Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Well, folks, it's time to brush off those crop marketing plants. They've been on the shelf here during harvest for many of you. Crops in the bin for many, many farms across the prairie provinces. So in this episode, let's figure out how to get after it here from a crop marketing perspective. I also have Maury Miklage joining me here. He's our resident agronomist and he's the guy when I want to talk efficiency, I want to talk cost savings from a fertilizer perspective. Maury is the guy we bring in. So let's get after, folks, episode 95 of the what Futures podcast. Let's go.
Hey, folks, welcome to the what the Futures Podcast, your quick guide to better farming decisions.
Alrighty, folks, welcome into the episode here, episode 95 of the what the Futures podcast, of course, recorded each and every week in the UPL studio. It's almost, it's kind of like a fringe episode here a little bit. It's harvest. I'm getting messages every, every day here from farmers wrapping up, but we're not, we're not quite there, right? We're not quite 100% done. We're still kind of slugging it out across the prairies. If you're out there wrapping up, you know, in your last days, you know, be safe out there. It's been a long run, it's been a big push. Get to that finish line nice and safe. Safe. All right, so it's been a fun week. I, I actually, I was on Trent Clarenbeck's podcast. He's putting out a weekly podcast now and I hope he edits this sucker down because I was. We recorded for over two hours and it's more about life stuff than anything. So if you, if you want to hear more about where I come from and, and what I got up to so far in my career, that that's where you go. Alrighty, I'll. We'll see when that comes out here in the next, next days. All right, so we got Maury that's going to come and talk, you know, mapping, we're going to talk soil sampling, we're going to talk fertility. You know, fertilizer prices have come down a little bit. Urea prices, I should say, have come down here a little bit the last couple of weeks. And, you know, I think a lot of that is, you know, from a global perspective. We saw, Was it India that basically said, hey, you're offering me like 5 million tons of urea and I'm going to buy two.
So we saw Global values pull back here we saw headlines of maybe a bit of a little extra supply across the globe. And that took a few weeks to trickle into the prairie provinces. It did. But we finally, finally have a little bit of some price drops in urea, some different terms coming out, and a little bit of negotiation.
Okay. Now I think there's a little, you know, a little calm in this marketplace. And I, I want to say this is a bit of a, a tinfoil hat theory, but, you know, I, I don't, I don't want to buy fertilizer at these prices. Especially when you look at prices for next fall for some of these crops. Like, I don't want to buy fertilizer at these prices. But you know, is there a little spot here to get, get a purchase done? Like maybe it's not everything. Maybe you sit here and say, hey, global prices are on the decline. I, you know, I'm finding a story for, you know, more of that, more of that trend. Like maybe you're one of those folks that say, hey, globally things are going to still keep working down, but domestically, I sit here and say, man, I wonder if we're just in a little soft spot here where you could get something traded in the sevens, like maybe before farmers are wrapping up harvest. There's not a lot of activity. From a retail perspective, I'm hearing it's very quiet out there and maybe as people kind of get over that harvest hangover. Yeah, they start, you know, you get in there and get something bought, you know, maybe a portion before it gets, it gets exciting. Now I would say that my tinfoil hat theory here is, I think that, I think that across the prairie provinces, many farms, not all farms, but many farms are sitting here breathing a sigh of relief. You know, if you looked at prices and the trend and you looked at average yield or maybe below average, we have the drought, the spring drought, the northern parts of the prairies that kept on. But a lot of people felt lucky and felt the tension ease a little bit with some of these extra bushels. And so initially I thought, like, maybe it's going to be a fall and an early winter where there's not a lot of transacting happening, there's not a lot of fertilizer purchasing happening. But now with how this is playing out from a yield perspective and from a closer to a break even or profitable perspective now for some farms, you know, that wasn't there before and it may be there now for many. So I think there's going to be a little bit of an appetite to go and start planning for next year. Even though the outlook, again from a price perspective doesn't look great, the margin perspective doesn't look great. But I just, I have, you know, a feeling I'm getting here is that we'll see more action, you know, later this month and into, into November. And not that it's back to normal or that it will be normal, but I just think there'll be enough going on. So I just, there might be a soft spot here to go in and get something done on, on the urea. Also, diesel prices seem to be working down here as well. Ultra low sulfur diesel working down from a chart perspective. So we'll see if there's a buy here on, on diesel for wintertime. We'll see what, what that looks like in the next, the next few weeks. Okay, so I want to talk conference here for a minute. We did a duck race. Now we did pick our winner, Carl Jansen.
Uh, he farms up. I can't remember the name of the town. He's Northern Alberta though. But he was our September winner for the voicemail. So congratulations to Carl. And if we had 11 voicemails come in, that, that's our most popular, the most popular month we've had so far. And I want to continue that. The voicemail is sponsored by the Lunchbox Crew for this month and there are a couple spots available if you're thinking about know some crop marketing.
I don't want to say service out there, but if you're looking for an alternative, you're looking for a community to join where we chat crop marketing and we chat strategies and, and you have a sounding board. Yeah, check it out. Ryanden Ca.
We do have a couple spots this fall for some new members in, in the Lunchbox crew. Alrighty. So this month again you go to the website.
Yeah, I'll see that send voicemail button. It's the what the futures podcast website. You click that button, you say hey Ryan, I, I'm. My, my name is, you know, Farmer. And what I'm asking for for this month is that you just say that you're, you've got or you've taken the time to sit down and dust off your crop marketing plan. That's it. I just want you to say hey Ryan, it's Farmer A. I sat down, reviewed my crop marketing plan. I'm ready to rock and roll. You don't have to say rock and roll, but whatever you want to say after that because I think the soft spot here, I know it's still busy. There's lots of fall work to do before freeze up, but you got to sit down and figure out your plan, for goodness sakes. Wheat futures made a new low this week. A new, fresh low. All right. It didn't get better. Canola traded with a five handle this week. It didn't get better yet. So take some time and let's figure out your crop marketing plan moving forward. Because if you just throw it all in the bin, lock it up and hope for the best, that. That is not a plan, folks. That is not a plan. And I'm going to tell you later on in this episode, I'm getting to ruffle your feathers a little bit, but there's some signals happening out there. You don't have to be happy about them, but there's some things happening. We got to talk about that because this market is not going to be friendly here for the next little bit. Okay? All right, so conference perspectives here. I just my update on the conference. I do have a deadline. Application deadline. October 13th, Thanksgiving Monday is our deadline to apply to attend the conference of Moosha. All right, so, Ryan, what's going on? Why the heck would you have a deadline for applications? Well, I'll tell you, folks, this is why we have to do this, because right now we have like 40 chairs left. Okay, 40 chairs roughly is where we're sitting at. That gets us to 75% sold. All right, 25%.
Room for 25% more. But we've approved a bunch of applications. And you guys, you don't just apply. Get the link to buy the tickets and buy them right away. It takes you like a week or two to do it. It's totally normal. You're busy. It's harvest time, right? So it takes a few weeks. So we have enough applications out there that if everyone with an application bought tickets. And I've got it at like one and a half tickets, some by two, some by one, but it's one and a half. Okay, well, we're 88% sold, 90% sold. Okay, we're down the last 10%. If the people that applied and were approved by their tickets, we're down to that last 10 to 12%. So, yeah, the application is not hard. Ryan, Denis, you fill it out. It's just to make sure that it's farmers in the room. That's it. Are we going to sell it this week? No, we're not. Are we going to sell it next week? No, we're not going to sell it next week. But by the end of October, we're, you know, it looks like we're going to be there, folks. And so there is an application deadline so that if we get to that spot where we have enough out. I don't want to, I, I really don't want it. If you were approved and I'd have to say, sorry, you missed out. Like, that would be painful. I would not want to do that to somebody. Be like, yeah, we approved your application last week, but you missed it. Like, I want to give everyone a chance. And hey, if there's some spots left at, you know, going into November, we'll let everybody know where. We've been working with the venues, looking at seating plans, trying to make sure that we have comfortable space, trying to figure out, every time I, like, we have this discussion, I don't get extra seats. I get seats pulled away from me. All right, so we're, we're trying to make sure that it's comfortable for everybody. And I have not figured out a way to add seats at this event. All right. I also want to thank. I want to. Well, I want to give a shout out to Simple Hedge.
I put a call out to see who else should we invite to this. There's a couple of spots left in the agenda.
And someone said, hey, why don't you reach out to Simple Hedge again? They were joined us in Drumheller. And so I reached out to Evan, I said, hey, you guys got anything new going on? He said, yeah, absolutely. We got lots of different stuff going on. And so we had a discussion and yeah, they've got some new updates. And I think that I know that people are going to appreciate some of the technology they've been working on. It's next level, next level crop marketing, next level risk management.
We've got them secured for the conference. Alrighty. Like, from an agenda perspective, I was running through it this week with Sarah from Triggergreen. It's action packed.
If anybody knows me, knows me personally, I.
We want to have a lot of fun as well.
And because crop marketing, I don't know, like, I think it's, I think it's exciting, but it's not, you know, it's. For some, it can be a bit of a painful, painful thing. So just give me a few minutes. We'll just run through this real quick. Okay, so Tuesday, December 9th, we have, we're gonna do a little Lunchbox Crew get together before everyone shows up. So Lunchbox Crew, you're coming early, but we're gonna do registration, you know, mid afternoon, right? Like all afternoon. We'll have registration set up. Registration is a really fun time. Like you get your hotel key and all that stuff, but then we're off to the side. And this is where you pick your swag.
All right. I'm not going to give away all the swag details, but the swag, you want to show up early because, you know, we get like 30 of a bunch of different things and there's some, yeah, some pretty cool items there. So you get like swag, like three pieces of swag, something like that. Four pieces of swag. You have T shirts, hats, toques, all sorts of fun stuff. All right. And then you kind of. You can go take a dip in the pool if you want, right? You're staying at a nice spot with a nice pool. I had some buddies message me and they're like, hey, we're bringing our, bringing our wives with us.
You know, what do you know about the town? And stuff like that? And I'm like, that, that is awesome. Like, you guys are going to be in the good books, that you're bringing your, your partner with you, your spouse to come hang out in the, in the spa while you're doing your crop marketing conference. So that's pretty cool that we were hoping that we'd see that. And we are. Tuesday night we've got, you know, happy hour. We're going to be hanging out at the Crush Can.
Sports bar theme upstairs. Speak Easy. Theme.
Speak. No, not Speak easy. Is it Speak Easy.
Yeah, that might be what it was called in 1920s. We're going old school. Gangster theme. Right. And so we've got cool vibes downstairs. Cocktails. We got upstairs sports bar beers. There's a stage. I'm going to do my song and dance. That, that night we got a great meal set up and then we have all these games. You could play shoot hoops. You can play Buck Hunter. You can.
There's 25 TVs. We'll see what's on for sports that night too. But it's, it's. And we got music. We got music on both levels as well. So it's going to be a party, right? We're going to kick it off. My buddies. Last year I, I went to Kurt, Tyler and Paul and I said, guys, you know, you're, you're coming to this conference and it was Drumheller last year and I'm like, what night are you going to go hard? Like you're away from home, you're going to learn, but what night are you going hard? And they're like first night. First night is go night because after the second night, you might be driving home that next day. So the first night's the go night. Well, that we are activating that night that is the what? The futures night. And we're going to give her on that night. All right, well, you're going to give her. I'm going to be in bed early. I got, I got stuff to do in the morning. I'm a busy guy at this conference. I got to be sharp. All right, so on Wednesday, breakfast, nice long breakfast hour. But we're even doing a little pre, little breakfast series so you can have your breakfast to come hang out with a couple speakers. They're going to do some talks, kind of some one on one on one stuff, some entry level beginner type stuff so that you know, you're like, all right, I know that stuff. I don't really have to do that or I don't want to really do that.
Then you can just be there for 9 o' clock because that's what I'm going to kick off the day. All right, then we got keynote, breakout, lunch, panel discussion, keynote, breakout, keynote and then wrap up for the day. So action pack for that.
What are we on there? Wednesday and then Thursday, same thing. You want to come for breakfast nice and early. Great little breakfast series. Come hang out with a few of us bright and early. I'll be taking one of those first spots, right? That's why I got to stay sharp because I'll be one of the first ones speaking for the day. 9am, set up the day, keynote, breakout, lunch, panel discussion, which everybody loved. The panel discussions. Last year we had to bring those back. Keynote, breakout and wrap up. So we're still tweaking the last of this. But anyways, so yeah, we got Sarah with triggergreen, Dwayne with Grain Metrics. We've got Simple Hedge there. We've got RBC teaming up with Nathan Kuhn for their presentation. Susan Stroud, Derek Deary, Terry Bettger, Deb with the Canadian center for Agricultural well Being.
Fritz, it's, it's going to be a good time, folks. All right, so application deadlines coming up here on Thanksgiving and Canadian Thanksgiving. And yeah, get, get to your spot. 40 left, guys. You've been warned. 40 left. All right, let's get into my discussion with Maury Micklidge from Progro again, folks. I gotta bring the agronomists on the show. I just, I don't know this stuff. So we have a great discussion. So let's get into it with Maury. I'll get back to you guys after with some crop marketing stuff.
All right, folks, we welcome back Maury Miklitch to the what the Futures Podcast. Maury, welcome back to the show. How you doing?
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Good. Glad to be back. Happy to see I didn't screw up my last one. Too bad to be able to make a return visit.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: I want to have you on sooner, but the summer just flew by. It flew right by. So did you have a good summer? How did everything go on the farm this harvest?
[00:16:08] Speaker B: Busy. You know, every year it's, you know, I'm gonna make an effort to golf more. And every time I've said that, I think I've golfed even less every recurring. So this year I got one round in, so it's been busy. Happy that the combine is parked and I can focus more on now. My soil samplers are rolling, the mappers rolling. It's. We're shifting from my focus not being on the farm to making sure everybody's doing their job. On my business side.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: Well, I was going to say. So my golf clubs have moved right there now by the door and I have not had it. I haven't done around either this year. So I'm attempting. Coal Creek closes October 14th, and I am attempting to try to get one round in before they close for the season. I've never golfed in October before, so I'm hoping to line up some good weather the month of October and get there before they. Before they close. So that's my goal.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: Maury, from what I've heard, you got a couple of weeks left. I think mid October. They were eyeballing shutting her down.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I, So I want to talk soil sampling. I want to talk about, you know, fertility and, and what, what you got going on for planning this fall. But before we jump to that is, it's, you know, you just parked the combine. There's still many people harvesting around us, but is there any learnings from 2025 yet? Like, does anything stand out from, from the agronomy side or from growing the crop this year in your area? Did anything kind of come to light?
[00:17:36] Speaker B: I said it last time. It's for the amount of panic we had in early June over. It's going to be a disaster. It's going to be drought. Like, we're not going to have a crop. It's patience. Like, we have never lost a crop in the first two weeks of June.
If we have, like, in my honest opinion, every year we've been dry up to that second week of June, you go back to 2023.
That's our best wheat crops up until this year.
So it's just patience and then just that.
We need more fertilizer. We need more fertilizer. This year has shown, like everyone likes to refer to that barrel, the big barrel of law, the minimum your yield is going to be dependent on the lowest nutrient available. Well, this year, I would say almost every year that's not the case. We run out of water before we run out of nutrients or we just get the sunlight. The sunlight is like an ax to the barrel. If it gets too hot, that's a big solid hole in that barrel and you're starting to leak water.
That's the biggest thing. Like I've kind of had a firm belief in it.
And then this year put that over the top like for the yields we pulled like the field. I put the lowest amount of fertilizer on my farm, gave us my best ever canola yield. So it's okay, you know, it's. You don't need to slog 455, 450 pounds of fertilizer. Get that.
It's all a combination of water and lack of heat, essentially.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah. So like, you know, over in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, they're talking about the smoke being the, the big benefactor, the crops being a big benefactor of the smoke. I didn't have a lot of smoke in my neck of the woods this year. I don't know if you did over at your place, but I just. It was a cooler summer. I don't know if I could sit here and say it was the smoke that led to these big crops. So any, any thoughts on that?
[00:19:34] Speaker B: We never really had any smoke. Like we had a few days, but nothing to really like. Nothing I can say saved it. It's. We never. I don't think we crossed 34 once.
Yeah, I think we sat around that 30, 31, which. Yeah, that might seem hot. But in for the crops like that allowed them to be able to root down fast enough and keep up with the moisture uptake until there was just no moisture left and they shut down. So we did.
[00:19:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:00] Speaker B: For as good as our crops were, I think we did leave a little bit because you could see it just in bushel weight and like canola seed size. It was really small at the end. We ran out of water. Like we just didn't get the.
They were. I sound bad because the crops were phenomenal, but if we would have just got another tenth or two, that probably would have Added five bushels.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: Like, yeah, no. Hearing some really, really good, strong success stories in a lot of areas right now. So.
So extra yield to help with these depressed commodity prices certainly doesn't hurt. So.
All right, Maury, so you're, you're working with farmers here across, you know, kind of north central northeast Alberta.
You're ramping up now.
Let's talk about what you got kind of on the go, what farmers across the prairies should be thinking about here as we park the combines and switch gears to fall work. Where does it start from a planning.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: Perspective, you ought to know, like, I got both my soil samplers running right now. The bottom line with what we're kind of facing going into 20, 26, if you don't know what kind of nutrients you have left, it's going to be a very expensive learning lesson on whether you didn't apply like enough or too much. It's. That's the base layer for fertilizer planning is just knowing what you have left over, if there is any left over and what you have kind of going on.
Any form of soil sampling. I rag on composite soil sampling quite a bit just because the resolution of that type of sampling is very low.
So I rag on it quite a bit. But just poke some holes, send some tests, see what you got going on. Like, like I told you earlier, most guys, on average, it's looking like there's going to be a 20 to $30 per acre increase on fertilizer costs for most guys coming into this year.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: And that's not even the only increase you're going to face.
There's going to be in crop increases, there's going to be other increases. It's getting that data to be able to see where you can make that piece of the pie maybe a little.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: Smaller from a soil sampling perspective here.
Do people sample these days every quarter section or do they kind of pick a few of, you know, with each crop? Like, what's the normal cadence out there.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: In my neck or is there one in my neck of woods? You have everything under the sun. You have some guys who've never ever really soil sampled some where like they don't want to sample everything. So I would recommend like you have five fields within a mile, pick two and kind of pot it. Treat them the same.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: Others do the full, like for guys who are vring. That's every field every year.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: So it's, there's everything out here. Like there's no pattern there. It's farmer to farm. It's all going to be different.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: Okay, so fair enough. So, you know, I'm just thinking here, like, you know, if I use our farm, for example, we had a fair variance in, in rain events and, you know, fair variance here and variability and yield. I feel like we're going to have different scenarios out there when it comes to planning.
Would you suggest, you know, kind of going into both scenarios and picking away at that or would you do something more aggressive?
[00:23:32] Speaker B: I guess it depends on the variants. Like out our way.
I'm pretty sure the pattern would be extremely consistent. In Alberta and Saskatchewan, you have your high ground, probably the poorest yield of the field. And then as you start going down that slope, the yields getting higher, higher, higher, you get into that toe to the very lowest point, into that little valley of a roll, highest field, and then it just keeps going back and forth. So it's more topography driven, I would say, like if you are just clamps. And so I'll probably do two. So I'll sample the high ground because that the rules of composite soil sampling are you avoid the extremes. You don't soil sample the high ground. You don't go to the poorest ground. You want to stay in that middle, you know, kind of, kind of the best ground. Essentially. That's, that's what you want to sample. So I would treat it as like I want the high ground sampled separately and then I want my good ground separately. And then you can kind of see the difference if that makes sense, that that would be the best way, like for guys who were, who were just doing that. That would probably be my recommendation is because that's where the, like you got to know where everything is. Especially this year. Like you do not want to be wasting.
Wasting fertilizer is going to hurt you this year.
[00:24:55] Speaker A: Like. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's bring in the mapping side to this then. So what, you know from like we use VR on, on our farm.
I have a side comment though, for later. I'm going to make a note of it here. But we're using VR on our farm, but from a mapping perspective, how does that come into play here? And is that something that we should like that you do every single year is go over that land and draw.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: Those maps the only way. So once it's mapped once.
So the brand of map I use or sell, it's called a swap map. So that stands for soil, water and topography. I own a few boxes and kind of support it myself.
So what happens is I go over with the box every 80ft. I drive across the field in swaths, map the field. The only way I'll remap it is say you've been doing it for 15 years.
It's the 15th year. It's like, okay, we've been using this same out long enough. It probably should be like, you don't need to remap it every year. The only times you remap is if it's been so long or if you've done some substantial draining or land work to that particular field where there's some substantial changes to the actual field itself. Beyond that, map it once you're good for probably a decade. Unless you, you like. In our case, I did remap a couple fields because after 2018, 2019, where we had like 70 inches of rain in two years, we just had some salt. It really brought some salt up.
So I remapped a couple fields that we had some water issues on. But beyond that, there's no mandatory needing to remap every year.
[00:26:38] Speaker A: Yeah, and that makes sense to me. If it, if you know, mother nature has an event that could influence change things, or you're out there doing, doing some, you know, manual changes yourself, that. That makes sense for sure.
Okay, so you know the setup here then for fall.
So you, if you don't have maps, you want to use variable rate, you have variable rate technology on your equipment. Go get some mapping done. That's kind of step one.
[00:27:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:06] Speaker A: And then step two, Step two would.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: Be I would ground truth it and then the sampler would roll out. So when I talk about ground truthing, it's so it gets mapped.
You. I'll have about 15 fields to choose from or 15 maps to choose from for that particular field. It's I ground truth it to pick the appropriate map. So when I talk appropriate map, there's weighting to it on these particular maps. I can weight it. Say you have a flat field.
Okay, maybe that'll be pretty much purely weighted to soil electroconductivity. Or you have a really rolly field. I want that weighted more to topography and water flow. I can kind of pick the weighting of what I think is influencing the field more and those zones more.
So I physically go out, pick the map, sample it, and then I get all the information back to be able to make a fertilizer plan for that particular field. Like the, the most important part, honestly, even above the mapping, is just ground truthing it. Because if you don't have the correct map, your zones could be. I wouldn't call them out of whack but just not accurate versus what is actually occurring in that field.
[00:28:23] Speaker A: Okay, that's a couple good points there. It's not just set at one specific map and away you go. You can have some influences based on what's out there.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: And it's never just a set it and forget it thing.
The map will continually evolve. Let's say after two years, you know, it just doesn't seem to be fitting. You can mod it. You can pick a different map. Like there's never. Okay, this is our map for the 10 years should not. It does not function that way.
[00:28:56] Speaker A: Okay.
Okay.
So when you're, when you're out there. So we're thinking about 2026 now from not every grower out there, but many growers are seeing 2025 some yield boost.
You know, from a financial perspective with low prices, it's helping.
Again, not everyone's seeing the yield boost, but, you know, many, many are across the prairies.
When you go to tackle fertility for next year, you know, do you find that in your work that you are looking to, you know, increase, increase what we're applying and, and go big and do more, or do you find that in your work you're focusing on, you know, efficient less. Maybe efficient's not the right word, but less cost per acre. Like how does. Is. Is there fine balance there? How do you look at that?
[00:29:49] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a combination of both. So the realistically that the nice part about it is, so this year especially it's say you've been applying £40 of actual foss.
That's going to be super expensive this year. So you want to cut it down to 30. The goal of it is I still want to be able to juice the land that I know is going to use it and I'm going to get the crop from it while pulling back from the areas of higher risk. It's risk management essentially at all. It is we're peeling away from the areas where giving it 40 actual pounds of foss is extremely risky. Likely payback on that ton is low. We're going to peel back from those spots and likely this year pocket that tonnage saving and then continually like might even go above 40 pounds of actual foss in, in the areas that we're pushing it. And we want that foss to help drive maturity and just evenness.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:47] Speaker B: So it's a combination of both. You can do either it's, I want to push it, that's totally fine. But this particular year it's just a cost management tool and risk management Tool like I would like to call it a risk management map this year essentially. Like with how draw. This is the driest I've ever seen our land in the fall. It is scary, honestly. So would I want to be fertilizing my upper slopes and top hilltops just like everything else? No, because that is the yield potential on that if we don't get a good snow. Right is already limited starting now.
[00:31:29] Speaker A: Yeah, okay. No, fair enough. Good comment. Put it in the right spots. Yeah. This is a bit of a loaded question for you. I'm going to put you on the spot on this one. But are, are all VR programs, variable rate programs, mapping that are out there across the prairies, are they all pretty much the same or is there some ones that are like this is poor and okay, this stuff better or like.
[00:31:55] Speaker B: There'S a conversation, there's a combination. So what you have, you have a few companies who just do NDVI imaging and either pair it with lidar or it's just a straight out vegetation map and they combine it with a yield map to give you a map. Those, I would say they're cheap, extremely low resolution.
It all goes down to the resolution a farmer is wanting out of his map. If you want low investment, just give me two, three zones that I can change. Those might be a fit the accuracy because I, I attack those quite heavily when I, when I'm talking to people. I have maps that even the NDV like, it's just not accurate.
So like I said, if you're, if you just want cheap, low resolution, those are good options. Like better than nothing. And then anyone who is using like an EM38 or getting soilyc better quality, nice. Like those are good, good solid maps. More expensive.
And then yeah, it just comes into how they're building the map off of that. So like the SWAT model really uses that water move. Like the topography and water flow. Like it's essentially a water map.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: Because that is for us, that's our driver is water.
So it's, it's a little more high resolution rather than just the straight EC and a bit of elevation modeling.
[00:33:19] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:33:20] Speaker B: There is various stages. There is no like, honestly at this point I would say there is no wrong choice because any little bit will save you some. Like even just the manual flick the switch, turn on off yourself. Like that's still better than nothing.
[00:33:38] Speaker A: Yep. What are fertilizer prices doing in your area? Are they holding steady now?
[00:33:42] Speaker B: Are they holding. They come down. Yeah, they come down a smidge. Urea, I think came down 20 or $30 a ton at the farm gate. But it's been quite, it's been eerily quiet now.
So there, there was that usual kind of July, August push and now that the combines have been rolling it's been, it's been cool. Like I'm expecting a push now because retails are going to want cash flow coming into Christmas, coming into that January 1st.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: So I think the, the news is the, the gossip and the, the price shopping is really going to start to low now. But yeah, yeah, you're looking at urea right now is starting with an eight boss, if you're lucky is in the high 12.
More likely 13. So it's, it's.
I don't know if I would call it ugly but it's scary. Like that's a big chunk. Your bottom line. You're just putting in fertilizer for something you don't even know is going to give you like is it going to give you positive return on investment?
[00:34:40] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and it's you know, like you said off the hop, you know, for a lot of folks that bought early last year for the 25 crop, you know that 25, $30 an acre increase here in an environment that from a crop marketing perspective, you know, from selling this stuff. Yeah there's, you know, there's some question marks on profitability out there. So it's.
Yeah. No guarantees on the yield side. From a fall work perspective, do you think that growers are going to get out there in the month of October and get a bunch of this applied in the fall or with the high price and the dryness out there, do you think people will sit back a little bit?
[00:35:21] Speaker B: Honestly, fall and hydrous is priced extremely sharp. But how much risk are you willing to take with how dry? I would not like with how dry it is, I would be scared to be doing fall gas.
There'll be fines put down like there always is.
Yeah, but that, that doesn't really. The moisture fact, that's not really a factor for fines.
It's just for guys who are looking at that how sharp the price is on, on fall gas out in our like I don't want to speak for Saskatchewan, Manitoba, but in east central Alberta, if you're putting juice down right now, you're probably losing 20%, 25, you're probably in a quarter of it just because the ground won't seal and it is going to gas out.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah, I'll, I'm. We're supposed to get some mixed weather here so I don't know what that brings with it, but fingers crossed that we get. Get some nice October rains here, even though it'll slow down, feel a little bit.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: So, like out here where I'm sampling right now, I'm doing some cores that are a foot deep.
The first 8 inches. The core doesn't even want to hold together. It's just powder.
[00:36:27] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah.
And for those listening, you are out of the, the Holden Alberta region. So you're kind of that North Central. I don't know if we got North.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: Central, East Central, East Central, whatever you want to call it. Yeah, but it's. Yeah. When I'm taking cores that deep and I'm seeing it's that dry, that deep, we need some serious help come October, November, through the winter, if we don't have a lot of snow, not a very good feeling heading in the spring.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: Well, my weather guy said to plan two winter vacations this year because there's going to be.
It's going to be a very cold winter with a lot of snow. So just plan those two vacations, Maury. You know, make sure you head out to, to Boston or New York to watch your, watch your Blue Jays play here in the playoffs and, and then get another one on the books because it's going to be a cold winter. So we'll see. Fingers crossed for some moisture.
All right, man. Well, I appreciate you jumping on the show here once again. I was just going to say for us the puzzle that we need to solve. So we have two drills.
The one drill, the canola yields are down significantly compared to the other drill. And so it should be easy enough to figure out what to do. But that's, that's on our minds here as we a wrap up harvest on the farm this week. So. Haven't seen it like this before. We've been running these drills for a couple years now and.
But the old one, something's going on. It's certainly seeing that yield drag. So.
[00:38:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that, that'll be a fun one to track down. I know, like out our way. I know like plant density. If a person's cow factor was out just a smidge and you overseeded. You saw it, we figured we had, we switched to one canola variety.
We figured by being about two and a half plants too thick, it cost us two bushels just out of seed weight. And that lower percentage of moisture per plant just carried like it just did not have the water to sustain that high plant population.
[00:38:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
All right.
All right, Maury, anything else you want to leave us with today?
[00:38:42] Speaker B: No, I think I have been a big enough downer for today that I, I think I've said enough. So cautiously optimistic, but still very worried now.
[00:38:54] Speaker A: We appreciate it, we appreciate the honesty and you gave us some good tips here for some fall planning. So appreciate that, Maury. And we'll get you on here. We'll try to get you on before it, before the ground freezes up. All right? How can people get a hold of you, Mario? Let's throw that in there.
[00:39:10] Speaker B: Usually like, I think my phone number is listed on my website. Pro grow catch Twitter. Just DM me on Twitter kind of wherever. If you find me somewhere, Twitter, LinkedIn.
Just through the website, my number's posted. Just text me DM me.
Or if you know, if you, you're friends with a customer I deal with, just ask for my number and pretty, just let me know who you are.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: You bet.
Sounds good. All right, man, thanks again. Have a good week.
[00:39:42] Speaker B: Yeah, you too, Ryan. Thank you.
[00:39:46] Speaker A: Alrighty fol folks, always, always learn something when Maury comes on the show. So we'll have him on here again in short order. All right, so positive moments for this week. Positive moment for the week. You know, I, I, I've been talking a lot about Finn's potty training and you know Finn, it's been going fantastic. We've had, we're on a streak here of, of no, no accidents, right? We're on the streak now of no accidents. So it's like day five, day six, no accidents. He's crushing it. Doing, doing great. It's just with that comes confidence. With that comes, you know, the ability to do more and, and the pride as well. And so, you know, it's just great to see him flourish in this, in this environment. And it's been a lot of fun. Willis, she's been sick this week, so of course, you know, you get going at school and all that stuff happens. But uh, but we had a great, great time at, at her birthday. We went to, to Gabby Cat the movie. And folks like, if you, if you've got little ones, it's hard. Like going to the movies I find is, is really hard. Like it's, I think when you probably get to like 6, 7, 8, you know, 8, 9, 10 is a lot easier. But to find a movie for a almost three year old and a five year old to watch at the theater is, is a challenge. So Gabby Cat, I'm just gonna give it, I'm gonna give it a strong review and if you want to do something with your littles it definitely did the trick for us. We played the arcade. It was all. It was fun. We had a good time. And then my last positive moment here is my wife is doing fall cleaning. And, like, it's like the purge going on in our household. And so, you know, my pause of moment is just.
I just. I'm involved, but I'm also. I just got to keep the peace, all right? Because my wife is in a.
In mode right now where things are leaving this house, and not everybody's appreciating it, all right? So I'm. I'm the peacekeeper trying to stay out of the way, trying to stay on her good side while we go through our fall cleaning. So lots of action at the Denis household here this week. So that's my positive moments.
All right, Crop marketing here, guys. I weed futures.
New low this week. Canola futures, five handle. Right? I haven't seen that for the last number of months. This is harvest pressure. This is how. This is how it goes. Right? But what I want to just say here is that I see out there, especially in the canola market, I see the frustration. And you could be mad and be poed about what's going on when it comes to politics and what's going on when it comes to trade. Totally fair.
Totally fair and totally honest, right? To be upset about that. But we're getting some signals here that you need to pay close attention to for your farm, because you may be very, very upset, but you still. You might have to pay some bills, all right?
And I know, like, for our farm and for a lot of the farms I talk to that, you know, the. The cash has to flow pretty regularly throughout the winter months. And when I went to pick up the phone here this week to try to make a canola sale, you know, though, the one crush plant said, hey, that's fantastic. We'll see you in the new year. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't. Not. Not the new year. I don't want the new year. Nobody said the new year. And she's like, well, we're full until the new year, so happy new year.
And then I talked to another crush plant, and they said, well, you know, we still have some room for December, but their basis has gotten worse as well, and they're a little behind. They actually take dragging contracts, September contracts getting dragged into October and not a small amount. So my December contract, right. I may.
I may not. You know, it might move that month, but it could drag as well. So, you know, like, there, there's some things. So I'm like, ah, no problem. I'm gonna start phone around, I'm gonna find a. A November sale somewhere. I couldn't do it. Like, I couldn't figure out how to do it and feel good about it, that's for sure. So, you know, like, if you farm up in the piece, if you farm around Yorkton, Saskatchewan. I remember the Yorkton guys back in the, in the day when I was doing some advising.
They. They just kind of laugh at me when I'd be like, oh, it's way on basis. It's. It's going to get bullish. And they're like, no, it's fall in New York and Saskatchewan, Ryan, we have to book that up because if we don't, it's gone. It's going to be sold out. Well, we're kind of seeing that in a larger scale. Right.
And yeah. Will we get some export business for canola? 100. A hundred percent? We will, yes. But we're a little bit backlogged here and we're getting some signals. And I don't want you to go and get mad and get frustrated and not do anything and have it cause you more pain and you more grief. Like, you can go and make if February cash flow is important to you and you have to move Canola, like, go out there and get your deals done. April, May, June. Yeah, don't worry. You know, be. Want to be bullish those months, fine. But we're already October line companies are saying, like, they have not moved the grain. They normally move like, the tonnage. They normally move like, we're a little behind. I'm not going to argue with you about if there's a crop out there or not. I know. You know, Twitter is always full of. Or X is full of folks saying, oh, this is baloney. These yields aren't out there. The crop's not even on the bin. Sure, true.
But I talk to a lot of people and I see a lot of information and yeah, there's a crop out there, guys. You may not want to believe it or you may not be happy with it, but yeah, there's a crop carryover is going higher next year, especially for Canola. All right? So I just. You could be mad, you could be upset, but don't forget, like, the market's giving you signals here and you may need to take action. If cash flow is fine and you can hold all this stuff to next summer, then don't worry about it. You don't have to worry about it as much as I need to worry about it right now. But if you got to pay your crop input loan in February or late January or March, you got to get going here. You got to get organized. And people have taken their crop, thrown it in the bin, and they said, we're going to lock up the bin, and that's fine. Your yellow P market is on the rebound because of that. Your lentil market is on the rebound because of that. Green peas, all. All the pulses. Right? But I just. I don't know, guys. I. I don't forget that if you need to put money in the bank, you gotta be out there, figure out your plan. And there may be signals here that you have to do. You have to execute on some stuff. Alrighty. Okay. Canola basis getting nasty out there. Okay. It's gonna get a little uglier yet again. I said futures. I know a lot of folks looking at 600, hoping that holds in this environment, you know, even as of recording here today, Canola if hits a five handle, Trump puts out a tweet that rallies soybeans and bean oil and it pulls Canola up with it temporarily. By the time you listen to this, are we gonna be above 600 on the nav contract? I hope so. But you look at that trend line, trend is your friend. If we break below 600, then 580 is in there, 570 is in there. I didn't want to look further than that. Okay. But I expect we are going to flirt with that at least for a little bit. Hopefully we're running out of time. Hopefully. The harvest low has to hit us sooner than later. But Trump's not meeting with XI for another four weeks.
The government shutdown is going to keep everybody in the dark here, which may be good or bad. We'll see from the US USDA side and the sales. But yeah, to me, it still could be dark for at least another week or so here. I look and I see in the past we have October, November rallies. I see that, folks, but you may want to lock in some basis with Canola and then get ready for that future rally. That might be the. The play you want to consider. You may want to lock it up and say, you know what? I'm just going to buy call options and be bullish the futures. So I know you want to get angry. It's okay to get angry. But anyway, okay, keep moving here. Canola base was getting. Canola basis was getting ugly.
Feed barley after stability for weeks drops five bucks a ton in lethbridge so not sure if that's a result of US corn harvest or what, but did see that this week.
Yellow peas trading $8 in Alberta, mid sevens in Saskatchewan. The rebound is there. I'm probably going to sell a little bit of yellow peas in that 750 to $8 region.
You know, I'd say I probably have two to three sales left and I think I'll take one of these green peas, not so much. I'm staying a bit patient there. Same thing with maples. Staying a little bit patient on those ones as well. Just for the most part on the farms I work with, they're smaller acres and we have those really good first sales done and like, yeah, not much left, so just the ability to stay patient. So. So staying patient there.
Oat prices. I was, I said this on the live show Wednesday, but there's like a, a violin playing. I was reading the sad story about how oat prices feed. Oats were down to two bucks in parts of Saskatchewan. Milling price was around three and I. And then in Alberta, the prices were climbing. I'm like, we just gained 20 cents in Alberta, 25 cents. We got fours out there. And so, hey, if you're out in sas, you may want to look west right now and little arbitrage opportunity. You can move oats a long ways for a buck.
So maybe take a peek at what you see there. And I think there's still some question marks around that oat quality from a wheat perspective, folks.
Yeah, that's, that's about what I think of that. A blank page on wheat. I look at the time of year and you think, well, Kansas wheat, winter wheat's going to rally. We had that small grains report from the USDA this week.
Didn't get any favors.
Didn't get any favors from, from anybody from a wheat market perspective. But yeah, we have strong demand.
We have a Canadian dollar or the Canadian dollar US Dollar exchange that is favorable towards a better wheat basis. Wheat basis has been improving across the prairies and the futures are not doing us any favors. And we broke through some pretty, I call them significant support lines this week. And so now I look here and say, well, Jesus, you know, maybe this is going to go down another 30, 40 cents here. I hope not. But we broke through support and I'm looking for the next one. And that's where I find them. 30, 35, 40 cents lower. And so I was chatting with the lunchbox crew, you know, this week, saying, guys, I, I think we got to sell some wheat here. Number one, the Company wants to buy it. Number two, the basis is pretty darn strong. And number three, futures are not showing any, any signs of recovery right now at all. And so will that company want to keep buying it as much as they want to right now? Will that continue? Well, hopefully. But if that ever went away, holy smokes. Basis gets worse with these futures. Like, it's a little bit scary. And on the alternative you could say, well, Ryan, you know, that basis is going to keep improving, that demand's going to be there. Then you might just want to lock in some March futures, lock in some May futures and wait for that basis. You know, we actually did some of that where we said, hey, you know what, let's just lock in these futures and when they have the special for the train, we'll lock in that basis at the time and see what happens. See if we can pick up 25 cents with that strategy. All right. You know, I, I'm not one to harp on people about like tools and having a brokerage account or having that in your toolbox, but I tell you folks, when I do my speech, my talk in Moose Jaw, a well funded brokerage account, like the average canola price that I'm seeing for farms with, with a hedge account funded brokerage account is incredible compared to where we're at. The ability to go and move wheat without much concern because you know, you can be bullish by buying back futures or buying a call option like it's peace of mind is incredible. I know it's not for everybody. I know people don't like it at times. I know it can be extra, you know, add stress, but to me it relieves stress. It, it makes, it makes it. It's like you can see the field better. You could see the play better. You can see what's going on and you can say, if this happens, this is my move. If that happens, I can do this.
It, it's, to me, it's a game changer. So yeah, we'll talk about more of that in, in Moosha.
All right, folks, for eating your veggies this week, let's do this.
Number one, apply for your crop marketing Made cool conference ticket.
All right?
Number one, just apply for it. You don't have to buy it. You can apply have that available to you. That deadline's coming up. Number two, dust off your crop marketing plan before Thanksgiving. What is your plan moving forward? Yes, you can move feed barley. Yes, you can move yellow peas. Yes, you can move wheat. Should you be moving wheat? Should you be looking at that because if your plan is to move Canola by Christmas, you gotta get on the horn. You gotta figure out how to pull that stunt off, because it's not that easy for parts of the prairies now, all right? Basis is getting ugly. So dust off your crop marketing plan. And number three, while you're doing that, don't forget about cash flow. Figure out what you need for cash for the next four or five months here, honestly, going into spring. And when do you need to get your grain moved by, get that down so that you can come up with your strategies to execute again, folks, I'm not. You know, you don't have to join the lunchbox group by any means. You don't have to.
You could just do this and do a great job on your own. But if you're looking for some peace of mind on strategies and how to tackle this stuff, you know, reach out. Ryan to Nina. That's it. All right? I'm not saying it's perfect. It's not perfect, all right?
But I'm told it helps. Okay. All right, folks, let's leave it at that for eating your veggies for this week. All right, folks, we. We're getting down to the last couple weeks here of the. The Harvest Hustle contest. We. We've had a flurry of entries.
So this, of course, is to go and, well, fly into Halifax, Nova Scotia, and go see the Canadian Curling Olympic Trials. All right, so ryandenee CA contests, that's where you submit your pictures.
And I'm just scrolling down here.
There we go. Yeah, we got a bunch if you go take a look. Amanda's been putting all the pictures up here and some nice descriptions from a bunch of farms as well. So keep.
Yeah, keep, Keep going. Folks, we are a couple of weeks away, and beautiful, beautiful shots here. All right? It's actually taking some time to load now because there's so many pictures popping up. Your odds are still unbelievable. We're talking flights, hotel, tickets to every single draw. And you guys know I told you already.
Maybe bring some family members with you, split them up. It's a lot of curling. Three meals a day in the VIP lounge.
We even have a chauffeur. We've got the guy.
All right, we got jeff with aguy3. Halifax local. Local guy's gonna pick you up from the airport. And actually, Kyle with a guy 3 is gonna join me next week. We're gonna talk, talk about it a little bit. Some valet service. All right? So a ton of fun, and all you have to do is Submit your harvest pictures. We got some beauties in here, folks. And we're gonna draw for that in like, the next couple weeks, the next two to three weeks here. All righty. There we go. We got Anaheim, Saskatchewan.
I remember, I think we hauled hogs just outside of Anaheim back in the day. We've got a farm. Labross. Labross Farm, northeast Saskatchewan.
We got Johnny Kaufman's got some pictures there onaway. Alberta Silversmith Farms. There we go. Buy more Alberta.
Anyway, southern Saskatchewan. We got Kaminicki Farms in northern Alberta. Just a pile of great pictures there. So check that out on the website and of course, submit yours so you have a chance to win this curling trip down to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Well, folks, I, you know, I've been talking about a lot about harvest, profit and John Deere operations center. And again, folks, this is the 20, 25 crop was the.
The most that I've used technology, used that technology, used those platforms, like just to help. Again. My role on the farm is about crop marketing. My role on the farm is about, you know, input, buying decisions. Like, that's where my. I'm the number. I do the number stuff, right? And as things are happening and as things were were, you know, yields were coming in, scenarios were changing.
For me, it was just really, really easy to continue to plan for the next year and to see some of the stuff going on, you know, from a big picture perspective.
And again, folks, every farm is unique and every situation is unique. Now we're going to dive in and analyze some of the data. We've got a few different things that happen that we want to figure out and sort out. But I know that as harvest continued, it wasn't an easy harvest for the farm.
I'm not sure if any of them actually are, but big breakdowns, big repair bills, you know, big things happened during harvest.
But even with all that, we just felt better as we. As we continued. Yields will do that. A boost in yield will do that. And again, I'm the one here crying wolf from the spring drought. All right, I took my. My kids. So where do we get our camper serviced?
Is west of Edmonton. Like these guys. You know how it is when you get good service, you stay there, right? And so we're pull the trailer over there for some fall service because I want to be ready to rock and roll in spring. I don't want to mess around. I want to get it done now because we got a record to break. I think we did 32 nights in the camp, but we got to break that record. Next year, right? So I'm ready to rock and roll. Anyways, we had some time to kill and so I said, told the kids, I'm like, let's go to the John Deere dealership and let's go see what. What's going on over there. I don't know why I didn't have my camera out to record Finley, but this was his first time in this specific dealership where you usually go to the one across town. And this is the one with the stuff. This is the one with the toys and the clothing and it's incredible. It's so well stocked. Well, that kid was basically. He was screaming as he ran aisle through aisle to aisle. And he was just pointing at things and just yelling, yelling, sprayer, Grandpa Sammy and running around this store. It was quiet in there. We were basically the only ones in there. And Finley was running laps, Willa was in there running laps, and. And Finley was just wild with everything. And then of course, we gotta take something home. So they had a wall with all the. I can't remember the, the ratio, this, the series, but this entire wall. And I'm like, kid, kids, you can each pick one off there. We were short, we're shy on loader tractors, did our toys. So we got a drawn to a loader tractor and Willa picked out her own skid steer and truck.
Finley has about five skid steers. Willa didn't have one, so now she has her own skid skid steer. So the cool thing is I used to work at this dealership as well. So I got show the kids where I worked. And honestly, not a lot had changed. Not a lot had changed in there, so. So that was fun. All right, folks, well, I appreciate you hanging out with me this week for episode 95. We're cruising towards 100. I gotta figure out what to do for episode 100. If you have ideas, let me know. Be nice to do like a on location type thing, but I guess I have a month to figure that out. If you enjoyed this week's episode, please share it with your friends, your neighbors. You guys are doing the heavy lifting out there, guys, because our YouTube subscriptions are up a pile, we hit a new high for amount of listens on a Friday. So I get to kind of see that we're listen to now in 25 countries.
And yes, even if you listen to it once while on vacation in New Zealand, it came up. So I'm counting that.
But 25 countries and yeah, you guys are doing the heavy lifting. So I appreciate that. I appreciate you sharing the show.
Any ideas? I have a new guest next week. We're going to talk NHL hockey with the Nation Network, and I got a few different guests here joining us for season three. So thanks to a bunch of folks. Episode 95 for the what the Futures podcast. My name is Ryan, and I'm out of here.
