[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in to the what the Futures podcast. If you're a regular listener of the show and if you're brand spanking new. Hey, welcome, welcome. I'm glad you're here. I, I was. There's a lot, I've got a lot of guests that I'm talking to over the next week. But for this episode, weather was a big part of the headlines over the last couple days. And so I got Brett Waltz joining me in this episode from BamWx to talk about the historic cold that's been hitting Florida, Louisiana, New Orleans, getting, what did I read, 8 inches of snow the other day. Things that just don't happen. And of course, from my mind crop marketing, I go to, well, what's going on with the winter wheat crop? What's this, you know, what's this going to do to winter wheat in the US Because I've been a little bit of a wheat bull here lately. You know, forgive me for that, but I've been a bit of a wheat bull. And so how is this going to impact wheat markets and what strategies can I use to potentially grab the best pricing opportunity? So Brett joins me. We talk about that. We also talk about a little bit of a sneak peek for the Canadian Prairies. This is a show for Western Canadian farmers. And I said, brett, let's chat. You know, Western Canadian weather, what's going on there? A little bit of an extended winter potentially, and already some little concerns about dryness popping up for the Canadian prairies. Things you do not want to hear about at the end of January, that's for sure. All right, folks, enjoy this one.
Hey, folks, welcome to the what the Futures podcast where we break down complex market market trends into simple, actionable advice. It's your quick guide to better farming decisions.
All right, folks, welcome in here to episode number 60, of course, recorded in the UPL studio as always.
Now, I need to just give you a heads up, guys. There's a deadline coming February 15th. You need to contact your local retail or your UPL rep and get signed up for grower rewards for the 2025 growing season by February 15, right around the corner. So reach out to those folks. All right, I've got, I've got a fun show here, of course. My name is Ryan Denis. I'm your host of the what the Futures podcast. I've spent my career working with farmers across the prairie provinces as a grain buyer, grain marketing analyst, great marketing advisor all around, you know, good guy trying to help farms make better crop marketing decisions.
All the way back from 2011 or 2009, I guess. 2009. So whatever that is, that's how long I've been in the game.
All right, this episode was.
Well, it wasn't the episode I expected because the inauguration happened earlier this week and I expected that it was going to be a very difficult week for crop marketing.
And you guys know that's not what happened. That's not what happened at all.
Wheat futures found levels we haven't seen in a little while. You know, I'll get into that later. But canola hung in there. Soybeans had a fine week. Corn totally good. Oats showing signs of life. Feed. Barley showing some signs of life as well. Things weren't that bad this week. So that's, that's great. That's positive. I got to slip that into positive moments later in the episode. But it wasn't as bad. I'm not saying that it's going to be sunshine and lollipops moving forward. I'm not saying that at all. I still think that you need to stay very sharp here. And in this episode I'm going to talk about some strategies that you can consider implementing to help protect your worst case scenarios. But also we're going to talk about some of the crops that have maybe woken up here just a little bit. And hey, we'll see maybe some more upside around the corner here. So fun episode. I got Brett Waltz with Bam WX and of course Brett, Big historic cold events in the US we got to talk about that little sneak peek at some of the stuff happening in the Prairies as well. So right around the corner here, we'll get into it with Brett Waltz of Bam wx.
All right, folks, I've got Brett Waltz with BAMWX joining me once again. Brett, how's it going, man?
[00:04:45] Speaker B: It's going good. Trying to stay warm. It is 4 degrees Fahrenheit right now. So it's chilly day for us down here in Indianapolis, Indiana. Even colder down on the Gulf coast, or not colder, but even crazier weather down on the Gulf Coast, I should say. So just trying to, trying to stay warm.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: So like, compared to normal for, for you guys right now, like, what would be your, your average normal temperature for today? You're four. What would you be up?
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Yeah, our average normal high temperature is about 36, 35 degrees somewhere in there. So we're about 30 degrees colder than normal right now, which is notable. It's not record breaking, but this is probably the third time that this is the coldest one so far. But this is the third decent cold blast that we've had in the past several weeks. So for the first time in the last several winters, we've really been getting some true cold shots of air.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: Wow. I saw somewhere in your content that and I just saw something strange and it was like winter, winter storm for New Orleans or blizzard or I don't know, something really strange. I was like, I need to get Brett on the show here, figure out what's going on, like what's happening out there right now. What is this?
[00:06:06] Speaker B: Yeah. So for the first time ever, there was a blizzard warning actually issued for the Gulf coast this morning from southeast Texas through parts of Louisiana. Never happened before in the history of the National Weather Service. So to be honest, I've never seen it before. I don't know if we'll ever see it again. It's just a very historic storm down there. Several inches of snow from Houston, Texas to New Orleans, parts of Florida. For folks that have gone down or snowbirds and have gone down south for the winter to stay warm, they're not going to be warm today. Parts of Florida getting several inches of snow. So kind of crazy to think about.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: What would be like behind this or the science behind it or like I guess why would this be occurring right now?
[00:06:51] Speaker B: So we have a lobe of the polar vortex that's, that's broken off from the Arctic and dropped south into the Great Lakes in the Midwest in the United States. And when that happens, that's led to the sub zero temperatures. We had sub zero temperatures down into southern parts of Kansas even this morning down through the Ohio Valley. And when you get sub zero temperatures that far south, speaking in terms of Fahrenheit here, then you get temperatures that are freezing all the way down to the Gulf coast and you have a warm, warm waters on the Gulf coast aiding in, in a storm system, a low pressure system developing down there. It just basically shifts the entire pattern for states down to the South. So that is, it's not totally uncommon to get some winter weather down there maybe once every five or to 10 years. It is rare to get that much snow down there.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: Okay. All right. So this might have some impacts to I guess maybe winter wheat down in Kansas. Right. Winter wheat would be a bit exposed. And then would it have anything with citrus or anything like that in Florida or not really?
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it could potentially. I don't know the crop well enough to know for sure how big of the impacts are going to be. But you know, sub freezing temperatures all the way down into central parts of Florida, Accumulating snow in northern Florida, even some ice there. I would imagine if things aren't well protected that there could be some issues down there. Again, I'd have to know a little bit more about exactly the process there for, for that time of the year because to be honest, it's not something normally to even have to worry about.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: Yeah, fair enough.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: Winter wheat is definitely a concern though. Multiple nights of below zero temperatures. Just very, very cold air working through that area. Definitely have some concerns that the winter wheat will have been impacted in the southern plains.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: Okay. All right. And is this, does this pattern, does it hang around for the rest of the week here or, or does it get back to normal very soon? Like what's the, the outlook?
[00:09:03] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's going to stay colder than normal, but the further we work into this week, the slow, or, you know, we'll slowly start to rise those temperatures a little bit. So not warm or warmer than normal, but not ridiculously cold, if you will. The pattern stays colder than normal pretty consistently over the next seven days or so for, for most of the winter wheat area. But I think the sub zero temperatures, the extreme cold should be getting out by, by the latter part of this week.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: Okay, all right, so a little bit of a reprieve or, or not back to normal, but working our way there.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: All right, working our way there.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Yeah. So we're recording this. It's January 21st. February is right around the corner. You know, when I turn my attention to the prairies we've had, you know, either it's been very cold or it's been very warm. Not no real in between for us this winter. What do you see on the horizon for us over the next few weeks?
[00:10:00] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, I think that over the next couple of weeks you get a little bit more of that, to be honest. I think that into next week you warm back up again. But then I think that as we go into the first week of February, you're going to get colder again. I think that maybe there's the potential for February to be a little bit more consistent with some colder air to the north up where you're at. But I still think there's volatility. I don't see a necessarily a locked in pattern, but I think that you might have more warmer than normal weather in February versus January.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: Okay, okay. And are we in El Nino La Nina? Like where are we in this, in this transition? Are we transitioning? Like where are we in this weather?
[00:10:44] Speaker B: That's a great question. And that really is kind of, I think, part of the driving force behind some of the volatility you've dealt with so far this winter. We have not been, up until now, we haven't been officially in a La Nina or an El Nino. We've been in a neutral state. It's kind of been in between, which is why we've had some of these fluctuations. However, we are starting to finally feel and see more La Nina like conditions developing.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: They probably won't last very long into the spring. We probably lose that again as we go into the summer. But what that means is into February it can favor more of that colder air bottled up to the north in the Canadian prairies. Still think there's some volatility because it's not a strong La Nina. But I think that that's why February can feature more cold than not after we get past maybe the first couple of days of the month.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: Okay, all right. And what about, you know, looking a little further? Have you guys had a peek at the spring yet? And anything stand out for the spring either in your area or for the Canadian prairies?
[00:11:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the key for both the US Growing regions and in the Canadian prairies, I think that winter could linger longer this year because of the late developing. La Nina tends to favor colder air lingering into March and April, especially before a big warm up, kind of a quick transition to summer into the month of May. And so plant delays, I wouldn't completely rule that out. Especially down in the eastern Ag belt in the US Colder and a wetter start to spring could keep things from, from moving quickly, especially compared to last year, which was a very quick start to the planting season up in your neck of the woods. You know, I think that colder for sure and that especially the further north you go, will have a bigger lasting influence. But I think that maybe not as consistently active as areas a little bit further down to the south into the east in the U.S. okay.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: In a sense, there's a lot of stuff going on right now, some historic type events. And it looks like we have again, a bit of fluctuations here for, for February and maybe a little colder into winter. I, I'm lucky I get to hop on a plane here in the next couple days and go down to Puerto Vallarta. So I'm going to get a little reprieve from winter. And my wife was already bugging me about a March holiday and I was like, no, like winter will be over. We don't have to go anywhere in March. But no, now, after chatting with you? I don't know. I might have to get another one scheduled.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: It might not be over. It might not be over in March, especially up where you're at, you know, Heck, even, even here some of our, our biggest snows the past 10 years have happened in March. So. Yep, you never know.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: Yeah, fair enough. Usually in March rolls around and it's the temperatures are nice enough where you can do some stuff outside and you get a bunch of accumulation, a bunch of snow and can have a lot of fun out there. So. All right, Brett, anything else on your radar right now? Do you guys have anything coming up for webinars or anything? Any going on the road at all or what do you guys got going on?
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Yeah, so a couple of things that we're doing right now. We do have our spring webinar so we'll have our official spring forecast that'll be the last Wednesday in February. To double check me on that, that might be the 26th of the month, but it'll be a Wednesday, last Wednesday, 11am Eastern, bamwx.com webinar and we'll give our full spring outlook and a sneak peek at summer. Definitely think that folks up in the Canadian prairies where you're at and into the north Central US could have some, some dry time going into the summer. So it'll be worth keeping an eye on that forecast. And then the other thing that we, that we're really big into doing this type of the year are speaking engagements at conferences and events, a lot of ag events and conferences this time of the year. So if you ever need a meteorologist to come out and speak and give a forecast at an event, feel free to give me a
[email protected] awesome.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: Sounds good Brett. And Clarity, the apps on the App Store, Android, all platforms. Any updates on Clarity?
[00:15:00] Speaker B: These days we have some fun things to come with Clarity. A new, a new thing that's going to come out soon. A couple of different things that I'm not, not quite ready to share just yet. But fair enough. As we get into the spring we have some, some fun things with Clarity and down the road, potentially a weather model website for those of you that like to watch the weather models. So cool things to come here at bam. Weather.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: Sounds great. And folks, if you are interested, head over to the website. You'll get more information on Clarity. It's a great app that our firm's been using here the last year. All right, Brett, appreciate you jumping on the show this week. Giving a little bit of historical Clarity about what's going on with the weather and yeah, it's quite something to see it for sure. Solos, cold temperatures down in the Gulf.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: So I want to give a big shout out here to show sponsor John Deere.
And they got a lot going on over at John Deere these days. It's been busy the last week or so. And of course you've heard me talk about connectivity, you've heard me talk about JDLink and John Deere Operations center, but I want to just take a second here to talk about Harvest Profit.
And Harvest Profit is a financial planning software tool. It links, connects with John Deere Operations Center. So what I mean by that is data entry is a little bit easier if it's in your JD Ops. It can sync with Harvest Profit and come across. I'm talking about land locations and things like that, Idle farms. You know, you look at some of these platforms and the data entry involves, it can be a little bit burdensome, but it's very quick to set up a farm when it comes to harvest profit, especially with JD Ops in the background. And I just, with everything going on here in 2025, I can't talk about this enough how important it is to have those numbers down, to have a place of truth where you go back, review, update and just have that plan in a spot. All right. We use it on our farm for cost of production, tracking contracts. We want to get better at it in 2025 and I think everybody does. I don't think it's just us. I think a lot of people do as well. Harvestprofit.com check it out. Honestly, if you want to sleep a little bit more, sleep better at night, having it down, that's one of the steps. All right, so again, thanks John Deere, great show sponsor here for what? The Futures podcast. Alrighty. My favorite segment of the week, Positive moments.
Got a couple here for you. So number one, we held the, the Zoom, the after party Zoom Call earlier this week for conference attendees and Drumheller and, and I had Kyle from Producer Profit join me. We talked markets and then I had Mark from Simple Hedge come on. And so I said this on the, on the, on the Zoom call, but when you get a group of farmers together, you know you're, you're putting an event together, hoping and working towards the farmers in attendance, coming and gaining some knowledge and some, some learning, some experience, some collaboration, friendships and taking that away from the conference to implement throughout the year.
And the one thing that I also realize and recognize is that the people that speak, they are also inspired.
And so they make tweaks and changes. And I know I talked to organizations after that spoke, and if it was jgl, producer, profit, even myself, tweaking and trying to get better at some of the stuff that we put out there. And Simple Hedge was. Was a great example they presented. Then they came out here last week with this academy, and they took feedback from the people in attendance, made some pivots, some decisions here, and put together something I thought was. Was really, really neat. And, you know, you can go check out the Simple Hedge guys and get the details on it. I'm not going to go into the details of it here, but the reason this is a positive moment is that as an industry, when you get together, you know, the goal here is to provide something of value for farmers to implement later. But you also see the industry respond as well. And I really, really appreciate that and acknowledge the folks that listen to the people in attendance and made some tweaks after the conference to make what they're doing better, to do a better job. All right, so that's positive moment for me. Second one was my wife's birthday earlier this week.
And, you know, we did it all. We. We had the cake. We. We had a. Celebrated her, right? Celebrated Chantel and the kids helped me. We did a mystery project in the basement. So Chantel's gotten into here the last couple years, and she's influenced all of us to just be a little bit healthier in our household. But she's a. She. She's going to the gym and she's doing all sorts of things, and she's really enjoying it, okay? And so we. We put together. We had a treadmill downstairs and a rower, but we were looking for free weights. And we built Mom a gym downstairs. We got these thick rubber mats we laid down. We got a bench and some weights, and we put all this together and. And we nailed it. She's excited and we nailed it. All right, so that. Let's pause a moment. My. Like, just a sidebar to this, though. So I bought this weight set from Costco, okay? And so this is how I know I'm getting old, but I buy these weights. I. The guy working is like, would you like, help loading this in your cart? And I look at him like, dude, I'm gonna be 40. Like, I'm a man. All right? I. I'm. I got this. So these three boxes, the whole thing weighs 300 pounds. So the boxes are like 100 pounds each. I throw them in the cart, okay? I get to the till, pay for my order at Costco, and I go to the door, you know, the. They check your receipt and check you out. And she says, sir, would you like some help loading this in your vehicle? And I.
Come on, just look at me, right?
I got this.
Well, my elbow, I don't know what I did, but my elbow is killing me and it has not stopped hurting since that day. So I have no idea what it is. It's not swollen or anything. But what I'm realizing, folks, as I approach 40 and people are offering me help, I guess I'm at the age now where I have to take that help and accept it because obviously I can't handle it on my own. And yeah, I guess getting to 40, this is what you're. This is what you're in for. So anyways. All right, and then my last one here.
So we are, we're heading, we're heading south for the week and we're going to hit up a little bit of beach time with the kids in Puerto Vallarta for the end of January here. And so it's our first holiday since, you know, late winter in 2023. So it's been a little while. We're flying with a two year old. So please, you know, pray for us if you don't mind, and keep us in your thoughts and we're looking forward to it. Getting away is always nice and, and fortunate to be able to do that. So certainly a positive moment for this week. What's on my mind for crop marketing this week?
Alrighty. A lot to untackle here, a lot to go through. First off, better check the markets, actually. Markets are trading as I record. This is actually a morning recording. The rare morning recording. Canola up 7 bucks.
Wheat currently up. Chicago up a penny and a half.
Kansas down a penny. Minneapolis down a quarter percent. What a week it's been. There's a lot of doom and gloom around this, this week, and I felt it too. You know, a lot of crop marketing decisions, you know, we'll see good or bad, and we'll see. That's one thing about crop marketing is you can always review your body of work after the fact.
But it was, you know, a week of expected negativity. And then we come out of day one with no tariffs against Canada and the market gets excited, people get excited. And I know I sent a thing out to the lunchbox crew saying, hey, no tariffs today. You know, some positivity. And. And then an hour later, February 1st tariffs are coming up. This Whipsaw action. This, you know, this uncertainty, this instability, you know, this market changing from a tweet like it did for four years, from what, 2016 to 2020, 2017 to 2021, that we're back into that. And so again, it's very noisy, it's stressful, it's unpredictable.
And, and that's why I go back to just whatever your version is, writing stuff down and having a plan. Because when you have that plan, you can look forward, get through the noise and just look forward at what that plan is. What have I written down? What am I focusing on? And not worry so much about the tweets and the day to day stuff. Okay, now there's been a lot of farm selling going on and stuff like that, but I tell you, you know, my technical buddies, the smart folks that I chat with on the technical side, they look at these charts with quiet optimism. They look at charts today, Canola chart, wheat chart, and say, huh, this is trying to show us a little something here to the upside.
Now it could change and it changes quickly, but it's not all bad. And we get out of this week with some positivity. All right, we've got, you know, wheat prices, wheat futures, you know, not showing us some, some of the highest prices in, you know, six, seven weeks. Now your net price, what didn't change much right in your backyard on spring wheat. I got an idea on what you can do there. Oat prices, that little quiet oat market, oat futures have rallied enough now where the oat market has to respond. All right, so oat prices are starting to climb here just a little bit. We saw some lentil prices also. New crop, old crop, lentil prices, not much, but showing a bit of life there as well. So that was good. And then Canola market coming in here and hanging in. Soybeans climbing, you know, some support from some missed rains in, in Argentina. Also some quality issues of Brazil soybeans into China. So that sparked the market as well.
And there's other things, right? It's not just about tariffs, it's not just about Donald Trump. There are other things as well. And so, you know, the market of Canola last week's down in what, the 590 level? 595. And it's up a buck from there. And it's in the green here, trading at 637 off the March contract as I record. All right, so what's on my mind for crop marketing? I just, I really want you to pay special attention to the feed Grains market right now we've seen some strength in feed barley for both old crop and new crop. And I think that's something that needs to be acknowledged here. The upside in the feed barley market, I know. Are we going to continue to take US corn to what degree or what tariff is going to come on. Are we going to respond by putting a tariff on US Corn coming into Canada? There are some questions here, but what I want to highlight is that there is also uncertainty on the cattle that are being bought out of the US to be fed in Canada. There's uncertainty on the folks that are in that industry on backfilling and filling, you know, those feedlots up. And so that barley demand, I'm not saying it's going to be less, just saying you got to, in my opinion, you got to acknowledge, acknowledge that. All right. On the wheat side, wheat basis I'm going to. This is going to bite me in the butt. This is going to come back and bite me. All right. But what I've been focused on here with, you know, my consulting clients and, and from an advice perspective is I've been setting targets on wheat basis and getting those triggered and leaving futures open. And so the example I have for you today is we were 825 for hard red spring wheat at Vitera. All right, 825. 825. Didn't matter what the market was doing. The special kept coming out at 825.
Futures pullback and we set a target that essentially would have given the grower like 835 at the time. Okay. But our goal was, was 850. Now we've kept the futures open so we set that target and the merchant picked it up pretty much instantly. Okay, maybe I put it a little bit too low, but it was definitely a premium over that posted basis of significant one actually. But over that posted basis. And so the strategy was have that basis locked in. I'm not bearish basis by any means, but farmer wanted to move some wheat, lock in that basis and then let's let this futures market breathe a little bit and let's see what happens here over the next little while. Well, yesterday that contract would have priced out at 860 a bushel. 860 or 865, something like that. You know what the price was at the Vitera location? It wasn't 8.25, it was 8.30. But you know, futures move basis just takes it away. And so that growers up, you know, we'll see 30 cents right now. I told them our expectation was to turn that into $9. So again, we got some heavy lifting here we need to do. Wheat needs to make a bigger move. But as I look at wheat markets entering into February and March, February is usually a quiet month. But as you get into March, April, wheat futures tend to wake up a little bit. And that's where I think the chance comes into play for some $9 stuff, maybe even better. All right, so that's the strategy that's going to bite me in the ass. So I probably have to put a disclaimer in there saying these are just examples. You know, you have to own your own decisions and seek the advice of an expert or something like that. So you don't send me hate mail when it doesn't work out. But it's just something that I saw that I thought was. Was interesting. Okay, Yellow pea growers, you know, or old crop yellow peas. That price is on the decline here, folks. India, we don't have enough time to get that. Get those peas over to India now. So let's make sure that you get those cleaned up. Okay? All right, that's it for what's on my mind here for crop marketing. All right, so this is the part of the episode where I get to like, freewheel here just a little bit. Of course, I freewheeled in crop marketing. You know, what was on my mind for crop marketing this week, but for this one, for housekeeping, it's kind of the same deal. So I got a couple of things here that I just. I want to get out there and just kind of get on your mind for the end of January. Number one, my pal Taylor Wallace is putting together a grower meeting in Unity, Saskatchewan. It's called beyond the Field. All right? And Taylor was inspired to have a business setting, a business type meeting for farmers in Unity, phenomenal capacity. It's going to be at the community center, all right, on February 20th from 9am to 3pm and this is the roster of speakers, all right? You got MNP kicking off the day, talking about some farm financial stuff, all right? Anytime I've seen those guys speak, it's been great. You got Clarenbach, that's going to be there, technical analysis. You got Sinclair, that's going to be there with producer, profit, fundamental analysis. And then you got Denis, that's going to be there. All right, that's just me, but I'll be there as well. And I'm not sure where I'm going to fit in here on my presentation, but I'll do A bit of a song and dance and see what, see what happens. If you want to go to this thing, lunch is provided. You can RSVP.
You got a text to 306-210-9954 by February 7th. You text that number that you want to go to this thing, how many people? And they will set your seat aside. Okay. February 20th in unity. A great roster of talent. They're speaking. The other thing I had on my mind, a crop Marketing Made Cool conference. Of course it's in Moose jaw here in 2025. And I just. If you are from Moose Jaw listening to this, your, your community there in Moose Jaw has just given us like a giant hug. And we get calls from businesses that want to participate. We're getting all sorts of creative ideas from folks in Moose Jaw as well. It's been very exciting the last couple days here as planning continues. But I want to hear from you, the listener about where to have this thing in 2026, 2027, 2028. Where should we have it? Where should we host it? We're looking for an event center. 175ish people. Yeah, we're not going to grow this thing numbers wise. We're keeping it to a nice tight 175 moving forward. All right. But looking for cool spots across the prairies that can host this event. We've done a little bit of Alberta, you know, centralist Central Alberta. We're going a little bit further south, heading into Saskatchewan. Hey, is there a spot in Manitoba that that would be cool for this? You know, somewhere not a city. Let me know Ryan at what the futurespodcast Ca Send me an email, send me a note, hit me up on socials. We want your ideas and everything is on the table right now. All right. Someone mentioned Cabo the other day and I was like, hey, maybe for like a five year anniversary or something. Like I'm not ruling anything out right now. So let me know. All right. And my last thing for housekeeping, so I got a, I got a picture here sent to me from my buddy Mark.
And so it's Manitoba Ag Days in Brandon and he sent me this picture. I'm just going to look it up on my phone. I don't know which organization did this. It doesn't show me. But the question was, what is one of the biggest challenges currently on your farm? And so they have a map of Manitoba and then people write on a post it note and write down their biggest issue.
And you've got all sorts of things like you got rocks Water, too much moisture, labor, weather, drought, manpower, erosion, like the list goes on and on. Disease, size of farm, acquiring land, property theft and vandalism, keeping it fun. Rising land value, soil compaction, turning a profit, fertilizer costs. You know, those are, there's, there's hundreds of, of notes on here.
And I know that folks tuning in and listening are, are going through the same thing. We have politics in here. Tariffs, marketed instability. Lots of marketing stuff on here, of course. And I'd say labor pops up, land pops up, marketing pops up and probably disease pops up as well, pretty, pretty regularly. But I know that, you know, it's never easy, it's challenging. I think there's always a bit of excitement as you get through the winter and temperatures warm up and you get that optimism for the next growing season. And I know that's right around the corner as well. And I know the what the Futures podcast can't solve all this stuff, but what I want to say here is that, you know, I'm taking a look at this and I'm using this type of, of influence fuel this stuff drives, is going to drive the direction of, of the show here in 2025. And so I'm looking at some of these themes. We can't tackle it all, we can't do it all. I love talking crop marketing. That's where I feel like I can help the most and immediately. But there's some other things on here that popped up that to me are very, very important that we need to cover and discuss and stuff like this is going to help drive the show. And Mark, thanks for sending that in. I've been looking at it quite a bit here the last couple days or last day or so and it's going to drive a little bit of what we have going on. Some different ideas for the what the Futures podcast. So appreciate that eating your veggies this week. Of course, these are action oriented items and we'll summarize it very quickly. We talked about it in what's on My Mind in crop marketing. But let's, let's consider selling some old crop feed barley and some new crop feed barley. Okay. Let's keep that top of mind for our feed barley growers out there. Take a look at those numbers and keep moving the needle on percent sold. I'm not saying 100%. I'm just saying just continue to move the needle there. All right. On the Canola side with all the uncertainty, full disclaimer. You know I have Canola puts. All right? I do. So if I'M talking my book here, talking my position. I have Canola puts. I did not pay a lot of money for them. I think I'm into them for 13 bucks a ton right now. And I have downside protection for the next month as we sort through some of the chaos out there. I hope they expire worthless. That just means Canola has held on and likely rallied. But I like the Canola puts. And then of course, I talked about number three, wheat basis. Setting that target. Take that wheat basis, take that latest special, work out your what the basis was in that and then add 15 or 20 cents to it. That's the target, that's the strategy. Maybe go off may futures. Give yourself some time for a futures rally and away you go. All right, Eating your veggies. That's all we got for this week. Alrighty. I think we made it to the end of the show here, so thank you. Yeah, thanks for tuning in once again to the what the Futures podcast.
And yeah, I hope, I hope we gave you a little bit of advice this week that makes sense. But of course, markets change, strategies change very, very quickly. And just be aware that what we've talked about may have changed by the time you listen to it. Always seek the advice of the professionals out there, folks, and, you know, have fun with it. I know it's been a tough, tough couple of weeks for many of you, but, yeah, have fun with it. Don't get too, too, too stressed. There's lots of folks out here that can help help you with crop marketing. And of course, you can always email in to the show, Ryan, the futurespodcast ca. And I'll see what I can do and if I can help. All right, that's it for me this week. I'm out.
