Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Good morning. Anybody that's able to join us on a live stream. I'm sure you're expecting to see Ryan this morning, but my name is Sarah Koshay.
I run Trigger Grain Marketing. And Ryan gets to have a little bit of time off with his family this week and he asked me to step in and help out and run cup of coffee so that you guys don't have to miss it. So thanks for joining me today.
We'll get into the future's moves this morning and then I'll bring in our very special guest. So Canola, we've got nav canola up $1.40 at the moment at 745.50. Spring wheat is down almost 6 cents on September and Kansas is down 5 cents. Unfortunately, Canadian dollars just down a hair.
Corn is just down a half a penny and soybeans are up 2 cents. So crude oil's down just about a dollar a barrel. Yeah, it's not a whole lot. For market moving news this morning. We had the U.S. crop ratings out yesterday and spring wheat slipped by 1%. Good to excellent. But corn and soybeans stayed the same and they are quite good. Winter wheat harvest moved up to 40%.
And other than that, the whole world's just kind of watching weather risk here in the States, in the eu they're experiencing some extreme heat and the Strait of Hormuz opening. So hopefully opening.
I'm going to go ahead and bring in our guests so we can. We got quite a few questions that came in and we should be able to get right into them.
Good morning, Josh.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Hi, Sarah. Thanks for having me on.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: Yes. So everybody who doesn't know this is Josh Jurich. He's a regional marketing manager at Bunge and I got the opportunity to see him last week in Unity.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a fantastic event. A couple of months ago, end of 2025, we had purchased Northwest Terminal, the elevator in Unity, and we've been operating it since November, but wanted to have an official event just to celebrate the customers and the Bungie name, I guess, formerly by Terra. Being back in that Unity district, It's been over 10 years. So really excited to be back in there. We've really hit the ground running and the producers have really welcomed us with open arms. So it's been fantastic. It's been a blur here for the last few months.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's such an important location for Unity producers to have back up and running. So it's really awesome to see you guys there.
Josh, he's like my Go to Guy. I'm sure you wouldn't like it if everybody called you instead of their green buyer, but Josh is handy to have around, that's for sure. Let's get into some questions that some farmers sent in over the weekend. The first one came in that was how many acres are flooded or went unseeded? So for, to the best of my knowledge, I went off of the Alberta Sask and Manitoba crop reports, and it looks like basically, as of last week, there was 3% across the Prairies still left unseeded, which should equate about 2 million metric tons or 2 million acres and 2 million metric tons of potential production. And I would say based on what's been going on, weather wise, that's likely to stay unseated for most places. What kind of numbers did you find, Josh?
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think we're going to get a break in the weather.
Based off of our estimates here, we have 200,000 that were flooded out.
So not necessarily due to factors of not being seated due to rain or other things, but we have about 200,000, which is significant.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: There are some places that in the last week have gotten an outrageous amount of rain.
So I feel for, yeah, really feel for those producers. I would imagine that number of flooded acres could even go up from, from there.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: But absolutely, you know, for, for us as a, as a company, we, we like to work closely with the growers and, you know, we'll try and update and keep the information as current as possible.
So, you know, more to come. Obviously, I think this week we've got another couple inches expected. Right. So there's lots of things going on. Some heat would definitely be welcomed.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: But yeah, I think that's, that's exactly what our crops need right now. I mean, the places that aren't absolutely flooded did get a little nice shot of moisture, but things seem to have slowed right down due to the lack of heat and sunshine. So that's what we're hoping for.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Yeah, the, the only thing I, you know, that I would say is we're dryland farmers. So at the end of the day, year over year, rain seems to be our limiting factor. So we've got that.
We know the heat's going to come. We live in Saskatchewan, Alberta.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: They love to say rain makes grain. So unfortunately, the market hasn't really picked up on any positivity yet.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we know what's going to come. It's going to get hot at some point here.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: Yeah, so that kind of leads into the next question that was Sent in, which is an interesting one. Should I be buying out canola contracts today since I'm in a flooded area? I will let you answer first on that one if you don't mind, and then I'll take it from there.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I think, I think it's a bit of a loaded question. You know, if, if it was my team or, or myself working with a producer, I'd have to ask a lot more questions. Where you're, all your crops affected? How many acres of canola were affected? Do you have unaffected acres? I'm assuming that if you, you know, if you made the commitment to sign up new crop tons over the last little bit here, it's probably a pretty good value. So just. I'd have to work through that with the producer, figure out a little bit more information.
[00:06:03] Speaker A: But yeah, for sure.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I would encourage, I would encourage the grower to work with his company that he signed up with.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: That would be. My first thought is you need to do some hard penciling and see, you know, know exactly how far along soldier know exactly. Try to figure out what your, your production risk is going to be like based on your flooded acres versus the highland acres, like how short you could possibly be. Start the conversation with your grain company sooner than later so that they're aware and like Ryan says, document everything.
So that's kind of all you can do at this point. I wouldn't get too excited about buybacks, but you definitely need to be aware of what, what your risk is at this point.
Sharpen that pencil. The next question that came in is that urea prices have dropped. Is it time to buy? And I would like to just say I did end up watching Ryan. Ryan had Josh Linville on last week and that should be posted on his YouTube. And if you, if the person who asked the question missed that, that would be the first place to start for some really, really in depth opinions on where the fertilizer market might be going. I think like the last quotes I heard were somewhere in the 750 to 780 range for summer filuria. And on my own farm, I'm seriously considering that we don't ever get summer fill. We always wait till the fall. But the way price, where prices have been and the fact that they've come down to that and that can be profitable on my own farm. It's, it's a serious conversation. Don't sleep on it. Definitely like look at it. Talk to your reps, make a decision, maybe layer in a little bit, maybe don't if you can do like not a hundred percent, but see what makes sense for you. But I think there's some valuable information in Ryan's podcast on Friday about that.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: I wouldn't add too much, Sarah. I'm no fertilizer expert by any stretch, so I think the biggest thing is lean on your reps and the subject matter experts and, and make a decision that's good for your farm. At the end of the day, you guys all know your numbers, you know what's profitable, you know what's the recipe for success. So utilize the people around you.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: Yep, makes sense to me. We'll say it's really nice to not be staring at a thousand dollar plus urea price for the first time in months. So it, I think takes a little bit of the edge off on the farm.
We also had somebody ask, where is Canola going now? It's a million dollar question. Is $800 possible again?
Any thoughts on that, Josh?
[00:08:44] Speaker B: It's a loaded question. You know, I, I've learned in the years that I've done this that never say never, because if I told you today that it was never going to go to 800, then it probably would tomorrow, right? That seems to be how it goes, but absolutely.
We live in a world of uncertainty and volatility and political factors drive the market more than anything else.
So could it happen? For sure. What's it going to take? I think you're going to have to see this. U.S. iran peace talks really go down the gutter and kind of flip direction on where it's going.
A crop wreck in Canada, a crop wreck in the U.S. those are, those are the biggest things we're watching for today. The typical verbiage we have is you're watching for a Black Swan event.
And when I look at bar chart, I know you're a bar chart fan, Sarah. It's.
You look at the last 10 years of data. You know, prior to the Russian war, we were kind of floating around that 400 to 500. The Russian war hits were over a thousand bucks. And, and then even, you know, more recently, up until basically the worst, the straight up abuse started, we really couldn't break that 750. Right. So it's 800 is a tough number. I think you've got a lot of resistance to work through along the way and you're really just watching for major, major events to happen to get back up there. But I don't ever say, no, it can't happen because that's just, there's too many different things going on globally that play into the market.
[00:10:33] Speaker A: So for sure, my thoughts is that all the biofuel positivity should have at least moved up the floor a fair bit. And that's probably what enabled us to hit that $800 in the last month. I'm not ruling it out again, but it's going to take, like you said, another, another risk. Like we've got the positivity now we need, we don't need, but another crop risk. And there may be that story building right now in Europe.
They are absolutely cooking over there and their rapeseed crop is not insignificant whatsoever. So. And we don't have, I don't feel like we have the makings for a monster crop right now. Everybody. You know, rain makes grain.
We've got the moisture. We just need, you know, the acres to actually grow that aren't absolutely underwater. But I think, I think if we hit it again in the next six months, it's going to be on a. The weather. The weather risk or production risk.
And I'm not ruling it out. I think it's, it's very possible. So I don't want to get anybody too bulled up because you can't sleep on the fact that where canola is right now is also profitable. You can't just hold out for that 800 number when you're, you know, staring 750 down.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: So the one thing I'll add to is, you know, there's, there's lots of different contracts that'll give you significant premiums. We do a chart, a contract called the Daily plus Target.
So even if you're close, let's say some different things happen and we're 780 or 790, you know, maybe even 770, depending on how far you go out, we can get you closer to that 800 level on some different contracts. So I encourage you to reach out to your buggy rep and have a conversation about it because we've, we've signed up a lot of eight hundred dollar canola in the last, you know, month or so here. That's all contracts.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: That is a really good option to have. It pays to know all of your specialty contract options. Last year at Ryan's, the what the Futures Podcast conference, Cop Marketing Made Cool conference, I did a whole presentation on all the different fancy contract options. And there are a lot out there than what people realize. And some of them are great and some of them are over complicated.
So who's the best person? Like if they're phoning their bungee location, they just talk to like their normal rep and they should be able to talk them through that stuff.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So wherever you are, we have 70 elevators across Western Canada.
We've done a ton of training with our group here over the last couple months just as we've implemented these contracts. So it's, it's a, you're buying futures, right?
Yeah. So it's a good opportunity. We work with our team in Omaha and they will, they can customize them, you know, if the quotes aren't exactly what you're looking for, like I was telling you, Sarah, there's lots of variations. Right. So your top end ones are a little bit riskier. Your lower end ones are, are quite risk averse. So lots of different options. I think it's just having a conversation and figuring out what's best for your farm and then executing on that.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: That makes sense. It's definitely worth a conversation. That also leads into. When you said you've got 70 locations, I actually didn't know that. That's a lot. The last question that came in was about Cargill buying three Grains Connect locations from pnh.
Is this a good or a bad thing? And I am surprised to hear that news that, I mean, the PNH purchase didn't get announced all that long ago for Cargill, for it to be flipping to Cargill. So the one makes sense because it was referred Grains Connect and the competition bureau said they can't operate that because they have PNH and Wilkie or whatever. So the one makes perfect sense to get sold to somebody like Cargo. That'll probably be a great addition in that area. But the other two that are going to Cargo are Beggarville and Huxley.
Just crazy to me. And PNH is going to keep the Maymont one, is that right?
[00:14:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I won't add too much. I think at the end of the day competition is good for the farmer. Right. So it keeps the grain companies competitive and Cargill's a massive, massive player in the industry.
So I don't have much more to add, but I think again, it's competition's good and you want a reliable elevator in there to sell into and have others compete against.
[00:15:20] Speaker A: So absolutely, in some ways it makes a lot of sense in some of the areas. But I'm not super familiar with, you know, Huxley or if you're wondering like who's better to deal with on a day to day basis. I've had the exact same experience dealing with Cargill and pnh. I can't say I would Prefer one or the over the other. It's all going to come down to who's actually working in that location, who's running it. So yeah, it could probably go either way. And I, I hope it's, I hope it's positive in each of those locations, but a little bit of a shocker. It'll be strange to see grains connect. Leave the space too, kind of. They've been around for long enough. We've kind of gotten used to them too. So we are coming up pretty close to our time here. But we probably have time to touch on one or two more points. Nobody else put any live questions in, so do you have anything interesting to add? Josh, what's your week look like coming up here?
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Lots of travel again this week.
We're currently in the stages of doing all of our customer appreciation barbecues. So we try and have one of those at every one of our facilities just to represent and honor the customers that deal with us and give them a day that we cook some burgers and have a visit, have coffee. We think it's super important to continue to build the relationships. I think that's one thing that you probably caught on with me is we're very relationship based and my team, I really try and push them to be present and get on farm with growers or have them come into the elevators. We want to know who we're doing dealing with and we want to provide the best customer service possible. So that's a big thing for us. And then, yeah, we, we get trucks in July or June and July and we try and get out on farm, like I said, as much as possible just to go see guys.
I think that's one thing that's got a little bit away in the grain industry and we want to get back to that and just make sure that we, we know who we're dealing with firsthand.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: That's awesome. So if you have a bungee location near you, you should reach out to them and bug them about when their barbecue is. You can go have a free burger.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: I went to the one in Lloyd and it was fantastic. I had a lot of burgers. I went to the one in Lloyd and then I went to the grand opening in Unity. So get out there for your free lunch.
We're on 20 minutes on the dot and I know that's how long a cup of coffee is supposed to take, so we should call her quits. But thank you so much for joining me, Josh. I think was really good conversation and hopefully the listeners out there was able to take some value from it.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for having me on.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: All right, see you.
