Harvest Hustle & Wild Cattle Markets | Guest: Ryan Copithorne

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Ryan Kopathor joins me here once again to chat. Cattle markets, they've been a little wild here the last couple of weeks. Ryan, I have to ask, if you're a junior trader, maybe you just got your hedging account open, maybe you've been doing this for a long time, but you're uncertain about how to hedge these profits. Are there strategies out there that these farmers can take a look at right now? [00:00:20] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. There's a whole layer of different strategies whether you want to keep it simple or go complex. But we can help you through that for sure. [00:00:27] Speaker A: All right, folks, let's get into it here with ryan Copathorn. Episode 92 of what the Futures podcast. Hey folks, welcome to the what the Futures podcast, your quick guide to better farming decisions. Alrighty, folks, welcome into episode 92 of the what the Futures podcast. Hope you're having a stellar day and thank you for, for tuning in here once again. Of course. Go hit that subscribe button on YouTube. I think we're north of 550 subscribers now, so appreciate that. Had a nice jump here lately. Or give us a like or a rating on your favorite podcast platform. We're on Spotify, we're on Apple, we're on all of them. So give us some love over there, if you don't mind, of course. Each and every episode recorded in the UPL studio where UPL conducts research in over 130 countries including Canada. They test their products on the crops you are growing here across the Canadian prairies. So all that valuable research is important. You got to research on your local environment. That's what UPL does. Alrighty. Okay, I gotta thank you for hanging out last week. We did what two live shows and the episode. So we, we hit you with content if you're not caught up. There is a live show that we did with Chuck Penner that is a must. Listen to Chuck and I hammer through 10 different crops and talk about some of the price expectations, some of the market update in those crops. Go check it out and send it to your neighbors as well. It might help them with some of these key crop marketing decisions here. As we enter we 1st 3rd of September is behind us now. We're heading into that middle part of the month. I'm excited. I have, I can't announce it yet, but I have a new sponsor, new partner joining the podcast here in the next couple of weeks. So stay tuned for that. And I'm also, you know, firming up the roster of guests for season three. Yeah, season three, episode 92. Right. Now, season three coming up here in November, and we have a survey that's gone out, and people have. Have asked for some different things. And so we're incorporating your. Your answers. You can go and check out that survey. We've emailed it to you a bunch of times. I'm sure it's on Friday, this Friday's email as well. And I. I mailed a bunch of stuff today. I. I sent packages out, flags out to some listeners. The flags are super high quality, so you need a bit of a gust back there to. To have them wave in the wind, but that's not a problem for the prairies, usually. So they're. They're out there. And I also sent the last of the hats. We did the wonderful fundraiser here at Egg in Motion for the Canadian center for Agricultural well Being, and the last of those packages hit the mail as well. So thank you to Corey, Kelly, Grant, Sarah. Oh, I'm missing somebody in there. I apologize. But thank you so much for donating to the CCAW and snagging those last packages. I sent most of you a bonus T shirt because I had some extras kicking around. So we got hats, T shirts and flags. Those are all in the mail here as well. Now there is. Are two hats remaining, signed hats, paisley blender. Sign these hats for me. And we have two fundraising initiatives coming up. So one of the hats will be at the conference in Moose Jaw in the silent auction. And the other hat, I believe we have an online auction happening in November. I could be wrong on that. I'm positive that is on the calendar here to raise some additional funds for the ccaw. I'm positive that's what it is. And we'll auction off a hat there. So there are two. There's also my, you know, I have a couple signed one sweaty ones that I've been wearing. I don't know if anyone wants those ones, but, you know, we'll see. Maybe. Maybe someone will want to bid on those as well. Now, that's just gross. Let's talk before we talk markets, let's talk about the Harvest Hustle contest. I need to. I need to shed some light on this because I don't mean to pick on the other folks out there. This is, you know, I'll apologize in advance, but I saw, you know, submit your harvest photo for $150 gift card to XYZ. Submit your photo to us and get, you know, your get recognized on social media. Like, that's the. The award. Like, we're giving away, like a $6,000 prize. I. I had a little aha moment when I was driving in my truck Wednesday. I was going down the road and I'm like, holy smokes. Have we. Have I overshot on this one? Have I have. Am I a little over my skis on this prize? Did. Did I mess up here? Don't get me wrong. We are getting entries coming in every day. Ryandenee Ca photo contest. That should get you there. Just head to the website. You'll find it. We are getting entries every day and I appreciate those. You can see them on our social media post. Amanda. Our social medias. Amanda has been taking care of posting some of those. You just have to go in there, enter your details, and you get entered to win a trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia. All right, Curling for the entire week, November 22nd to 30th. Hotel, three meals a day in the VIP lounge. The list goes on and on. I, I think, yeah, I'm going to venture that this is one of the, the more. Some of the bigger, one of the bigger prizes out there for your harvest photos. And hey, we're just doing this for fun. Like, I'm not not doing anything with these photos, you know, sharing them obviously back to, to the followers, but nothing crazy. Like, I'm not, you know, monetizing this in any way. So if the prize is intimidating, I want to take a minute just to break it down for you, okay? Because I understand that a week of curling, you know, it may not fly for everybody to step away for an entire week to go watch how many, 20. Some draws occurling. I get it. Now here's the thing, folks. I want the winner. I want you to go to Halifax. All right? But if you came to me and said, well, Ryan, you know, we, you know, we need to get a babysitter or we need to get some, you know, some. Some help. Here are our schedules. You know, we can kind of do four or five days. We can't do it all. Like, these tickets are yours. I want you to be there 100%. This trip is for you. But if you were like, hey, you know, my parents are coming or my brother or, you know, so the folks on the farm, we're going to divvy these tickets up between a couple of different people here. I don't want to overcomplicate this, don't get me wrong, but just know that I understand it's a lot of curling. And if you want to bring in some other people and do some stuff here, have some fun with it, spread it out a little Bit, that's up to you. All right? That's going to be under your control. So, you know, if you're intimidated, like, man, this guy wants us there all week. It's going to be monitoring our every move. No, no, no, no, no, no. You figure out what you can make work and then you work the rest. All right? Now the cool thing here is I reached out to Curling Canada and I, you know, when you send an email, you just put it out there in space and you don't, you don't expect an answer. You don't expect an answer. I didn't expect an answer. I put it out to Curling Canada. I'm like, hey, I have this little podcast, you know, it's, farmers tend to enjoy curling and be great. If I could have a guest on, you know, I thought they might come back and say, all right, thanks, Ryan. You know, we'll think about it and get back to you. Or hey, you know, this person's just joined the circuit, you know, a rookie. Don't get me wrong, we appreciate the rookies as well, but, you know, here you go. Well, you know who I got an email from? I got an email from Caitlin Laws. Her and her partner farm in Manitoba. So maybe that's the, maybe that's the catch here. But Caitlyn, Caitlyn is a two time Olympic gold medalist. Caitlyn Laws has been Voted back in 2019, the seventh greatest Canadian curler in history. A TSN poll of broadcasters, reporters and top curlers voted on this. But she's a big deal, all right. She's qualified for Halifax. Her and her rink, they're based out of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Winnipeg is a wagon. Pardon me? Manitoba is a wagon when it comes to curling. There are you, look at the roster for the trials. There's a pile of Manitoba teams. I don't know what you guys are doing over in Manitoba, but you guys are a wagon here when it comes to, comes to curling. This, in this, for this Olympics. But we, we, I get to have a chat with her. So, you know, we're trying to figure out some schedules, we're trying to figure out our, our calendars here. She is very busy, you know, preparing and training. But she did send me a note, said I'm gonna come on the what the Futures podcast. And we're just trying to get our schedules lined up. So stay tuned. We'll have a one on one convo here with Caitlin Laws and look forward to it. It's gonna be, it's gonna be great. All right, so again, Harvest Hustle contest. I got one more thing to add. We've got one more feature here, if we'll say so. We have some transportation lined up as well. We have a chauffeur that has been lined up in Halifax, so when you land, you'll be greeted by a guy three has stepped up and provided this option for us, provided the service for us is how I should say that. And you'll be greeted when you land in Halifax by your own personal chauffeur for the week. You know, if you want to head out to Peggy's Cove, there's an opportunity for. For you to ride with Jeff. He'll take you to Peggy's Cove. Jeff is a. A Guy three employee and a. A local to Halifax. And he. He said, hey, Ryan, what do you think? Like, we could make sure that people have a ride that week, make sure that if they want to see an attraction, I could do a little tour guide. And so, yeah, I said, absolutely, let's do that. So egg i3, we have a chauffeur service lined up for you as well when you land in Halifax. All right. All right, cool. Thanks for EGY3 for stepping up for that with that. All right, so we got. Ryan Copperthorne is on the show this week. Cattle markets still very hot, folks. Don't get me wrong, things are hot, but futures are starting to pull back here a little bit. So we wanted to get Ryan's thoughts on. On what to do from a risk management standpoint with cattle. Honestly, a lot more exciting than grain right now. You know, you've. You've done a lot of the hard work already. And for grain now, you're probably delivering contracts, you're getting quality assessed. You know, you're not. You're likely not making any big moves. I know. I'm not doing anything wild. Yeah. Okay. Our farm, yeah, we sold a hundred thousand bushels of wheat this week. But, you know, I wouldn't call that wild. You know, when you. When you're going to replace it at some point in. In your futures account, I would call that wild, but we'll talk about that here a little bit later on. So Ryan Copthorn with cows and control, joins me for this week's episode. All right, positive moments for the week. Now, this one, you know, if you. If you have a weak stomach, just bear with me for a second. I'll let you mute it here or. Or lower the volume for 10 seconds. But number one for me this week. So Finley. Finley's gonna be three in January, and he's been working very hard on his potty training here the last last couple of weeks. All right? And we just, we have to celebrate. We have to, we have to celebrate the first poop, right? You know what, parents, you know what I'm talking about here. You know what I'm talking about. When that thing lands in the toilet, we celebrate with all our might. And it has happened for him. He has pooped in the potty. Honestly, we're having a lot of fun. We're having a lot of fun with it. And he's doing great. He's doing great. As you know, anyone going through this, you have your little setbacks, your tough days, but you know, I tell you, we are, we are very creative peers now. We, we go to places, we pee on things that you never, never would have imagined. And I bet you didn't have that on your bingo card for episode 92, Finn's Potty Training. But there we go. We're. We're getting it done. So Finn's doing great. Uh, my second one, uh, I went to the Russell Peters show, uh, last week. I. So Russell Peters, Canadian comedian. He's lived in California for the last 20 years, but Canadian comedian and he mixes in some music with a show. Anyways, folks, I. Anyone that knows me personally, I'm. I'm not great with time. And so I thought a comedy show, you would, you know, you would have an, an opener, then a intermission, and then your headliner. I'm thinking headliners probably going on like 9pm So I put Finley to put the kids to bed. I help Chantel put the kids to bed. And I'm like, oh, I'll be there at like 7:30. The opener guys probably just starting or whatever. I'll get a beer. Well, I pull up to the venue, a great venue. The Jube in Edmonton is fantastic venue. And the bars are closed. I'm like, could I get a beer? They're like, oh, we just closed everything. I'm like, what? Are you sure? Like, it's 7:30. They're like, yeah, the show started. I'm like, what do you mean? So I go to the, you know, the person that helps you, the usher. And she's like, yeah, the opener should be done in 10 minutes. And like, yeah, and then there'll be an intermission. She's like, no, Russell's gonna come on stage like right after that. So I don't want to go. My seat was in the front row, so I didn't want to go as the opener was talking. So I waited for him to end and I was just standing at the back of the theater, right? I'm talking about, what, a couple hundred feet to walk? Well, he ends his show and I boot it right away to the front of the stage. My buddy's waiting for me. Buddy, Rob. I'm going to get there, sit down. And I'm not even at my seat. And Russell Peters jumps on stage. He is on stage. I sit down. He has started his show. So you know what that means. Russell Peters and I had some discussions during the show and yeah, it was a lot of fun. And he was not shy to point me out at times. So I turned very red. I was sweating, my glasses were foggy. He pointed everything out to everybody the entire time. So it was, it was fun. It was a great show and, and had a lot of fun. Last positive moment, we are heading camping one last time here. Some September camping. We are going to get 32 nights in this trailer this year, and that's a new record for our family. So we are off camping one more time here. Some beautiful fall camping with the beautiful weather. All right, folks, let's keep moving along here. Let's talk crop marketing and then we will talk about the conference and let's do crop marketing. Ryan Copperthorn, conference, eating your veggies. Let's do something like that. I don't have a lot to talk about from a crop marketing perspective. I really don't. I do have, like, I would have some. I have some things that are maybe, I don't know, not opposite of what's being said out there. But, you know, I. I keep reading that the malt in like malt is super quiet. And don't get me wrong, I'm not excited about the malt price at 575 and 6 bucks. Like, I'm not. But what I like about malt right now is that I can move it. So the example I have is for feed. This farm got offered 435 a bushel. Was the feed price, the malt price, 575. And malt was delivered right away and feed was actually, you know, deliver a week later. Some good yield. 575. I like moving my malt barley as fast as I can. I encourage people to do that all the time. I don't like sitting on malt barley and these big bins all winter. I know quality holds most of the time, but I just, I don't like it. All right, so this early malt barley movement, I'd call this a bit of A hot thing right now. And in fact, you know, you can take your malt barley, move it over to some of these line companies. I'd say bunge vitera. I still have to say bungay vitera because everyone still says vitera to me. But bungie vitera, like, bring it in right away. Now, word of caution. A word of caution. Unless bunge changes this policy, which I don't think they will right away. But you. You do not know if you've made. If you're getting paid malt until it. Until it gets loaded on that, on the boat. All right? So just a word of caution with that, because what happens. What has happened before is you deliver malt and. And then all of a sudden, a few weeks later, it's happened to me. It's happened to farmers I've consulted for. You got to call a few weeks later saying, hey, yeah, we have to pay you feed for that. It didn't make it. It is. It is completely devastating. It's a terrible conversation to have. And it almost doesn't feel real. It almost feels like you're. You're in shock about what is going on. What are you telling me? So just be. Be careful. Make sure your specs are good specs. And your buyer with Bungie Vitera, they should communicate that with you and they should give you like a confidence level when. When you're hauling. Like, I was chatting with a buyer yesterday, and she said, you know, like, this stuff is so good. Like, I don't. I don't understand what could cause it to not be so. You know, you can have that conversation, right? Talk it through. But I like moving this malt. And like the other scenario is, hey, here's a malt price. I can't take it till January. I'll pay you storage, though. And that storage doesn't amount to a hill of beans right now because I think the storage is like 7 cents per month or something like that. It might be a little bit different. I don't know. Do your interest calculations, folks. It. It's not doing much. Much coverage there. It's. It's covering. It's covering it, but it's not great. So. So I like moving that malt right away. Okay, so if you're a malt grower and you have it, you know, I even have it as eating your veggies. Number one. Like, malt guys don't mess around here. Shop your malt around, get the stuff moved. If you are profitable, you're making money. Breaking even close to it, you know, have at it. All right. Okay. Feed market, switching gears here a little bit. Feed market, Feed barley, not so much. I did not look up the feed bids as of recording, but I keep reading under pressure and I just noticed the export bids have, you know, they seem to have quieted a little bit here. We had a bunch of get your feed barley in by September 15th and here's a better price and that's a little bit behind us now. So. So feed still trying to find that low, which again, not abnormal to try to find a low here in the next week or two. That's quite normal. All right, okay. Outside of that, there are some companies looking for yellow peas. All right. And again, it's hard to look, look at a 650 and be like that. You know, that's, that's the number. Like that's where I have to sell these things. Hopefully you're at the tail end of your sales and you've got most of those yellow peas marketed. And maybe it's about freeing up a bin or freeing up a little bit of space and just. Or generating a bit more cash. You know, if this is the tail end of your marketing, I'd say move those darn things, you know, because when are the next P trains coming and at what value? And just, you know, something to, to keep an eye on there. All right, So I like tidying some of that up. If you're, if you're like, Ryan, I have nothing sold for yellow peas. I have lots of cash and lots of bin space. While I wouldn't start your marketing plan at 650, don't get me wrong, I would start it there. All right, okay. Wheat markets again. Just wanted to touch on this. You know, Poland, their airspace was interrupted by Russian drones here this week. You know, tension is escalating in Ukraine and over in that part of the world, yet the wheat markets have not responded at all. I will still continue to reference these early movement trains, this environment of filling these trains at a higher than posted price. Again, we did some of this stuff at 7:50. Those current offers, bids. Pardon me, bids from those companies. Jason's going to be on me over that. Those bids from those companies. 670. 675 today. So, you know, we're starting. We moved it at 750 already. We're going to replace it on paper with a call anyways. Just keep an eye on those. The movement for wheat take, try to take advantage of some of that. Putting it all in the bin, locking it up. I don't know, guys, I don't like it, but we'll see. Time will tell. All right, let's, let's move over now to my conversation with Ryan Copperthorne. We'll come back with the conference, an update on the conference and eating your veggies. All right, Ryan, welcome back to the show. Here regular on the what the Futures podcast. I appreciate you coming on last minute because the cattle markets have been, I don't know, a little wild here lately. And I woke up this morning thinking I need to get Mr. Copperthorne on the show ASAP. And here we are like five hours later getting you on the show. So how's it going this week, Ryan? [00:22:47] Speaker B: It's going good. We can't complain in the cattle industry. Our prices are good and we got lots of cheap feed around. So we're actually doing, doing pretty good here in the cattle business. [00:22:57] Speaker A: So last time I was bugging you about how many cuts he would get. You know, you're what you're in one cut country for when it comes to hay for the most part. And anyways, I was driving last night. I was out having supper in the field with a farm and driving home and there was people that were cutting, raking and bailing like all, all in one swoop. It was all happening out there. So getting that September cut north of North Edmonton in 2025 here. So pleasant surprise, I would say. [00:23:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it's been interesting because we had such a late start that the hay really was late this year. And then we had all those rains that came and July and August. And so we actually got our hay crop up at the end of August when normally, you know, we'd be doing it in July. I'm hearing stories of pretty good hay cuts, but it's really the green feed crops that are incredible right now. Anything that's a cereal crop that you're growing is just amazing if you're turning it into feed right now. So I think there'll be lots of feed around in, in a lot areas. There's still some drought areas up north, but, but overall we got pretty good feed around the country right now. Yeah. [00:24:05] Speaker A: The northeast part of, of the province here, they were talking about on the grain side about a 50 reduction in yield from I was on the radio here earlier today, so definitely some dry spots out there in, across the prairies. All right, so cattle markets are, they're a little bit wild here right now. What, like what's going on? I saw something about Trump saying they're putting things in place so that the price of beef drops, like, you know, what do you see and what's the big impacts here? [00:24:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, nobody knows what that one means yet, what he said the other day about that. But you know, they're trying to. Our cattle prices are really running right now and this year they've run 34% higher or something on the year. So we've basically added a third of the value to an already elevated level to these cattle prices. But you know, that's on the futures market. When you start looking at the cash prices that we're getting, especially these forward sales for the fall, I mean, the prices have got kind of ridiculous in my opinion, but, but you know, we'll celebrate them all the same. [00:25:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:15] Speaker B: So, you know, I'm just encouraging people to take advantage of these high prices while they're here. The futures market's getting a little toppy, it looks like, but, but so far we're holding in there. [00:25:26] Speaker A: And so the futures market obviously will influence. But when you look at the prices here for the prairies in the fall of 2025, things are holding up relatively well in the middle of September. [00:25:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I actually think it almost feels like a bit of a panic situation in the sense that the prices are so high for the fall right now. What the, what the feedlots are buying these calves and yearlings for now for fall delivery. When I run the numbers, like there's just no way you can make those cattle pencil. And so maybe that's okay because the feedlots came off of a, off a pretty good turn this year. You know, with the prices going up as fast as they did. The feedlots made a lot of money this year, but I think they're going to give a lot of it back on this next crop of calves and cattle because the prices are just ridiculous and that when I do the projections, there's, there's several hundred dollar a head losses looking forward. So as producers, all you can do in this scenario is just keep selling into it. Like, don't. There's not really a good case for backgrounding or further feeding right now. And if you're producing calves or something, just take, just keep taking advantage of these prices and keep selling into it. Same with the yearlings, you know, your yearlings off grass and such, just, just celebrate the high prices, take a breather. It's going to be hard to find something to buy next. So I think we need a market pullback to make that, you know, make that happen. [00:26:56] Speaker A: I want to talk about feed costs here. Last time you were on the show, we were talking about feed barley and being a little bit bearish feed grains. That certainly the trend we're in right now in the glut of harvest year. Do you think that, you know, the price of these cattle, everything's kind of crazy high right now. Do you think that folks are just, you know, assuming or speculating that feed costs are going to get cheaper and that's why they're paying these big premiums for these calves? [00:27:25] Speaker B: Well, that's certainly part of it. I think the feedlots are more confident looking forward that, you know, they do have cheap feed now coming. We got enormous crops coming and obviously the prices are quite a bit lower. So that when you run the cost of gains on feeding these cattle, it is down significantly. But that being said, I still think they're more panicking about the supply issue than, than, than the cheap feed side of things. Because even when I run today's feed grain prices that, you know, the depressed feed grain prices when I run the break evens on feeding these cattle, it still doesn't pencil to me. So it says to me these feedlots are overpaying just to get the cattle, just to keep their lots full. [00:28:13] Speaker A: So, Ryan, I was chatting with a farm yesterday and one of their, one of the, their financial team members, you know, on their, one of the professionals they hire just mentioned to them that, you know, they thought it would, it would not be a great idea to background their cattle this year. What are they, what are they talking about? Am I saying that right? Like what are they referencing there? [00:28:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I think they're looking at the cost of these calves this fall. When you try and run the run the profitability of further feeding these cattle this fall, it doesn't look very good for, for the average producer. So I guess what they're recommending is taking these high dollars that are being offered right now, just selling the cattle and taking advantage of the high prices. If you try and further feed them, it's a pretty tough game right now. Of course your feed is going to dictate that though. If you have a bunch of feed on the farm and you can't get rid of it any other way, you're going to have to find a way to get rid of it somehow. But I'm pretty sure that's what they were referring to is the feeding economics are very poor at these prices. [00:29:21] Speaker A: Okay. Obviously the futures are tipping here a little bit. There's been some pretty wild swings here even today. Pretty wild swings today? What sort of. If you're willing to share, like what, what's the strategy if you're. Maybe you're me, you know, maybe you're. You're me here, Ryan, with what the futures. And let's pretend I've got a few head out in, you know, in the back 40 here. You know what, what can I do as someone that's a little bit more junior in hedging catalytic. What strategy is, is, is. Can I look at. To protect my margins here for this year? [00:29:56] Speaker B: Yeah, the first and foremost, the easiest strategy right now is to take advantage of the current existing cash markets. So whether that means selling today or selling for the fall, like with a forward sale, these prices that are being offered are so much higher than anything that the futures is offering. That's your best strategy. So forward sell, I would say, is your number one strategy right now. The other tools like livestock price insurance and put options are always a nice safe option because you kind of pay a premium and lock in a floor price. The challenge with those is that you're paying, you know, 15 to 20 cents in premiums for those right now, which is a lot of money. Yes. This market can drop 50 cents. It might even drop a dollar, who knows? But, but to pay $0.20 upfront for that kind of insurance or a put option is, Is quite expensive. And so generally what I. If you're comfortable with trading futures, I've been just looking at, you know, drawing, using a ruler on the charts, on your futures charts and looking at the trend lines. Every time a trend line gets broke, sell the thing a little bit. And then once you sell it, make sure you got protective stops in case you're wrong, in case it goes up against you. But, but you know this. If you look at the futures charts, it's just been getting slowly steeper and steeper and steeper. And if you draw trend lines under every one of those, under that line where it gets steeper every time it violates that trend line, if you sell a few futures, it's actually a pretty good way to play it. That's the way I played it in 2015, and I don't see why it wouldn't work in this go around as well. But you have to be kind of adept with futures. I would generally say the forward sale is still your best tool. [00:31:47] Speaker A: All right, fair enough. Now, there's bullish factors remain, correct. Obviously, we don't know what Mr. Trump's working on to lower the price of beef, but there's still a lack of inventory, a lack of supply. Right. Anything else stand out from a bullish side? [00:32:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the Mexican border's still closed, and that's definitely going to be hard on the feeder supply, especially in the south in the US So that's been pushing the market. Trump's tariffs on Brazil has been a challenge because the US Imports a lot of beef from Brazil, lean beef. And those tariffs, people, you know, consider it a restriction. I don't think they've actually sold a whole lot less beef into the US but there is a tariff on it now that, the 40% additional tariff on it right now. So people are looking at that as being restrictive. And just the fact that we haven't helped. There's been no sign of serious heifer retention. We're slowly starting to retain heifers and grow the cow herd, but it's been really slow. And so if we start holding back more and more heifers to grow the herd quicker, you know, that could be a bullish thing as well. So definitely there's some bullish signals in there. I just think the futures market's already priced all that bullishness in and, you know, at some point it's gonna correct. I think we're seeing a little kind of nosebleed optimism now, and it's time for kind of the realistic price to be discovered here. What is a fair high price? That's what the market has to figure out now. [00:33:26] Speaker A: All right, Ryan, so we've talked strategy in this episode. We've talked about how you can take advantage of high prices right now. We've talked about some of the factors impacting, impacting these markets. I'm excited you're going to come out to Moose Jaw for the Crop Marketing Made Cool conference, which is going to have a little layer of cattle in it now, cattle risk management in there. So I appreciate you bringing some diversity to the conference here. I'm putting you on the spot. But is there anything from a presentation standpoint, when you get in front of that crowd, is there any point that you're going to hammer home to them when it comes to risk management? [00:34:09] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, we'll see what the market's like at that time of year. Maybe it might have. Might break by then. We're not sure. But. But it definitely. I would be encouraging people to take a hard look at risk management. Like, it's. If you don't have a plan in this kind of environment, it can kill you. It can be. It can be really devastating when you get as much volatility as we get at these, at these High levels. So risk management, something I'm going to be pounding home for sure. [00:34:36] Speaker A: All right, sounds good. Okay. Anything else that we didn't talk about today? Anything else that you have to bring to our attention or did we get it all covered? [00:34:44] Speaker B: No, I think so. I'm just urging caution out there, and I'm actually encouraging people to start looking at taking on short positions on this market at some point. We don't know when it's going to top out. It may not have topped out yet. There's a lot of people saying that could. This bull market could run another year or two. Maybe they're right. I'm just looking at it like these are pretty phenomenal levels. And there's an economist named Minsky that kind of had these principles for how to know when you're in a bubble. And one of it is the greater fool theory. When your investment has no chance of making money except for people paying higher prices later, then you know, you're kind of getting into a. Into a greater fool theory where the greater fool is the person that keeps buying your. Your product at a higher price even though it doesn't make money. So we have to be careful that we're not getting into one of those scenarios, especially when you run the numbers on these cattle. But, but for now, we're going to celebrate high prices. Ranchers have never made these kind of dollars ever, and so hopefully it's enough to build the herd here. [00:35:52] Speaker A: Well, I think you might have given us a nice little clip there to. To clip as well for, for social media posts, Ryan. Appreciate that. Thanks for coming on the show here again. As always, my panic this morning, texting you, hey, these markets are moving. Can you jump on the show? So I appreciate your time this week. How can people get a hold of you? [00:36:11] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you can look up my website, cowsincontrol.com and otherwise you can, you can email me or phone me or whatever. But. But cows and control.com's got my contact information on there and, and see what my program's about. And then we have some other services as well that stem off of that, so. [00:36:31] Speaker A: Perfect. Perfect. Folks, you heard it from the man. If you want to talk about strategy, dive into a few things that Ryan mentioned here. That's how you get a hold of them. So. All right, Ryan, have a great rest of the week, man, and we'll talk to you again real soon. [00:36:45] Speaker B: Okay? Thank you. [00:36:48] Speaker A: Well, it's always great to have Ryan Copperthorne joining. Join the show. And you heard him talk about it. Folks managing risk, managing margin, profit. A few different ways to do it there, but always great having him join us to talk cattle markets. All right, let's turn our attention here to the Crop Marketing Made Cool conference, which is sponsoring the voicemail contest for this month. Of course, you go to what the futurespodcast ca. It'll say send voicemail. It's a little like, bar on the side of the screen. It'll say send voicemail. And if you go to that spot, you can send me a quick message and say, hey, Ryan, I'm tuning in from, you know, wherever Dormy, Saskatchewan, will say. And we are harvesting along and we are, you know, 40% done, whatever it is we had. Allison, Brendan, Val, Carl, all send voicemails in over the last week. So thank you so much for doing that again. You're entered. We're going to draw at the end of the month. John Deere Multi Tool. Can't have too many of these kicking around. And a couple John Deere tumblers as well. And maybe some liquid courage to go with that. All righty. [00:38:00] Speaker C: Hey, Brian, it's Valerie here. Yeah, we're just sitting in our combines here. We're just in our wheat here. Yeah, y' all looking that amazing. But it's hard to get guess right this early in the game. But I think if you count acres, we're probably about 35 to 40% done here. Almost done swapping. I noticed a lot of guys are swapping their canola down in the area this year, which is pretty amazing. So a lot of acres have gone down here, so. Yeah, yeah. So it's validator entry here. [00:38:30] Speaker A: I am Brendan Shaw from Esteban, Saskatchewan, calling. It's going pretty good out here. We're getting to be half done. Just want to say I like the show and look forward to it every week. Have a good day. Hi, this is Allison Ketoranchuk. I'm from the county of Smoky Lake. I'm currently sitting in my combine. My mom told me about your podcast. She's in the combine next to me. But appreciate your work and what you do. Hey there, Ryan. This is Carl Jamsen here from Peoria, Alberta. We are approaching 50% combined up here. Almost all the wheat's done and going back and forth between wheat and canola now. Yields are around 40 bushels for wheat and 30 bushels for canola up in the peak country. Now, you don't have to be shy about this. I'm not going to, you know, I'm not gonna sell this information to Stats can or anything. If you tell me your percent sold, don't worry, it stays in house. I'm not gaining any crop marketing advantage by, by you sending in that voicemail? All right, Crop Marketing Made Cool conference. You heard it there. Ryan Copperthorn is going to join us in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, December 9th to 11th. Again, you can apply to, to participate in the conference here at Ryanden Ca can find the conference details there. Again, the application is just to make sure we have farmers. Farmers in the room. All right? That's why we do it. We just want farmers at each table. We don't want nothing against the industry people, but this isn't what, what this conference is for. It's. It's for farmers. All right, so Ryan Carpathorne is going to join us for a session around risk management for, for marketing your cattle, hedging your cattle. We've got Susan Stroud from no Bull Egg. She's one of our keynote speakers. She's going to talk about everything going on with the US Biofuel policy. She's very sharp and so looking forward to that. We've got Nathan Kuhn that'll be in attendance. Nathan is a farmer from the Unity, Saskatchewan area, actually Reward Saskatchewan, and he presented in Drumheller as well. And the people couldn't get enough. They wanted to hear Nathan more than once. And you know, it's a farmer that's talking about how, when, how crop marketing works for, for him and what he does and things that he's learned. Nathan has a wealth of knowledge and so he is coming back. We've got Dwayne from Grain Metrics. He's one of those Canola whisperers as well. Dwayne is dialed in not just on the Canola markets, but he's going to talk about taking the emotion out of some of our decisions, which they got emotional here in June. Again, it got emotional in the Canola market this last year with some of these big declines. Sarah Kushay from Trigger Grain, she's going to come and talk about, you know, all the grain elevator contracts, all the fancy contracts that, that are available. In fact, today my phone was, was blowing up with a bunch of different Cargill contracts to talk about. But she's going to dive into the Bunge contracts, the Bunge Vitara contracts, Cargill. She's going to talk about what's available to you, what the watch outs are, you know, which ones to consider and why and in what scenarios to use them. All right, so we got that going on. We have a session on wealth management on you Know, on, you know, managing wealth, your retirement years, you know, different ways to manage wealth. We're going to have a speaker on that. That's a little bit different this year. Terry Becker. He's making a return. That's Crop Marketing Make Cool Conference. He kicked this off last year and blew everybody away. He's gonna talk financial ratios. He told me, ryan, I need to be there again. I, I got a little change to make here. I want to keep working on adding to the presentation I gave last year. So I want another stab at it, you know, let me add it. And I said, you know what, Terry, we got a spot for you, man. So let's, let's do it. We got RBC coming to talk about hedging strategies, broker relationships. How do you, how do you work with these folks for managing, managing your risk? Suzanne with Market Master is going to come do some 101 stuff with us. You know, if you're new to crop marketing, new to farming. Suzanne's going to cover just some of the terminology and some of the things to look for in green contracts and with buyers. All right, I'm going to speak a couple times. The list goes on and on. Folks, there's another half a dozen people here that I haven't even mentioned yet. We will shortly, but the agenda is coming together and we have a lot of fun too. The Crop Marketing made cool conference. 70% sold right now. I don't know. I think this thing's going to be sold out by the end of October. We'll see. Time will tell. Again, head to the website if you want to level up your crop marketing. This is the spot to be here. Moose Jaw, December 9th to 11th and come have fun with us. We have a blast. We take care of all the little things. We spend a lot of time and energy on all the little things, like having fun at the breaks, lots of networking, a heck of a party, and we give away a pile of, of of merchant swag as well. So it's a lot of fun. All right, so look forward to seeing you, seeing you there. And thanks. You know, Bob bought tickets this week. So Bob, I know you're tuning into the episode, man. So thanks for, for coming to join us. And again, we're about 70% soldiers at this time. Okay. I, I wanted to. Eating your veggies here and I think I gotta check canola just briefly as well. So eating your veggies for this week. The one thing here, I hear about this, you know, quite regularly right now, but it's about redoing your cost of production once you have those bushels figured out. And so for many, the bushels are, are bigger, there's more crop there. So you're lowering that cost of production. And so just, you know, maybe you got the, the dry erase marker in the cab of the combine. Just, just figuring out where you sit now from a break even perspective because you know, if you needed 600 bucks an acre, you know, you were getting 60 bushels, you needed $10 for that. If you're getting 70 bushels, that's, you know, eight, eight and a half, 860, something like that. Just doing some of that math, getting that updated and seeing where you sit, it might make you feel a little bit better. It might make you feel a little bit better again. Some of you harvesting crops, you know, the county of St. Paul saying about 50% of normal yield right now, peace country, you know, 60, 70, 80% of normal yield. That, you know that cost of production is going up. But then maybe you figure out, you know, what crop insurance coverage looks like for you and stuff like that. But anyways, I would just encourage you to redo those, Redo that cost of production. Second one I have for eating your veggies. I'm going to say make a flax recommendation here on the show this week. Again, I don't know you from, many of you from anything but you know, if you are a flax grower, I think the writing's on the wall for yield potential here. And you know, I'm still seeing some $18 flax out there picked up on farm. I would take a look at that. I, you know, chatted with Chuck a couple days ago, Penner with left field and it was a market that was still kind of hanging in. It's not the 20 it was, but there's some good margin there so secure that sell some flax in the last one. Just going after this malt barley market. If you need to generate cash, if you're a malt grower, you know, maybe you've got stuff that you want to get gone. I would just go and be aggressive in that space. Be aggressive and go after, get after that, that malt sale. Other than that, you know, I think for Canola here we're trying to find direction. You know, this isn't really number four, but obviously the market's trading, you know, fairly sideways. Many have that 605 level kind of, you know, $600 level penciled in as the zone for some support here. But easier said than done. Currently trading at 627. And I know for myself, I did roll some of my positions from November to January. You know, a couple days ago, that was Sunday night, I started to roll some positions over and move them over to another month. I also took profit on some short positions as well. I'm not saying that I'm bullish by any means. I'd love for the market to flirt with 640 to 650 in November in the short term here. And I'd pro sell a little something at that level if it got there again. Canola harvest, I think is in the high teens, completed in Manitoba, less than that in Saskatchewan and Alberta. But the yields that are being recorded, you know, again, you're talking about, you know, 20 million acres of a crop, the highs and lows in there. But there seems to be a bigger crop coming again. Time will tell. It's not in the bin yet. I just think about and reflect on the yields that get reported to me again. You know, I don't even know if you'd call it reports from hundreds of farmers maybe. I talked to a lot of people, but yeah, there, there is a crop coming and I just, again, I see the, I'm in my, the middle of my field and it's not what it was last year and it's not a, you know, this was my smallest crop in three years, but I get it and it's tough. But that kitchen window, we talked about the kitchen window all year long. Just look a little bit big picture. Maybe we'll get some positivity out of the, or some updates out of the meetings in China this week. Maybe we'll get some positivity around trade flow. But in the meantime, we also have to kind of play the hand that we're, that we're dealt for now and not put our, our head in the sand. All right? There's things you can do to protect yourself in these markets. Again, I don't like, you know, what's going on from a trade perspective. I don't like what's going on out east, you know, in the response, the lack of response for Western Canada. I don't like any of that. But I'm also going to play the cards that I have right now, play the hand that I have right now to the best of my ability until this gets straightened out. I'll be the happiest guy when I'm, when I'm out there, you know, buying calls or getting long this market because of some type of positive update between trade between Canada and China. Alrighty. Yeah, let's, let's leave it at that. For eating your veggies here for this week. So I, I'm notorious on the farm for, you know, like number one, I phone, talk to my dad or my brother and I say, how's it going at harvest time? It's not really, not really what you should, what I should put out there right away because, you know, there's always a little something going on, right? So I got to change the wording. But I've been, I've been following along here, you know, John Deere Operations center and it's, it's reduced my text messages to the farm to say, how's it yielding? What's yielding over there? What's. What are you guys seeing? I'm following along now, JD Ops watching the machines go by and yeah, I'm even getting the alerts when things break down as well, which I'm like, oh, oh boy, I better send. Better send my brother some, something here to cheer him up because it looks like we got a breakdown. We have a couple machines down on the farm right now. It's been a slow grind, you know, kind of get going, take a break, get going, take a break and then we break some stuff. So I don't know, it hasn't been the smoothest harvest, but you know, fingers crossed here that we find finder our momentum and our mojo. We. It sounds like we have four combines going here tonight, so we were down to two for a while. Sounds like we got four going again. So fingers crossed. But yeah. So what I want to highlight as well with you know, John Deere Operations center is that you know, you can use this technology and basically, you know, any machine for the most part, of course you got to talk to your John Deere dealership and figure it out, make sure that it's compatible. But I know lots of farms running different color machines still using JD Operations center because it is providing you with key information, decision making information, and it's just one of those really great technologies from, from the folks over at John Deere. So reach out to your local John Deere dealership. Check out all that great stuff in John Deere Operations Center. I did I see on X here this morning there was one tweet in regards to John Deere operations and it's giving you a little, let's, you know, if there's a machine that, that breaks down, it even pinpoints where in that quarter section where that machine has had the issue. And so you don't have to, you don't have to search. You don't have to guess. You just follow that pin. And of course, I can't find the tweet as of recording here, but that was a new feature just released here. Alrighty. Okay. Well, I think. I think, folks, we've. We've kind of covered it for episode 92, so thanks for hanging out with me again this week. Put out a lot of content last week. It looks like you guys still have some catching up to do. Again, strongly encourage that you check out those episodes. There's definitely some. Some little nuggets in there to help you with your crop marketing plan. I got to go out. I had supper in the field yesterday with Kurt and his family. It was Kurt's birthday and so we had passed a pantry meal. I was able to kind of take the reins from Ruth for one evening. We had a great meal, beautiful evening, sun shining nice and warm out. And anyways, after I was driving home and I drove by a farm that just jogged my memory. It was. The last name is Gannett. And I remember when I was a grain buyer. So this is Canadian Wheat Board days. And I thought this might be an interesting story here if you have a minute or two as I wrap up the episode. But back in the day, so with the Canadian Wheat Board, you guys remember like trucking premiums? We'd negotiate trucking premiums. So you'd get all your samples in and you'd negotiate grade. That was step one. You take your samples to all the elevators and then you'd negotiate grade. And whoever gave you the best grade deal often got the business. And so someone would say, hey, that's a two. And the other company would say, you know what, let's make that a one somehow. Let's blend it with this guy or whatever it is, right? And then if everyone was the same grade, then you would negotiate trucking premiums. And so as like a rookie grain buyer, you'd come in and say, well, I'll give you five bucks a ton this year for trucking premium. And they say, well, the other guy over there is going to give me six, you know. And so you say, all right, I'll go back and figure this out. And you do, you know, trucking premium. And I believe this is how it worked. But as a grain elevator, if you did like a 2000 ton series a contract, it could be getting that kind of wrong. But as long as that farm dumped that load, first load at your facility, I believe you got credit for that entire contract. So I was working at Vitera and Then we had Richardson. You could see Richardson from our driveway. And then we had a little company called Providence Grain. And I remember going, and you try to, to poach farms from these other grain companies. So I remember going to Gannets and getting their samples and negotiating trucking and getting the green light, just blow the doors off, give the this farm like a crazy trucking offer to get this business. They had done business with Richardson forever and we got their business that that year. I don't know if we got it the next year, probably not, but we got their business that year. And then I remember going to another farm. This jog my memory on how we used to buy wheat back in the day. But another farm, you know, Vitara, also had crop inputs. And I remember we packaged up like, here's your wheat board offer, here's your crazy big trucking premium because we want your grain. And then here's your discounted price on your canola seat. Like, I don't know, just kind of jogging my memory driving home last night about some of these old school, kind of old school deals back in the day. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sitting here saying that those were better times. I remember, I remember having to write a check back to the Canadian Wheat Board because they paid me too much on the initial payment. I remember getting the surprise grain checks wondering, where the heck did this come from? Oh, this is from my wheat 18 months ago. Cool. I don't want to go back there, folks. I like to have control of how I sell. All right, so that's not where I'm going with this one. Anyways, trip down memory lane for me last night. All right, folks, well, if you enjoyed this week's episode, tell your friends, tell your neighbors, spread the word about the what the futures podcast. I certainly appreciate you joining me here again this week, but we'll try to. I don't think we'll have any bonus content here coming out the next few days, but look, next week, next week I've got a short week. Unfortunately, Chantal's, her mama passed away here earlier this week. So we are heading to, to a funeral here in the next week. 91. Great lady, great legacy. And, and you know, I, I think we all hope we can make it to 91, but, but Merwa did pass. And so I'll be in studio a couple times early next week. Hopefully catch up with Caitlin Laws and get that out to you guys as well. Maybe a live episode Tuesday in the works, but we'll see what we can get. Put together. Any questions? Guys, you know how to reach out to me. Ryanothefuturespodcast. Ca. That's my email. Leave me a voicemail as well. That's fun too. If you have any crop marketing questions, I'm here to help. And that's it. Have a great rest of your day and a great weekend. For what? The futures. I'm out.