Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, folks, I called in a mulligan for this week's episode because you just never know when the EPA is going to throw some biofuel announcement out there and some updates. So I reached out to Susan Stroud from Noble Lake and said, susan, you're the expert. Come help me figure out how this EPA announcement, how this big, beautiful bill are going to impact canola prices for prairie farmers. I need the latest. So here we go. Episode 81 of the what the Futures podcast with Susan Stroud from no Bull Egg.
Hey, folks, welcome to the what the Futures podcast, your quick guide to better farming decisions.
All right, folks, welcome into episode 81 of the what the Futures podcast, Of course, recorded each and every week in the UPL studio. And I want to remind you guys, you've been out there applying the UPL products that might have been better batalium, it might have been wave aikido, just to name a few. Don't forget about the grower Rewards program. Reach out to your retail. If you want to even go and reach out to upl, head to the website with thefuturespodcast ca and you can find them. You can find your territory rep with UPL on my website, of all things. All right, I'm excited. We did some trials here this week. We applied some wave on the farm.
And the important thing here, folks, is that we had a rain event and it felt. It felt okay to be out on the sprayer. It felt good to be out there doing some stuff because it's been. It's been. You guys know this. It's been challenging. It's been tough. So it's good to get a rain and good to get out there and do some spraying. I'll keep you guys in the loop on. On that. Okay, this episode, it's all about Susan at no Bull. I am not the smartest man when it comes to biofuel policy. Bring in. Right. Bring in the smart person to do it. So Susan Boyle, with no bull egg, going to join me, of course. She has a fantastic conference coming up in July. I have my name on a ticket. I actually have my name on a couple tickets. And I'm just working through some logistics here, making sure that I can go and attend. You never know. Might be asking a couple of you to join me down in St. Louis, Missouri, here in July. Stay tuned. All right. Stay tuned. Okay, now, we've been doing the live shows Tuesday, 1 o' clock mountain in the afternoon. I understand 1 o' clock might be, you know, it might be a bit of a challenging time. You're just finishing your nap after lunch and getting on with your day.
But give us, give us a, give me some feedback on that. Let me know what you think of that 15 minute live segment. Let me know how you'd like to receive that if you want it in a podcast later on or if you think like, hey Ryan, why don't you do this at 7am every single day instead? Just let me know what your feedback is and we'll see what we can come up with. So this week I talked about, on the live show, I talked about, well, you know, everyone's asking me do I buy diesel? And unfortunately by the time you listen to this, you know, the diesel price has gone up. I think they were saying 8 cents. So I apologize that you missed it. But Lunchbox crew, we had a very active discussion about diesel prices and about how to do a purchase here.
And the highest price we got was a buck 19 and the lowest price we got was 78 cents. Now again, different areas and stuff, there's some freight and some logistics involved, but even neighboring, I don't know, what do you call an hour? Maybe not neighboring, but an hour, okay, let's say an hour of freight. And that spread right there was 25 cents a liter. Right. So we did a little price discovery on diesel and we spent a lot of time talking about diesel, A lot of time talking about urea, Summerfield prices.
700, 705, 715, 725. Like everyone's asking, do I buy this stuff?
I know history, history tells us you buy summer fill urea, you know, with 90 some percent, it's going to be the lowest price of the year. Man, is it hard to commit to $700 urea right now, you know? You know what I mean? Growing conditions.
Yeah, I don't know. Could be better for many. Yeah. Commodity prices climbing. Yeah, basically I don't mind that. I don't mind that. Nav 26 canola is at 7:30 while I'm recording and urea's in that same like that kind of adds up. So we talked a lot about that and of course we're talking canola here. As I record canola facing a little tiny setback, down $3 a ton and what do we do? Right again. Puts are just so safe right now to buy a put. But we still got decent momentum. Three bucks down is not a chart violation in my opinion by any means.
Trend is your friend. But hey, you know when your buyer calls you up and says, I've got some $16 canola. You stare at that crop and say, that's a nice looking crop. You look at your profitability on your farm and you say, that's a nice number two. Then, hey, you know what? That, that's all, it's all good. It's all good to make some sales there. We also had some exciting wheat on the live show. I was like, oh, man, I can't find anything on wheat.
I'm sorry. Hopefully I'll come up with something on the podcast.
And here we go. Boom. Too much rain in the US Winter wheat belt quality concerns. Large area in Russia declares drought, you know, emergency action or whatever they call it over there. And so wheat up 20 some cents, 25 cents. Minneapolis wheat up about 16. Hey, I'll take it because you look at that spring wheat chart and of course I'm recording this on Wednesday. So by the time you hear it, fingers crossed.
But we entered the old cell zone here. We entered my first sell zone. And I'm not saying that I pulled the trigger at this time, but I'm just looking and saying, hey, hello, hello, three month high, hello, six month high in our reach.
I just kind of entered the part of the marketing year where my brain clicked and was like, oh, yeah, you have not sold enough wheat, sir. You need to consider it here. Hey, like one year $7 futures or 6787 bucks. Let's, let's figure this out. Let's go. I'm here for the ride. Trent Clarenback said he turned bullish wheat earlier today. So let's, let's rock and roll. I've got Susan this episode.
What else do we have here? I've got a little bit of my John Deere egg emotion stuff on here as well. I got lots of great episodes coming up later this.
Well throughout the summer here. Lots of really fun stuff that we're going to try to pull off. Of course, you know, the hockey stuff's behind me now. You know, I' still grieving. I'm still in shock. But when you can, I have pictures now two father's days in a row wearing my Oilers jersey. Like when you could do playoff hockey in your shorts, go to a game, go experience the game itself. The, the energy that I got to do that, right? Like, that's unbelievable. I went camping and had the game on while I was camping like that. I don't take that for granted because we didn't get that for a long time. And a lot of you, a lot of the, your teams out there haven't experienced that in a long time and it's so cool. So, yeah, definitely, we lose. Sure.
Was it a lot of fun and did I appreciate it? 100% as a fan? I appreciate it. And hey, I don't think our window's closed quite yet. So I still think we have some fun hockey coming up here. All right, folks, so let's get to Susan. Got a couple other things later on this episode, of course, positive moments, eating your veggies.
And let's rock and roll. Let's bring in Susan Stroud with no bullet.
All right, Susan, well, you know, welcome back to the show here as well. And last time you were on, you were heading to Brazil, like moments after that. So how was Brazil? How was your trip in South America?
[00:07:41] Speaker B: It was good. Brazil was really good.
I was able to see the actually after I dealt with some delays because I feel like domestic US flights are on the struggle bus lately. But once I arrived, I was able to visit the port of Paranagua.
[00:07:57] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And then. Which is an interesting setup. It's definitely a little, a little different than probably what we're used to here in the US as you have exporters that are sharing, sharing spaces, export terminals. So they're sharing like dock space which. Okay, very different than how we operate here. I would call it organized chaos at best.
Incredible. They're able to do though.
I spent some time in Curitiba at a conference event and then I did a lot, kind of a long weekend at Iguazu Falls. That's in the very southern part of Brazil where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay come together and Parana State. And it was, it was really nice, cool place to visit. Highly recommend.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: Cool. Awesome.
The conference there, did you have a big takeaway oil seed type conference or biofuel conference? What was it about?
[00:09:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it was for Agrule. It was their just annual customer event. But it was definitely, it was, it was interesting to see, to kind of gain a different perspective. First conference I've attended that was in all Portuguese.
So I spent during my presentation, I was talking about kind of the evolution of the US soy demand and the way that we've seen biofuel policies really affect overall export demand and then domestic demand, that kind of thing.
And of course the questions mainly centered around how does the US farmer feel about President Trump, so on and so forth. And so that led to some interesting conversations. Of course, the Brazilian producer is completely fine with President Trump being in what at that point seemed like an all out trade war with China again because of course that kind of bolsters their opportunity for increased market share.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: And that's changed since you've been there, right? No longer as much of a trade war between the US and China. Right. There's some type of deal.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: It depends how you, how do you define trade war and how do you define deal?
So that was.
Yeah, I, I don't know. The thing that we saw was that it feels like an attorney ago, but the beginning of last week it was the official, or was it the week before the official deal that was struck while the US and China, they met in London and had these productive talks. But it seemed like for the most part ags were left out of the conversation. It was more focus on the rare earths and then also semiconductors and things of that nature.
So that largely, I guess that was the beginning of last week because then that largely that definitely took the backseat to, to all things biofuels. As we headed into Thursday of last week with a lot of rumors about the supposed RVO that the EPA would be releasing.
And then we did see that on Friday and it came out substantially higher than most people had estimated.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: Yeah, quite drastically.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: Like it's one, two punch. So in a good way.
So it's one, it's a substantially larger RVO saying that, okay, U.S. petroleum fuel producer suppliers, you have to blend a substantially larger amount of biomass based diesels into petroleum supplies in 2026 and 2027.
Now the kicker is, and I would call it the icing on the cake, I think a lot of people are looking at this and saying, wait a second here, this is a negative. But. No, no, no, this is like a huge positive in the grand scheme. If you were looking at this from a soybean oil or let's say a canola oil perspective.
So the EPA said that we're going to take whatever the RIN value is for, for this gallon of biomass based diesel that you're producing and we're going to cut it in half if you're producing the fuel, if it's either an imported fuel or which normally would qualify for a rin, or if it is a domestically produced fuel, but it's produced from an imported feedstock.
So that really changes the game because it means that we have a much larger percentage of fuel production in the US that's only going to be generating half of the RIN value that it would have previously.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: And so rin, like what, what's the, like what does RIN like, what does that mean? What's a, what's a rin? Let's Do a quick little. There's a quick little definition.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: Deep. So a RIN is what is generated when you produce a 1 gallon of ethanol biofuel equivalent here in the US and so this is the way that the EPA is able to regulate and track compliance with the renewable fuel standard.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: Okay, and these are traded, right? Like this is a market that is traded.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: They're also traded. And so I kind of refer to a RIN as the cost of compliance.
And so the higher the RIN value is, the more that it costs to comply. So, so when you are a petroleum company here in the US you have two options when it comes to the renewable fuel standard. So either you can blend X amount of biofuels into the petroleum fuel supply each year as mandated by EPA per the renewable fuel standard, or you can purchase rens to offset.
You know, you could purchase rins in the same amount that you would have had to blend physical gallons. So you can either pay to play or you can actually blend, actually do it.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: What have RIN values done since this announcement?
[00:14:34] Speaker B: Huge, huge rally. So we saw ruin values up substantially Friday and then into Monday because of this. And it's also a lot of it too. I think at this point is kind of uncertainty because it's the unknown of exactly, exactly how does this all play out? The biggest issue with biofuels in general and anything that's kind of related to the renewable fuel standard, it's that you have, I would say 90% of the population doesn't have like a very firm grasp on exactly what these things mean because they're inherently complicated.
And so you have a very emotional market. You have waves of buying and selling that are either based on a headline, like a rumor or something like, okay, well, they released the rvo. And then I started to see messages later on in the afternoon where people were saying, wait a second, if they are reducing the rins for this, then it means that domestic will do this. And, oh, it's just, it's a net negative.
And that's not the case at all. But when you have a few of the big brokers that are kind of echoing that same sentiment or they have the same hot take, that's maybe not necessarily right.
It. It creates these waves of confusion.
And ultimately this is why we see these really big sweet swings up and down in soybean oil.
It's also that soybean oil is the most impacted just because due to the nested nature of WRENS and the renewable fuel standard.
And that just means that Soybean oil and D4 biomass based diesel rins are kind of most susceptible to these swings or changes as far as regulation goes.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: So this, this report that came out on Friday, like this, this thing apparently is like 100 pages or, or longer. Right. This is a whopper of a report, I think.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: Oh, I think it's more like 300.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: Okay. There's a few, there's a few pages to skim through.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: I'm getting that confused with the Senate, the, the House and the Senate. Big beautiful budget reconciliation bill.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: Big beautiful bill. It's in my notes here as well to ask you about after. So. Yep.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: I don't know that it's beautiful, but it's big.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: So, you know, we're. So I was looking at some of the kind of the numbers that were pulled out and so I was looking at like canola oil.
I think it said maybe canola oil import or something like that. And there was some increases in those numbers for the next couple of years. But you know, your opinion, your account, like is it a game changer for a canola, you know, farmer in western Canada? I don't know how you'd want to answer that, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's. I, I'm not certain that I have the best answer for you. So for one thing, I think that it means we will begin taking much more US Soybean oil and allocating it to biofuel use and then that's going to leave a gaping hole in food demand. And I think that that's something that will likely be filled with canola oil.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, I read like food and industrial and I don't know how big industrial is, but I think food would be the big one there.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that that's somewhat of a flatline thing. I mean, it's more, I think that it boils down to the kind of interchangeability and price relationships between soy oil, canola and then also palm. You know, we, we import a decent amount of palm in the US for food applications.
But when we look at the bigger picture as far as an imported, an imported feedstock like canola oil, where we're using a lot of it to produce biofuels now or in the past few years. We have, it's definitely, it's a game changer when you look at it from a wren perspective. So just taking for instance, Wren's going home on Friday.
I think we were in that one.
I think I wrote 130 or something per gallon range. So if you're making renewable diesel out of for instance, like a domestic, some sort of domestic oil, you're going to be getting $2.20 or something per gallon as the value of that wren or per physical gallon. But if you're making it out of any sort of imported feedstock, which would include canola oil, you're only getting half of that. So you're looking at like a $10 a gallon. So that makes a huge difference.
The other piece of that is right now as we're looking at these changes or these proposed changes to 45Z and right now they're sitting in the Senate. And so we received notification late yesterday that there were some pretty substantial changes to those credits as well.
So to kind of back up, we had, we had a major change first of the year. So in the US we went from a $1 blending tax credit for biomass based diesel. So it didn't matter what the fuel was produced from. As long as you were blending a biodiesel or renewable diesel into petroleum supplies, you would receive $1 bridge per gallon. Okay across the board, no matter the feedstock.
So January 1 came around and 45Z went into effect. So for one, it's a production credit, so it's not blending. So it's a matter of who is producing the fuel. Two, it excludes imported fuels entirely, which for the US that cuts out 16 or 17% of our annual biomass based diesel supplies were generally imported. So so no more credit for them.
The other big challenge is that it went to a sliding scale based on carbon intensity. And this is where Canadian canola producers really took a kick in the shorts. And that's because it's based on carbon intensity. You have to have a carbon intensity that is below 50. I can't remember the exact units.
Canola is barely above that threshold. So canola oil was not receiving any 45Z credit whatsoever.
Soybean oil receiving like one third of the credit that it had previously received under the blender's tax credit of a dollar.
Major, just big issues there.
Definitely it gives preference to waste feedstocks. So like use cooking oil or tallow.
So the kicker was 45Z. One thing they did that was a good thing for us. And even you know, like canola is a feedstock is the US said we can't verify if used cooking oil coming into our country is actually used.
So we're not going to give any credit at all. So they decided no credits for Yuko.
So back in mid May. So it's been righted a month ago The House version of the big beautiful bill, which includes amendments to 45Z came out. So there were three big things that were changes there. So one it said we're removing the ILOC penalty, which is indirect land use change.
So that is a penalty that essentially dings any crop based feedstock for any deforestation that would happen worldwide. So for instance, what's happening in Brazil gets the rest of us take the fall for it as well. So that was really one of the big things that hurts canola the most. It also hurts soybean oil. So removal of that added about 20 cents of premium to the credit. And so that puts, that puts canola back on the map. The other big thing with the House version was that they restricted it to North American only feedstocks. So that also puts canola oil back in the game in a big way. It's also a huge boost for soybean oil.
So what it did was it was able to take canola oil to a point where it's actually receiving a credit. And then on soybean oil it gets it much closer to the credit that would be received from for domestic use cooking oil or any tallow either domestic or imported.
Now here comes the fun part. This is what came out late yesterday. So now that bill is in the Senate and the Senate has done its first kind of look through and proposal now that it will be voting on. And in that bill we had a few different changes.
So the biggest thing is that it said, oh okay, you know what we will take, we're not going to restrict it just to North American only feedstocks. We're going to remove that barrier. But instead we're going to say any feedstock that is imported only gets 80% of the available credit.
So it doesn't matter if it's canola oil coming from Canada or tallow coming from Brazil, it's allowed in the program, but you're only receiving 80% of the available credit. So kind of to give you an example here, under the House version, canola oil coming from Canada would have been 22 cents or something.
And now since under the Senate's proposed version it would only be 18 cents. Okay, for kind of reference, US soybean oil going into biodiesel or renewable diesel is going to be in the low 50s is what it's qualifying for per gallon in this production tax credit.
Distillers corn oil, it receives the highest credit. It's in that nearly 80 cent area.
And then when you look at us tallow or use cooking oil, it's closer to 70 cents. The big thing here is that now with the way that this is worded, it opens up the doors for used cooking oil imports again, but that those also, they'll only qualify for 80% used oil and imported tallow.
They're going to be somewhere that are in the, I would call it mid-50s. So again, let's, we're comparing this to soybean oil that's kind of in the low 50 cents per per gallon. So it's so messy and it's so complicated. And the fact that we had both of these things within a matter of days of each other is just, that's probably why I feel like I can't put a sentence together that makes any sense.
[00:26:10] Speaker A: Yeah, or you put something out on social or in your reporting and it changes not long after.
[00:26:16] Speaker B: So, yeah, I swear I feel like here lately I have this, I have this incredible knack. Like it clicks send and then automatically it's like, oh, okay, that's outdated. That was wrong.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: So, like it's important, I think for the listeners to just separate the two out. Like these are two different events going on.
Both have major implications.
But I've seen like messaging around and correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't know if it's the big beautiful bill that's a huge positive game changer for, for U.S. farmers. Like, like a big, I don't know, like a lot of positive messaging around. You know, this is what we were looking for. Maybe it's the EPA side that's, maybe I'm getting that wrong. But like that this is kind of the next, you know, from a financial frontier. Like, this is so positive for moving forward. Like, what am I, I reading that right or where am I off on that one?
[00:27:21] Speaker B: I wouldn't say that you're off.
I think that one thing that's important to note is that the EPA mentioned farmers seven times. And it's, we'll call it hundreds of pages of, you know, this, this particular RMS proposal or this RBO proposal for 2026 and 27American energy independence is also mentioned. But the big thing in the EPA RFS proposal is they specifically mentioned, like US Farmer incomes and supporting rural America.
So I think that that's really important because it's, instead of, okay, we have this aid reserve for this trade war or, you know, whatever it may be, we know that USDA had this huge set aside potentially for farmers in 2025.
And I feel like this is maybe this is their way of saying we are Going to support the American farmer, we're going to support it with domestic demand.
And that's exactly what they did. Because it's not only we re that we got this massive rvo, but it's that they, they made a very strong stance or stand against imported fuels and fuels that are derived from imported feedstocks. So but we're talking about two completely separate issues here. So you have rfs, that's this long standing mandate where every, you know, every year, two years we receive this update that's saying we're going to, we're inching up these, whatever the required volume is for blending biofuels into petroleum supplies. And then on the other side of it you have this tax legislation that's completely separate 45z that's really changing the way that we are producing biofuels here in the US and another thing that was a big piece of these proposed changes in 45Z legislation is that they kind of said, you know what sustainable aviation fuel, I don't know that we care so much value. It looks like they're proposing to change the credit structure there.
So there's not quite as much incentive to do sustainable aviation fuel versus renewable diesel.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: And that was a big one. Right? That was kind of the ticket to really getting this demand going.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I had a conference that was all, I mean last year's theme was called Wheels Up Taking agriculture to new heights. Which I mean it is, it's the thing when you look globally we have, we have increasing mandates that you know, in the US we had a goal, we didn't have an official mandate but you have a lot of places where you have a mandate or you have very substantial goals. Of course the EU is kind of the one leading the charge, but that's the next thing. I mean we've been working on trying to make transportation fuels cleaner. Road transportation feels cleaner for a long time.
Aviation's obviously the next step.
I mean the, the kicker is, is that it takes an incredible amount of energy to power a jet. And so when you're looking from the, you know, it's not nearly as efficient as an easy as going from petroleum road transportation fuel to something that's more bio based or electric. It's not that, you know, you're not playing the same game there. So yeah, it's really challenging.
I don't know. Here in the US we've had a substantial, substantial challenges and seeing sustainable aviation fuel production actually take off, no pun intended.
And I don't know, I think that we're and you have to kind of go back to the rfs too. We're talking about road, transportation, fuels. There's nothing that's actually mandated as far as aviation goes at this point.
[00:31:48] Speaker A: So I want to just get clarity on this point here as well. Like none of this, nothing's set in stone yet. Right. This is all still either being voted on or tweaked.
The bill itself or the announcement from the epa.
There's a bunch of positives out of here, but this isn't like you can't write this in stone yet.
[00:32:13] Speaker B: Correct? Yeah. So this is a proposal. Well, so on the rfs, the RVO side of things, it's a proposal. I believe it's July 8th is there's a hearing or, you know, opportunity for the public to voice its concerns. But we will, we generally see, we'll see, see a final rule that's published several months ahead of now. So.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: All righty. So go ahead.
[00:32:45] Speaker B: And as far as the Senate piece goes, yes, it still has to be voted on, potentially changed. Voted on. So we have, we have a few months before we actually learn something. That's, that's for sure for the next few years anyway.
As far as 45Z goes.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: All right, so bean oil has ripped higher.
Right. It had limit up and then limit up the next on the next trade. Right.
[00:33:20] Speaker B: Biggest two day gain in history apparently.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Canola loving it along for the ride. Not to the same gains but like we like this thing, this Canola market was down in the in. We dug a big hole and it was, we rallied 160 bucks a ton here since March. Like these are substantial gains.
[00:33:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:44] Speaker A: Corn and beans though like corn's obviously not doing much growing conditions are improving. It sounds like beans also on, on their own, some gains there, but not nothing near bean oil.
What do you, what do you take on that? Is it just the unknowns? Is it other factors like you know.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: It'S very difficult to, to rally any market when you have an abundance of precipitation. So outside of 2019 for the US it's just you. It's an uphill battle. So the market use it as benign conditions.
I understand that we will see, you know, some parts of the US into the hundred degree area or something like that next week.
But at the end of the day the market is not going to be terribly worried about it as long as it's, it's not, it's not like we're going to see temperatures, high temperatures like that sustain for a long period of time.
And it's also, it's accompanied with excess moisture. Now, we all know that too much rain can be a bad thing.
It's horrible to get the, to get the crop going.
It's horrible once you get to the point where there's some heat stress because you've never forced the plant's roots to actually dig down deep where they need to be. And so it presents some challenges. But all in all, the market does not. Doesn't look at that. As long as there are above average chances for precipitation, it's the path of least resistance is lower. So I think that that will continue to be a wet blanket on top of the market.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: Fair enough.
I had a farmer late last week. Maybe it's over the weekend. That said, Ryan, what does this look like for Canola with this announcement from the epa? How would you look at this? Is this the big game changer for us? Are we going to see this market rip higher? 800 plus a ton. And I said, I don't understand it all. I said, but the way that I kind of think about it is that if you have your cupcake, you got your cupcake and you got maybe a little bit of frosting on there, but we definitely didn't get any sprinkles and no cherry on top. Like it's, you know, I try to keep things pretty simple. And is that at all close to relating that to the EPA or am I out to lunch?
[00:36:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that the most important thing is to realize that this is policy.
So the government giveth, the government taketh and maybe the government giveth back.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: That should be on your conference T shirts, I think. I think that'd be a great conference T shirt for you.
[00:36:41] Speaker B: I didn't. Well, actually I'm wearing last year's now, but I didn't, I didn't make one for this year.
I need, maybe I need like bumper stickers or something, but I feel like that's what, that's what people tend to forget. And I am not one that loves demand. That's kind of, I don't want to say created, but I'm going to say for the sake of this conversation created by the government, you know, because the government is like were mandating this and ultimately, I mean the, the battle that we saw with a lot of the soy associations here in the US that were really going to fight for a larger rvo.
It's all because of what California did with the low carbon fuel standard. They are the ones Arnold Schwarzenegger is to blame for this way back. I don't know, 15 more than 15 years ago, 20 years ago. So.
But I think it's difficult because we, when you have demand that's created as a result of policy, or when policy is the catalyst, then you back yourself into a corner and then what do you do? The US has been dethroned. I mean, we were dethroned well over a decade ago by Brazil as the largest soybean exporter in the world.
And thankfully we, you know, we've seen this like regular government support via the blender's tax credit and now hopefully like a larger rvo.
But, you know, we're, we've been limping along. We're not the low cost producer in the world anymore and we've, we've turned into a secondary supplier, unfortunately.
And the more that we see biofuel policy progress, the more that we see mandates and things increase that help make sure that we're supporting this increased crushing capacity that we have in the U.S.
i mean, it's just a, it's like the snowball effect.
So we're in too deep and we can't back out now.
[00:38:52] Speaker A: All right, all right.
I appreciate it, Susan.
Lots of good stuff there. Lots of stuff to chew on and to digest. So appreciate that.
You've got an exciting summer ahead.
Agranext, that is the name of the conference here that you have in July. And I was going to ask you who you're looking forward to hearing from the most out of your panel, out of your roster of speakers. But does anything over the last couple of days kind of highlight a certain presentation there now?
[00:39:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I've been really excited because I'm partnering with Cargill this year and we're hosting a producer and merchandiser panel from South America.
So we'll have merchandisers and a couple of producers on hand.
So I think that will be really insightful. But obviously biofuels have kind of taken front and center again just in the past few days. I think the biofuels panel will be really insightful, a combination of. I have Scott from American Soybean Association, Devin Mogler, that's the president and CEO of NOPA National Oil Seed Processors here in the US he'll be joining as well. He's originally joining for the Make America Healthy Again panel, but I'm going to drag him into biofuels to too, because he's right in the middle of this mess.
So we also have someone from Chevron, their renewable energies group, which is boots on the ground. They have biodiesel plants, actually, a few of which have been closed the past few years. And it's due to this, like, margins getting really tight and policy uncertainty.
So Billy Burns, who is a senior VP of Fats, Oils and Greases. I mean, that's a heck of a title.
So his, his day to day is trading these products that are going into making renewable fuels. So I think that it will be a really important panel. And then of course, we have Chris from Coppa Canadian Oilseed Processor.
[00:41:12] Speaker A: Little Canadian flavor there. Yep.
[00:41:14] Speaker B: Yeah, we're going to. I, I will be doing a one on one with him just because there's so many.
It's been such a roller coaster ride for Canada. I think it's really important that we have kind of, kind of have him in his own little session. So, yep, it's going to be a really good event. I'm excited. And you know, as much as I hate the ups and downs of biofuels, at least, at least the conference falls at a good time. And I feel like anyone that's attending will be able to walk away with a much better grasp on the reality of the situation and kind of what it means for ag, not only here, US domestically, but for Canada and other countries as we move forward.
[00:41:54] Speaker A: Great lineup there and lots of expertise and a lot of great people in the room. So cool. And people can register on the website, nobleag.com, i believe.
[00:42:08] Speaker B: Yeah, that's correct.
[00:42:09] Speaker A: Perfect. And those dates, July 23rd and 24th in St. Louis, Missouri.
Yes, perfect. Well, thanks again for coming on the show, Susan. Really appreciate your insight and creating some clarity for some Canadian canola farmers here.
I know what I want to do at this rally. I want to protect these prices, so we'll see where this goes. Our growing season's getting a little better. We got some rains now, so it's.
We're not quite comfortable yet, but we're getting closer now, so it's good.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: Well, I feel like good sales are never made when you're comfortable.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: When you're making some of these sales, some of the best ones, so. You bet. All right, Susan, thanks again. I kept you long. Appreciate your time as always.
[00:43:01] Speaker B: All good, thank you.
[00:43:06] Speaker A: All right, folks, positive moment of the week for, for me. I want to give out a. I want to give a shout out to my friends in this one. My, my close group of. Of of friends that. The friends that when, pardon my French here, but, you know, shit hits the fan. Maybe you have a, a tough day, maybe you have a tough experience or, you know, maybe you get some bad news or something like that group of friends that's there to you Know, hear you out, light you venture, come up with solutions and also the group of friends that just let you know that whatever you're going through, they got your back and they're there anytime. And so that's for this week, my positive moment.
And I hope for everyone that you have that in your life as well and that you can call upon those people when, when you have a tough, tough day, tough moment, tough week, whatever it is. So shout out to my friends helping me through this week. I, I really do appreciate it.
Well, hot off the press here, I just got a media alert from the fine folks over at John Deere in regards to egg and motion, of course gonna be running July 15th, 16th and 17th. I'm gonna be hanging out at the John Deere booth all day, all Tuesday afternoon I should say after, I think I said around 2:30. We kind of kick it off there. Now here's the thing. You're going to see air seeders, you're going to see the John Deere sprayer. They're going to talk about see and spray technology, the combines, the 2026 combines are going to talk about the Updates coming for 2026. The tractors, the 9 RX710 is going to be there and I'm going to be hanging out in the Precision upgrades and Precision Ag Technology tent, hanging out with the experts from John Deere. And we're going to talk about things like the G5 advanced software, how that works, connecting machines with and the John Deere operations center, helping farmers be more efficient, productive and profitable. You guys know I like profitability. And then of course JD Link Boost now available in Canada. So we're gonna be hanging out all Tuesday afternoon. That's July 15th at the John Deere booth. You gotta come and say hi. We're gonna have some fun activations here that we'll share closer to the date.
Well folks, lots of, lots of stuff this week. Lots of fun actually I'm wearing, put a poll out on which hat I should wear because we got the new what the futures hats this week and I don't know if you can see this on the YouTube, but anyways. Actually did I. No, I didn't pull it. It's, it's, it's pretty cool. We got some cool hats here from our, our supplier. Here's a couple fun ones, right? Like this very 80s 90s vibe. I thought that was cool.
We got this guy as well that you're going to stand out in the crowd on that one. My hunting buddies. You're going to Appreciate this bright orange.
Going to make sure my brother gets one of these as well. World famous trucker hat. I have two. I got also this one. Bright orange as well, but a little camo. A little subtle. Now I know you're saying Ryan, these hats are wild but don't worry, I got some boring ones for you as well. Don't worry, I got lots of boring ones. This one I thought last one eating your veggies hat is what I kind of thought. But then I see there's an egg. There's an egg. There's eggs on here. So eating your veggies and also a bit of protein.
Anyways, I thought that was pretty cool. Definitely be rocking that one too.
So lots of fun this week. We wrapped up our hockey pools.
I want to give a shout out start with the what the futures pool. And we've got our winner here. I better re better give this a little refresh.
Looks like it's missing last night's game or pardon me, this week's game.
But our winner we've got Airwick Freshmatic. Eric is our winner of this year's hockey pool. 442 and three quarter points.
He was. I had a cody by exactly 10 points here it they both those guys kind of ran away with it at the end in that final round.
But I do have to give one more like ribbon causeway. I'm positive he was last when we did this last year and he came in third place. So big improvement by causeway as well. So congratulations Eric. You're going to get yourself two tickets to an NHL game in any city. Doesn't matter if you're a Panthers fan. God forbid you can go to Florida. If you will get you those tickets, Vegas, Vancouver, Montreal, whatever it is, we'll get you a couple tickets to a game here in the next regular season. Also, it was a barn burner in the lunchbox crew. We had a playoff bracket and the winner by one point, Justin Kelly is our winner.
He, him, his farm, nine guests plus me. We got a Montana's cookhouse VIP dinner experience. So congratulations Justin. He beat Corey by one point to wrap it up. Oh, and you're wondering where I ended, right? Yeah. 17th place out of 27 in that one. And the other one I was in 50 some place. I bottomed early guys and I had momentum from there. All right. Crop marketing made cool conference.
Like I said in our social media posts, when the playoffs are over, the discount is done. That $97, it's over. My playoff buzz is behind me now and it's back to reality here as an Oilers fan hopeful for next season. All right, so we got that finished off here. Crop marketing made cool conference, you can still register and all that good stuff. Just that discount has disappeared. So there we go. All right, what else do we have for housekeeping this week? That's it. We'll leave it at that. All right, so I don't know if I'm allowed to do this or not, but I'm looking for a mailbag sponsor. Again. I get questions come in. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but if you're interested in sponsoring the mailbag each and every week on the with the Futures podcast, send me a note, send me a message. Go to the website Ryandi ca. Click on podcast. You'll find it, find the forms there. But I got a great question this week and I'm just, I'm putting it out there. I don't have the answer, but I'm going to put it out there and then I'm going to come back to you in a couple of weeks with the answer. All right. But it was phenomenal question.
So selfishly, I'd like a sponsor for this segment, but I guess I could say sponsored by the Brian Denis CA website. But the question comes or talks about hedging urea. Vern. Fantastic question, Vern. Thank you for listening to the podcast. I started following your podcast thanks to my friend Barry. So thanks Barry as well for doing the great work of spreading the word of the what the Futures podcast. Urea is listed on the CME but never seems to trade. Is there anywhere we can trade fertilizer futures? I would like to protect our farm without taking physical fertilizer, especially 11 months ahead of the next planting season. Thanks, Vern. Well, Vern, I am going to go and dig under some rocks here and see what I can find. We have a thinly traded urea market. I want to see if we can find anything a bit more user friendly, tangible, something that makes a little bit more sense for a prairie farmer. So you got the, the gears are kind of grinding here and I'm going to come back to you. I'm on vacation next week, so you guys get a vacation episode. It's a great episode, but it's, it's pre recorded a little earlier than normal. So I'll be back at you like first week of July with an answer. All right, Vern, I won't forget. I found the email. I even put a little star beside it. Just make sure I actually put a Star beside it. There we go. Yep, start it. We'll get an answer for you. And if you have the answer, if you want to talk it out, email me ryanfutures podcast ca. Give me your answer to that or ask me any question, and I will bring in the experts. All right, let's leave it at that for this week's mailbag.
All right, folks, I.
I want to say here for.
For eating your veggies that the.
Susan said a great thing. I don't think we actually caught it in the episode, but she talked about sitting at the edge of your. If. If you're not. If you're trying to hit. I don't want to say the high of the market. That's not what she said. But something about you have to be sitting at the edge end of your seat. I basically said, you know, we're uncertain about production and we're worried about heat and lack of rain and stuff. But she basically said, like, if you're not at the edge of your seat trying to figure this out at this moment, like, that's when the best decisions are made. Like, when you are at the edge of your seat and you are trying to figure this out often when you're nervous about production, like, those are the highs of the year. And I'm not saying we're there yet, but she's not wrong. I know, like, in my mind, my. My go to, like, a area of wanting to sell, and. And I know when the farm is. Is really resisting and stressed about the conversation and tents and not even that, but just, like, crossing your arms, right when we're having the conversation, like, defensive position, defensive posture. I know, I know I'm probably on the right. The right track, but what I'll say for eating your veggies for number one is that there's some unknowns in front of us here from a production standpoint, but crop marketing is getting fun with canola. And what I mean by that is this is the great opportunity. Imagine by the time you listen to this, imagine it goes up to 800 bucks on the November. Imagine to phone up your buyer, your broker, your strategy people, and say, all right, this is at a level here where if I get a decent crop, like, this is going to right a lot of wrongs from last year. I need to lock this in. I need to secure this.
How can I do this and feel good about it? Because, like, I remember the days when I would phone up a farm and be like, hey, I want to talk to you about securing or protecting your canola. Price.
And when we did all the math and the puts and the strategy and all that, and we looked at it and said, your floor is going to be 960 a bushel.
And we were like, okay, good, good, good, good. Yep. You know, like, oh, doesn't that sound gross? Doesn't that sound terrible? But when you can have that conversation today and you're doing all your fancy strategy and your math, and then you're like, they say, oh, hey, you could protect 1550 a bushel. Worst case scenario, that's it. 1550 a bushel. Even if the market goes to 12 bucks, you're getting 1550. That's not bad. That's fun, right? Isn't that fun? Isn't it? Getting there?
So take number one. Take your time this week to get those strategies figured out. You're not there on wheat yet. It's not gonna work out the same. But on canola, you're getting to the point where you can lock in profitability.
Grow all the bushels, Your head will hit the pillow. You'll sleep like a baby knowing that you're completely protected. All right, that's number one strategy. Canola strategy. Figure it out for yourself. Oh, man, I was banging on the desk there. You see that? A lot of passion coming through. A lot of. Is that. I don't know, not anger. That's not anger. That's like, go get them attitude.
All right, number two for eating your veggies. I'm gonna. I said it before a couple weeks ago. I'm gonna say it again.
Wheat targets. You know, wheat targets. Now the market's waking up a little bit here. Last year felt like it gave us one chance.
This year we will see again. It's a little nerve wracking out there. You're all undersold. You're all undersold on wheat. Get those targets out. Doesn't have to be a million bushels. Couple loads here and there. Just get those out. Start building up. That average.
On our farm last year, it just paid huge dividends. We just scaled in. Sell, sell, sell, sell, sell.
We did find the peak in there, too. Just luck of the draw. Found the peak. Had a lot of wheat sold. A really nice average built before it all fell apart. I fell apart in what, June last year? Yeah, early June. Started falling apart. This year's a little bit different. All right, number three for eating your veggies. Yeah. I would just say from a.
From a yield perspective, again, reviewing, taking the time to give yourself that plus, minus. How is my crop progressing? Can I Put a plus to my budgeted yield or a minus. And man, that should be, you know, maybe it's the first thing you should do because it impacts the rest. But just taking stock on where you sit, just an, I know you're not going to predict your yield, but just an honest feeling about what you think, what that plus looks like, what that negative looks like. You know, we've been feeling negative on yield here. We still do.
We're definitely not back to budget even though we did get a rain. We need more rain and we need to see that crop make a move too. Right. But just give yourself that plus or negative because imagine you put a couple negatives in there, let's say on a crop you put in some negatives and you sit there at the end of June and say, you know what, I'm still thinking, this is my number, I'm down X percent on, on yield.
Well, if you go and review how that changes your break even and what that does, and all of a sudden you might sit here and say, oh man, like I need 15 canola to break even. And then you can sit here and say, oh well, I can actually secure that level, secure all my profitability even with a slower yield. Boom. That's a, that's a no brainer. So do a little bit of that for me this week as well. Some plus minus on your yield. All right, that's it for eating your veggies for this week. All right, folks, thanks for joining me here. Once again, episode 81, not gonna lie. Took it took a bit to get in front of the microphone and the camera this week. It's, it was a trying week and honestly it just took. It took a bit more to get on here. So appreciate you hanging out with me. Appreciate you tuning in each and every week. Go hit that subscribe button on YouTube. I'd appreciate it.
You can definitely see all my very crazy hats that I'll be wearing all summer long here.
Lots of exciting things coming up and as always, appreciate your time, your listens. I know that there's lots of other stuff you could check out.
Be listening to you out there. So I do appreciate you joining me once again this week. All right, take care. I'm going to take some time off and I'll be back. Well, you'll still hear from me next week, but fresh episode. I'll be coming at you in early July. Take care. I'm out.
