Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Buy, sell, or hold. We're going to go through that list today for prairie farmers as harvest rumbles along here.
What should farmers be selling for cash flow? What could they consider holding?
And is there a crop you'd consider buying?
Let's get into it. Episode 141 coming at you right now.
Hey, folks, welcome to the what the Futures podcast, your quick guide to better farming decisions.
All right, folks, welcome into episode 141 of the what the Futures podcast. My name is Ryan and I'm your host here each and every week. Of course, I'm hanging out in the UPL studio. Big thanks to UPL for supporting the show here the last couple years. And you can enroll now.
Go to uplcorp.com ca click on grower Rewards and you can get enrolled signed up for the Grower Rewards program, one of the most lucrative programs in the Prairies. All right, check that out at upl.
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Get a little extra. That's Ryan at what the Futures podcast. So you just got to email me, say Ryan, add me to Insiders and we'll get you going.
Shout out to Aaron, producer Aaron, who's behind the scenes this week, making things look good and sound good, getting things tidied up. So thanks, Aaron, for that. This week's guests, we've got Blake Weisseth with Western Egg. We've got Al with Brett Young. We're gonna chat corn.
Apparently Al's a bit of a, if you play hockey against him, he know he, he lets you know that he's around. All right, He's a little feisty. And then we Ellie with John Deere. That's going to be a recording here from Egg and Motion. Actually a couple of these are so a couple a little bit of a catch up here on some of our summer content with some previously recorded episodes.
Song of the week for this week. The Harvest playlist is on YouTube. You just look up what the futures harvest 26 and that's where I have curated 100 songs for your listening enjoyment. My Song of The week is going to be Soul to Squeeze by the Chili Peppers.
And it has such a killer bass line in it. All right. Flea does not disappoint in this song. Last week, I think we did a song from 1995. I think this one's like 1993. So we're going back. I need to get maybe a little bit more modern here in the next couple of episodes. Also, the reason the song. I love this song is I played the bass guitar in high school.
Peak fame happened on Telemiracle, a great fund fundraiser in Saskatchewan.
Me and the band Crystals, Karma.
We, we. We peaked at 3am on Telemiracle. And I'm pretty sure my parents said they stayed up to watch it, but anyways, maybe I have video of that. Have to track that down, but that's where we peaked. My bass playing just went down the tubes after that. Just worse and worse.
All right, positive moments here for episode 141. I, I, I, I don't know how to, how my, what I say. My joy is just like, I, I can't be more excited. All right. And so I want to congratulate my brother Colin and his wife Christy.
They announced here last weekend that they are expecting their first baby in March.
And.
They have been in it, folks. They have gone through everything to get to this point, and I am so excited for them to be parents. I'm so excited about that announcement here. And for those that know my story, I'm not going to go into it, but this is very, very special because I've seen these two individuals and what they've gone through the last number of years, and this getting to this point, it's supposed to be easy, right? It's supposed to be easy to, to make a family. And, and it's not. The reality is that it's just, it's not for everybody. And so they have gone through everything the last number of years, the highs and the lows of, of, you know, getting to this point today. And I just, I want to give them the biggest congratulations and, you know, to, to good health and smooth sailing here the rest of the way. But very exciting, the den growing here in 2027. And grandma and Grandpa were ecstatic as well as, as expected. So just again, Colin and Christie, congratulations, guys. It's, it's just phenomenal and I'm so proud of you guys getting to this point.
All right, last thing here before we get into.
Oh, let's, let's go to Benzelli here. Let's go there with John Deere but we ran, we did three 30 day trials for the Lunchbox crew in August.
And so we're giving those three the boot here.
Well, I guess Monday. And so if you are interested, you know, in joining the Lunchbox crew for the month of September, like I'm willing to do three one month trials as well. All right, just three. You just have to send me an email, Ryan, at what the Futures podcast ca and say, hey, I want one of those free trials here for September.
Come in and experience it. I'm not going to do this forever. It's probably the last go at it for now, but it was fun in August. But those guys are getting the boot here and so we'll throw the next three into the mix. All right, folks, let's get into it here. Ben Zelli from John Deere, we're going to talk air carts, tires and on and on.
So here we go. Here's Ben. All right, folks, I've got Ben Zelli joining me here. Of course, we are recording. Recording live. Well, not live, Augustine, you can scratch that.
All right, folks, we are down at Egg in Motion hanging out at the John Deere booth. I've got Ben Zelli joining me in studio here. I can't believe it. Recording live from the. Or recording from the John Deere stage. We did do a live show earlier this morning.
Ben, we had a couple things to cover off here. Why don't you tell the folks your role at John Deere and you know your area of specialty.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: Thanks, Ryan. I am the product manager within our air seeding and planting group. So I cover planters and air seeders for the US And Canada.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: All right, perfect. So, Ben, we've got the, well, the new C1450T that was just announced or just released this morning, of course, on the grounds is the C1100T. We didn't get in the live segment. We didn't get a chance to talk about tires. And one of your colleagues came up and said, hey, hey, don't stop the show yet. You got to talk about tires. What's going on? On with the tires, man.
[00:08:09] Speaker B: Absolutely. So the, the thing you may notice as you come up to our C1450T in the booth is there's big tires, not just in the back, but in the front too. We've got duals, dual tires on both the rear and the front and they're 1100 tires. So some very large tires, some of the largest that we see on air carts in the industry. Yeah, right here at The John Deere booth. And one of the things that that comes back to us. And you know, at John Deere, we're always listening to the customers. And very specifically, one of the customers when we were working on this 1450T said, you can add more, but we don't want ruts through the field. So how do we work through that flotation? And so we're calling it our high flotation package.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: And it only has 12 psi in the tires. And so if we think about that pounds per square inch, the psi that's contacting the ground, we're spreading that out across four tires on the rear, four tires on the front. And so we're creating that bigger footprint and using some of those same learnings that we have on combines and tractors in our air carts there to reduce the compaction across the machine.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: So is there somebody in engineering that is just super passionate about rubber and tires and like, getting this down to a science?
[00:09:15] Speaker B: Absolutely. We've got engineers that are focused on everything, and we work with great suppliers too.
Actually, the tires on that C1450 is a partnership where we have a John Deere exclusive tire for that cart that's been co developed with the supplier.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:09:31] Speaker C: Cool.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: It's just amazing how much, you know, thought and effort goes into, you know, the tire. Right. It's amazing.
[00:09:38] Speaker C: So.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: All right, well, I appreciate that, Ben. Now, we also didn't get a chance to cover wind, and the wind is calm here today. But air packages in these new carts, what's going on with the air? Less air, More air, more wind, less wind. Where we at?
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Well, certainly, as we think about larger carts and as the tools have gotten larger as well, up to 90 foot tool from John Deere in that P690 configuration, we think about how do we get all that product. And as rates have increased as well, that we have some customers who are putting down even higher rates of fertilizer along with that seed. We got to make sure we have enough wind or enough air power to push that out to the extents of our air tool as we're going through the field. And so both the C1100T and the 1450T come with a new air package. And you'll notice that I think that'd be one thing customers are looking at. And this is, of course, an engineering version here, since this is the launch of the product. But we've been really working on what the next steps are of that air product to ensure that we can get enough air and have sufficient air to blow that product through the tool and accurately see through the field.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: All right, so part of your expertise, like, we're talking about the cart here, but is there anything, like, with a tool as well that has changed or. Or are you specific to carts and not tool? Is it two different people that handle that? Like, they. I don't know.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: We work together. And so. Absolutely. Carts and tools for us, just like customers, you rarely see them disconnected. So, yeah, it kind of freaked me out walking up to the booth that we have the C1100T not hooked to a tool. Right. It's just out of the booth, but we have a full train with the tractor, tool and cart hooked up with the C1450T. So we have both of them here in the booth, which take some space. So we have to be mindful of that as we work together. But when we're Talking about that P600, we have been working on that. And you'll see some new hose routings if you add an older tool to the one that's in the booth, Some updates that we've been doing there. So it's not just about new introductions for us. We also are focused on that continuous improvement and how we can, through precision upgrades, like the relative flow blockage, which is showcased on the tool that we have out here today, as well as updating routings, updating how we're connecting those hoses, and continuing to refine and hear that customer feedback and what worked and what didn't through each season, and working with those local dealers to provide that support for the customers.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: All right, sounds great. And I got one more for you.
I'm going to lob this one up because I want to know, like, we've talked about all sorts. We talked about tires, we talked about wind and air. We've talked about
[00:12:18] Speaker B: meters. The EasyCal.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: Exactly. Keep going. Like, what's your favorite? Like, out of all the changes, or maybe it's an old reliable that you're just continuing to be excited about. But is there anything that really stands out with this latest launch?
[00:12:34] Speaker B: I would say one that maybe has been a little more quietly introduced and is one that, as we talk to customers, they go.
I didn't realize how nice this was until we had. It was blower automation. And so we talked about that air package on the back. But when you have a John Deere tractor with that P600 tool and a John Deere air cart, we can have the cart and tractor talking to each other. To automate the airflow, or excuse me, automate the hydraulic flow through the tractor to the fans to automate what that speed is. And so if you've run an air cart, and I know you have, you're kind of hunting through the day of what is my hydraulic flow for each SCV to make sure that I'm getting the right airspeed through and running that for my products to ensure that I'm getting that flow through.
This takes that away. So as as you get it set, you set what you want that speed to be and then the tractor and air cart are going to work together. That as the hydraulics warm up, as the temperatures change, as conditions change throughout the field, it's going to help automate that process so that you don't have to, in addition to everything else you're monitoring in those tight windows, also keep track of what that hydraulic flow is to the car as well. So maybe an unsung hero, if you will, of that blower automation feature, but I'd say it's that for me. And then the Ezcal system always is a crowd pleaser and accurate meters. That section command pro in that being able to turn on and off those individual meters and change those rates.
As we've talked to agronomists and growers, that's changing the game for them of being able to make prescriptions to get the most out of every field. And we know that there's some areas that, hey, maybe it's a slew that I don't want to plant as high a population because that may not make it through the year. And maybe it's an area that has a little bit heavier soil that we know is going to produce better for us or we can put the higher nutrients in to get the most out of the soil. Those for me are the features that get me really excited.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, thank you, Ben. Have a, have a great week down here at Egg in Motion and really appreciate you being on the show here a few times for us.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Thanks again, Ryan. Always happy to talk about Eric Carts. Appreciate you meeting with us today.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: Awesome.
Oh man, Egg in Motion was just such a blast.
Great weather, great crowd and let's set up a John Deere.
Ah man, it was just cool.
In fact, I tried to text the message of the sound guy I had because he had these little boosters. I don't know what they are. I should have paid attention. But anyways, for your microphone and I want to get that for the studio here. So I was talking to the agency, I'm like can you give me that guy's number? Because I really want to figure out his sound setup because it was awesome.
Anyways, crowd marketing monologue here for episode 141.
So this is pre recorded on Sunday.
We got a little vacation. So I, you know, as of recording here, we had a big canola drop on on Friday. Kind of an outlier compared to the other, you know, soybeans, corn, even wheat like canola just kind of stood out as a, with a $20 a ton drop. Now I expect by the time that you listen to this that we have gained some momentum here because we, we make higher lows on these little pullbacks.
So are we going to dip below 800 and to what level Is this a minor pullback for heading into harvest? Canola harvest still a couple of weeks away from really getting going here.
So a little early for a big pullback. So I'm expecting that we're holding here maybe trending sideways, worst case scenario, but just something to keep an eye on.
We sold a little bit of $17 canola on our farm. Again, it's pretty, the last few episodes that I'd like to reown some canola here at some point.
But we did, we wanted a bit more bin space. We, we like that margin potential and maybe you're looking at that too, saying hey, I do need bin space. I do need to make some money here. You know, it could be a crappy look at now again we were talking about can only go into 20 or $21. So you know, if you're going to do something, make sure you have a strategy in, in place.
I also just want to talk quickly here. It's the time of year where, you know, we, we need to generate some cash and we, we have to pay some bills unfortunately. And, and you know, maybe bin space is a challenge or not. So the, you know, the buy, sell hold.
I thought we could talk about some different scenarios here and you might say, well Ryan, the buy side, that is insanity. Why would you have buy in here or in the business of selling commodities? Well, I just mean that, you know, if you look at, you know, a dozen crops or so that we're growing across the prairies and with confidence, is there a crop that you would, you know, look to maybe reown at some point? It's just like we talked about a moment ago. But I put canola in this, this category is the smallest one. You know, you could, you could maybe put like, you know, number one Durham that you could convince somebody to sell it to you for eight bucks and the, the premiums go bonkers here in a few weeks and it goes to 10. Well you could throw that in the category I guess but I don't have evidence in that.
You could do that with just about any crop on quality spreads and say well I'm going to own this at this price and hope the spread improves. Again, I'm not giving that advice out today. I'm just saying canola is a crop that we feel very strongly that we need to ration demand out there. And yet demand is the story in the background. China coming in and buying some canola here again as the rumors suggest earlier in the week. So you know, it's the one that I feel, you know, the most confident on. That supply is super tight and is there a chance to re own. All right, so that's the buy. It's the shortest list. The cell. I would put feed grains in the cell category because I'm seeing some premiums for feed wheat across the prairies for those early delivery months and of course the same thing with feed barley. And I also, I wonder here, are we producing a bunch of feed grains? Are we producing.
Yeah, you know, in a spot where maybe we have a little extra feed wheat this year, maybe some germ into the feed market.
Plenty of feed barley around. We have some, you know, a good hay crop that quality wise may be poor but I again feed grains I'm just not as bullish on. So it's the crop of the most sold as well. It just kind of adds up. So that's a, that's a sell. I put wheat in this category, spring wheat, CPS wheat.
But it is one that could be explosive to the upside yet.
But I would say it's the one that I'm watching closely or maybe with the most intent because the wheat market to me if it loses the Ukraine, Russia storyline for some weird reason in the next week or two, then that's the one that could face some more severe pullbacks. Now that's not my expectation and I still think wheat, there's plenty of reasons to hold wheat into the winter here.
I'm bullish wheat. But again it's just one of those that could face severe consequences if the storyline changes. So it's, it's in the sell area. Keeping an eye on that flax, same thing. I'd put that in there. I'm still, I'm okay with the flax market but just something I would watch at this time, you know, maybe poor quality Durham like I like, I like Being patient. I like letting the market figure out spreads. Unless I have like a really good quality, you know, product like Durham or peas, and I extract a big premium, you know, because they need to fill cars, then okay, I'd look at that. But overall, I kind of like letting things settle. So if it's a discount, the discount side, they tend to get too severe too fast. So I'd like to be a bit more patient.
But if it's, you know, the premium side, maybe they've reacted too fast and there's something to grab there. So I'll put this in the sell category as Poor Durham. Maybe you get ahead of the severe discount or maybe you get a big premium off the, off the hop. So I'll put that in that category then hold. You know, malt barley is a hold. Just, you know, seeing what happens with quality.
Looks like there's lots of room here for malt.
For malt demand anyway. No one's really plugged up, so I like to see how that develops. I like a bit of upside there.
Maybe not much, but a bit. Oats, again, I said last week I'm gonna, I think these are going up 20% now. They have gone up like 25 cents this week. So there we go. We're off to the races, right? But oats is a hold tight supply. Maybe some quality stuff. We'll see. But I'd hold oats and then all the pulses. Green lentils, red lentils, yellow peas, green peas. I'm just kind of holding all that. Unless again, I have good quality and can extract a big premium. All right, so you got to figure this out for your farm. We as well for our farm. But just some ideas around the buy sell hold and I figured the buy would get a few eyebrows raised.
All right, folks, let's keep moving along. I've got Blake Wiseth here with Western Ag. We did our mid cast on the farm a couple weeks ago and talked about yields review, profitability, and I wanted to share that story. So let's get into it here with Blake from Western Egg.
Alrighty, folks, welcome back here. Episode 141 of the what the Futures podcast. We've got Blake Wiseth from Western Ag joining us once again. You're. You're like a regular on the show now. Blake, how's it going?
[00:22:33] Speaker C: Hey, no, I feel honored. Thanks for having me, Ryan. It's. Our first chat was a lot of fun and I am expecting the same for this one, so.
[00:22:40] Speaker A: Awesome. Good stuff. Me too. I.
It's been a, you know, an Interesting growing season across the prairies. It's kind of been a tale of two different stories, kind for the. For the most part. But you took a trip out to our farm here the other day.
What'd you think as you were traveling north of Saskatoon and taking a peek at some of the crops around the Dormy, Saskatchewan area?
[00:23:06] Speaker C: Yeah, so we were up in your neck of the woods last week, Thursday. And yeah, generally speaking, I mean, as you head north of Saskatoon, I think things generally are looking pretty good.
You know, there's fewer pulse acres, of course, as you go north of Saskatoon, so, you know, not as many of those flooded fields and, and negative yield impacts that you see, you know, in other regions where pulse crops are more important in the rotation. But, yeah, generally. Generally really good. And that was really the point of the conversation with Colin was just to really recap the season. And so we talked about that and we can dive into that story and then just really, hey, what impact does that have on. On the crop, cast, model and what does that mean for us going forward?
[00:23:52] Speaker A: So, yeah, you bet. So to back this up for a second, so I got a call from friend of the show, Nathan Kuhn, who basically said, if I'm farming, I'm working with Western Ag, there's no way where I'm, you know, ever a year or space where those are going to be separated. I farm them doing that together. And I was like, what are you talking about? Like, what's the story here? And so that got us down the path of, with you and Ian and some of the team there and learning about Western eggs, you know, philosophy and how you guys approach fertility and all that. So your, your big season's coming up here right away. Like, it's going to be go time for you guys over the next few weeks.
So we get started and you guys were out early May in the snow, you know, doing some soil sampling.
We got a late start to the growing season on our farm. May 19th was. Was go time for us. So delayed a coup, absolute chaos.
But once we got rolling, it got better. Each day, less stocks, you know, more acres getting done in a day. And at the end of it, we were only delayed about five, four or five days at the very, very end. So a quick planting window for us and it worked out.
When you were sitting on farm there in early May, were you thinking, wow, we've got a hill to climb here. What were you thinking? So sampling in the snow, I mean,
[00:25:18] Speaker C: yeah, it was very real, for sure in terms of getting to the farm, you know, Roads washed out and taking the goat trail to get there. You know, wow, a lot of water in the spring.
We even ended up having to make a game time decision and sample a different field because the one we were originally going to do was flooded out yet. But credit to the team there that did a great job of hitting the ground running when the conditions were right.
And you know, as it turns out, I think, you know, the, the rest of the growing season has been quite favorable in terms of grow season conditions, which, which is certainly a blessing. So that's really good. Yeah.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Yeah. We're one of the farms that's crossing our fingers, crossing our toes, you know, just wanting to get to the finish line. And it's been for everybody, it's been a slog. It doesn't matter if it was, you know, too much rain or now a bit too dry or if it was bugs and disease. Like it's just been one of those all in growing seasons here for 20, 26. Very, very few down days for farmers in the prairies this year. So. All right, so the intriguing things here for me as a crop marketer, that's why we have a fertility, you know, soil sampling guru company and Western egg on the show is about, you know, marketing with confidence, marketing our crops with confidence, looking at, you know, smart decisions around profitability and, and that's what you guys bring into the equation here. Blake. So why don't you just give the listeners just a quick.
Yeah. Mention on what that is what I'm talking about there.
[00:26:57] Speaker C: Totally. So yeah, I guess if you start where we start in the spring in this case, typically, as you noted earlier, the big season for sampling is, you know, as soon as the combines are pulling that crop off, we're hitting the field in the fall, getting those soil samples, doing our, our complete nutrient analysis.
But then with respect to your comment about, you know, how does this interact with, with marketing and that sort of thing, we have a decision support tool, a simulation model called the crop caster. And we're taking that nutrient analysis results from that sample we're collecting, but we're contextualizing it, if you will. I guess we're placing it within what is your growing season normally look like in terms of, you know, what you're expecting for precipitation, what you typically get for, you know, heat stress, 30 degree days during canola flowering as an example, and then seeing what impact of those factors have on what we're predicting for your site's yield potential. Okay.
Then we bring in the economics for fertilizer costs, cost of production, et cetera, to come up with what's the most profitable plan based on what we're seeing there. And then, you know, the nice thing about using that as a tool even as the growing season progresses is we can update that model based on how the growing season actually looked like. And. And so that's what we call our mid cast. That's an important part of our cycle. And so as an example. Yeah. As it relates, your farm in the spring, you know, I asked Colin, I said, what would you expect for sort of an average precipitation that you're comfortable in season? Usable moisture, 7 inches, you know, and that was the number he gave. Well, fast forward.
We had a pretty favorable growing season condition. Got that crop in the ground, albeit maybe a few days late, but really nice moisture and not a whole bunch in large events, pretty dispersed.
[00:28:50] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:28:50] Speaker C: I think Colin referenced 8 inches in June, but it was, you know, a couple inches here, a couple inches there sort of thing.
And so now the kind of growing season precip is no longer seven inches, but we're actually more nine and a half. Right. So we can use that, put that into the model.
We also had fairly minimal heat stress. Thankfully, July was quite positive in. In that sense on the farm. So not really expecting much of a yield drag in that respect. And so, yeah, ultimately then to give you that confidence, you can have a pretty good idea, you know, what. What should my crop look like? We're not there yet. We're getting close. But you know, what, what does that look like from the marketing perspective?
[00:29:31] Speaker A: So you sat down with Colin at the farm the other day, and I was teasing him that he made his. His YouTube debut because the. The first time he came on my show, I think he's the only guest, maybe there may be two guests where there was no camera on. He said, I'll come on the show, Ryan, but no camera. And so I said, well, dude, you're now on YouTube, man. So.
So he made his YouTube debuted y.
So we're at the midcast part of. Of the. Of the program here. So, you know, what did you guys kind of COVID We talked rain a little bit. Did you kind of review the execution of the plan in the spring? Did we do what we were supposed to on our side and.
And you know, what kind of stood out in the midcast session?
[00:30:19] Speaker C: Yeah. So, you know, of course, looking at, you know, those two key parameters of moisture and temperature, and particularly because temperature wasn't much of an issue, but this added moisture. No. What impact does that have? Right. So we Know, soils are dynamic living systems and so that extra moisture, it's stimulating more microbial activity. We would see more nutrient supply in that model.
Now there's greater yield potential and so, you know, greater demand for nutrients. The one real thing that Colin had referenced was, you know, there was some issues in terms of supply, you know, accessing additional nutrients. Even though we may have recommended that the canola, based on what we're seeing, could have benefited from a little extra n.
Just reality, not able to necessarily get that on farm. So ultimately for the wheat acres, we were pretty close to, you know, the actual applied fertility matched pretty closely to what we were calling for a model on the canola. We were asking for maybe a little more nitrogen. But yeah, like I said, Colin did a great job with what he had on farm to get it in and especially in a tight timeline. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that comes through at the end though.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: So, you know, as you're going through the midcast and reviewing some of the factors, you know, that, that are, you know, temperature and moisture, did you find that the farm overall with those ingredients is looking at, you know, above, above average crop potential and, and some pretty good optimism there? Is that kind of what came out of it?
[00:31:55] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. So I think we're definitely in that space. Like I say there's. We also recognize that there's other factors outside of the environment that might impact crop yield. Of course, largely pests. Right. So we talked about that a lot with Colin too, and to his credit, the team's done a great job of getting out there and you know, quite a few passes over the field. Particularly, you know, in these, in these conditions, we're thinking about disease pressures for sure. So yeah, spraying fungicide one application on the wheat, two on the canola, I believe.
And then also, yeah, we, as we're lining up the, the mid cast session with Colin, he was saying, yeah, you know, just getting the Bertha army worm sprayed in the canola too. So yeah, there's definitely, definitely insects disease.
But that said, I think, you know, Colin's done a great job of getting out there and so I think the, the control was, you know, went according to plan in that respect. So things are shaping up pretty good.
You know, the one thing I guess that did come up with like June, July, really good conditions. August has been kind of funny, you know, the heat turn turned off, it seemed like in a way, and these sort of cooler days in August and, and so it seems like some of the maturity isn't coming along as quickly as, you know, we might have expected.
So let's hope for. Let's hope for a long open fall.
And yeah, more than any, you know, frost event, we should be good to go on that front.
[00:33:29] Speaker A: So I think between.
I'm not sure how long the sprayer has sat this year between applications, it has not been long at all. And even from bugs to now switching gears to pre harvest application and getting ready to do peas here, it just, it felt like hours in between those two events. So. Yeah, and I saw last night some farmers in the Unity area out spraying for. For bugs as well. I didn't ask if it was Bertha's, but it was on Canola, so assuming that it is. And again, the cast continues. But yeah, not. Not a cheap crop to grow at the end of the day here, Blake. Like, it was expensive to start and then we've decided to throw everything in the kitchen sink at it as well, so. Yeah, yeah, a very expensive one.
All right, so, you know, when you come out of that, that meeting here in early August, from my perspective, I saw some of the yield potential that was, that was highlighted, some of the scenarios that were highlighted, and again, you know, we. We're not at the finish line yet, but things look pretty promising and, and you know, certainly on my side, you can mark it with some confidence here. And in fact, the. The weather settling down also settled down the, the big white combine potential as well. Right. That. That was very, very nerve wracking.
[00:34:49] Speaker C: Yeah. And, and very real.
We stopped in at the Leo home quarter there for actual site to check on the wheat and saw the wind effect that went through the. The farm there, taking the one shed down. Thankfully you guys spared from the hail, but yeah, it I guess was close on a couple events over the summer there too, so.
[00:35:12] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:35:13] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, there's been all sorts of damage this year and. And yeah, unfortunately we didn't escape all of it, but. But most of it. All right, Blake, anything else here from, you know, the midcast event or the midcast meeting?
We're gonna have some great content from that session, some great images and a couple videos as well that we'll share on our platform shortly. But anything else from that day?
[00:35:43] Speaker C: Yeah, like, I think just to reiterate, you know, we're. We're about halfway through the cycle, as the name of the mid cast would suggest, I guess you could say, but we're really excited to see how it comes through to completion. And then. Yeah, where the, the proof is in the pudding is at the end of the day, how does the actual yield, as we see on the yield monitor, compared to what the crop cast is predicting under these conditions? You know, and that's the whole point of the back cast. So. So at the back cast, we'll know exactly how the growing season's finished out.
We can put in what we had for the applied fertility and then see, you know, how those two numbers compare. And then ultimately, I think, you know, the other interesting thing, just to hearken back to our first call, we talked about sulfur.
You know, we saw there was some relatively high, you know, sulfur supply in the canola stubble going into the wheat.
Colin did get that sulfur on, according to sort of the original plan. But that's fine. I mean, the whole point is going back for the next season, we'll likely see that supply being reflected going into the canola crop. So maybe again, there'll be opportunity to dial things down on the sulfur applications going into next year's canola, if that's the crop that's going on on that piece. So again, just the whole point of taking that cycle to completion and leading into this next fall where hopefully we'll do some more sampling.
[00:37:12] Speaker A: So, yeah, 100. And I don't know if you've had a peek at sulfur prices lately, but again, we have a theme here of. Of expense. But yeah, it's not cheap. So if we can, you know, figure out how to be a bit more efficient on sulfur next year, that would be. Be a nice little win on our farm. So.
All right, Blake, what else can we expect now? So we're tail end of.
Of August here. Our combines are going to start rolling in the next days here. Actually, this week we got going on peas.
So from a western egg side, what. What would be our next steps? What are we looking for?
Is there work to be done here shortly, or are we kind of hitting pause for a few weeks as we get more into harvest?
[00:38:02] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, I think the one interesting thing, just maybe for your other listeners to consider, you know, the harvest is a great time to, you know, reflect on the season. And, you know, as you're in the combine, going across things, you know, even visually, it can be quite interesting to see. You know, how is this. This area? How is this field performing relative to that field? You know, let's maybe the conditions were pretty similar on these two fields. This one is not meeting my yield expectations. This one is media or exceeding it. And then the question naturally comes up, why? Right. And so I think that's a place where we can provide Some insight into that. And so I think, yeah, just the interesting, you know, challenge, I guess, for Colin is maybe as he's going through the field, just to think about, you know, make some mental notes of, you know, how is this looking? Are there any interesting areas, really good areas, problem areas?
And that's really important for kind of focusing the strategy for sampling into the fall.
[00:39:02] Speaker A: Yeah, you bet. Awesome. And. And just one last thing from my end, because I don't think I mentioned it yet, but for our farm in the past here, the past number of years, we've been doing some zone type mapping and this has changed with western egg. We are doing a straight rate for that entire piece of land. And so I just wanted to highlight that as well. It's not just, you know, mid caste and. And the crop cast are part of this. It's there. But also that's been the change in, I guess, philosophy, I guess, on our farm or. Yeah. So awesome. How can people get a hold of you, Blake? Are you guys willing to go and hang out in the. The cab of the combine or right behind it here as we get into September? How can people get a hold of you? Guys?
[00:39:45] Speaker C: Guys? Yeah, I would love to. Absolutely. Just want to direct your listeners. Check us out. Growmore, profit.com that'll direct you to, you know, the most locally relevant rep in your region and you can get connected. So we'd love to hear from someone for sure.
[00:40:00] Speaker A: Awesome. Sounds great. Blake, thanks for coming on the show.
[00:40:02] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks, Ryan.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: All righty. Well, that's. That's new for us. This year we're. We're again going away from the, uh, the zone mapping that we've been using and just changing things up here. So we'll see. Time will tell.
[00:40:17] Speaker D: The.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: The proof will be in the pudding here, as they say, later this harvest. All right, just a couple things here from a price strategy side. I, again, I'm. I'm always looking at arbitrage opportunities. A unique one presented itself here in Alberta last week at Bungie.
So think about, you know, farming in an area where crops look good, prices, you know, are steady, maybe pressured a little bit, and then an area an hour and a half away, you know, facing tough conditions, less yield, people needing to exit contracts. What developed is that you could take your canola, drive an hour and a half each way, so three hours on the road extra, essentially, maybe four hours, depending on how far away you are, and go and extract an extra two bucks a bushel.
All right. That's what they were quoting those farmers to buy out of those contracts was $19 a bushel when the price was 16.95. And they said we have sellers at 19. If you want out of your contract, Mr. Farmer, Mrs. Farmer, we will do it, but it is costing you this.
[00:41:27] Speaker B: All right.
[00:41:28] Speaker A: Insane, insane. This arbitrage idea is a little bit tongue in cheek, but this is absolute insanity that we sign page two of these green contracts and allow that that clause to be in there. That idea, I encourage you write it in yourself or get it in an email or a text message that your buyouts are subject to posted bids minus your contract price. Okay, this is insane. If anybody wants to take on a project this winter with the growers commissions and stuff like that, this is the one. That clause has got to change. This is insane because you just listened to me say take canola an hour and a half away, extract $2 a bushel, everyone would do three. That, that's a no brainer, right? Because it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. All right, check prices here guys with, with just for early trains, some wheat specials out there, some canola specials, yellow peas, higher oats up as well.
There is just a little bit of action right now on these early trains and so we may get a little pop in these markets, maybe a bit more harvest pressure and then, you know, higher later. I will say though, yields coming in a little bit underwhelming. Okay, so far.
So in that environment, what happens is that farms are get harvesting, they're calculating bin space.
They're saying, okay, I got room for it, I'll throw it in the bin, I'll throw it in the bin. This is not what I thought. I'm going to throw it in the bin. Right. The flip side is, oh yeah, I have more than I expected. I got to sell. I got to sell more. Right? There's a bit of that this year, but lots of like, okay, this is a little bit lower than I thought. I got the bin space. So just watch for that out there. Early train premiums, that's about it from a pricing perspective this week, folks. I want to highlight in eating your veggies just a trade that CPS growers need to consider. So before we do that, let's get into our interview. We've got Al from Brett Young. He is the corn guru.
Growing corn, feeding cows. Let's get Al on.
All right, folks, we've got Al joining me from Brett Young. He is the corn expert. Is that, is that the right way to say it? What's your title?
[00:43:43] Speaker D: Might be talking said that I'm the expert, but lots of experience with corn.
[00:43:48] Speaker A: So when I said I want to interview and talk about corn, most people ran away, but you ran.
[00:43:53] Speaker D: All right. No, I love corn. Yeah, I love, love corn and what it can do.
[00:43:57] Speaker A: So. So. All right, so this, this segment is gonna be for my wife because she is struggling to plant corn in the garden. So it's just like for just a. She's a great gardener. But is there any little tip that. Anything I could, like, help, you know, guide her in this. Just a little tip for us.
[00:44:14] Speaker D: Probably not, because I'm not a gardener.
[00:44:16] Speaker A: Fair enough. But get a planter. Get some right young seed.
[00:44:21] Speaker D: So. So actually, this site was seeded by hand. We see every seed in our site at. At this. At aim.
[00:44:29] Speaker A: Oh, boy.
[00:44:29] Speaker D: With our fingers. So we plant.
Yeah, we plant them eight inches apart and we plant them about two and a half inches deep. And that's usually a good start because corn sends up a little stem and then it grows its roots from there and then pops through the ground. So you want that so that you got good base roots at the start. Get a good start.
[00:44:50] Speaker A: All right. Right.
Sounds good, Al. I will pass that along to you.
[00:44:53] Speaker D: Warm soil and into moisture.
[00:44:55] Speaker A: So, folks, we are at egg in motion here. It's the second half of July. Nice, hot day for us. Some beautiful looking plots. Why don't. Do you want to walk us through? Like, we've got, well, three different ones and we've got a secret one as well, so I'm sure we got to be careful on that one. But where do you want to start, Al? Like, what's going on here with Brett Young's lineup in Corn Barn? And what kind of stands out for you as the main talking point or the main feature?
[00:45:21] Speaker D: We have three products. Braava is on my right hand side.
We have by Guernsey VT Double Pro Rib Complete.
[00:45:30] Speaker A: That's a fancy name.
[00:45:31] Speaker D: Yeah, it is.
It's actually Bear's trait that we use in this product. And this one is my favorite, mostly because growers that have grown it have been successful and they keep coming, coming back to it. Yeah, Our corn is. Is for grazing and silage. We don't focus on the. On the grain, guys.
[00:45:50] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:45:51] Speaker D: Mostly because we're a forage company to be company to begin with, and we don't have super early products that would fit into the grain corn market.
[00:45:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:46:00] Speaker D: Yeah, you bet.
[00:46:01] Speaker A: So your ideal farm that's looking at these varieties, you know, ideal rancher.
Is there something that stands out between the varieties, like shorter timelines or different Yeah, I guess. Different agronomic.
[00:46:18] Speaker D: So we always measure corn hybrids on heat units.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:46:23] Speaker D: And the, the two earliest products we have are 2150 heat units to.
To silage or grazing. And that means 2150 heat units. Units will get you to about 65% moisture, which is the optimum time to be taking it for silage. Or you want mother nature to freeze that crop when it's at 65% moisture. So you get the best benefit of the crop from that.
[00:46:46] Speaker A: Sure. Okay.
[00:46:47] Speaker D: The benefit that we have with these products is that their silage corns, they have a flint kernel so they don't dent, they're semi dent. So they will stay with that, that 65% moisture a little bit longer, allowing the farmer either to graze or to silage at the appropriate time. It dries down too quickly, you might miss the window and it'll mature a little bit too far and you don't get really good timing on it. So.
[00:47:13] Speaker A: So if I come to y' all and I say, you know what, I'm gonna winter graze this. That's the plan, would that point me in a different direction variety wise then, or are they kind of similar?
[00:47:23] Speaker D: It depends on where you are in Western Canada. So if you're in a, in a zone that has higher heat units, southern Saskatchewan, southern Alberta, even into Manitoba, you'd want to look at 8 or by Belmont RR2, because it's about 2250 to silage. So it's a little bit later. The other thing to note about the numbers that we use for heat units is there's no standard like we have for wheat that it's 94 days.
[00:47:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:47:52] Speaker D: The heat units thing is something that each company puts their tag on. So sometimes those numbers change from year to year. If they realize that Guernsey is a little bit earlier than what we see, then we'll, we'll move that number up a little bit.
[00:48:07] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:48:08] Speaker D: Yeah, you bet.
[00:48:08] Speaker A: All right.
[00:48:09] Speaker D: Or move it down, I guess, so that. Yeah, we attract more people to our products.
[00:48:13] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:48:13] Speaker D: Yeah, you bet.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: Okay. So has this has like, you know, planting corn for feed purposes? Has this grown in popularity the last number of years? Like are more people planting corn that maybe were doing barley before or something else. So it getting more popular. Is it kind of holding stick?
[00:48:31] Speaker D: I think as we see earlier products, we see the guys that are consistently grazing use corn more often because it produces so much mass per acre.
[00:48:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:41] Speaker D: There's nothing better at water use efficiency, fertilizer use efficiency than corn. It's a really well studied, really well bred. So we get some great products from that.
[00:48:51] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:48:51] Speaker D: So I think we see it expanding a little bit. The other thing we see is when we have an early frost, the guys that grew corn didn't get a good cob developed and then they'll switch back to barley or oats because they know that they can get consistent silage.
[00:49:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:49:06] Speaker D: If we have really good years of corn, their silage pits will be full and they'll have two year, two seasons worth of silage. So then we miss them again. Yeah, but it's, it's. There's nothing better than corn for silage for if you have the season to get it. Okay. Yeah.
[00:49:21] Speaker B: All right.
[00:49:21] Speaker A: Sounds good. Anything else you want to add to like, how's it going at the show this week? Anything come up in conversations, themes?
[00:49:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:29] Speaker A: Anything else you want to add?
[00:49:30] Speaker D: The show has been fabulous. We get the damn smokehouse here. We can smell the smoke and it's making me hungry all morning and all day long.
Our tent and our beer gardens. We have a ton of people here and a ton of professional reps that are going to give you good recommendations and great shade cold drinks.
[00:49:48] Speaker A: What? The future's podcast.
[00:49:49] Speaker D: Exactly.
[00:49:53] Speaker A: Awesome. Thanks, Ella. I appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on the show and how you can. Can people get a hold of you or this division? Because I, you know, I go to the canola side all the time, but if someone wants to get a hold of this side, the corn side, the forage side, what's the best way to do it?
[00:50:07] Speaker D: Talk to any one of the reps. They're going to be able to help you with their corn products.
Go to by or Bret Young ca Check out the website. Learn from it there.
Ask any of us, we'll help you. And if they don't have the answer because they're not as good on corn, they'll give me a call. We'll get them straightened out.
[00:50:23] Speaker B: Sounds good.
[00:50:23] Speaker A: Thanks. Appreciate it.
[00:50:24] Speaker D: Thank you.
[00:50:25] Speaker A: Well, we've reached the end of the show here, folks. We just have eating your veggies and I'll let you go for the week. Thanks for hanging out. Number one, as I mentioned, if you are a CPS grower, you want to take a look at the wheat spreads out there. What I mean by that is take a peek with your broker at the Kansas City wheat. This was an idea from my buddy Tyler, futures broker with RBC with Simpson Caputo, but a premium on Kansas WHE futures over the Minneapolis market.
It's 6050 to 60 cent premium right now. That's Typically a discount. If you're a CPS grower out there, you are seeing a terrible basis. If you want to extract some of that basis back, you want to figure out this trade, okay?
Because that's a reason that you've got a terrible basis. So if you want to try to get it back again, you're thinking about selling Kansas we Futures, buying Minneapolis and hoping, looking for that spread to go back to normal. Because if you do, there's 60, 70, 80 cents a buck a bushel in this and that's where you'll get your basis back. Okay? So take a look at that one and see where it goes. Second thing for eating your veggies, make sure you have your cash flow covered. And to win how many dollars and when do you run out of money? What is that day? Okay. Because that's when you need to get your next sales in place. So that's number two. Just cover cash flow needs and that date. Then third one your fall. 2027 targets on wheat and yeah, even on canola. Right. Again, not sitting here saying we're bearish, but markets have rallied. Canola has made some new highs for Nava 27. Getting some targets out there and building that plan. I like doing that in the this environment.
All right, guys, that's it for this week. Strategy subject to change. Reach out to the professionals. Crop prices can change as well. Lots of different things happen between recording and when this goes out. For the what the Futures podcast. My name is Ryan and I'm out of here.
