Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right folks, welcome into episode 54 of the what the Futures podcast. The episode before the conference. There'll be no podcast next week, so if you want to get your marketing fix, you got to do it right now. We're taking a break during the week of the conference. I've got John and Tara with AGI3. We're going to talk about the latest in private crop insurance. I also have Megan with upl. We're going to talk about Rancona and of course we'll talk about the Trump tariffs. We'll talk about everything impacting crop market for this week and where we're going from here. So let's get into it. Episode 54 of the what the Futures podcast.
Hey folks, welcome to the what the Futures podcast where we break down complex market trends into simple actionable advice. It's your quick guide to better farming decisions.
All right folks, welcome into episode 54 of the what the Futures podcast. Of course, I'm your host, Ryan Denier. Spent my career working with farmers across the prairie provinces as a grain buyer, advisor and analyst, I guess at times.
All right folks, we what a week. What a week it's been here. We're recording a little bit early because of U.S. thanksgiving. So you're going to get this one a little bit early, but it's been a heck of a week. Obviously the Canola market getting tossed around, getting tossed around the last couple of weeks, but really getting hurt this week after Trump puts out some type of tweet, I guess just saying, hey, you know, when I take office here in January, January 20, I'm going to implement a 25% tariff on Canadian goods heading into the U.S. canola oil, one of those potentially.
The market sold off aggressively in the aftermath of that tweet. It was a rough day on Tuesday. It's been a rough couple of weeks.
The good news, we did find some support as of recording. Things could change by the time you hear this and listen to this. But hey, fingers crossed between recording and listening that we have a little bit of a bounce here.
I obviously the conference is coming up right around the corner here in a couple of days.
I've done my very best to stick handle the last minute requests. Okay.
We are at the capacity over the capacity that we expected.
All right. And if you want to try to grab a last minute ticket, you can email me ryannyfarming.com you can email me. See I'll try, I'll try, but just no promises. We are, we are at capacity. Alrighty. We, we are pretty good for the conference. So we had, we had a pre call, a pre conference zoom here earlier in the week on Monday.
And with the understanding that everyone's going to arrive in Drumheller with different levels of comfort or experience, I think is a good way to put it when it comes to crop marketing.
And I wanted to maybe get a base level down but also start to talk about the bigger picture and the bigger goals of a farm operation. Because when you get weeks like we just experienced or days like we just experienced, it's really hard. It can be hard to find that positivity. It's like your crop marketing plan has just gone down into the crapper here temporarily.
And at times decisions can be made, hasty decisions, upon reflection. Sometimes it's those decisions. I always say, geez, I wish I was thinking a little more clearly during that day or that week because that was not a great move. I've had those days, I've had those weeks. You know, I remember, I remember when, well it rained in early June and in a drought year and I thought, man, this market is made. The market started to pull back. This crop is made is what I meant to say. And I started selling aggressively and it was a drought year. It remained a drought year even after that rain. So in the, in the pre, the pre conference zoom call here, I talked about, and I'm not a vision and mission like expert by any means, but what we talked about was how to look further out the crop marketing plan for 2024 and 2025 and 2026, just a small part of the overall farm business and the farm business goal. So by creating a mission statement, by creating a vision statement and by marking and jotting down some long term goals, those can be anchor points for you and for your farm.
On weeks where it gets a little bit tough here, on days where it gets tough, when you're staring down, you know, a new canola low that you haven't seen in a little while or you're looking at the charts at this downtrend. You can can pull out some of these supportive documents, some of this long term goal stuff like hey, you know, maybe you got a transition in place, maybe you sit there and say, hey, you know, our 10 year goal here, our long term goal is to successfully transition this farm over from the one generation to the next.
Take a look at that and refresh yourself and maybe even spend some time focusing on that.
When markets get tough or when you're, you know, pull out your vision statement of your, of your farm business or your mission when the days get tough because I joked with the attendees that, you know, when you hear somebody say, and we've all heard this but you know, I'd rather dump my ex crop into the ditch or burn it or whatever before selling it for this price. Like we've all been there. It's emotional. It happens. You get angry. Having those anchor points on weeks like this one, you know, I think could be grounding. I think they can be remind you of the big picture. Okay, now from my perspective, I, you know, I've been leaning bearish. I'm the good and the bad thing about the podcast is I get to look like an idiot more often than I would care to acknowledge. But I also get to state the record, good or bad on what I've been doing. And a couple episodes ago everybody that listened knew I was heavily sold on the farm on, on Canola. I got a lot of, you know, wtfs on that one that came through, which I appreciate the feedback and I appreciate the questions coming in and the, the back and forth I should say is great.
But I've been sitting here and I still fumbled it, I still fumbled trying to capture a bit more upside in a market that shouldn't have been maybe playing in that type of position. But what I mean by that is the market trend overall is still quite negative and some of these geopolitical headlines and things that come out, there's not a lot of positivity around them or that wasn't anticipated that as they would come out statements and whatever that it would be positive. From my side, I guess I went down a bunny trail. But from my side, I'm playing this market. I still long term bear. Yes, okay. Still long term bear. Some of the stuff coming out geopolitically just not fun, not great at all. Still a bit more of a bear. That being said, I am in a position here where, you know, if someone's got put options running, if somebody's got, you know, has sold this market just I'm hyper aware that the Statscan Report is days away with the expectation that it's going to drop production. The Statscan report will drop production. Not saying they're going to agree to the number in the 17s that my analyst friends have jotted down here Prairie wide, some in the high 16s as well. But the 17s, they may not. It may be an 18 in there. It may be a 17 something though. And so not to say that that's going to kick off this massive rally for you, but with production lowered again this is, It's a number that can be supportive when you start looking at ending stocks. And I'm just myself preparing, positioning myself for a report that's going to lower production, whatever that may be for you and your farm.
There's not a lot. There shouldn't be a lot of panic yet. I know that we've had a lot of panic from many, many people over the last month or so. And, you know, it's. There's still times where you're going to have opportunity to sell. Markets go up and down. That's what they do and do. I think this is the low of the market right now. No, I don't. I think it's going to go lower yet. But in between there, in between those, well, you have a chance to do some selling. Hey, obviously the rally we saw here post harvest was tremendous. And now we have geopolitical events. We have things beyond our control that are going to impact, influence the direction of our Canola market.
And, yeah, we'll see where this goes. Now, one thing that came across my desk this week was in my area of Alberta, Cargill had not. So they have their specialty program. They buy so many bushels and then if you yield above that, they used to call it Flex Tons. I don't know what it's called. Someone from Cargill can respond and let me know. But it's extra that they may or may not take. And I don't know if the history of the program, how many times they have not accepted Flex Tons. But this will go down is what I'm hearing is one year where they are not accepting flex tons. And so that had me thinking here just a little bit that, hey, maybe, maybe that's got something to do with Trump's tweet and something to do with demand here for that product moving into the U.S. i don't know. I don't know the ins and outs. Maybe someone from Cargill could oblige me and join the show one of these days and we could talk it over. Okay, what else do I have from a crop marketing standpoint here today we've got wheat markets basis levels continuing to improve across the prairies. I had a few farmers asking, if the US Dollar rallies and US Exports don't look as attractive, would that be positive towards the price of wheat in Canada? And, you know, I believe there's charts out there that can represent this for you. I don't have them in front of me today, but I did see some in the past from some of your line companies out there. But yeah, I think there's a small benefit, a small gain if the Canadian dollar is lower against that US Dollar. But I don't think it's going to be a game changer by any means with meaningful gains. I'd much rather see futures get on their horse and rally for some significant reason that would pay bigger dividends for your farm operation. But hey, basis continues to get better. $8 wheat targets heading across central Saskatchewan here once again and giving you some opportunities to move some wheat, generate some cash during a tough time with the canola market being down.
All right, folks, I've got John and Tara joining me from a guy three in episode 54.
John, how's your day going, buddy?
[00:12:40] Speaker B: Good. It's. Well, I didn't look at the markets later today, but it was a little bit of a rough morning, so hopefully it's improved. But yeah, no, things are good, good, good.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: We can blame Trump's Twitter account for today's action. Tara. And how are you doing?
[00:12:58] Speaker C: I'm doing fantastic, Ryan. Thank you.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: Awesome. Great stuff. So a guy 3 has been on the show before, but it's been a while. You guys are going to be at the conference here in just a couple of days. I really appreciate you guys supporting the Crop Marketing Made Cool conference. You have that keynote spot on Thursday morning and I'm looking forward to that presentation. But before we get into there, John, why don't you just do a little intro for us, Tell us a little bit about yourself and I think it's your first time on the show, isn't it?
[00:13:29] Speaker B: No, I've been on once before. My apologies, but no, it's, it's good. Like I got three. We've been around since 2021 and we're. Yeah, we're done our second commercial year here and we're just getting wrapped up. So basically the season is pretty much on a calendar year basis for right now. We're wrapping up 2024 and we're starting our plans for 2025. So, yeah, AG3, it's basically, we're a risk management and crop insurance company. We're focused not just on crop insurance. Ag Insurance is our focus. We're leaning into technology. We basically looking at how can we do things a little bit different in the insurance space. And yeah, we have a pretty awesome platform that we use for delivery into the market. We work for network of both brokers as well as internal sales staff and partners in terms of, you know, getting in front of growers. So it's. Yeah, it's pretty Exciting. We're pretty, pretty young but we have a good backer with dfinity and yeah, exciting.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: Awesome. All right. And you know, when you, when you talk about the technology side, is there anything that kind of stands out? Like one thing on the tech side that has you really excited right now.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: So I would say the adoption of new technology, like right now we're doing a lot with AI and how can that help our business on a day to day basis both from like internal communication to, you know, what's the latest information on whatever we're looking at. So on a day to day basis we're finding tools that incorporate AI to be very useful. The other thing that's pretty interesting in what we're doing is everything is geo referenced and geo based. So our whole platform, it's every legal land description is obviously Joe reference and then we can layer in different layers of information to get kind of unique risk profiles from that. So it's okay. Unique way to, you know, manage the business and you know, we're having a lot of success right now doing it. So.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: Awesome. All right, Tara, I'm going to turn it over to you for a second. Where are you based out of? Are you Southern Alberta?
[00:15:42] Speaker C: Yeah, so I kind of manage a swath through south west Saskatchewan and then southern Alberta. So mainly around the leader sask areas where I'd be situated.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: Okay, cool. And I want to ask you in regards to, in regards to AGI 3, you know, why should or why would farmers be reaching out to Agai3 at this time?
[00:16:12] Speaker C: Well, so right now, like some of, I would say the reasons why a farm would want to reach out are risks have been increasing, cost of production that has increased substantially. Machinery costs, land costs, the hot topic on, you know, carbon taxes and things like that. So there's definitely more complex discussions that are needing to be had.
Now insurance in itself like that is a discussion that should be happening every single year. Transferring risk off of the farm, knowing the worst case scenario, you know, what's the most that a farm is able to or willing to lose. Right. So that they can continue farming from year to year. Now every farm is unique. Every farm will look different from the next and have their own, you know, unique strategies and needs that need to be met. But all in all, like crop and like farm production insurance, like that's a really niche space. I would say our team at AI3, like we have a lot of years of combined experience and expertise on the team and we're able to bring some planning tools to the table to really help our farmers make the. Make those choices and decisions. Like I said, with it being a niche space, like there are different options available out there.
What are some different scenarios and situations because everybody's going to be unique to the next. And how can we fit and mold some of those options together and come up with a unique plan for our farmers?
[00:17:53] Speaker A: And Tara, is there any reason to hold this off until March and April and follow some of the other deadlines out there, or is this something farmers could get into sooner than later?
[00:18:05] Speaker C: Yeah, the sooner the later just to get that planning process going. So right now, sooner the better. Yeah, yeah, We've been pretty busy in the background right now with loading farms and getting everybody set up and ready for discussions after. In the new year here.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: Okay. All right, cool. John, I'm going to turn it back to you for a second.
2024, a year of highs and lows from a production standpoint, you know, as a, you know, an individual and a company in this space. What'd you guys learn in 2024?
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Well, we should have stopped the year at the end of June, I guess. Right.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: So just freeze and harvest. Yep.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: Yeah. My goodness. So, yeah, things looked amazing. We're like, I don't think we'll have a claim this year. I mean, honestly, it was bumper crop in many areas and obviously the month of July, it, you know, the talk came off and in some areas we, you know, there was definitely, you know, crops that weren't so good. So, yes, we did have some claims this year, but everything is going really well. We've, you know, have experience signing guys up, different types of operations, different types of farms. We get, you know, from very small to very big and then dealing with these operations, you know, through the season and then through claims and stuff like that. So. So we had, you know, our cereal crops were not too. Not too much for claims really, but Canola did a bit more. So we had some, you know, some experience with that, but it was good. I mean, we learned some things going through that process and, you know, we feel that it went good. We hope our farmer customers, you know, like how it went, and we look forward to, you know, next year and, you know, what we have in the. In the table for 2025. So.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: So the farmers going through that experience, the process itself has been. The feedback has been.
It's not a fun process right, when you're in a claim, but the process itself has been positive for feedback.
[00:20:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I. So, yeah, like, the company were double the size what we were the year before. So, yeah, we're starting to deal with scale. Right. And you know, there's, how do we, how do we manage this at a scalable level is basically what we're going through. So we had some learnings in that, but we're refining our processes all the time. Like we're iterating and how do we, how do we make things better? And we got some learnings out of it. And, you know, I think I like where we're at right now, to be honest.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: Good. Well, let's keep going on that thread. You know, when we look at where you're at from a product standpoint, let's not go into super great details for today, but what are we talking about here? What's in the portfolio over at Agai3?
[00:20:50] Speaker B: Well, as you know, like, I'm based out of Manitoba, south of Winnipeg, and I've always been pretty big advocate that. Okay. You know, we got, you know, a lot of growers like what they're getting from mesc.
They do a lot of good things. I've always been looking for something a little bit more on the crop insurance side, so. So we've been looking at that avenue. So I like, I like what we got coming down the pipe here. Look forward to talking to growers, to what we have in Manitoba on that front. So, I mean, it's more of a black soul zone product, but it's something we're going to work with in Manitoba and then hopefully we can expand and beyond. But for this year, unique play in Manitoba and then we got something else in the pipeline for other areas. So I'm sure Tara will get into that in your. At the presentation there. Perfect with you guys. Yeah, we got, we, we got something for everybody. You know, we got the core product from this past year and we're just tweaking it, refining it where we need to and you know, we're looking forward to talking to growers about it, so.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: Okay, cool. And Tara, one more for you here. How can growers, you know, they're listening to the podcast here, maybe they can't make it to Drum Heller. How can they get a hold of you folks?
[00:22:02] Speaker C: Yeah, it's as simple as just heading on over to our website, AGI3AI. So, AGI3AI send us a quick note through the website and someone will reach out.
[00:22:18] Speaker A: Awesome. Sounds great. And so, Terry, you're going to join us in Drumheller.
[00:22:23] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:22:23] Speaker A: Been asking everybody, what is your walk up song when you need to get the crowd pumped up at 9.30am on Thursday morning? What am I playing blasting through the speakers?
[00:22:35] Speaker C: Well, to tell you the truth, Ryan, we're narrowing down between a couple songs right now, so I'm not going to. Yeah, I'm not gonna let any cats out of the bag right now, but we'll have something ready to go.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Perfect. I like that. I like the strategy. That's great. All right, John, Tara, thanks for joining me here in episode 54. Appreciate your time and Tara, look forward to seeing you in Drumheller.
[00:22:56] Speaker C: Thanks.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Thanks very much.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: All right, folks, shout out to show and conference sponsor John Deere. If you think about it, you've got a lot of connections. Connections to family, the community, your land. Well, here's a connection you may not think about. How's the connection to your machines? You know, your tractor, your sprayer, your combine. With a JD Link modem, you can easily connect them to John Deere Operations center. There you gain valuable insights into your machines, know where they are and what they're doing at any time, monitor speed and fuel levels, even compare machine performance. If you're not already, get connected by heading over to John Deere. Ca. Thanks, John Deere, for sponsoring the conference next week. All right, so let's head over to Positive moments here for the week.
Obviously, the conference right around the corner is a huge positive moment. Not that we were waiting long. This idea came together very last minute here in early September, but my presentations are ready to rumble. I've got. I'm going to go through them one more time over the weekend here, but I'm ready to rock and roll. I've been driving all over town, picking up stuff, gear, ordering stuff. We had great calls on Monday and Tuesday with the attendees and the speakers. You know, it's. Here it is, here it is happening. And I'm super pumped to get together with all of you in Drumheller. Huge puzzle moment. The second one, we got our Christmas tree. We get a real tree every year, and only the one. The one year we got our tree, a real one, and the needles all fell off the tree during the whole month. It was brutal. But we love getting that real tree, that smell. I've had a real tree my entire life. Even when it was illegal for me to have a real tree in my apartment, I still had a real tree. I would smuggle it in and out of the apartment building. So we got our tree up. It's feeling a little more Christmassy. Even though the kids have been in the Christmas spirit now for multiple weeks, I'm starting to catch up now with the tree up in the living room. And then my last one, my little guy, Finley, he's turning two right away.
But both kids have had great leaps here, development leaps over the last number of weeks, vocabulary through the roof for both of them. And you can just see, you know, when you have little kids and they're, they, you know, as they are growing up, it's really cool to see these leaps happen and acknowledge them. But Finn, it's the best now. So he's really into farming stuff. He's combining every day. He's, he's got his tractors. We have a wonderful equipment lineup for him. And so when he goes to bed at night and when he goes down for his nap as well, he's got, he's got a favorite tractor, a loader tractor. And he's got right now is a manure spreader is the other part. And this little guy's going down for your sleep, and he's just clutching both of these like, like his life depends on it. He's clutching these items. He is not going to sleep with them put anywhere else. I've tried, tried to get him to park them in the shed so they can sleep. No, he's got to hold them and then we, he drops them eventually and we pull them out of there. But yeah, it's really, really fun to see this, this next phase. So those are my positive moments for the week. When you get a chance, folks, head over to wherever you listen to your podcast, give us some ratings there, subscribe to the show, head over to our YouTube channel, hit that subscribe button as well. And yeah, wherever you get your content, go. And like the show, hit the subscribe button and stay in the loop on each and every episode.
All right, folks, I've got Megan Reed with UPL joining me this week on the what the Futures podcast. Megan, how's your day going?
[00:27:04] Speaker D: Pretty good. We got a ton of snow in Saskatoon over the weekend, so, yeah, it was a little bit of a deep freeze battle this morning getting the truck out, but, yeah, everybody's kind of buried under the snow and the city's a little bit shut down, so. But otherwise I'm doing really, really good.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: Good. I, I think we got off lucky. Like, I live just outside Edmonton. I don't know, we got about 6 inches of snow, but it looks like Saskatchewan got more than what we got.
[00:27:30] Speaker D: We got close to a foot.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:31] Speaker D: So we got 25 centimeters or so.
[00:27:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Nice. Yeah, nice. Well, I, I, my son's 22 months old and he loves a tractor, so we were out Plowing snow. And he was having so much fun. We went and did our, our senior neighbor and did her yard as well. Then after I was like, hey, dude, we've been only for a couple hours. Like, let's go in. He still wanted to keep going, but I had to convince him he was frozen. We got to warm you up. All right, Megan, so what's, what's your role at upl? What do you focus on every week?
[00:28:02] Speaker D: Oh, it changes every week, but my role is a technical service specialist for Saskatchewan. So my job is kind of at the intersection of market development, research and sales. And so I'm a support for our sales team. The front runners there are TSM's or Territory Sales managers. I provide the technical and agronomic support on our product line and practices for them. I work closely with the marketing and communications department, so developing any of the marketing materials to support the sales in Canada and then as well.
Honestly, one of the biggest parts of my job is research and development. So as a tech service specialist, I do some small plot research and field scale research trials throughout the summer and then travel around the province actually supporting the reps as well and doing, you know, grower calls and that kind of thing.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:28:56] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: So sounds like you got a lot on your plate. Lots going on, lots of exciting things. And I know this week your schedule was bonkers, so I appreciate that. Appreciate you having time for us. So it's November. It's end of November.
[00:29:09] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: I'm assuming not a lot going on and you're part of the world right now. Is quiet, snow covered. What would maybe the farmer side, you know, what are they reaching out to UPL in regards to at this, at these times?
[00:29:24] Speaker D: Yeah. So ironically, you would think it is quiet. Actually, in reality, things are just ramping up again. So November kind of is the start of the selling season throughout the winter for our sales team. And what that means for me on our side is that growers, retails, agronomists, they're sitting down and starting to make decisions for the 2025 planting season. So next spring we're starting to make decisions, settling into some, doing some crop planning. And along with that comes the very first decision that you're going to make. What goes in the ground. So lots of those seeds. Yep, seeds. Seed and fertilizer. So a lot of those decisions are being made right now.
[00:30:04] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:05] Speaker D: And from the UPL camp, that means seed treatments.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: Right. And what does UPL have in the roster for seed treatments?
[00:30:14] Speaker D: Yeah, so our name stay product would be Rancona Trio. And so it's an all in one formulation registered for both cereals and pulses, which is really unique. There's no other products on the market in western Canada that has that broad of a crops registration on the label. So we have one product for every acre on the farm, essentially. And yeah, so it's a fantastic product. Three different actives, easy to use formulation, highest active ingredient load in the market. So it's the best bang for your buck. And it's actually when you add in additional Belmont on our label, which is our proprietary brand as well, we're getting increased efficacy of Aphanomyces root rotation, our peas and lentils, which is a unique, unique selling feature for our product line.
[00:31:02] Speaker A: Well, and for 2025, I don't know what the crop mix looks like out there, but I know there's a lot of discussion about pulses and trying to look at what's coming back with a positive margin for 2025. So I can't say all those big words, but I know that was a big one on a lot of farms minds the last number of years. Okay. So, you know, if I'm looking at Rancona Trio, like, what is the big thing that I'm trying to protect? Like, what's kind of the one big one that I'm trying to protect myself against?
[00:31:36] Speaker D: It depends on the crop first and foremost. So it depends on the crop. In your cereals, you're looking at a range of different pathogens, but usually the big driver is Fusarium species. So crown and root rotation. And then in your pulses, the biggest ones would be the root rot complex, which that the leader of the root rot apocalypse, as we like to say, is the phenomyces. But in the root rot complex, in your peas and lentils and your pulses comes along Fusarium is pithium. And so you also get those pathogens in your cereals as well. So looking at a whole range of hosts of, sorry, diseases, Ancona Trio has activity on all of them and some of the best, if not the best, activity on specific pathogens in the market.
[00:32:25] Speaker A: Okay, all right, well, I don't like Fusarium because I know that it really impacted our farm's bottom line. For every second year for a number of years there, it was brutal. Okay, cool. All right, so farmers right now, they're sitting down, they're doing crop planning. They can reach out to their retail, reach out to your team. That all works right now. That's what you guys are focused on?
[00:32:48] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. So when we talk about putting the crop on the ground, like you said, seed goes in first nutrient package. And when it comes to making chemical decisions, seed treatment is the first thing that we start to make decisions on, and that's this time of year. So when you're looking at, as a grower, putting my grower head on, when I'm looking at what seed treatment I want to use, there's a few other things besides disease control that come into it. Is it easy to use? Is it easy to handle? Can I put it on at 0 degrees at the end of April when it's cold and humid? Is it going to stick? Also, the number of diseases that it's got control of. I'm looking actually right now at our cereals comparison chart. Although the leading products in the marketplace compared to and looking at the diseases that we control compared to our competitors, we have the most diseases on label for control compared to any other product in the marketplace with the least, the least number of suppression, active or suppression diseases on label. So for the amount of active ingredient that we have, it's. I know our next closest competitor would have half of the amount of active ingredient per bushel.
[00:33:56] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:33:56] Speaker D: And we're getting, we're seeing that because we have the widest range of control across the disease spectrum in our cereals and similarly in our, in our pulses as well. So it's a really, really great product.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: And you know, from an economic standpoint or from a like a price standpoint, my understanding is this is a very competitive product out there from a price standpoint. Anything to add to that?
[00:34:23] Speaker D: I'm going to stick my heels in on this one because I'm a tech service specialist, not a sales rep. I actually couldn't give you the pricing on it, so I'm not going to go there. But as far as our value proposition, we are very competitive. I have seen the programming. We are very competitive, if not the most well positioned value proposition in the market for control grams of active versus price point as well. Logistically, having one product to go on every acre, there's two different rates, one for cereal, one for pulses. But you're not juggling multiple SKUs, multiple different products. It's one product.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: Oh, it makes sense to me. Perfect.
All right, folks. Well, UPL is coming down. They're going to spend some time with us here sponsoring the Wednesday dinner at the Crop Marketing Made Cool conference in Drumheller. That's days away now, next week. So, Megan, UPL appreciate you sponsoring the conference. And we are doing a UPL prime rib dinner that I'm sure Everyone's going to enjoy. So, Megan, thanks for coming on the show this week. Stay safe out there. Get that truck dug out. And safe travels. I know you, you're putting some miles on this week. So have fun.
[00:35:37] Speaker D: Yeah, thanks so much, Ryan. Thank you for having me. And leave your listeners with this thought. If they have any questions or anything about Rancona or interested in it, reach out to their local retail or their technical sales manager and they'll be able to help you out with Rancona Trio.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: Fantastic. Thanks, Megan.
All right, so I'm going to, for eating your veggies, I'm going to cheat a little bit this week. I'm going to rob from some of the conference stuff because it's been a heavy week of conference prep and all that good stuff.
So first of all, let's throw a crop marketing thing in here. So we saw in central Saskatchewan this week, even though wheat futures are doing diddly squat, we saw basis improve. Now, I call it 50 cents over the last two weeks. Now, that may not be on a website or that may not be, you know, apparent out there, but it, it is there. When you look at targets hitting the basis improvement is drastic. Futures have done nothing. So as a farm, I, I like being a little bit of a wheat seller. I know some are pounding the drum, the, the wheat rally drum that it's going to be bullish and all that good stuff. But I see us winter wheat rank ratings go from like second worst in a decade to second best in a decade.
I think that's going to be a bit of a deterrent against a rally. I just look at the time of year when I look at stories that are going to help rally this market. They're a little far and few in between, in my opinion. I think exports are still a good thing. But hey, our farm gets offered $8 weed in central Saskatchewan, take 25 cents off there to south southeast Saskatchewan, add 50 cents in Alberta.
I don't know. It's a heavy cash flow time right now.
I think moving a bit more wheat makes sense. Okay.
The second thing again just comes back to cash flow.
You know, when I talk to farms, the stress increases dramatically in January, February, March.
That's when I get or used to get the phone calls about, hey, I need to generate 250k, half a million dollars, whatever it is, I got to pay this input loan. I got to, you know, revolve my line of credit, whatever it is. It's that heavy time. You need to sit down if you haven't done so already talked about cash flow before review your cash flow needs, you know, review your cash flow needs. Now when canola goes from $14 to 12.
Maybe not quite that drastic. No, yeah, that drastic. Actually, a bit worse than that. It's, you know, make sure you have that reviewed because now again, you're looking for a canola rally when, if, how you might have to sell out of the crops, you might have to figure out strategies to take some canola money but stay in the market, whatever it is, but get your cash flow figured out because the stress level unfortunately just gets cranked up just a little bit here for many over the next couple months already.
And my last one, this is where I'm stealing from some of the work this week. Honestly, you know, it's, it's just a podcast. You don't have to. Maybe this is entertainment for you, maybe this is more or not, I don't know. But seriously, when it comes to creating that anchor for your crop marketing plan, writing down your long term goals, maybe vision and missions a little bit mushy for you, you don't. It doesn't get you too excited. But I strongly encourage you to have some thoughts around it. And even if just for yourself, you think about it and write it down somewhere that you can review.
But you need an anchor at times because the crop marketing that you do each and every day, it's a small part of the overall plan and the overall goal. All right, so where are we going? Where are you headed? Why are you doing this? Create that vision and mission statement. I think that's a really healthy exercise for your farm business. All right folks, that's what we'll have for eating your veggies for this week. All right folks, if you found this episode useful or you enjoyed the content, please share it with a friend, neighbor, farm neighbor, colleague in your local community and spread the word of the what the Futures podcast. You can also head over to Ryandini Ca. You can sign up for the emails and the some of the blasts that we put out there. And again, prices can change. This is recorded usually on a Wednesday a little bit earlier this week for a later Friday send off. So have a good weekend. See you in Drumheller. Folks. I'm out.
