Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, folks, in this episode of what the Futures, I've got Anthony Staczynski with John Deere. We're going to talk air carts. We're also going to talk about crop marketing stuff. As per usual, we always talk a little crop marketing. We'll reference 2014 and what happened that year. We'll talk about seasonals, and we'll try to tie all that in together for our crop marketing plan as we enter those dog, not the dog days of summer, but those summer summer months, right? There's a lot to talk about from a crop marketing perspective. How do you sell after this? After this drop? How do you sell in this market? So stay tuned. Episode 32 coming at you next.
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.
Hey folks, welcome to episode 32 of the what the Futures podcast. I hope you're having a great day. As per usual, each and every episode recorded in the UPL studio and on the screen behind me is actually stamp seeds down in southern Alberta. Enchant, I believe, is the area they're from. I wanted to head over to this crop tour the other day. I think it was on maybe Friday, June 14, if I remember correctly. I wanted to make the drive. It's about a five hour drive from the podcast studio. Couldn't make it. So anyways, I was watching the hybrid rye demo on YouTube here, and good on Greg and his team for actually getting that on YouTube as well and letting us participate even though we weren't there. All right, of course. My name is Ryan Denis. I am your host of the podcast. I've spent my career working in grain marketing, working with farmers across the prairie provinces, and I've worked my career to help farmers make better crop marketing decisions. Decided to take the show on the road here with the what the Futures podcast. Thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoy the work that we're putting together.
This week's episode is a little bit different than the past number of weeks. You might not even really notice it, but we have an in depth conversation with Anthony Staczynski from John Deere. He is the air card expert. So we have a big discussion with him today. And we do cover crop marketing to some degree. We do talk about, you know, what to do from a crop marketing perspective here after this big sell off. And I don't want to say that it's time to pause from a crop marketing perspective, because it's not time to pause, but some of us are pausing or figuring out new strategies or looking to execute the next part of our strategies as well. So we'll talk a little bit of crowd marketing, but we got most of the episode dedicated here for a great discussion about John Deere air carts. We're going to do the same type of format for a couple of weeks, and then I'm doing a little bit of not a re, it's not a reboot at all. It's honestly, it's just a shuffling of the the podcast agenda or the script. You know, the things I want to talk about each week. I had a great discussion with Yvonne, who helps me with all the marketing things from Ryandini, CA to the lunchbox crew to the podcast. And I just, I feel like the podcast has all these little bunny trails going everywhere, and I just want to bring it back to the main path of what the goal of the podcast was, which was to talk about crop marketing specifically for farmers in western Canada. And we do that each and every week. But I just want to make a slight tweak. Stay tuned for that in early July. Also have a little bit of time off. So yeah, you're going to get an episode here the next couple weeks, but I'm also fitting in a couple days off to do some camping and and have some family time. Of course, everything's wrapping up here with kids activities and preschool and all that stuff. So we have a chance to get away. So a couple of tweaks here for the next few weeks, and then we'll see if you notice them here in early July heading into egg in motion, which I'm so pumped about. All right, so let's pause for a second. Each episode of the what the Futures podcast is brought to you by John Deere. John Deere has been a great financial partner of ours here, helping keep the lights on and helping with all the fancy editing we get done and all that good stuff. So thank you, John Deere, for your support. You know, connections matter. Connections to family, connections to the community, and of course, the land. Well, here's a connection you may not have thought of. How's the connection to your machines, you know, your tractor, your sprayer, your combine? What I'm talking about is John Deere Operations center. It's an online farm management platform where you can connect your equipment, your fields, and your operators. It's a single place to stream all your data. A place where you can monitor equipment, track work in the field, even analyze your results. Check it out at John Deere, CA, and we talk about this with Anthony a little bit later on this episode. All right, folks, let's, let's do housekeeping. Let's do positive moments, hot topic of the week. And then let's get to that John Deere air cart discussion. Housekeeping. Going to keep it short and sweet for this week. It took until the end of game three in the Stanley cup final, but we have a new leader in the what the Futures podcast hockey pool, Willingdon Wildcats Greg, who I'm sure is tuning in this week. He has taken over the leaderboard as expected.
I thought he'd do a little bit sooner, but he's there now. No one's taken away from him. Of course, my earlier is hanging in for your dear life. And who knows, by the time you listen to this, the playoffs may be over. So I'm not going to talk about it much more than that. So we have that second thing, a carryover from last week. Again, local community events. We're looking to sponsor some stuff this summer. If you've got a project going on, let us know. We we want to raise some funds, help you support this project. Email me Ryan at what the Futurespodcast CA I need the details. I want to support something local, grassroots, help seniors, kids, people in the community, whatever it is. If there's something that stands out, let me know and let's see if we can partner up and help support that. And lastly, I'm still looking for farm volunteers. I got a couple already, but farmer volunteers. If you want to sweep out the shop floor one night this summer, I will bring the keg. I will bring the food. We're looking to do a hillbilly crop tour. And if you're interested in hosting the what the Futures podcast, let me know. And again, we're just looking to hang out, talk some farming, maybe look at a few crops. And you don't have to be the crop lead. We'll find those people in your area to help us lead the, you know, looking at the crops. I'm just looking for someone to host in the shop. If you sweep the floor, honestly, you don't even have to sweep the floor. I'll show up early and sweep the floor. But if you want to host or interested in hosting, just email me again, looking for someone to partner with here for sometime in later July. Okay.
All right. Positive moments of the week. I'm just going to keep it down, keep it to one. And again, I always go back to the kids. But wrapping up the first year of preschool, Willa wrapped up preschool and to see a three year old. She wasn't even three when she started. Just. She was turning three, yeah, at end of September. But to see the progression, and I'm sure your parents out there are just gonna listen to this and say, ryan, just wait. You know, just wait year after year. But, you know, we get the notebook that she started with, that she drew in every cup every week or wrote in or whatever you call it, you know, we got that. We got. We're getting all the work back from the year, and you just get to see your child where they start and what they progress or where they progress to. And it is, honestly, it's just so cool for me. I'm so. I get so excited when we get stuff back from preschool because I know it's going in the memory box and I know we're gonna look at it in 1020 years and laugh and think about these memories, but we wrapped up preschool and the stuff coming back is incredible. And just to see where she started for writing her name, you know, in October to where she ended the year writing her name, she can write it on her own now. It's just awesome to see. And then all the drawings. I'm. I'm a big topic in the notebook. I make it in there quite a bit. And, you know, what I was in in the fall compared to how I look now in the notebook is pretty cool. So it's been great. It's been great to wrap it up. And now we got a bunch of campy and fun stuff planned here for the summer. So I'm sure all you folks, you got graduates out there, you know, graduating grade twelve, you got kids graduating from junior high to high school. You've got kindergarten grads. It's all so fun this time of year. All right, now my hot topic of the week is we'll do hot topic, then we'll jump over to Anthony here. But hot topic of the week, I know that we could talk about, you know, we could talk about the latest news here all the time. But honestly, when, when I think about what markets are doing right now, and I try to put myself in your shoes, and we actually got a great question about this here later on. But it's what do you do now? What do you do now?
And so my hot topic of the week, I want to pull up the 2014 charts just a little bit here in the seasonals because I think if you've listened to the podcast for the last number of months, there's a few themes that have come out. And number one was seasonals we talked about that early, where you tend to get a spring rally and some of your highest prices in the year are in May, June and July. And time will tell here. But it looks like we saw something like that in late May and early June here. We've talked about being how to sell, how to aggressively sell, how to learn new contracts and new ideas.
I referenced Cargill, Vitera many times. We talked about different strategies to implement.
And I know it's not easy to do something new.
It takes courage. It takes effort. You have to step outside your comfort zone, step outside of the level of. I've done this a certain way for many years, and now we're trying to change that. And I know that's a little bit uncomfortable, and I know it takes hard work.
And some of you are, you're reaping those rewards. Now, if you did get uncomfortable and you learned a new strategy over the last couple months, you're, you've implemented that. You're, you're reaping those rewards now because the market has fallen. You know, as of recording here, it's down like another wheat's down like another $0.20. Right. It's just not, not fun. Not fun. We've lost over a dollar now in our wheat markets. In fact, I texted my brother this morning. I said I missed nine dollar wheat. You know, our last sale came in at, I think it was about 925.
And the quote we got at that same elevator this morning was 766.
Like, that's over a buck, right? It's gonna be $2 by the time you listen to this recording as Aberdeen, Saskatchewan, P and H, if you're looking for a reference point to see if I'm right by the time you listen to this. But, you know, it's. Anyways, you're reaping those rewards. You got uncomfortable and you're reaping those rewards.
And it's important because now, as we look forward and I talk to analysts, some of my good friends are analysts. I have their own companies that give advice to farmers, and some of them are still very bullish. And I don't have a crystal ball. I. They don't have a crystal ball. I don't have one either. But there's still a lot of folks that are really, really bullish out there. And, and, you know, if, I hope they're right, because I got a lot of crop left to sell, right. I didn't sell at all. I wish I would have right now, but I didn't sell at all. So hopefully they're right. But anyways, coming back here to 2014, and I'll see if my chart's still hanging around here. So we've referenced that, you know, 2020 and 2010 were similar in style or trend. Market Trend, 2011, 2021, 22, you know, 23 going back to twelve and 13, all very similar. And so we were looking at 2024 and looking at 2014, trying to see what similarities would exist there.
Now, every year is different. And even the wheat market in 2014, it tops out in early May, not late May or early June like this year, it tops out in early May.
But from there, the wheat market doesn't find stability.
It finds a little bit of stability twice. So June 2 to June 27, the market pops a little bit and kind of trends sideways. And then again from August 13 to September, long weekend back in 2014, it trends sideways there as well. You could actually back that up to maybe late July.
But from there, we've dropped the high in May of that year was just north of $8, 825 on the Minneapolis futures.
And you find stability in July. Well, that stability comes at 615. That's a $2 drop. Okay. And then it really doesn't find stability or a floor until harvest time in September, where it drops all the way to 530. Okay. Now, my buddy Bert with RBC wealth, he's with the Simpson Caputo group. He sent me the seasonals here back in February. I'm just going to see if I can pull them up real quick. But I was looking at the Minneapolis seasonals and spring wheat again in the month of June here. It really, it struggles, right? If you look at the five year, the 15 year, and the 30 year pattern, it struggles all the way into early July. And then you tend to get a seasonal bounce in July.
Now, you know, if we look back at 2014 again, we also got a little bit of a bounce here in July. Now, it wasn't that exciting of a bounce, actually. It happens more in June than July. July. We basically go from seven down to 620 in 2014. But we're looking now we're looking for the seasonal bounce, this storyline, what's going to come out here to help push this market higher so that we can sell into it. And it's obviously been a tough go here the last couple of weeks now. But I, I am certainly not surprised.
I marketed and suggested marketing based on this type of setup. And we look back at past years and trends and try to figure out how to use this to help us move forward. And it gets to be, it can be a little bit challenging. Right.
So I said earlier in the episode that we were pausing from a crop marketing perspective, that's not exactly true.
But we're pausing in the sense that we're not selling wheat and canola right now.
Generally speaking, old crops tied up, new crop. We're staying patient on because we have already done the hard work. We've been aggressive, might have puts on. We've already done it. So we now we're taking time to pause because these wheat markets, they're all looking for support and we're approaching some support lines right now.
We're approaching support lines that were established in late winter here. And we're going to see if we can hang in or if we're going to make some new lows. If we make new lows, those are going to be the lowest values. We'd have to go back to like 2020 to find those lower values again. Right. And I guess just to kind of wrap it up here for my hot topic is that we know that markets, they don't go down forever. Okay? They are going to rally 2014 again. Every year is different. But that reference here, the opportunities to price grain were in the summer, were short. And what I mean by that is wheat market bottoms out June 17 at 690 rallies up to 730.
That 730 that took three or four days to climb 30 or $0.40 in that year. In 2014, that sale at 730 was the highest sale the rest of the year, the rest of 2014. And I'd have to look at 2015 to see when we bounced above that.
So as we go into summer here, folks, the season will show us that we can rally the seasonal trend, show us there's a bounce. Let's. That can potentially happen. We know India importing wheat would be a bounce. We know Russia, Ukraine, increase in tension. There could be a bounce from that. We know Russia's numbers.
They've pulled them back for production. From a production perspective, we know that that could even be bullish as well. There's things out there that can be bullish.
A warm spell in the US in July for a week, the dome of doom, the heat dome comes in on the corn crop, corn rallies, wheat rallies with it. There's things that can happen, but you got to be ready. You got to be Johnny on the spot because there's no guarantee that you're going to have, what did we have for a rally here? How long did this rally happen? So this rally kicks off, call it April 22 ish, 23rd, and it takes all the way. Yeah. Five, six weeks. Five weeks of rally.
We may have five days right. So your, your marketing plan, now we're pausing, trying to figure out our next leg of our plan here.
And it'll come. It'll come. Markets will rally, but you have to be ready to go. You have to be ready to sell. And when you get that little opportunity in July, which I think you're going to get, when you get that opportunity, you got to be ready, ready to sell. And again, weather, markets are so tricky, so sensitive, hard to predict, hard to execute. It's a fun time of year. Wanted to talk about seasonals there. Wanted to reference 2014 a little bit. Want to emphasize, folks, that there's still lots of good marketing decisions to be made later this spring and into summer. And you have to prepare yourself. And so part of that was last week in eating your veggies, was just reviewing the work you've done. I think I did that two weeks in a row. Contracts, what do you have contracted? What's your yield expectation now? Has it gone up or down? What's that done to your breakevens? Has it moved it at all? And what percent sold? Are you against that? Okay, so that's, that's it for my hot topic, a bit of a rambling one for this week. I get it, folks. I get it.
But I feel like it's a time for pause right now on wheat and canola and getting ready for the next, the next play. And again, folks, like in 2014, it could be three days, three, four days. You're still going to make some great crop marketing decisions this year, though. This, pardon me, this summer, because there's things that will happen to rally this market. You'll use those things to make those sales. And later on this fall and winter, prices will be lower than where they're at. And it'll still feel really, really good when you make that sale.
Okay, you know what? Now let's go. I have a great conversation here with Anthony from John Deere. Let's turn it over to that and let's talk air carts.
All right, folks, welcome back to the what the Futures podcast, planting in western Canada. As of recording, it's early June. It's about 99% done. I know it's a little bit wet in a few areas, so there's a few acres that linger. But I'm seeing those wonderful pictures across social media. Farmers are talking about their plant stand. They're talking about their seeding jobs. A lot of pride out there right now across social media. And I also realize, though, that at this time of year, you may be looking to make some changes or at least talk to folks that are experts in seating equipment, air carts, all that good stuff. I know it's on your mind, so I want to bring in Anthony Stacinski from John Deere. Anthony, how's your week going?
[00:21:27] Speaker B: Oh, it's been pretty good. It's been pretty good. Similar to, to you guys in the north, we. We've been a little wet down here in the midwest, so finally getting a little dry weather. People are, as you said, trying to. Trying to wrap up planting, trying to wrap up seeding. So crossing our fingers, we can, can make that happen this week.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: Have you been involved in, like, the. Like, the crazy weather down there, like, the intense weather, or has it been kind of standard and normal?
[00:21:53] Speaker B: I feel like we have had some of that crazy weather, like rainstorms, where it's two, three inches at a time, and it really puts a pause on things we're doing, having to do some replant, having to, having to push some of the planting off. So it's been rough.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: So tell us a little bit about yourself, your role at John Deere. Give us a little bit of background.
[00:22:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So I am the go to market manager for planting and seeding equipment. So, really, anything that puts. Put seed, put seed or grain in the ground. Right. Comes across my desk. So, really, with all those products, it's, hey, how are we going to the market with it? What technology is there? What are we talking about? What. What conversations are we wanting to have about those pieces of equipment? Myself, I grew, actually grew up in Wisconsin, so. Grew up north of Kansas City, where. Where I'm at now.
[00:22:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: Kind of rural, rural dairyland, I would say. So now. Now kind of dealing with corn and soy on the planting side of the business, and then wheat, canola on the. On the seeding side, how do you.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: Become the guru or the wizard in this area? Like, what? Like, what's it take to get here?
[00:23:09] Speaker B: Oh, man. So I've had the opportunity, or I've been lucky enough, I should say, to kind of bounce throughout the company, both on the production side of the business, through the customer support side of the business, really been able to help me gain knowledge across the different production systems, whether that be large grain or small grain. In my shoot, it's been 1213 years now with Deere. So, like I said, I've just got lucky and had good opportunities put in front of me where I can continue to learn about the different production systems.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: Awesome. All right, and what about from, like, a personal side? How do you spend your days what, what do you got going on for, like, hobbies and activities out there? What do you do in Kansas?
[00:23:51] Speaker B: Oh, man. So summertime, we, we like to spend a lot of time on the lake. So right now, stuff starting to warm up, starting to get on the water. Trying to spend as much time as I can on the water and just, just relax. That's awesome. That's one of the main hobbies, I would say.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: Nice.
So I'm going to switch gears now. We've got egg in motion is coming up in just over a month, the big outdoor farm show in Saskatchewan. Do you get a chance to make it out on the road at all or head up the prairies?
[00:24:20] Speaker B: I'll be there. I'll be there. Yeah, I'll be there all week. So.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: And are you going to tow one of these carts behind your, your half ton and, like, pull it up with you?
[00:24:29] Speaker B: No, I'll let the, I'll let one of the local dealers worry about getting the cart there. But we will have one of the new, see 850 carts at the show along with one of the high horsepower nine RX's. So we'll have, have an entire train similar to what we had last year.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: But really showcasing the latest and the greatest that have come out in the last twelve months.
[00:24:52] Speaker A: Well, I'm bringing my camera. I'm going to take lots of pictures. Sounds good of that stuff.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: So we can for sure hook you up with a good walk around.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: Perfect. Sounds good. Let's dive into these C series air carts. The C 850, maybe a few of the other ones. My farming friends, they, so we talk a lot of equipment, and I talk a lot of equipment with my brother and my dad as well.
But the excitement from these guys in regards to these air carts, like your marketing team, they gave me like a list. Ryan, who do you all want to talk to? We got, you know, lots of cool things to share. I was like, air cart guy. I want to talk to the aircraft guy because my buddies are so excited about these changes. Tell me more about it. Like, why are these guys excited?
[00:25:39] Speaker B: Yeah. So for 2025, we really had a complete redo, if I would. So the C 650 and C 850 maybe didn't change quite as much as the 1910s. However, we are now the complete C series. So the 1910 cart, so the smaller cart that was below that 650 bushel really went away. And it was a frame up redesign to pull in some of the new technology to that cart. So we now have a complete lineup of c series from 350 to 650 bushels in that leading cart. So if you think of cart in front of the tool and then in a trailing cart, we have up to that 850. So 350 is still the smallest one, but all the way up to that 850 bushel cart in the trailing configuration. And that really allowed us to bring technology to those smaller carts that was only available in the 650 and 850 in the previous years.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Okay, and let's talk about some of those previous years and previous models. What are some of the differences between these new ones and some of those older models?
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Yeah, so if you, there's a lot of differences. So as I said, those smaller ones, they were a frame up redesign, but I would break it into really three different categories that all the carts got. So the accurate stainless steel electronically controlled meters is probably the first one and the biggest one that everybody notices mainly because theyre not painted green. We actually used a grade of stainless steel that couldnt be painted. So its a higher grade stainless steel than whats out in the market with a lot of other manufacturers that really prevented us from painting it. But when you think of that stainless steel, youre getting that corrosion resistance that we didnt have previously across any of the carts. And then those electronically or individual electronic controlled meters really open that ability to do curve compensation or to do section control more accurately. And then running high fidelity prescriptions now. So being able to vary, if you think of a eight run cart, you can run eight different prescriptions across the width of that tool. So really being able to get, we won't say like sub inch farming, but we're getting towards that. Hey, how do you farm more accurately across the land that you're covering? So being able to run those prescriptions down into an eight foot wide or ten foot wide section where with past carts we would have had to be at the width of the tool. So 80ft wide, 90ft wide, starting to break that down and get into smaller chunks so that you can use those inputs. So when you're thinking your seeding rate, your fertilizer rate, really working with the agronomists to get those narrowed into the most productive parts of the land.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. That's precision agriculture.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: Hey yeah. It's not quite to where we are with planting. Right where you start talking seed by seed, but compared to where we were, when you think of something 80ft wide and youre going to have to run a fertilizer prescription or a seeding prescription at 80ft wide, down to 10ft wide, thats a big difference. And theres some savings that can come in with that being able to adjust that rate on the fly and have those higher fidelity prescription maps pushed into the cab with these new meters. You know, those meters being standard across all the carts now. You know, just, it opens up a ton of opportunity for us. Like I said, being able to, being able to spin those at different rates, that curve compensation. So the inside of the tool, we all know as you go around a corner, it moves slower than the outside, but being able to slow those inside meters down, speed up those outside, and keep that rate consistent across the entire tool. Again, when you opened up and you were talking about stands and what customers see, I mean, that's really where you're going to see it.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: That's fantastic. Is there anything else from a technology standpoint, that the farmers can expect to see or that you want to highlight?
[00:30:15] Speaker B: Yeah, so, I mean, from a technology standpoint, easy cow would be that second big change. We talked a little bit about that, I think, off air prior to this. You know, really, when you think of EZ Cal, its an industry exclusive way to help set that meter displacement value before you get started. So when you think of your typical calibration way with the bag bag calibrations and the fish scales and all the fun that that was, you know, EZ Cal just does that for you as you're getting ready for the day. So you're able to take a sample as, as you're tendering, you're able to take a sample of that grain, of that seed, put it in the EZ cal system, start running that as you're filling it will run that through the meters, ensure, you know, kind of do that mdv value for you, and push it right to the cab so you don't even have to get your piece of paper out. Now write down that mdv value. Go walk up to the cab, put it in there. It's all from the side screen on the, on the cart now. So you're, you're able to just run that all as you're tendering for all the different products. If you have the same product in multiple tanks, you just say, hey, tank one and three, my fertilizer, that's the same product. Seeds, whatever tank that is in, you're able to just set those and then really on the fly, go. So when you're done tendering, those mdv values are updated for the product you just put in, and you're able to just kind of start your day. We know a lot of people skip that step in the, in the past just because it was pretty cumbersome. To do. Okay, but that really gets your day started out, ensuring that the rates that you're putting down match what you want to be putting down.
[00:32:04] Speaker A: I was preparing for our discussion, and, of course, chatting with some of the buddies I have that were very excited about this, and I said, well, what do you guys have for questions like, what? Is there anything that stands out? And the one guy said, ryan, the easy cal system is amazing. Ask Anthony how it came to be. Was it always in the plan, or he's hinting at some story there.
[00:32:30] Speaker B: I don't know that I know the story of how it came to be, but we know that calibration has always been a pain point, and being able to reduce that calibration time by 45% and really have it be hands off was something that the engineering team was looking at of, hey, how do we do this? And how do we do this smarter? How they came up with the system they came up with. I would have to go back and visit with engineering and figure out how they did that. They came up with a great solution to a problem that one of the customers brought to us and said, hey, pulling the fish scales out of the toolbox to weigh a bag that's blowing in the wind and then having to take that 70 pound bag and climb to the top and dump it in the hop, there's got to be a better way to do this. That's what engineers do. They find, sometimes find a better solution, and sometimes they maybe find a solution that's not so much better. But in this case, we found something that works out really well.
[00:33:36] Speaker A: I'd say, just as a side note on that and a bit of a thread here, I've been a part of some conversations lately, the growers. We've been talking about equipment and having that farmer that's using it every season and every day, having that input from them, that's one thing that's kind of been standing out in conversations about John Deere and the interaction with growers. Having growers be very much a part of the solutions or at least coming up with the ideas. And I think that's just really neat. It makes sense to me to have the farmers involved, but that's a good example right there. Anything else from farmers that maybe heard from farmers that they wanted implemented in there? Air carts.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: Yeah, so I think the last, and again, there's a lot of smaller changes when you think of conveyance and the cart side display and that type of stuff. But the last big one, I think, is tank scales. Now, the c 650 and c 850 of past already had tank scales. We saw a really, really high take rate of those from an option perspective. And really, customers at first saying, I don't, not sure why I need tank scales. But then once they had them, they said, hey, I can't go without this.
[00:34:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I heard that. Yeah.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: So being able to bring tank scales across that entire lineup, so now 350 all the way up to 850. We have tank scales available on all those models. So that really all customers, you know, all farmers, depending on whatever side that could be or whatever size cart they could need, you know, really can, can use tank scales. And tank scales then unlock that ability to do active Cal.
So active Cal is really calibrating from the cab throughout the day. So as those conditions change. Right. So as that humidity sets in or as you dry down from that morning dew and that product's changing, it's ensuring that that meter displacement values always consistent or always right for what it is you're putting down, really ensuring, again, that the rates that you want to be putting down is actually what you're putting down. So being able to unlock that for all farmers now, whether they're smaller or bigger, was a big deal for us. And we've got a lot of people that have given us a ton of praise and are super happy that that's an option for them now to get awesome.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: I, you know, I hear about, you know, I'm just looking at my notes, efficiencies, time savings, precision.
This podcast is about making good business decisions, crop marketing recommendations, all that good stuff. This just lines up really, really nice with our theme here.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I mean, with. Yeah. With those tank skills, being able to know how many acres you have till. Till empty. Right, right. Like, hey, all right, I need somebody to be here in 2 hours to refill me. When you're running multiple trains or, hey, when you're short on help, we know those are all things that are happening on the farm right now, and it just helps you better plan your day to where you don't end up with a bunch of time standing around waiting on different people or having to run around and fill seed keeps you out in the field being productive, which, when we have springs, like what we have right now or had this last, last few months. Right. Those sometimes hours could mean finishing up a field where a rainstorm came in, and then you end up waiting a week to. To get back in.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: That's been the theme for some of us at 2024.
[00:37:22] Speaker B: So it has been, if I go.
[00:37:25] Speaker A: If I want to take you back to a blast from the past here. I. So back in the, in the spring of, like, must have been 2005, my dad suffered a farm injury in April, a serious one, where he, he was out of commission. So I got tapped on the shoulder. I had to phone my summer job. I was in university. I had to phone my summer job folks and say, hey, I'm going farming this year. I'm sorry. I'll come back next summer, and hopefully that'll work out. Anyways, we're running. I can't remember the model number. I should ask my brother before recording. So. John Deere. A John Deere system. Anyway, and I'm learning all this. Right. And so, and it's, I think 30 acres of fill back then, I think, is what we were doing a lot different now. I think it was maybe 30 acres, maybe 20 or 30. But anyways, I seeded an entire, you know, 30 acres. I got to the end. I went to fill, and my cart was full, still full. So I got to go and redo the whole thing. So, anyways, yeah, a little different back then, but, yeah, anyway, it was.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: But I mean, that, that's a great, I mean, it's a great example where having tank scales and having some of that technology on the screen, you would have, would have seen, hey, my, my weights aren't changing. Something's, something's plugged. Something's going on.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:38:46] Speaker B: Really helps, you know, alert you that, hey, there's an issue happening, especially for somebody that's filling in and maybe not as experienced with, with that equipment. Gives you, gives a, I mean, even a farm manager, if you think of it from that op center perspective. Right? So ops center, mobile, being able to pull up each piece of equipment and look and say, oh, they have this much left in their tanks. Okay, that's, that's working out, or it's not working out helps prevent some of that.
[00:39:16] Speaker A: Definitely one last little thing on that spring as well. This is a little side note, but my most expensive mistake, it was a bit of a wet spring, so I had to get stuck a few times. But my most expensive mistake, we're running liquid fertilizer. The hose pops off on the caddy, pops off the back, right off the pump, I think, and I fill. I go down. I do run one. One run in the field. I make my corner. I look back, my fertilizer tanks empty. What is happening? So I, like, go take a look. Yeah. This hose popped off. Nothing grew in that small area forever. It took forever for something to grow there again. But that was my most expensive mistake.
[00:39:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: Okay. So our farm, we're running John Deere operations center. We tie that in with harvest profit, helping us make business decisions on the farm. My brother's super involved in jdops, and it's incredible how much we use it for now. It's part of the day. Is there. I know we talked about it a lot already in some of these questions I had, but is there anything else that stands out on the JD operations side or that technology side?
[00:40:27] Speaker B: Yeah. So, I mean, I think when you think of that, what I'll call the green on green solution. Right. So when you have that green tractor hooked to a green cedar hooked to a green air cart, one that solutions all plug and play, the cart's able to plug right into the tool, which plugs right into the tractor, or vice versa. However you want to have that leading or trailing cart, you run that all from the cab display. So you don't have to run extra displays, you don't have to run extra harnessing. But to your point, that all connects to the op center. And really having that digital connection allows you to use things like work planner now. So with the new carts and the changes that were put in there, are you using work planner on your, on the family farm yet?
[00:41:17] Speaker A: I don't.
[00:41:18] Speaker B: Or do you have have familiarity with it at all?
[00:41:21] Speaker A: I don't myself, but I'd have to loop him in on this.
[00:41:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So now, I mean, really, with that work planner, you can work shoot in December, you can start planning for your spring now, working with your agronomist looking at. Okay, what are we going to put down for fertilizer rates? What type of fertilizer is that going to be? What type of seed, what type of variety am I going to use in that field? And you can actually set all that in the op center and push it to that piece of equipment. So when that train passes the boundary of the field, instead of you having to sit there and input all. Okay, this is the variety I have. This is the fertilizer I'm putting down. Here's my rates.
You get a pop up that just says, hey, you're in the tractor. You have a cedar hooked to you.
Do you want to do that step? And you just hit. Okay. And that way the data is clean, right? So the data is consistent. You don't have Ryan in the tractor inputting one thing where your brother's inputting something different. Even though it's the same variety, it allows you to be so consistent with that data, and then that flows through I think we all understand that data is good, clean data is even better. So that work planner step really helps ensure that that data that's being put in is clean all the way through. And really, to me helps customers and helps farmers understand what they're doing. And when you start talking harvest profit and going through that complete loop, it really ties it all together. Right. So having that seeding, having that seeding step in there and with the new meters, right, being able to do that seeding step and fertilizing step more accurate than what you were before, but then following that into that application step and into that harvest step, tying that all together, it really helps you understand, hey, what this is what it looks like for the future. And this was a smart decision. Maybe this wasn't a smart decision, but you can learn from it and change your practices to, you know, to things that work best for, for the ground that you have.
[00:43:39] Speaker A: And I really, I like getting this work done in the winter time when I, when I've got 3ft of snow outside and it's, you know, freezing outside and I don't want to be outside like getting this stuff done because in the spring, especially a spring like we've had, where every moment counts, you don't want to be fumbling around with this stuff a whole bunch. You know, in the spring it's, farms are getting bigger, there's more people involved and you just, you want to get some of this stuff done when, when you have the time or more time.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's one of those things. It's almost, to me, it's easier to sit down at a computer and do it than try to do it on the display in the moment because like you said, rain's coming or, or something's going on, you get a little bit in a rush and you go, I'll come back and I'll fix it later. I think we all know that once that season progresses, later just gets bumped and bumped and all of a sudden you get to harvest and you're like, uh, I, I think I used the same variety when I crossed the road, but maybe it was half the field. I, I don't know that I quite remember what I'm doing. But now when we're seeing yields and the yields are different. Okay, what worked, what didn't work. So it helps with some of that. And not that there's any downtime now. I feel like the year gets super busy no matter what time it is. But like you said, when you have 3ft of snow and you want to stay inside or shoot. If you head south and you're sitting on a beach, you can still be. Still be working on setting up for the spring.
[00:45:14] Speaker A: That might sound like a bit of a write off as well here. I'm not the accountant on that one, but I'm going to go to somewhere warm, Hawaii, and do my crop planting. Yeah, there you go.
I have you here. I'd like to ask a little bit about the seed master relationship while I have you here, because there are the green John Deere Green seedmaster toolbars out there. Can you just enlighten me a little bit on that and that relationship and what you have going on there?
[00:45:40] Speaker B: So some people want to call it the deer master. We like to call it the P 600. As you said, it's a relationship with, with Seedmaster. It really is. When I think about it from a simplistic view, they have a really good opener. They have a really good toolbar. What they didn't have was the relative flow and true set technology that our tillage pieces and our other seating equipment had. So it's really taking the technology that we offered on the other seating equipment and getting that paired with their opener and their toolbar that they're known for having a really good quality toolbar and really good quality opener. For us to develop something like that, sometimes it's easier to just partner with somebody and have a really good relationship with them, which is really what we've done with the P 600. So high level, if you think of it, our technology that allows the plug and play green on green solution that I talked about earlier, linking all that relative flow data right up to the op center. Linking all that true set data right up to the op center. So really allowing us to make the best of both worlds there.
[00:47:00] Speaker A: Awesome. Awesome. That sounds good. I appreciate your comments on that. We're close to wrapping up here. I want to ask one more quick question.
[00:47:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:10] Speaker A: And maybe it's a bit of a sensitive one, but what about availability of an air Carter or the P 600? If I want to be proactive for next year, is there still time or how does that look on the availability?
[00:47:25] Speaker B: I would say you're right in the season for that.
[00:47:28] Speaker A: Right.
[00:47:28] Speaker B: So if you think of our ordering program that is open right now, there is availability out there. Yet it's pushing.
It's always changing. So day to day it adjusts. But really, as we look at it, most farmers are now planning, like you said, that year in advance. Okay, how did seeding go? Did I have major breakdowns. Is it time to replace that? Am I looking at my neighbor's stand? And maybe they did something a little different that's working better. There's a lot of those questions ongoing, I would say, right now. Dealers, our dealer network, is kind of in that mode of looking and quoting some of those new units to show up for next spring. So your timeliness is spot on right now.
[00:48:20] Speaker A: Awesome. All right, well, thank you so much, Anthony, for taking the time to chat with us. And farmers from western Canada are going to tune into this here in June, so thanks for the time. Is there anything else you want to add before we let you go?
[00:48:35] Speaker B: No. I appreciate you having me on. Sounds like I'll get to to meet you in person at motion. And I guess everybody else that's listening to this will. Will be there at the booth. We'll have a ton of seating experts there as well. So feel free to come. Come see us at the booth, stop in and ask questions.
[00:48:54] Speaker A: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Anthony. We'll see you later this summer, man. Take care.
[00:48:59] Speaker B: All right, thanks, Ryan.
[00:49:04] Speaker A: I love talking about equipment. I'm not like my brother's the big equipment guy. I love talking equipment as well. But as you can tell, folks, Anthony is the pro, I'm the rookie. They're trying to figure things out. And I really appreciate John Deere making these folks available to us and learning a little bit. Yeah. Great conversation. All right, let's switch gears now to our mailbag sponsored by pioneer seeds. A little quieter this week, which is fine. I know you're busy spraying crops out there. I did get an email from Maggie, who's our contact over at pioneer seeds, and she shipped me four of these coolers, four breakaway speakers, Bluetooth speakers, and so Jason's already won one. We need to pick a winner for June later this month, but I will have them in my possession here shortly. So the question this week, anonymous comes in. I get it, folks. I'm good with anonymous questions, but how do you approach. How do you approach crop marketing after a sell off? And. Huge question. I talked about it to some degree in, pardon me, the hot topic, my hot topic ramble for this week, but you've had this sell off, and maybe you're feeling undersold. So what do you do? What do you do? Right.
And so, great question. And what I would say to this from a strategy perspective, number one, what are you all growing for? Crops? Okay. What do you have in the mix? Because not every commodity has fallen off, but it is a leading indicator when you have a wheat, corn, soybean, canola sell off.
Yes, crops can rally independently, but the trend is your friend and on many times the other crops fall.
Not always many times. Okay, so I would look at my what crop mix do I have? And are there any crops where prices have held on? And what's my profit margin in that? So, like, if I'm growing like yellow peas. Well, yellow peas haven't fallen off. Maybe I got yellow peas, barley, wheat and canola in the mix. Well, wheat, we'll talk about that strategy. Peas haven't really fallen off yet. Maybe there's something there. Maybe the twelve to 1225 gives you a really strong margin opportunity. Maybe you've bumped up your yield a little bit. Maybe there's a contract with act of God. You can go and focus on those types of crops. Maybe there's some play out there with oats or malt barley, something where the price hasn't moved a whole bunch, but your profit level has held, or maybe it's increased with yield potential. You can go and focus on some of those crops now. And so, like, I, you know, I think about our farm. We have malt barley in. We. The last sale we made was $7. You know, we might sit here and say, well, geez, hard reds at 766 malt barleys at $7. Now, maybe let's make another phone call and see if we can get a little more seven dollar malt done, right? You know, green pea, green lentil, maple pea. Like, there's lots of crops out there that haven't fallen that maybe you can go and say, well, you know, by golly, gee, I missed it on my wheat. I didn't sell enough wheat. I'm not going to make the same mistake on yellow peas, flax, whatever it is, and go and get some sales done there, okay? But if we want to talk about wheat and canola specific, here's the easy thing to do. So what would prevent you from selling? Now, what would prevent you is that you're worried you're going to miss the market. You're worried you're going to miss the next rally, okay? Or you're worried about production, about producing it. So why don't you look at an alternative contract or phone your futures broker, my buddy Bert at RBC. He can help you out, too.
But you can look at some of these alternative contracts here. Look at that. I'm all flustered. My hands are flailing. My microphone took off fumbling. You want to, if you're concerned about missing the high or missing a rally or above production, then you want to look at strategies that keep your upside open, keep the increase available to you. And so it could be as easy as just buying a put option and saying, hey, if the market rallies, I want to sell cash or physical at this higher price, I'm just going to buy a put option, protect against lower prices, protect against my floor. Because Ryan said, back in 2014, the wheat market rallied for three days in July and then fell down another $2 a bushel.
It did do that. Will it do that this year? Heck if I know. But it did that in 2014.
Put option would have done fantastic there. We talked about puts on this show, right?
I'm pretty sure we did a couple of weeks ago anyways. But you want to keep the upside. You could say, hey, I'm going to make sale Vitera, I'm going to sell you 750 wheat. Vitera's price a little worse, and p and h in my backyard, I'm going to sell you 750 wheat, but I want a call option in case it goes back to nine where it was. You just add that call, give keeps your upside open. It's the easiest thing. And then you say, well, Ryan, what happens if I, if I don't produce in the market rallies? We got a call option there to help you out. It's not perfect, folks, but it helps you out against buyouts. It helps you out against missing rallies and opportunities. You might even keep it even more simple than that. You might just pick up the phone and say, hey, you know what? I want to move more grain in October. What can I do? And they might offer you an averaging contract. They might say, why don't you average your price out between July 1 and August 31 or July and September, get a little average contract built in there and deliver that to us in the fall. It's not going to be your worst contract. It's not going to be your best contract. It's going to be the average of that period. But you could stretch it out. You can say, well, I want to keep that average running all the way into harvest or whatever. I want to start it now and leave it until September 15. They'll customize it for you. But you're, what do you do now? You sit there and say, well, geez, are the markets going to work higher or lower from here? And do I need to take action? And if I'm going to take action, what am I worried about? And if I'm worried about buyout, I'm worried about higher prices. Then you attach a call that's what I would do. They might ask you to attach futures. Be careful because if futures drop, you may also lose on that. So be very, very careful. I'm still a bear, folks.
I probably should get t shirts made up. Big bear on them. Still bearish. I'm bearish. I love the spring rally. I was just living in the moment, selling grain. Fantastic buying puts. Life was great like everyone else. Wish I would have done more. But here we are, folks, and I'm hitting pause, right. I'm not doing a whole bunch of anything right now. And weed and canola doesn't mean it's the right call.
And what I'd say to that is very good chance your selling decision here in June still works out to be one of your better decisions throughout the year. So how do you participate in this market? Wait, what was the question again? How did it, how do you approach crop marketing after sell off? Well, number one, not everything sold off. So I look at those 1st, 2nd thing, give myself a little bit upside and honestly, folks, can't guarantee it. I wish I could, can't guarantee it. But I still think it's going to be a dandy of a crop marketing decision for you. It sucks though. It hurts, you know, when it sells off and then you're like, oh, I still need to make a sale. Shoot, I think my yield's gone up 10%. Darn it. I got to sell something. It's still, it's, it's just not a fun thing to do. It's hard to get over that hurdle. But I still think doing that now is going to pay dividends down the road. Just buy your call. It's easy. You guys can do it. You know how to do it. You've been doing it. That's what you're going to do. All right, I'm not going to talk about market prices today notes. I'm going to leave that for now. All right, folks, it's now time to give away our giveaway from UPL. One more week of wave.
Learned a lot about aquaculture here the last couple of weeks on the show. Of course, last week we asked, well, there's a long list of benefits using wave, but what is the best reason to use this product? What is the best reason to use wave? All the responses counted. Okay. There was no wrong answer. It's the easiest conversation, easiest conversation, easiest entry you could have.
And our winner, 120 acres. One jug of wave is Spencer Bellingham from balfe, Alberta. So, Spencer, congratulations. UPL will be in touch with you. Now, we're going to take a little pause here and reset for next week. We're switching products and so stay tuned, folks. But thanks to UPL with, for all the battalion, a couple weeks of wave and we've got another product here for next week. So hang in. You'll probably hear about it first on the email next week then, and then on the show after that. So hang in. I think it's rocks are that we got next on the agenda here. All right. So congrats, Spencer. UPL will be in touch. And I'm just going to wrap up here for eating your veggies brought to you by the lunchbox crew. If you're looking for more, if you're looking for your meat and potatoes to go with your veggies, head over to Ryandine, CA. You'll find the lunchbox crew there. You can check out those details for this week. What are we going to focus on? Well, we're busy spraying crops. We've been busy spraying crops the last week. We got another week or so busy spraying crops. I know you guys are all busy out there spraying crops as well. So I strongly believe an action item, action oriented item for you. Let's take the summary of today's episode. And if you've never done it, if you still have never done it and called up a vitaire and said, hey, I want to sell today, but stay in the market for further upside, how do I do that? That's still what I would focus on. That's what I would focus on from a crop marketing perspective that will pay dividends for you for not just this year but for future years. And the other thing to do, maybe for, for some 2025 planning here, but you could also check in on what prices look like for the fall of 2025. Again, I'm kind of hitting pause on all that. But you can look at that and then if you are a UAN 280 zero, if you use that product, uan, nitrogen, urea, I don't know. You got to talk to an agronomist about the experts. I just know that when I was getting quotes for fertilizer last week, 280 zero came in at like seventy one cents a pound. I always break it down to the price per pound. And 46 nitrogen was coming in at 460 zero was coming in at like a buck 15 a pound. So to me, the liquid guys, that's what you pay attention to. I'm like, okay, there's that market strange right now. Something's going on there. But if you use liquid fertilizer 280 zero again, all the fancy terms. I better brush up on that. You could check out those prices. So three things again, check out your price for 28. Number two, you can look at fall of 2025 offers, see what's out there for next year. And my last one, just learning, picking up the phone and just again, learning those new strategies for your farming operation. All right, folks, that's it for this week. Episode 32 of the what the Futures podcast. Now, prices can change, strategies can change. We do our best here, but everything's very fluid as of recording. It changes by the time you listen to this. So just remember that in your crop marketing decisions, if you'd like to be a guest on the show, email me or head to the website Ryanjenny, CA if you'd like to connect sponsor, that's the spot you go to as well. So that's it folks. Have a good weekend. Thanks for tuning in and I'm gonna head out camping. I'm out.
