rain, and it just went straight into the ground, disappeared. You didn't even make a puddle, you know? Yeah, so. But we're okay. I. You know, grass is okay. Hay is going to be a little bit light, maybe, but.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Were you kind of like us with this? Kind of the second half of June, it opened up a bit for moisture events, or was it even before that?
[00:24:59] Speaker B: Yeah, no, we had. We had one inch of rain in May, and that was it. And then. And then we got that one in June that really kind of saved our bacon here.
[00:25:08] Speaker A: So, like, do you think so now? Like, I see some. Some farmers are cutting hay right now.
You know, if we got a bit more moisture in July, like, with that second, would that set up another cut later on? Or how does that. How does it kind of work?
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Kind of just depends on what part of the province you're in. Like, it's pretty tough for us to get a second cut because of our elevation and such where we're at, but some places in the center province will definitely take a couple cuts, and if, you know, moisture helps for that second cut, for sure.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: All right, so, you know, it's barbecue season here. Let's get into these markets a little bit. You know, what's going on with. With cattle these days?
[00:25:51] Speaker B: Well, they just keep grinding higher. It's just. It's just amazing. We're all kind of chewing our fingernails as they. As they go higher and higher, wondering how long this thing can keep doing this, because it's. They've pretty much gone straight up, and it's just, it's, it's unnerving, but it's good. At the same time we're seeing prices we've never dreamed of, never imagined. And, and we're starting to see a lot of people do forward sales now. You know, a lot of volumes increasing on that. People trying to lock in these, these good values.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: Not that I want to say crazy not to because of course the market has been going higher. But you know, when, when the numbers work, when the margins look good. Right. It crazy not to so.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: Well, all right, the margins are good for people selling. Like if you're a producer, the margins are phenomenal. I, I kind of feel sorry for the feedlots. You know, they've had a very good turn. I shouldn't feel too sorry. They've had a very good turn this last one because the market rose so quickly. But, but the forward looking profits and forward looking margins for feeding cattle right now is not very good. And they're paying a lot of money for these cattle. So it's going to be interesting what the next six months looks like.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: So is that, would that be a, could that be looked at as a leading indicator at all for, for something to come here on the, the price side, on the market side of this or is that just kind of ebbs and flows throughout the year?
[00:27:18] Speaker B: It can sort of ebb and flow for sure, but I think, I think it is a leading indicator. It does indicate one thing though that, that you know, the market is still short of cattle. So these feedlots are really panicking about what they're, you know, whether they're going to be able to fill pens as false. So in my opinion they're kind of overpaying just to make sure that they get the cattle. They know they're going to be probably underwater on these cattle, but it's, it's, it's a kind of a big sort of a knife fight to get the cattle for the fall, you know, make sure that they get their volumes.
But you know, back to your question. I, when I look at the futures market, it's already pricing in lower prices going out to October of next year. So I, I almost feel like the futures market has already called the top. But we'll have to see when it.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: Comes to the, the futures markets here, are they, I guess when is there a little bit of liquidity to get something traded? Like, I know if I look at like the Canola market for example, you know, I could start to, you know, NAV of 26. We could start to Do a little bit of trading a couple of weeks ago here.
So that's, you know, 14, 15, 16 months out. How about on the cattle side? Like how far. If you saw a price that you liked, how far out could you go?
[00:28:39] Speaker B: Oh, you can go out a full year. I mean, the volume gets a little light that far.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:28:44] Speaker B: I would say most of the volumes within six months, but. Because that's usually kind of a feeding term, but.
Yeah, but you're. Technically, you can go out a full year.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: Okay, all right, fair enough.
Okay, so last time we had you on the show here we were, we talked about insurance a little bit back then, some peace of mind.
But we also talked about things like, I think Screw Worm was one of them. We talked about tariffs, which again, I don't, I don't know if we've refreshed the screen yet today to see what's going on tariff wise, but talked about low inventory.
Where are we at on some of those topics?
[00:29:30] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think the, The Mexican screwworm one is interesting. The.
Normally they, the US imports about 1.2 million cattle from Mexico and it's mostly into Texas and Arizona, like the southern states down there.
Now this year I think they've only, I think it's less than 500,000. It's like 400,000 or something they brought in. Their best case scenario, if they kind of get this border open is probably about 700,000. So it's definitely going to be behind the regular year.
So what it's done is it's created shortages in Texas and Arizona and places like that that normally take those cattle.
Now they're talking about staged reopening, re entry. So they're going to start opening one border entry at a time and slowly letting cattle come in, come back in and monitoring it. So, you know, that's good for, for getting those replacement cattle down there refilled. But you know, there's. There, it's definitely causing some of the price lift that we have now in terms of the shortage of placement numbers.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: Okay. Still on that screw room topic there, there was questions around treatment and stuff like that, like have they come up with a plan?
I guess if they're slowly opening the border up, they have, but there was talk of some.
I don't know exactly what the plan was here for, for treating Screw Worm, but has that come to fruition?
[00:31:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not, I'm not an expert on that side of it. I would definitely. I, I think they can just dip the cattle and I think they can get rid of It. I don't, I don't know if it's as drastic or serious as they're really making it out to be, but they've chosen to sort of hang their hat on it, so. Yeah, but I think it's just a matter of dipping, you know, or, you know, it's like any other sort of parasite that they can, they can either dip it or I've mech it off. I'm not sure, but you'd have to talk to a vet on that one.
[00:31:30] Speaker A: All right, well, some topics for, for future episodes here. All right. Okay. What about tariff stuff then? What's going on from a tariff perspective?
[00:31:41] Speaker B: Well, as long as we're under the usmca, we're kind of safe right now, but who knows? It's just like everybody in Canada where it's like the wind changes every day with Trump and you never know what, where you stand. But so far, so good. What is coming down the pipeline is, is that we have a country of origin labeling regulation coming in January where the US Is going to start voluntarily allowing their marketers and plants and such down there to, to put country of origin labeling on.
So right now, normally if Canadian cattle go to the U.S. they just kind of get thrown in the mix and it's called, you know, product USA type thing. And okay, this new country of origin labeling now is going to separately identify Canadian cattle where they're going to have to now be segregated if they want to label it as product of usa.
And so it could actually create some concerns or discounts on Canadian cattle if, if they have to sort them off and keep them separate and all that type of thing. This is something that's been kind of going back and forth ongoing for years.
And I don't know if it's going to be that much of a, of an issue, but, you know, it's one of those things that they can kind of, they can use as a trade dispute because we're, we're going into our free trade negotiations here in this year, too, with the US and yeah, I'm sure that's going to be on. Their supply management is always on the line.
And our government just passed a law saying that they're going to protect supply management at all cost. And of course, the rest of us are not very happy with that ruling because we don't want to hang our hat on the entire trade deal to be hung on supply management, which is only 9 or 10,000 dairy producers. So we'll see where that goes.
[00:33:32] Speaker A: Yeah, and that, so that's The USMCA that's getting renegotiated. Right. Or up for negotiation again. So we're safe under there for the time being, but again, up for some negotiation here in the, in the near future.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: Okay. So we also talked about low inventory of, of cattle. You mentioned that off the top here as well.
Anything else on that that's been. We've been talking about on the show for the last, I don't know, year and a bit or so, maybe even the whole time that you've been here. But I guess what. Is there any change coming to the low inventory?
[00:34:14] Speaker B: Well, that's a good question because it's.
It sure feels like. It doesn't feel like we're going to rebuild this herd anytime soon.
I just don't see the heifer holdbacks and I don't see the, you know, I don't see the young producers stepping up and building and doing all that. I think there is some herd rebuilding going on right now as we speak, but I don't think it's large. And you know, I, I'm doing some presentations now for people and it's. And it's. One of the things I talk about is in, in 20 years ago we had five and a half million cows and now we got three and a half million cows. So we've def. We're really far down in terms of our cow herd numbers. But when you factor in the fact that we've got carcass weights have increased 16% and you got beef on dairy, which is basically dairy cattle that we're converting into beef cattle now you add all those and then you add all the production efficiencies that we've added in the last 20 years in terms of all the feedlot technology and such, and we're producing more beef than we've ever produced.
So I kind of warn people not to get deceived by focusing too much on cow numbers because we can produce a lot more beef out of a smaller and smaller number of cows.
So I don't think the herd's going to rebuild back to where it was 20 years ago. We're probably going to rebuild a little bit. But I, when I look at the average age of the producer being 60 and not much change on that front, I, I don't think this thing's going to rebuild anytime soon. Beef is going to be here, going to be expensive for a while, I think.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: Yeah, fair enough.
What about on the, on like the retirement side? Like as these farmers are getting older, you know, are you seeing any Any, I don't know if you call it herd dispersal or any ranches going for sale.
Is there anyone that's putting their hand up saying, hey, this is a great time.
These margins are great, but could be a good time to exit as well. Do you see much action on that side?
[00:36:24] Speaker B: I think there's always a little bit.
The best way to sort of gauge that in my opinion, oftentimes is just looking at how thick the Richie brothers catalog is or some of these catalogs where they're doing farm auctions.
That's probably your best gauge of how much that's actually going on. On the cattle side. Yeah, there's some herds being liquidated here and there. I wouldn't say in mass volume yet though. I think, I think some of these old codgers are hanging on for one more cycle to try and get as many dollars out of this thing as they can. As they can. And beyond that, I don't know what the plans are. I don't know. You know, I don't think there's a lot of next generation stepping in, but. But hopefully they, they do, you know, because we need them.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: Yeah, we definitely do. Otherwise it's just going to get a little more expensive. So. Yeah, so I, you know, go back to that comment as well. Some of the, the old timers, you know, like my father in law, you know, his favorite song, been listening to a lot of cor blun lately. But you know, cows around, like you always have to have cows around and yeah, his numbers may not be what they were back, you know, way back 10 years ago because he is, you know, retired.
But he still, he says a couple animals kicking around or he's not far from, from from feeding an animal anyway. So.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: Yeah, like the, like, you know, 10 or 15 years ago, I mean a cow might make you a hundred dollars ahead, so you had to run like lots and lots and lots of them to make a living, you know. And now, I mean some people are making 700 to a thousand dollars a head on every cow. So it's changed the game a little bit. Now you can run less cows and still make the same living.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: Yeah, Yep. Yeah, for sure. That's true.
All right. I wanted to, I wanted to just ask in here as well, you know, things, things still quite bright, cautiously hanging in there, optimistic. Is there anything keeping you up at night here? Obviously you want to do the best marketing you can while you're in this kind of. I don't want the golden era, but you know, you're trying to do your Best for as long as you can. Is there anything keeping you up at night though, these days?
[00:38:42] Speaker B: I don't know if I would say keeping me up like these prices are phenomenal. So I just keep encouraging people to take advantage of it. Keep, keep forward selling your calves forward, sell your yearlings if you can trim your cow herds a little bit. You know, these, these bread cows are over 6,000 bucks now. So it's like those are phenomenal prices. So you might as well take some of that money off the table and maybe sit on some dry powder.
But as far as keep you up at night, I mean there's, yeah, this, this market's going to tip at some point and I don't think it'll be as steep as the last one was. But, but you know, if it gives back, if you look at like standard pullbacks or whatever, if it gives back 50 or 60 of its value of, of the prior gains, you know, those are big dollars being wiped out. So you'll definitely want to keep your hedges up. Like, like these, these eight weights, for example, they're trading over $4. They might be $3, you know, but a buck a pound is a lot. You know, that's, that's 800 bucks. So, so just be, you know, keep, keep hedging because this thing is, we're getting pretty toppy. It feels like it to me.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah. Okay, good stuff.
So you said you're doing presentations out there, you know, doing the, the speaking run right now. Anything else that we haven't talked about today that's, that's kind of in that, in that slide deck that, that is top of mind?
[00:40:13] Speaker B: I don't think so. I, I guess I touched on a little bit. I'm, I'm asking people to kind of explore different ways, like do you really need to own these cows now? Or you know, people that either want to expand or the ones that are sitting on expensive cows. It's a good time to ask do you really need to own all your cows or is there other things you can do like custom cows or leasing cows or trying to get some value out of these, these herds before, before this market turns? Because it ultimately does there. It's a 10 year cattle cycle and we've been rising for five years and generally at some point, this single flip and we'll, we'll kind of fall for five years. So you want to be prepared for that and take some money off the table, that type of thing.
[00:40:56] Speaker A: Okay, this might be a, maybe a question you don't want to answer. Or it might be a weird question for me to ask, but is there any. Anything off the.
Kind of. Not off the ledge. I was going to say kind of like any strategy, any. How do I want to say it? Out of the thinking, out of the box. Anything kind of out of the box ideas that you have in regards to some of that, some of that strategy or some of those things you just talked about? I don't know if that's a question I can ask Ryan, but. Or if it is a question. But.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's some of the stuff I'm talking about. It's, you know, you want to, you want to be evaluating which cattle you're owning going into this, into the turn when it does come. Because, you know, when I, when I do those retracement and looks, look at those levels, a young cow might go from 6000 down to 4000. So there's going to be $2000 of sort of asset value just wiped out.
And, you know, other cows won't have that much depreciation. It's. You're gonna have to sort of pick and choose which cows are going to be the ones that kind of take the biggest hit on those, on those turns. So that's, that's one way of looking at it. And then, of course, doing a lot of the forward selling, you know, you can forward sell cattle right out into February, March of next year. So those people that are doing backgrounding and such this fall, you can actually buy, you know, buy. Pay $3,000 for calves and still make money selling them in February if you do a forward sale now at these high prices. So.
[00:42:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:33] Speaker B: And then on the futures, futures and options side, we're just, we're just waiting for the, the moment to, to trigger our short sales at some point when it does roll. But I haven't seen any topping formations yet to confirm that yet. So we're, we're just kind of sitting on our hands as far as aggressively shorting this market.
[00:42:53] Speaker A: Yep, fair enough.
All right, and one more for you. Do you have any advice for some of the young ranchers out there that are, you know, maybe they've just gotten into this over the last five years. Maybe they are taking over from mom and dad or something like that. Any advice you pass along to some of the younger folks getting into this?
[00:43:14] Speaker B: Yeah, keep at it. Like the, like the cowherd is not rebuilding, so we're going to need these cattle and I think these prices are going to stay high for longer, but they, but they will. Correct. So we're going to see a market correction and that's going to be nothing more than a buying opportunity.
And so that's why I say don't go and blow the wad on $6,000 cows at this, at this stage of the game. Put your resources in terms of getting land put together in forages and, and sit on some dry powder here because we're gonna, we will get a buying opportunity at some point. This is a selling opportunity. Right now is the time to be selling and forward selling and, and taking advantage of these, these prices and, and then the other thing I guess for young people would be to, you know, try as much as possible use other people's money. You know, we gotta, it's really hard to try and borrow your way into a ranch. You have to try and find ways to use other people's money to grow and, and there's numerous strategies on that one.
[00:44:15] Speaker A: Yeah, you bet. Well, I appreciate those comments for sure. And the last one I'll leave you with here, Ryan, is I know you take a peek at some of the feed grains and stuff going on as well. Some of those inputs coming into, into the herd there any, anything kind of sparking your interest on corn or barley or any of those feed grains?
[00:44:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I was actually thinking of asking you about that because it's like when I look at corn, the US Is gonna, in my opinion is gonna put together a monster crop. Like from what I'm seeing, they got good weather down there, lots of acreage.
They're gonna put together a humongous crop of corn and then you got Brazil put it putting together a record crop of corn and then you got China. Looks to me like are overloaded with grain or they, they say they've got lots of grain on storage. So I'm cheap corn for a while here and I was going to ask your opinion if you agreed on that because that definitely, you know, cheap grain for, for a long period of time there is not, does not bode well for high cattle prices.
[00:45:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I, you know, the, the US growing season looks, looks quite good. It looks like, you know, as of the second week of July here, they're setting up for some record type performance. That big second corn crop in Brazil like China is always tricky for me. I'm, I'm cautiously, I wanted to be cautiously optimistic for China to buy a bunch of Canadian wheat because we need some help there. But yeah, like there's the, the stocks, the ending stocks.
Supply availability is going to be very, very adequate. And yeah, I, I'm Not, I'm not bullish on, I'm not bullish on a whole bunch of feed grain stuff at this time.
I, you know, I obviously got to keep an eye on policy and some of the biofuel stuff. But again, I think bean oil is getting the big lift right now. And not corn, not ethanol, but, but bean oil. And yeah. So no, I think from a price perspective it's, yeah, it looks like it's going to be a tough, at least 12 months ahead here and you never know going into the next growing season. But yeah, supply is climbing and not just in the U.S. but in other parts of the world and even look at, you know, the Black Sea, Europe, you know, it got better year over year when it comes to producing grain in those, in those parts of the world as well. So.
[00:47:01] Speaker B: Well, I think we're going to see monster, monster, monster carcass weights in cattle because we got negative feeding margins looking forward and cheap grain.
So feedlots are just going to keep feeding these cattle, trying to make money on them. They'll just feed them to gargantuan weights. So I think we're actually going to see record average carcass weights this, this fall. It's going to be interesting to see if, if grain prices stay low here. So. Yeah, and barley, you know, barley's sitting at what, 650 a bushel and you know, the corn in the states is what, 350 or 4. It's like, I, I don't know. I don't, I, I'm questioning whether barley can stay up at 650 or not. I think we're going to see $4 barley.
[00:47:43] Speaker A: I.
Barley is the crop, one of the crops that I'm the, the most aggressively sold on for, for new crop. And like, yeah, at some point the floodgates gonna open here as well. It's, it's happening a little bit right now.
Corn trading into, into the, the prairies here. But I expect that's gonna get.
Those floodgates are gonna open up quite a bit more over the next couple months. So yeah, I think anyone growing feed barley needs to be taking a very, very close look at their marketing plan on that one. So. Yeah, yeah, I like, I want to try to find some bullishness in this, in the commodity market. And I know we have some geopolitical stuff. We've had some world conflicts, wars, you know, that stuff was trying to raise some of these commodity prices, some of the grains and oil seeds out there, production concerns maybe prairies a little drier. Right. And, but yeah, once you start to eliminate some of that or some of that gets quiet. Yeah, we're still, you know, trending lower on a lot of this stuff. So for this winter, but we'll see.
[00:49:05] Speaker B: Commodities are like, if you look at the, the ratio of commodities to stocks or commodities to other investment assets, I mean commodities are trading dirt cheap from a century level lows. You know, like we're trading at, at the lows in terms of that ratio as we were at the beginning of the 70s. So there's lots of room for commodity prices to, to rally. I mean, if you want to get bullish, get young people thinking about it, at some point that's going to reverse. All this, the hype on technology and AI and all this stuff that, that's driving the stock market to these crazy levels. At some point that's going to reverse and people are going to have to start investing in real things when they realize it takes energy to run AI and we're not producing enough food to feed the planet and our materials are well down because we've been beating them up with environmental regulations. At some point that worm is going to turn where we're going to need to invest in commodities. And that makes me really bullish about being in agriculture.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: You know, I, I don't disagree with what you said.
It just doesn't seem to be there for 20, 25 and we'll see when, when it does turn. But yeah, yeah, we got to work through this period of low, period of low margins, negative margins, you know, chatting with some grain farmers here the last couple weeks and reviewing some of the numbers from last year and you know, to go out there and, and put a, an average of a 50 to $70 an acre loss from last year, like that's a pretty standard conversation right now for a grain farmer. And hey, hopefully, hopefully growers were able to take advantage of some of this Canola rally and some of these little higher pricing, you know, compared to last year. But we got to weather the storm and look for some brighter days here.
[00:51:06] Speaker B: We'll get some of those farmers in your network to start growing some forages and things like that. We need some, we need more cattle grounds.
We're short of forages and we're short of grassland acres and things like that. So farmers can put some of that into rotations. It would sure help us grow the herd.
[00:51:23] Speaker A: All right, you guys heard it from Ryan. We, we'll see what we can do here. We'll get, let's get together this fall and make some plans for next Year and get some good margins for everybody lined up.
[00:51:35] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
[00:51:36] Speaker A: All right, Ryan, thanks again for, for coming on the show this week. Always appreciate your insights and of course, cattle not nearly my strength. So I appreciate your perspective and your, your wisdom.
How can farmers, ranchers, how can, can they get a hold of you here?
[00:51:53] Speaker B: Well, I, probably the best way to, to get a hold of me is through my website, cowsincontrol.com you can see my newsletter on there and contact information, but I can always be reached on, on my phone. 403-669-3451 if you want to talk further about the cattle business and always open to discussing those things.
[00:52:14] Speaker A: So awesome. All right, Ryan, appreciate you being on the show here and I'll yeah. Look forward to seeing you soon.
[00:52:22] Speaker B: Sounds good. Thank you.
[00:52:26] Speaker A: Well, always great to have Ryan join us on, on the show here and look forward to Ryan presenting at the Crop Marketing Made Cool conference as well in, in Musha. He is on the agenda. So if you're a rancher, you want to get in, go to Ryan Den, check out the conference details there. Over 50% sold already, which, which is kind of cool. Yeah. Countdown is on, I guess. Positive moment for this week. I know I've, I've rambled a lot this episode, so I'm just going to say that it's my excitement to see you guys in person at Egg in Motion. All right. I know that'll be my positive moment next week saying it was great to see everybody at Egg in Motion, but my energy is high. I've got an entire truckload of stuff just off camera on the right here and I'm just super pumped. Forecast looks decent and I'm just looking forward to getting out there and chatting with you guys. You, you throw all sorts of scenarios at me and I love talking about with you as well. So that's my positive moment. Eating your veggies for this week. I'm just gonna throw a commodity one out here right off the bat. If, like, if you're a big feed barley grower, I strongly encourage you to, to take a look at at some of the contracting options available. All right. It's. If you want to see something trading right now, it is us Corn into feedlot alley. And feed barley is a crop that I'm the most sold on for. New crop again, you got to make this your own. But I'm very comfortable being half sold on that one. There are values there that are still profitable. They, they were a pleasant surprise not long ago. You know, a Couple months ago where they were sitting, and I just, yeah, we grew less acres. Yeah, we don't have much leftover. It's a word of caution on that one. If I, if I want to throw red flags up there. To me, it's feed barley based on, on this US Corn crop, yellow peas, based off discussion discussing with Chuck, like India, we've talked about on the show a few times the last couple months, but India may not be, you know, coming to the table here for a while to buy our yellow peas. And China, we still have some tariff stuff going on there. So that those two crops are, are, are the ones that I'm maybe a bit more hyper focused on at this time. And I think with canola, you don't want to sleep on this. Canola and wheat, you really don't want to sleep on this right now. You just have to spend time figuring out your plan. My second one here for eating your veggies for this week, it's just to again, brush off that crop marketing plan, spend some time on it. Like you're, you're mid July now. You're, maybe you're going to the lake, maybe you're going fishing, maybe you're going golfing, maybe you're going to egg in motion.
You need that, you need to decompress. But also, don't just bury your head in the sand when it comes to crop marketing. You know, do a target review, do a cash flow review, look at your situation and your, your space. You know, take a look at the stuff around you.
And you may have to take additional action from that. You may have to look to execute. You may tweak your targets. But this is, this is a good check in. Like, I, there was the Farmer's Golf in Viking, Alberta the other day. That was an event for me. I only went to it twice, but that was an event for me. When I saw the pictures of that event, I was like, oh, yeah, we better take a hard look now at what we got coming. And the other thing to, like, what you got coming and what you're doing out there, like, if you're out there saying, hey, I'm not spraying fungicide, the sprayer's parked. You know, my summer vacations have started.
You know, crop insurance, you know, they're thinking about coming out. Like, that's, you know, that's not a fun space to be in. And you're definitely not thinking crop marketing at that time. But my favorite one is when I get a bunch of people telling me that, oh, yeah, this thing looks Looks good. And. And I'm out there, I'm going to spray a bunch of fungicide. I'm going to keep pouring the groceries to this crop, like, you know, get this potential.
And then I'm like, oh, yeah. Are you bearish or bullish cross? Like, oh, bullish, bullish price. Yeah, we got a whopper here, but we're. We're bullish.
I just.
Yeah. Sometimes those two things, you got to look in the mirror and say, oh, oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. If I'm going after it here, maybe. Maybe there's going to be a little more production than I thought. So it's just a good time to just review everything because you'll go decompress, then you'll be getting equipment ready, and you'll be in the field in very, very short order. All right, what else do I have for eating your veggies this week? Yeah, I would just say that you don't, you know, farms don't get a lot of time off during the growing season.
And so it is important for your mental health. It's important for you, for your family.
And so if it is a day at Egg in Motion, if it is cutting the grass, listening to tunes one afternoon, if it is, you know, having coffee with. With a neighbor or whatever it is for you, whatever that decompress is, make sure you take some time for yourself because you all know that harvest is right around the corner. Alrighty. I. When the Boonders were here this week, we met on Monday and chatting with Paisley and the family, and they were supposed to leave for. For B.C. on Tuesday. And I don't mean to pick on Colin. He's going to listen to this episode, but the plans changed and Colin's out spraying fungicide and putting in a big week here of farming. And so the vacation plans got. Got tweaked. Right. And I know they'll. They'll do something else at another time, but all I'm saying is you guys know how busy it is, so when you get a little break here.
Yeah. I'm just asking you to take it because it's good for you, good for your family, and good for everyone.
All right, folks, we. Well, we. We had an episode. We. Episode 84. Thank you for joining me. Go and hit the subscribe button on YouTube or wherever. Get your podcast. Your favorite spot to get your podcast. I appreciate it and I just, yeah. Encourage you to come say hello at Egg in Motion. We've got lots of swag for you. We got some gray hats. Looks like the weather's going to be phenomenal. You'll come hang out with me. Let's, let's learn about the latest John Deere in the tech tent. Let's go and take a picture in front of that beautiful tractor. They got a couple combines out there as well.
So come say hello.
Let's have some fun. Don't forget, Tuesdays, 1 o', clock, I do a live show. I'm going to see if I can pull that off. An egg in motion as well.
If you got any questions for the show, it's Ryan at what the Futures Podcast ca. I appreciate questions. It gives me an idea of what's on your mind. So if you want to talk fertilizer, fuel, if you want to go over a commodity, fire them in. Ryan at. With the Futures Podcast ca. That's my email.
All right, folks, that's it. Next time you see me, I will not be in the UPL studio. This next episode, 85 will be recorded somewhere in the middle of a field or, or the middle of the show.
And so, yeah, look forward to that.
For the what's the Futures Podcast, My name is Ryan and I'm out.
