[00:00:02] Speaker A: 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 number 42 of the what the Futures podcast, of course, recorded in the UPL studio. I hope you're having an outstanding day. Whenever you're tuning in, it is, of course, positive Friday. That's when we send these out. But hey, if you're tuning in over the weekend, I hope you're having a great weekend and having a safe harvest out there as well. The what the Futures podcast is your weekly dose declared in the complex world of crop marketing is what we'll say. I am your host, Ryan Denis. I've spent my career working with farmers across Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan, helping them make crop marketing decisions. I've been an advisor, a coach. I was a grain buyer for a little bit of, basically spent over a decade working with farmers in that capacity and decided to do a podcast last year. Started off in November of 2023. This episode, I'm going to have Brittany Nielsen, my dear friend with all Bushel consulting, brittany's going to join me to talk about crop marketing successes and harvest results in northeast Alberta. I was chatting with one of Britney's customers the other day. Brittany worked with me for me at full acre back in the day as an advisor. And so she works with a lot of the same customers that we, you know, both knew back then. And I still keep in touch with a bunch of them. And, you know, the one guy had such a big smile, you know, paid for lunch, and I was like, what's going on here? Like, what's, and he's just, he's having a good crop marketing year. So I'm going to talk to Brittany about what the heck's going on. I forgot to get her contact info when we were recording. So if you, if you want more info from Brittany, you can reach her at
[email protected] it'll be in the email as well, and I'll put it in the show notes. But
[email protected] dot, that is her email. If you have any more follow up questions for her, of course, we, we have about a 20 minutes segment here later on in the show. We're also going to talk about in episode 42, purely Canada Foods. Oh, no, folks, another company, how do you say it? Their license has been revoked from the grain commission, which means some farmers out there are owed money and it's not a good situation, unfortunately, this is not the end to this type of stuff, folks. There's going to be more of this yet. And so as farmers out there, you need to be extra cautious. And then we're going to talk about selling yellow peas. You know, do we sell yellow peas or do we not? And why or why not?
Now, we are not going to sell to purely, and we're not going to sell to xfinity. We have our reasons. But, you know, do we sell these yellow peas? I think you should. And I'm going to explain why. Of course, folks, hit that subscribe button. You can stay up to date by subscribing on the YouTube channel or wherever you get your podcast. When you subscribe and I release the episode, you get a little new episode out and you get that instant access.
All right, so before we get to housekeeping, I do want to give a shout out to show sponsor John Deere.
There's a whole new John Deere lineup that's out right now. New tractors, new combines. You guys see those combines out there? Now it's harvest time. Big green machines are going. There's also that new air cart as well. I know some of you are already in your forward planning stages, thinking about next year, and you can order this stuff and get it in line, all with built in intelligence that keeps getting smarter. Check out all of these pieces of equipment at John Deere, Ca.
All right, housekeeping.
Well, I actually just got a fun one to start off with here. So the lunchbox crew. You guys have heard me talk about the lunchbox crew. Well, I'm building the lunch kits here. I wonder if I could reach it. Hang on. Let's see.
All right. This darn thing's. It's heavy. I hope I'm within the KG Canada Post box I bought. I don't know if you can see this all on camera. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see this. But I'm packing these lunchboxes full of delicious, nutritious treats and a little bit of junk food as well. Even have a little bit of gum. But I got a spoon in there for your fruit cup. Anyways, folks, I'm packing these up, filling them full of goodies here for the lunchbox crew. And my question to you is, like, what is that? What is that snack out there that you just need to have in the combine? Like, what is it? Like, I think I showed these a couple weeks ago, but he got these cool little lunch kits from El May out of Ontario. He started making these things in like, the fifties. Anyway, so pretty cool. And I've been mailing these out with a little note to each lunchbox crew member as well. Just a little word of encouragement here for harvest.
Anyways, what's. What's that combine snack that you're. That's a must have for you. And, like, I started doing these snack bags back in. Oh, man, what time? When I started consulting, 2011. Yeah, I started doing these. We used to have a budget.
I worked for a large company in western Canada, and I think my budget for per year that I could spend on customer stuff, I think it was $500 for the entire year. If I wanted to take, like, a farmer out for dinner or do something, I had $500, and so what I decided to do is to take my $500, and I'd buy, I take sample bags and fill them with snacks and deliver these out to the combine to all the farmers. It's the only way I could really get to everybody with something.
I don't know what the snack bag would be valued at. Five or $10 probably, right? So I could kind of get to everybody with something there. So I started doing that, and I know a lot of other folks do some great things as well. So you can either tell me what your favorite snack is, put it in the comments, or hit me up, or, you know, what's been the best experience out in the field. Like, I. What I see now is everyone is super efficient, so you don't really, you know, want to, you know, see ten companies roll in ten nights in a row and stop everything for an hour or two, you know, some of you like that for sure. Maybe towards the end of harvest, you don't mind it, but I know it's very sensitive out there when it comes to efficiency, especially with the wet start to harvest we've had. So I almost, like, almost daydream that I should get. Like, at the Oilers games, they have this donair gun, and they just fill it and shoot it out, and it goes a couple hundred feet, and you just fire donairs. Like, if I could be standing at the edge of your field with my, like, Donaire gunna and just, you know, pop donairs out to the combines, to the grain cart, that might. That might be something cool to see. Like, imagine if I miss and it hits the window and just splatters. But anyways, what's some of your memorable suppers or something a company has done for you in the field that you really appreciate? I'd love to hear what those are this at this time of year.
All right, what else do we have here. Oh, playlist. Yeah. What? The futures. It's getting better. I made some tweaks. I cut some songs out. I put like 30 other songs on last night or this week anyway, so it's what the future is. Hash harvest 24. That is the playlist on YouTube music. And my song of the week is gonna be tipsy. I don't know if it's called Tipsy or if it's called a bar song or if it's a bar song. Tipsy by Shabuzi. I'm like the newest music that I listen to. Like the song playing behind me on the tv. I thought that song was three years old. It is nine years old. So I'm. That's how I am with music, folks. I'm getting old. My music's old. And anyways, this one, though, I think is a newer song, probably within two years, I would think. I'm just catching it now, but it's a bit of a good one. I don't know. I like it. It's got a bit. A good song for the combine for you. What else we have for housekeeping, grain marketing conference I for not much for this week. I'm just gonna say I'm like really digging deep into the conference agenda and I've reached out to multiple speakers now and we're in conversations to get some of this, some of these folks locked down. But it's going to be a very interactive workshop feel of a conference. Like you're going to write stuff down, you're going to take notes, you're going to have a booklet with some homework as well. So there's going to be a lot of, a lot of that. That's what's certainly coming out of this. But someone asked me, they sent an email and trying to see who, who was it that sent that email again? I like giving shout outs when I can, I can remember here. Shoot it is.
All right, well, I'll see if I can come back to it. Anyways, the guy farms like north of Westlock and he said, ryan, how do we get, what's the cost and how do we get tickets? Great question.
I will promise you that by the end of September, we have that organized for you.
I believe the agenda is the most important thing to get done right now and ironed out so that you can make that decision as a farm if you're going to invest that time with us in Drumheller. So I'm going to get that down and on paper so you can see the agenda and then you can see you know, costs associated and logistics and all that stuff that goes with it. What I will say is if you are interested in joining us for a conference in Drumheller, you can email me in advance. You are not, you're not signing up for anything, but I can start a priority list and you can say, hey, Ryan, I'm very curious about the agenda. You know, I'm interested. Put me down for a couple of spots and then once I see the agenda and prices and stuff, I'll confirm. I'm totally cool with that. Just email Ryan at whatthefuturespodcast ca. That's, I'll use that one for now and let me know that you're interested. And I can just start a list and at least start getting an idea on numbers because I think it's certainly going to be limited and there's going to be a bit of a process for everyone to, to get registered. Like I, it's a bit of I want to say, application, but what I want to say is that for you, as farmers, I want to make sure that you're surrounded by other farmers in the room. So I'm going to look for a bit of an application where you give some details about your farm and who's attending and stuff like that, just so that we know who's in the room and who's there to learn and to grasp. I don't want any of this. I shouldn't say I don't want, it will not come off in any area of our, of our conference as a sales pitch. That's very, very important to me, and I'll give you an example. So I was asked to speak at a conference, a conference that I would have to jump on an airplane and fly to this conference and spend a couple nights in a hotel.
And so they approached me and said, hey, we'd like you to speak to this. And I said, okay, that's kind of interesting. I'm already, my commitments, I'm pretty, pretty busy packed at that time. But like, what are we talking about here? And most of the time when you bring in a speaker, there's a speaker fee associated with that and some like, lodging and stuff. Well, this was a big event that people were paying pretty good money to go to, and they said, oh, no, no. Like, we're not, we wouldn't give you anything. Like, you just be there and I, but you have to get there yourself and you have to pay for your hotel, but you get to be there.
And I was like, well, why would I do that necessary? Like why would I do that? They said, well, because then you can sell whatever you want to sell. Whatever you're promoting and selling, you could sell it there.
Okay, good point.
My point to that, though, is I don't know, all the time as farmers, though, if, if you necessarily, I don't want to say realize, but a lot of these conferences we attend, the person that's speaking to us may have even paid to be up there. So are we paying to see a sales pitch? Are we paying to see something, product, service, whatever it is, to implement on the farm? And a lot of times we are, and that doesn't always, like, I get it, but that doesn't always jive with me. So what I'll say is that when you see a speaker at the making crop marketing cool conference, everyone that stands up on that stage is going to have been compensated for their time to be there, and there's no sales pitch on, on anything. If you like what that person has to say and you want to engage with them off to the side about something, about services, totally cool with that. Go for it. But you're not going to sit there and say, hey, you know, here's someone say, I've done this, this, and this, and this is why you should hire me. No, no, no. We're getting information. We're helping to create a crop marketing plan. That's why we're doing this conference. All right. Yeah, that's it for that. Moving on. Housekeeping. I don't know why I put purely Canada foods in the housekeeping.
Should have been in what's cool in crop marketing, it's not cool, but license has been revoked. Okay. August 27, 2024, purely Canada Foods Corp. Grain dealer license and primary elevator licenses revoked in Avonlea, Saskatchewan, Kindersley, Saskatchewan, and Legored, Saskatchewan, which to me, I thought this had already happened, because on April 1, Legour, their license was revoked there, but maybe it's under a different, slightly different name. Anyways, folks, the Canadian Grain Commission is asking you to get in touch with them in regards to this. If purely Canada owes you money, you need to contact the grain commission. All right? Their license has been revoked.
I don't know what it means outside of that, but, you know, if you are in this situation as a farmer, I apologize for your hearing from me, number one. But also, hey, go and reach out to the green commission, get your name on that list, and fingers crossed that they have those funds to get everybody squared away.
Again, folks, this is not a one off. This is happening in this industry right now. And in my opinion, it's not over yet. There's going to be more of this yet. You guys, the farmers, you need to be hyper aware of who you're doing business with and super cautious right now because farm margins cannot support this either. You can't have a 50 grand, 100 grand go missing. And obviously, I've well documented what I've said about eggfinity. There's that baloney going on. There's purely Canada going on. There's others on this list, folks. Like, I don't want to list them all off, obviously, but. And everyone's got their stories. But, you know, I was looking global food and ingredients that, you know, that's a big company. Multiple locations there as well. Bowdoin, Lazhort, Z Landia Sedley. Like, it's. It's happening. It's happening. And unfortunately, I don't know, folks, it's still gonna be tough for a bit here, so just be cautious.
All right, positive moments now and positive moments for the week. I've got a couple here, but. Oh, yeah, I missed this one last week by the campfire. But Cooper and Aaron, if you guys remember the what the Futures podcast sent. Well, farm on a trip. On a trip to Nashville, Tennessee. Cooper and Aaron out of Irma, Alberta. They won the trip. All right. And they went to Nashville here, like, the middle of June. And I told them, hey, like, let's do an interview or something from Nashville and let's do something. And let's. But we. It just. It's summer got busy. Anyways, they got back. I opened my mail last week and in. The mail is on the top shelf, I guess it's not top shelf. It's top shelf booze. But it's on the middle shelf right now. I got two bottles of Tennessee whiskey there, and I don't know what to do with them. Like, I want to open them and try them out, but I also. It's kind of cool to have them out on display, so I don't know what I'm going to do yet. I did run into Cooper at the local John Deere dealership just randomly the other day and got to thank him in person. But it was cool. They sent me a nice message. They had a great time in Nashville. And you know what? I think what the future is, we're going to have to figure out another getaway here. But I think I'm going to have to go this time. The booze, the whiskey is awesome to get, but I don't know. I think I got to go next time. So thanks, Cooper, for that. And, Aaron, that was great. Second positive moment. My wife and I, we went to the. I think it's Hozier. Hosier. I'm not sure how to say it. It's on my t shirt today, though. But we went to a concert Saturday night. It was a blast. Got the babysitter in, headed out for a night on the town, of course, paid for it the next day a little bit. The kids like to, you know, they get up nice and early every day. But we. It was a great concert and a great time, and it was a really fun date night. My last positive moment. Is that, okay, well, life's getting back to normal here. So Chantal is going to the preschool meeting tonight, Wednesday night, recording this. And it's just fun to get back into, into routine and especially with little kids getting back into their, their activities and stuff that, that you have going on. But I'm on edge, all right, because I am waiting to hear where my time has been volunteered. My wife's going to the meeting. Only one parent's allowed to go to the meeting. And I know that when she gets back, she's going to say, hey, you are now this volunteer position or whatever it is, you know how it is. Like, all of a sudden you're not at the meeting, and then your partner comes back and they're like, hey, you're treasurer now for the school or the school program or whatever, and you're like, what? How? I wasn't even there. And they're like, well, they needed somebody and you're good with numbers. So I put your, your hand. I put my hand up and you got it. Of course I got it. You, you know, the books probably haven't been updated in five years. You get handed a whole thing. You guys have been there. You get handed a whole thing and you're like, what is this? And like, yeah, we couldn't make sense of it for two years, so we just, we just kind of started from zero. What? Come on. Anyways, folks, I don't know what's going to happen here tonight, but I'm on pins and needles waiting to see what my volunteer position is going to be. Fingers crossed. It's, I don't know, greeter or I, in school support, in class support. I don't know.
All right. Okay. Now let's switch gears to the real stuff here. Let's go to what's cool and crop marketing this week.
And I. Oh, man. Like, do we, do we really need to talk about the stats? Can numbers? Like, I know we do. I have them here.
But, you know, for goodness sakes, they've revised in this report, they revised the canola production number from 21 2022 and 2023. They're like, oh, let's go back. We got to revise this. And, like, fine, okay. But, you know, like, there's lots of revisions on here. There's a pile of them. Lentils were revised. Barley was revised. There's more revisions on here than anything else. It just, you know, when you get fresh numbers, you just sit there, like, for me, stats, counter reports coming out. I I knew it was this week. I didn't know the exact day. I didn't know exactly because it, I don't, it doesn't, I don't know. It doesn't really matter all that much, right? Anyways, well, here's some numbers. I'll give you some numbers. Barley, 7.46 million tons. All right. Last year was 8.9. That was a revised number. Second smallest barley crop in, like six years.
Again, still, big carryover demands. Not great. Anyway. Canola, 19 and a half million tons. Too high, right? Last year, 19.2 million tons. But, you know, they're saying that this is going to be the highest canola crop since 2019.
I guess acres were up there, but I don't know. I still think this crop is going to be a bit lower than that yet. What else stands out for me? Oh, big chickpea number, 330,000 tons. It's a double the crop last year. Faba beans are a typo. I won't even say the number. Flax, 300,000 tons. A bigger flax crop than last year. Really?
All right. Again, this stuff's from July, right? 2.7 million tons of lentils, second highest crop in six years. Oh, it's 2.9 million tons, you know, higher than last year.
All right. And then spring wheat, 25, just a shade under last year for spring wheat production. Again, folks, you know, Durham, 6.02 million tons, largest durham crop since 2020. The stuff's all kind of old information. You guys are creating the new information as you harvest.
So this stuff is just going to be revised. Gonna be revised again. All right. But I thought you guys might want to hear some of those numbers. So there you go. Protein and grade spreads.
Now, I said last week we're going to talk about this stuff. Well, it's relevant. And my title to the lunchbox crew earlier this week was protein premiums. What I say, protein premium slip from our grasp or something like that.
So basically there's a lot of protein that's being harvested. And when you have that high protein, high protein crop, and obviously those protein, those premiums just disappear. Pardon me. And so, you know, as I was looking around here trying to figure out protein spreads, it just, it certainly wasn't, it wasn't all that exciting. So, protein premiums, your best company right now for protein premiums is actually Vitera, because they're paying up to, they are, as of recording, paying up to 15% protein, and it's like 1.2 cents pertainous. So, you know, there's, there's a little bit of a protein premium there. Other companies were at, we're paying up to 14.5% protein, and they were one cent per tenth. And then Patterson said, we're not paying anything zero above 13.5. So those harvest results come in and protein premiums are basically non, non existent. Are not a big factor. Like, I don't. They're not really a deciding factor. Now, yesterday or a couple days ago, I was chatting with a grower and they were looking for a bit of wheat movement off combine. And so with the 15 protein, like, they were harvesting some 16. So it was a little bit of an advantage there. Plus the location did provide a premium on top of the spot bid, and we're seeing a lot of that. Everyone has room for September to buy and they are paying up a little bit. But remember, this is your worst basis levels in, like eight years. So are they paying up a little bit? Yeah, but the money's there to do it. Like, they're, they're holding it back. So. So, anyways, now, if you had low protein wheat, if you had low protein wheat, then some companies were only discounting, you know, a cent per 10th going down. So Patterson was paying nothing for protein, but discounting payrol, basically nothing going down for lower protein. So if you have lower protein wheat, Patterson was substantially better because some companies were still trying to discount three cents per tenth going down.
And so your high protein guys, you're not getting much anything right now in western Canada for premium, but if you got low protein also, there are spots for you where you're getting basically nothing for discounts. Some of the highest discounts here, the highest discount was coming in at PNH. The biggest discount for low protein was PNH. G. Three was two cent, p and h was three cents. And so, just something for you to keep an eye on, you know, in Richardson pioneer, the location I talked to, said waiting for more results. We don't have any change on spreads yet. So, you know, folks, if you hear something different out there, let me know. But the consensus is big protein crop, and there was a bigger, higher protein levels in the winter wheat crop in the US as well. So just a couple of things working against us here.
All right, harvest results for this year. As someone that talks to a lot of growers, I hear the really good and the really bad, right?
So I hear of the five bushel peacrops and, and I hear of the light barley, and I do see some of the bigger oak crops and stuff, too. But I would say it's really hard to get a handle on production. Like 60, 70 million acres of production to say average crop. Like, it's. I'm having a hard time with that. And so, like, what I'll say is that there is a lot of light barley out there, like it will harvested in Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan. There's a lot of light barley.
Is that going to lead to higher prices?
Not necessarily, but I know that some of the maltsters, like, if you're located, if you're a maltster in central Alberta and all the barley around you is light, you know, they're a little bit more nervous right now.
Not super nervous, but they're, they're anxious. Checking in on, on how the rest of barley harvest is going. So I could see some upside, regional upside and malt barley values. Oats. There are some lights out there, some light oats out there, but there's some beautiful heavy oat crops as well. So I don't. I think if you're an oat buyer, you might have to push a little further out to buy some. Like you'll pay a bit more freight. But to me, they, they do exist. Peels, you know, I think just a bit under average as a whole. The same thing with lentils. There's some good lentil crops out there and some poor ones. And I think wheat's hanging in really well. I know I talk to people. I'd say right now it favors more slight decrease under average, like if I had to put it together now. But there's a lot of good wheat crops out there too. So I'm pretty average right now. I think there's a pretty good wheat crop in canola. I'm just not sure yet. So I don't know. I don't even know if that's a value to you at all. But I'd say, like, there will be question marks into December. And hey, with that might come pricing opportunities here. We'll see.
All right. And what else is cool in crop marketing. The last thing that's cool in crop marketing is, do we need to take advantage of these yellow p trains? And the answer to that as of what, August 30? You know, if the recording going out. Yeah, you need to take advantage of this. And this is why, in my opinion, I think production is fine. Russian and Ukraine production is fine as well. But for yellow pea guys, for growers out there, you have a company, multiple companies right now, that want to buy your yellow peas. Okay? They have 100 and some cars worth of yellow peas that they need to buy. And I know you're sitting there saying, hey, well, they're wanting them now. Just wait, Ryan. Just wait till November. Just wait till January.
No, I.
They may not have 100 and some cars to fill in November or January.
India may put that tariff back on in at the end of October.
And I get it, like, psychologically, we want to say, oh, I'm going to stick it to them and I'm going to throw them in the bin. I'm going to make $2 a bushel. I, I cannot guarantee that for you. I know that somebody wants to buy your yellow piece today because they need to fill trains and they are hitting targets, paying premiums slightly above their posted bids. And I think you should take advantage of that.
All right. That's. I don't like the setup with China after India disappears from us, I don't like the setup with China because Russia has enough peace for them.
I know China's buying lots of barley right now, but I don't know. I just don't like that setup. I don't feel good about that. And my, someone asked me today, like, well, what do you think yellow pea prices will do? And I said, best case scenario, I think they hold steady. So why not take the money now, right, instead of holding them and, and, hey, what else are you going to sell?
You know, like, if you're a yellow pea grower, you probably got some wheat and some canola. You know, you might have some lentils out there. Depending on where you farm, you might, if you have specialty crops, you're in a better position because you've got other crops you can sell. But let's say you're like a yellow pea grower in the central part of the province and you've got barley, wheat, and canola. You're not selling your canola. You're not selling your wheat, right? If you sell your barley, sell your peas, I guess, but sell your peas, some cash flow going and get some grain moving.
All right, folks, now, that's enough of that. Let's. I gotta go and fix this voice. So let's. Let's get Brittney Neilson here with all bushel consulting. Let's bring her in and cover all sorts of positives around crop marketing in northeast Alberta.
All right, folks. Folks, I've got Brittany Nielsen with all Bushel consulting making her what? The Futures podcast debut. Brittany, how's it going?
[00:30:13] Speaker B: Good, Ryan. How are you?
[00:30:15] Speaker A: I'm doing really good.
I can't believe it's been this long. The show's been going on here since November, and this is your first time on the show. This has gone on for far too long. So thanks for coming, coming on here. I appreciate it.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: Thanks for having me.
[00:30:32] Speaker A: So for those listening, Brittany and I have worked together in some capacity since. Man, we'd have to go back to probably early 2018. Hey, was it 2018?
[00:30:44] Speaker B: 2018, yeah. Fall of 2018.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: So the spring of 2018, I have my little consulting company that's growing, and I'm starting to try to find someone, another advisor to bring in a. All right, listeners. So I end up going. A farmer reaches out and says, hey, let's go for lunch. I'm done seeding. It's the end of May. Let's go for lunch. And let's. I want to talk to Vitera about some deal or something. Let's have Vitera. Let's go for lunch with them. And Brittany was at that lunch.
And so from that moment forward, I was keeping tabs on you, Brittany. I was keeping tabs, seeing how farmers were. You know, what they were saying about their buyers and saying about you and how. And they. Everyone had great, great things to say. They loved working with you. And I knew I had to convince you to come join the full acre team back in 2018. So I appreciate that.
And if your mom's listening, I had to really convince Meredith. Meredith, she's very sharp, worked in a bank. That's Britney's mom. And I had to convince Meredith that I was legit as well and that I had a viable company. So, Meredith, if you're tuning in, thanks as well.
Oh, man. What do you remember about the old days, Britt? Going back to 2018?
[00:32:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, honestly, I remember our first conversation when we first chatted. You were on the golf course, you sent me a picture, and you said, if you work at full acre, this could be a workday for you. And as I sat in my Vitera desk and looked at my computer screens, I thought, huh, that looks actually pretty ideal compared to staring at a screen.
[00:32:21] Speaker A: You know, it's sad. My golf clubs are right behind me. They've been in the shot all summer. They have a layer of dust on them. I'm, I'm actually, I'm going golfing for the first time on Friday. Yeah, August 30, I think is the day, my first round of golf. So 2018 to now. I don't know what's going on, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong now. But jeez.
Oh, Mandy. Well, why don't you tell the listeners here, of course, people from across the prairies in the northern US tune into this show quite regularly. Why don't you tell farmers, you know, what you do for a living now and where you're based out of.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. So I'm based out of Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, and I now own my own little consulting company.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: Hey. Oh, yeah.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: So, yeah, full acre consulting branched off into all bushel Consulting. Yeah. Just work with a small group of farmers and main focus is grain marketing. Just looking at making grain marketing plans, executing them. We'll dip my toes a little bit in fertilizer, but grain marketing is the main focus, cash sales and then do advice on some brokerage strategies as well, with some help from some fellow brokers.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Nice. You know, your family farm is just south of Killam, Alberta. And, you know, I know that you say that you, you know, you touch on certain things, you know, fertilizer and stuff at times, but the point I want to make is that you, you're for the farmer all the time, every day. You know, you're an independent company. And so when there's opportunities, you're telling your farmer group, which is great. So want to highlight that.
All right. So we, you know, we know some of the same people you consult for some of my, my good friends as well. And, you know, when I chat, like, I chat with a lot of people across the prairies now, like, I get a lot of, you know, messages from all over the place. But I, and when I chat with some of my buddies, they're pretty happy about the situation they're in right now from a crop marketing perspective or side. So are you willing to share a little bit about maybe some of your successes this year or some of the things that you've focused on and that's translated to that success?
[00:34:38] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. So early on, like this time last year is when we started making our first sales for this crop year could kind of see that the sky high prices, I guess that started in 2020 were coming to an end, unfortunately. So we were quite aggressive on sales even early on, some of the first wheat sales were made at $10 a bushel. First canola sales were made anywhere from about $7.40 to 770 futures for this November. Good old days. Yep, good old days. You bethe so, yeah, really proud of those sales. And like I said, we are kind of a little bit more aggressive all the way along, especially anytime wheat was over $9, we were looking to sell that canola. Anything above 14, $50, $15, we were selling that. So, yeah, just to highlight a big one farm that I do work with and one of your good friends, he is well sold on his wheat crop. And when we look at the numbers as to where his average price per bushel sold is first, where the current market is, that puts him about 130 grand above the current market. So pretty good win for that farm.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: That's why he bought lunch the other day.
That's starting to add up a little bit there. Good.
I'm going to throw a little bit of a curveball at you here, but how do you get your clients, your farmers to, to get those sales on? Like, what I notice across the prairies is still from the Joe to 21 and all the buyouts, a group that's reluctant or doesn't have the confidence or I don't know what it is, but to forward contract, how did you work with farmers to kind of get over some of that?
[00:36:25] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. That's a really good question. So a lot of it I just kind of highlight, we know some farms, not all farms know their break evens. So just highlighting that anytime there were opportunities to sell grain that were above breakevens, that was kind of a no brainer, I suppose. And then again, just looking at how markets are changing, right, like we had all of those factors that led up to that bull rally in 2020, the war in 2022, some weather concerns in there. And then once we take all of those factors away, we were looking at growing supply, maybe some weakening demand. So just kind of highlighting those points along with, hey, we're above your breakeven, we need to make some sales. So kind of the combination of those conversations give growers the confidence to forward sell. And then amongst the network that I do have, always kind of reiterating that, hey, if you do come up short on this contract, likely we're going to be ahead of the market. We can always look to get somebody else to fill that contract within the network and still make a little bit of profit as well on that contract.
[00:37:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that I think, I believe listeners hearing that are going to be like, what? You know, what is she talking about? But this episode might have to be called the good old days because I was having the same conversations with growers in regards to yellow peas this summer when they were, you know, 13 1211. Like, hey, like, if you push yourself a little further and you do have that hail event which we had on our farm right before harvest here, but, you know, someone else could fill that. Or you can use some of that equity and take advantage. We are still in it. We're in a downtrend here. And, you know, we. Again, it got hot in July, but the crop was coming on really, really well. And it was quote unquote made. Wasn't the top end made, but it was made to that we were going to have something, you know, as we were in June. So that the power of a network, you know, using your network of growers to be like, hey, all right, so how do we handle this? We have a high price contract. We're short. What do we do? And, hey, you can always buy grain. Buy grain for less in this situation, Phil. So I know that's a concept that we did a lot back in the day. And, yeah, in a bearish market trend, it can work out. Okay, cool. So let's switch gears here just a little bit. But how's harvest going in, in your region with growers in, you know, central north east Alberta? Like, how's it going so far? I know it's early, but how's it going?
[00:39:05] Speaker B: So mostly we just have peas off and then do have some cereals coming off now some wheat and barley. So far, yields have been average, slightly below average, especially peas. There might be the little pocket here and there. You can definitely tell who got the reins and who didn't. And then. Yeah, same thing with wheat and barley. Barley's actually so far been a surprise. It's actually been average, maybe even slightly above average.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: And wheat so far, once again, has been all right. Knock on wood. That. That does continue. And then wheat. Yeah, I would say slightly below average yields there. There was a little bit more confidence even heading into the last couple of weeks of August, but some comments after guys have been spraying said that the REIT actually doesn't look as good as they once thought a few weeks ago. So.
[00:39:52] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: Yeah, still early, but, yeah, chug along and kind of as expected, slightly below average, I would say, overall for yields. Yeah.
[00:40:01] Speaker A: Okay. I. I'm having such a tough time with. With yields, you know, like, I.
You know, a lot of the Manitoba guys are, you know, it's wet, but the crops are, are really, really big there and really nice and really big. And Saskatchewan, we're getting reports of some good, lots of good stuff as well, and then some bad stuff and some very poor stuff. And even across Alberta, like, I don't know what to think of this crop, but I think I read in one of Chuck's latest updates that they were going to tweak their pea production down a little bit. Chuck with left field commodities. So I guess my question to you is, are you turning bullish here as of late August on any of these crops, is there anything that kind of stands out where you say, hey, that one might have a chance here to do something?
[00:40:50] Speaker B: The only one I think that we could see do something would be potentially canola. I don't think it'll be necessarily immediate, but I think there is some underlying support in canola, not only because of reduced yields, but more crush capacity is coming online, or has come online this fall with more expected later on in the summer, thinking that we could see some better exports, just a little bit better demand pending rail.
But, yeah, I think canola could see some opportunities and then I'm not going to say I'm bullish wheat at all, but I think.
[00:41:23] Speaker A: How about neutral? Can we go neutral more?
[00:41:26] Speaker B: So neutral maybe with some selling opportunities.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: There we go. Yeah.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: But again, I think that could be later on, especially if you do have some good quality wheat. Lots of high protein being reported out there, so not really expecting many protein premiums, unfortunately. And then oats too, if you have some heavy oats, because I am hearing quite a few lightweight oats coming off. I don't have any oats coming off yet. Should over the weekend and, yeah, I think if your oats are heavy, make grade. We could see some premiums later on for some good quality oats as well.
[00:42:01] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think that might be on the oats side, that might even be regional a little bit. So I think in Alberta specifically, there's been some fair amount of light oats harvested so far. So there may be those millers in Alberta looking for coverage. Saskatchewan oats seem to be coming off a little heavier in Manitoba as well. But I'll be curious to see. And that goes to lots of different crops. I think, you know, malt barley might have regional opportunities. I think, you know, depending on how the spring wheat crop in the US turns out, protein sounds a bit lower down there. There might be regional opportunities down there for high protein guys. We'll see. But lots of moving parts right now. I'll put the right disclaimers in. So if you wanted to say, I'm bullish canola, I'd still put the disclaimer in to say, hey, you know, where we don't exactly know what's going on. So, you know, go seek the advice of an expert. I. All right. Okay. So is there any crops, in your opinion, that have, you know, limited upside that or anything that you're still marketing and selling right now? Like end of August into September? Like, are you. Is there any crop where you're. That you're still selling or you think doesn't have upside or as much upside?
[00:43:14] Speaker B: Yep, for sure. So, actually, just today, decided to move the needle on some yellow peas. I see limited upside in yellow peas just because demand is not there. Of course, we have our two biggest buyers, China and India. Very quiet right now, so don't really want to hold over many yellow peas. If we do, we might just be selling them for the same price that we see today. So I'm definitely an active seller of yellow peas. And then another reason for that, too, is that is what a lot of line companies are handling right now. So just nice to get that bin space cash flow movement on farm. So, yeah, yellow peas, even green peas. I think that market could be a little bit more stable, but I still don't mind making some sales on some greenhouse green piece. And then I'm also don't have any fava beans coming off yet, but again, that's a crop that I would be looking to sell. I think soy meal prices will get pressured just with the bigger soybean crop coming off in the US. So lower soy meal prices will weigh on faba bean prices. And right now, fabas are still over $9. Close to touching ten. I don't mind moving some fabas as well once those are off. And then actually feed wheat. Feed wheat is comparable and even over some gradable bids out there, so don't.
[00:44:28] Speaker A: Regional opportunities again. Yep. There you go.
[00:44:31] Speaker B: There we go.
[00:44:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:32] Speaker B: Regional opportunities for some feed wheat. So don't mind moving some feed wheat, especially if you do have say, like CPS. Feed wheat is about 50, $0.60 over gradable CPS regional around Edmonton. So, yeah, don't mind using that feed wheat bid to move out some CPS. The other one would be feed barley as well. I see feed barley having some limited upside. So don't mind taking and selling some feed barley again if weight weight is good.
[00:44:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I saw on the feed barley, like in Saskatchewan, there was a location looking for some. Looking for November feed Barley at $5. And I thought, geez, you know, like, if you, if you got to decide between canola wheat and barley to sell for, you know, for an example, that's the one I would be doing is that $5 barley in central Saskatchewan. And, you know, buy yourself a bit more time for that canola market to recover. And, hey, maybe wheat will. You know, tensions are rising in Russia and Ukraine. Maybe there's something there, but we'll see. And I'm with you on the yellow peas, too, and this has been well documented on this podcast, but here's what's happening right now. So the line companies are looking for this stuff. And so I saw Vitera and PNH, you know, ten to 1025 central Alberta Peace region. Like, that's where they're at, but they want it. And then farmers are getting that message and they're like, oh, well, they want it. I'm not going to sell to them right now because they, they want it. And they're, they're paying this, this premium, and I'm there, like, waving the white flag like, hey, they want it and you should sell it. Like, this is where everyone can be happy and, like, you know, get married up here with this sale. Because once these first trains go, yeah, what's the next train? What does that look like? And by what price? It might be the same price. I don't know. I, you know, we've been used to, are accustomed to taking those yellow piece, throwing them in the bin and making a couple bucks a bushel, selling them later this winter. But things have changed. It's not China buying all our yellow peas right now. So, you know. Yeah, I like the yellow pea sales. So those tuning in, it is in the eating your veggies part of this episode as well. But be a yellow pea seller and take advantage while they want it. All right. What else do I have for you here?
I think that, you know, you gave us a lot of good stuff here already. Oh, yeah. I wanted to ask you a very serious question about. Actually, two serious questions.
[00:47:01] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:47:01] Speaker A: Number one. So you're the truck driver on the farm. Britney does all the trucking on the farm. Have you upgraded the sandals for the harvest of 2024?
[00:47:11] Speaker B: Nope. Still going to be rocking my baby blue crocs with sport mode on.
[00:47:17] Speaker A: All right. All right. Now, just if they, if this farm harvests in the snow, folks, Britney will be wearing those crocs in the snow. That's how this works, so. All right, good luck Britney, with that one. And the second thing, you do a nice job of little perks for your clients. You know? I see. I saw the snack bags getting built the other day. What's your. You got. What's your item that stands out in the snack bag for harvest this year?
[00:47:43] Speaker B: So I tried to go a little bit of a healthier route.
[00:47:47] Speaker A: Yep, yep.
[00:47:49] Speaker B: Trying, trying. But Costco does a really good job, because, of course, they have their Halloween snacks out there, so lots of chocolate bars, lots of candies, lots of chips.
But I would say my favorite item is they have some fig bars.
[00:48:02] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah.
[00:48:03] Speaker B: Rolla bar. Yeah. Blueberry.
[00:48:07] Speaker A: Yep. My kids, we get. We buy that two boxes at a time.
[00:48:10] Speaker B: Yep, yep, yep. So I would say that's a favorite in the snack bag this year. Yeah. And then I switched up some of the favors, I guess, because I always have been doing pails, ever since the full acre days.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:22] Speaker B: So a lot of guys are like, we have so many pails, we're drowning in the pails.
[00:48:26] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:48:27] Speaker B: So cut back on pails, and then threw in a rain gauge in hopes that maybe we can channel some rain post harvest and replenish those moisture reserves that were drained this year.
[00:48:40] Speaker A: I like that. I like that. Bring that positivity forward. Nice. All right, cool. I. I gotta walk over to my little snack table. Cause I am doing a few this year. I gotta. I gotta show you my. My key. My key thing. Okay, one sec.
[00:48:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:48:54] Speaker A: So this is inspired by Wilhelmina, and I think the farmers are gonna roll their eyes when they hear this one. But these are seafood roll snacks. Okay, now, we're big. We're big seafood fans on the show now. Cause seaweed fans upl is using french seaweed in some of their products. But I've got these going. We were doing. So Wilhelmina loves going to Costco. She loves doing the snacks, the tasters, right? Like, it's insane. Like, that feeds my kid lunch once a week, for sure. Anyways, we're doing this one, and she's like, these are so good, dad. I'm like, that's seaweed. Like, are you sure that's good? And she's like, they're so good. I'm like, all right, well, lunchbox crew farmers, they get two, and I haven't had one yet, so they get to enjoy it, though.
[00:49:45] Speaker B: I didn't even see those when I was at Costco. What the heck?
[00:49:47] Speaker A: Oh, I will take a picture for you. I'll show. Yeah, I'll give you directions, but, yeah, yeah, if they're.
[00:49:53] Speaker B: Let me know where they are.
[00:49:54] Speaker A: If they're good. I've got classic spicy and barbecue sauce. Those are the flavors. And if my four year old is raving about these, gotta be a winner. I'm thinking they must be good. Yeah.
Anyway, thanks for joining the show, Britt. We are putting together the making crop marketing cool conference in December. I. This is my informal invitation for you to come and join the conference, but I hope you can make it out there in early December. But thanks for coming on the show. Obviously, we worked together for a long time and I thought you might say something about the hat that I pulled off the shelf here today. But there's like, just a couple of these left in existence, and I didn't even take the tag off the tags on it here, too. But the good old days. Retro, right? Yeah, for sure. All right.
[00:50:39] Speaker B: Thanks for asking. I appreciate it.
[00:50:40] Speaker A: Thanks, Britt. Have a good harvest.
[00:50:42] Speaker B: Yeah, you too.
[00:50:47] Speaker A: Well, it was great having Brittany on the show. Well, long overdue. Brittany and I have worked together for a long time and a heck of a good advisor there. So I was. Yeah, super happy to have her on here. All right, we're getting towards the end of the show here. Let's. Let's do the mailbag sponsored by Pioneer Seeds again last month, actually, today. So our last, we're going to draw a name here and give away the last bucket, cooler and breakaway speaker. But we did have a couple of questions come through, and we got a couple of fun ones here. So let's start. Okay, so this one, Ryan, any tips, warnings, or recommendations for guys starting out with a hedging account? All right. My tip check, commission fees with a few different brokers because they're different. All right? And not that it adds up to hilla beans at the end of the year per se, but over your career of having this hedging account, see what's out there for different structures, because there is a pretty good difference and it can lead to significant dollars in the thousands at the end of the year if you're an active trader. So check on that warning. You are going to get a statement every day. All right? Every business day, you're going to get a statement with your account.
Do not treat it like a bank account, is my recommendation. So any tips, warnings, or recommendations? That's what I would go with. My recommendation is start small.
Yeah, start small. Use small contracts to learn. See how things feel, how they work, how you get in and out of trades. And, you know, even though it might not feel like a lot of volume, you start small and you get to learn. And so if there's a big mistake, it's, if there's a mistake, it's not that big. And I just start with smaller size contracts. Don't, don't swing big off the hop because it just doesn't work out that way. All right. Hopefully that helps. Second question. I got a pull from x here.
Came in from Carl. I think I went to my personal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here we go. Durham spreads. What option does one have? So he had, he had one company.
Well, what was your Sam said? The other ones. So this is from Durham. So he locked in a number three. Okay, so a g three to go from a three to a two is. Seventy five cents at Cargill. Sixty cents. And at Viteras, $0.80. This guy's got contracts with multiple companies and he says, what options do I have? Any success in negotiating spreads? Transparency, number one. If you went in this example, Cargill is at $0.60. Vitaras at, would just have a conversation with Cargill and say, hey, guys, I've got this contracted with you.
Obviously, this is going to impact our further dealings, right? Because at the end of the day, who's giving me my best price for my number two? Carl's got some dandy stuff as well. It's like number one, high protein, I believe. But just bring the transparency to them because they may not know that they're out of the game by twenty cents. And so you just go to the low one and say, hey, you know, you're out right now. I've got a contract with you. I'd like you to be competitive. Just being transparent here. And, you know, if you want to buy the next lot from me, you gonna have to be in the game anyway. So here you go. Like, we can start now. And that actually works often just to be transparent. Don't have to get angry about it. You don't have to raise your voice. You can just say, hey, like, this is what I'm seeing out there. What are you guys gonna do about it? That's a bit of a sidebar. This episode seems to be full of these sidebars. But I noticed here, and obviously, farmers have not done much selling and there's space and capacity. But I even got a call from a buyer the other day that said, like, I'm targeting certain farms to do business with certain farms. And the company has given me, you know, a chunk of change here to do this, to go and grab market share and to go and get this business done.
When's the last time you heard that in western Canada, which, you know, music to my ears. Right. But when's the last time you heard a buyer speak like that to say, I'm going to go get market share, I've got money to spend here, I'm going to go get it? Like, hey, that's pretty cool. So my point here with Carl's question on the spreads. This is a wheeling and dealing environment, folks. You don't have to take things for where they're at. This is a wheeling and dealing environment. And this continues. Well, we're in these depressed times, I call it, or depressed prices. And so, yeah, this is, yeah, there's some interesting things here for sure. All right. And the last question came in, I got it on the text line and this came in from Saskatchewan and it was, I thought it was really interesting. So he says, what are your thoughts on growing mainstream, mainstream crops like wheat, canola, barley, versus multiple specialty crops with the main crops in terms of marketing, are bigger volumes with main commodities better than smaller diversified crops for selling? I'm curious if diversification hurts your selling power with, okay, now from a volume perspective, like I would challenge whoever's listening to the show that's done a Ydezenhe volume deal.
You probably wouldn't want to share that with the show, but we could do it anonymously if you want.
But I actually don't think there's much happening for volume deals. I was at a meeting, grower meeting earlier this summer and having a conversation with the grower and he said I don't forward contract my weed and I just do one big deal and I just have them, I produce lower protein so I just have them not give me any protein discounts and they just blend it in with someones higher protein. But we were talking about weed in the low thirteen s to blend with something to make it to a 13 five in an environment with a lot of high protein wheat. Like to me that, that wasnt that impressive. So like, I think in this environment today, moving forward, there may be some really interesting deals that happened to over the next year, but behind us, I don't think much exciting has happened in the last while. Now. Hey, if you have a large farm and you can say otherwise, I'd love to hear it. But I don't see volume coming into play. A whole bunch on, on deals where it amounts to something substantial or it's the word I'm looking for, substantial or yeah, anything really. It's, I don't see it out there myself.
I see different contracting methods and I see different ways of like I was talking to a grower the other day and we ended up over contracting on this August premium so we are delivering new crop against it. It's still the month of August. We're a little bit behind on the contract but you know, we're getting eight something for our weed instead of 670 as the posted biddenness, you know, like maybe stuff like that. You see there's opportunity there but I think specialty crops, they're, they're in many cases more risky, in all cases less acres. So more volatile from a price perspective and I believe they have plenty of opportunity and margin as well. So that extra risk and effort not all the time but often can pay off. Right. Not all the time though. It's definitely more stressful for many of you. But I. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I like to me as a crop marketing advisor person analyst person volume.
It's been a long time since I really spent time.
I used to put together 10, 15, 20,000 tons of canola and id bring that to a crush plan and say, hey, I got 20,000 tons of canola here with these growers. Lets play ball.
And we would get something but it was not anything to write home about the actual marketing decision that we did doing that deal at the time. Those were the good things doing that deal at the time. The whole future side too was even way more important.
We would get something but it was, I don't know, it wasn't. It wasn't. I don't. It was something. Not super exciting though. Anyways, Keaton, I hope that helps answer that question. All right, our winner here for August, this bucket cooler is going to.
Drum roll please.
Ian McDonald. Ian, I actually don't know where you farm, buddy but you are our winner. I will send you an email here and get your address and we will send you this Bluetooth speaker and bucket cooler and I have a meeting with pioneer seeds coming up. We'll see what we're giving away here in the month of September. But thanks for those questions, folks. Keep them coming in. Ryan at whatthefuturespodcast dot CA and I know I'm behind on answering some of these. I'm going to try my best to catch up on emails and stuff this week. Get back to speed here for September 1. Get fresh. I know I'm behind folks but keep them coming. I do appreciate it. All right. Pricing. What stands out. I'm going to leave that one for this week. I think we've talked enough about that type of stuff here. What I'll say from a price perspective, if you're still here in this late in the show, right before eating your veggies, from a price perspective, keep a close eye here on early September, like markets. If you look back at history with the setup, we have very good chance the market's bottom out here towards the end of September.
That's what I'm aiming for. But there could be just a little, a little something here in the short term out next week or so, there could be a little pop in the market. I like having wheat targets out there, you know, $0.50 above your posted bid, something like that. There's swatch. Canola is trying to make a move here. Let's see what it does if it can break over 600. You know, there's a few things here that could lead to a little pop before we make our harvest lows later in September. Every year is different. Might not be the case here this year for harvest lows, but the market is trying to show a little signs of life here.
All right, so for our last segment, eating your veggies, brought to you by the lunchbox crew. If you want to have your meat and potatoes along with the veggies here, head over to Ryandini, CA. Check out how we can work together.
Collaborate on, on your farms marketing plan, folks. That's what it is. How can we make you more money? Hit to Ryan, Denis, Ca. How can I help give you the confidence to sell grain at higher prices? That's where you go and check out what we have, what I have offered there. Number one, easy sell, yellow peas. Right? I would love for you to be aggressive on this again, my yahoo behind a microphone that you don't know that well, but I'm a yellow pea seller. They want your peas. You should sell them. And I hope you do. Second thing, I want you to consider setting a canola target.
All right, now sit down for this one.
It's about your 2025 canola crop. Okay?
And I want you to set the target. Start building that 2025 plan, if you haven't already.
November is trading at 06:06. I want you to set like a 640 target out there, 640 to 650 in that range. Start building that crop marketing plan, that canola plan for next year. All right? Can you do that for me? Good. And then the last one here is just, let's see what this harvest rally does in the next week, if anything at all. We usually get a little harvest rally, a little bouncer. Let's see if we get it. If we do, might be a little selling opportunity for you. Because once we get to that bottom, whenever we do it, we gotta dig our way out. And it takes time, folks. It takes a lot of time. The crops are not poor enough to dig out of it faster the way it's setting up. All right, folks, that's it for this week. Episode 42. If you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend, neighbor, colleague in your local farming community. Spread the word, my friends. I appreciate it. Of course, prices may change by the time that we record and send this out a couple days later, so we apologize for that. Of course, always seek the advice of our professional to help you with your crop marketing plan. If you want to be a guest on the show, email Ryan at whatthefuturespodcast ca.
And if you want to connect as a sponsor, you head over to Ryandini Ca. All right, folks, that's it for episode 42.
I'm out.
