Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey, folks, welcome to the what the Futures podcast, where we break down complex market trends into simple, actionable advice. It's your quick guide to better farming decisions.
Hey, folks, welcome to episode 36 of the what the Futures podcast. I hope everyone's having an outstanding week or an outstanding day whenever you're tuning into the show. This is episode number 36, of course, recorded in the UPL studio. You'd say, brian, what are you talking about? Doesn't look like the UPL studio behind you. Well, that's because I'm still on the road from egg in motion. I had a great time with the folks at UPL. They had a tremendous booth over at egg in motion, thanks to everyone who stopped in. It was great. It was great to say hello and to just have a conversation, put faces to names, go over all sorts of scenarios and questions. He had. It was a great time had by also. Thank you so much for. For stopping in this episode. We're going to try to play some of those clips from egg in motion. We're going to have Trenton McCrae with Upl join me. We're going to have Anthony join me from John Deere. And we're even going to talk to the head commissioner of the SJ Chell as well. Some new announcements out of them, of course, they are partnered with UPL. And anyways, a heck of a show. The sound quality is going to jump all around, of course. I mean, I'm even fighting the wind here today on the deck just outside St. Louis, Saskatchewan. But hang in for that. Of course, what the futures is your weekly dose of clarity in this complex world of crop marketing. We're going to have to talk about this market bounce as well in today's show. My name is Ryan Denis. I am your host. I have spent my career working with farmers across western Canada, helping them as a marketing advisor, coach, analyst, grain buyer. I've done a few different things and I've had a great time doing it. So, of course, taking the show on the road here with what? The Futures podcast. And I can't believe we're already at episode 36. Of course, took a break last week. Wasn't much of like a break. It was more of having issues with connections, connectivity and to get the episode pieced together. So this is going to be a bit of a hodgepodge one. We'll try to bring some of last week's work in with this week, but of course we got to talk about this market bounce. We have to get you guys set up on how to tackle this moving forward. But before we do that, let's turn it over to our sponsor, John Deere, and let's talk to Anthony about easy cow, see if we can get this one to play.
All right, folks, we've got Anthony here with John Deere. We're at the easy cow, easy towel. We got calibration set up here over at egg in motion.
Anthony's gonna run us through it, and he said that I get to hit some of the buttons, so it's so.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Easy, Ryan, to do. All right, so the way we like to think of this is, as you're tending, you'll be able to take this bucket, right. And fill it up with some product, grab it on the truck, put that product in this, in this yellow tub up top, and then from there, it's pretty easy. Right? So we do call it easy cow for a reason.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: You'd select your takes.
[00:03:11] Speaker C: So.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: So on your partside display, you'll be able to select your tanks. With this test stand. We only have one tank, so it's on a single tank part, so it's grayed out. But if you were running the 850 behind us, you'd be able to select whatever tank it is. In California, we do have the black roller in, but if you want to click on that black roller, so if you were running something else, you'd be able to select a different color roller. If you want, you can go ahead, click that black one. And then now it's as easy as clicking that start calibration button.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: Sure. You ready?
[00:03:44] Speaker B: I'm ready.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: You guys ready?
[00:03:48] Speaker B: All right, so what this is going to do is it's going to do two cycles of that meter to make sure that meter is full. It's then going to record the weight from this yellow tub. So that means this bucket can be swinging in the wind. It's not going to affect your calibration.
From here, it's now going to run 15 revolutions. We got it running pretty fast at the show here, but those 15 revolutions are essentially just getting that weight out of the bucket, as you can see. As that goes, the weights going up, it's just measuring how much product's leaving the bucket. From there, it's going to give you your new MDB value. So it's as simple as now that checkbox, it's going to send that right to the cab. You're ready to go. That's it done for the day. Wow.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: I can do it.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And then here you're. You're probably still tending at this point. So you can take that bucket full of product, throw it in the conveyor. You don't have to carry it all the way up top and dump it in the tent.
Makes you start it pretty easy.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: I can see where everyone sort of.
Thanks, Anthony.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Thanks.
[00:04:53] Speaker A: All right, folks, always great to learn about new technology here from our sponsors. I forgot to ask if you could, if you may, please hit the subscribe button. If you're listening to this on a podcast, if you're on YouTube, please give us a subscribe a like, give us some ratings, some feedback. It all helps on putting this show together. And, you know, I was chatting with Mark, who stopped by the booth last week, the UPL booth, and he said, you know what, Ryan, your show's fantastic. I appreciate everything that you're doing out there. But, you know, man, if you could just shorten it up a little bit or give us 20 minutes clips here and there, I'd appreciate it. And so we're gonna, you know, we'll see what we can do here moving forward, but give us a, like, hit the subscribe button. It certainly helps us out now for housekeeping this week, housekeeping positive moments kind of blends together here a little bit. But for housekeeping, we raised a little bit of money for the bellevue care home. Okay. And I want to thank everyone that placed a donation, everyone that bid, I want to thank Keith. I want to, uh, thank Stephen, our winning bidders. We actually donated two lunchbox crew subscriptions. Uh, when they went over list price, I thought, geez, you know, these guys are willing to pay a premium to get into this right now. Uh, why don't we kick those funds over to the care home and help them with their kitchen rental? We ended up raising, uh, just a shade over $13,000 for the kitchen rental. So, uh, it's going to go a long way. Uh, and it's certainly going to get them a lot closer to their goal. Also pledged a donation for next July as well just to help them out. So thanks to everyone who participated in that. Again, folks, we are just a little podcast.
But hey, you know, 13 grand is, you know, it's something. And if your community is looking for support, certainly willing to try to figure out how we can help as well. So reach out to Ryan at whatthefuturespodcast dot ca for housekeeping. That's probably to be it. I, again, I had a great time last week at egg in motion. I can't thank you enough for stopping in and saying hello. You know, I was having a meeting yesterday and, and someone asked me, you know what my highlight of the week was? And it was just talking to folks seeing that.
That I had or we had helped. Right. It's not just me putting this show together. I'm sure I'm the one on the microphone here, but we have some great editors behind the scenes. We have a great social media team as well. And so it was very rewarding for me to hear from folks that we had helped them in their crop marketing and farm business decisions. That's what the show is all about. So, again, I really appreciate that. So, positive moments for the week. I've got a couple here, some family stuff going on.
This one's from a couple weeks ago, but we had a babysitter come in, and this was our first time getting a babysitter. Finley is a year and a half old now, but it was the first time getting a babysitter where we. We put the kids to bed and just handed the babysitter to the monitor and said, hey, you know, watch this, and we'll be back in 5 hours. And we went to a music festival. We went to Ravenwood music festival and saw a band that we enjoy called Royal Foundry. Anyways, we had a great time. And so it was first time doing that. First time having a date, a night date. Usually, we end up getting the babysitter, and we go to, like, Costco, which is fine and fun, as well. But it was a good time. It was. It was nice to do that and to get out in the evening, and I, you know, dance in front of the stage and just get a little bit wild as well. We had a good time.
The next day, we took the kids to the festival. And what I realized is that when you're. When you go to a music festival, doesn't matter if you're 220, 40, 65 years old, it doesn't matter. The result is the same.
You're out there. You're in your, like, your. Your tank top or your cutoff shirt. You've probably got an ice cream stain on it. You know, you got chocolate all over your mouth, maybe a little bit of vomit on your collar as well. I was just looking at Finley. He's just sitting in his little chair, just, like, laid back in that exact, you know, a little bit of red from the sun, you know, just in the moment. And I was thinking, dude, when I was 20 years old and I went to Craven, I looked exactly like that. You know, I had the same type of look going on. And so, you know, now that I'm reaching 40, it's not that much different folks. So I guess music festivals, that's kind of how it goes for life.
They're great. They're enjoyable. My other positive moment for this week, my last one. So we went and did a little family camping on my side of the family. We went up to Elkridge, up to Waska Sioux in that. In the national park there. And it was the first time I had been together with my siblings. My sister lives in. In BC. My brother and other sister live in Saskatchewan. It's the first time we were all kind of together in about five years, just under five years. And, of course, all the little cousins got together. My sister had a baby earlier this year. We met her for the first time, may for the first time. So it was just a nice time. Of course, we had to fight the mosquitoes, and we had to fight the horse flies, and we had to stay cool, but it was a good time, and. And we're certainly not gonna let five years pass us by again. It's important to get together as family, for sure. All right, folks, what I'm gonna do now is jump into the crop marketing stuff, and then we'll get trent onto the show after that with UPL.
But I know you guys wanna talk markets, and we wanna talk about this balance.
Now. You're going to sit here and say, well, geez, Ryan, you've been telling us all along, you know, to be a seller in this market, and now it's making some of the highest levels of the summer. Like, what the heck is going on? And I'll tell you, folks, we've got a bit of a weather market going on. Obviously, we're all uncomfortable with the heat. Of course. I've been living in the smoke now for the last week, but. Which is certainly helping a little bit. But we're uncomfortable with the heat. I was just looking at the weather maps for the canadian prairies. It's very dry north of Edmonton.
It's dry in that central part of Saskatchewan, that southern part, like, I don't know if south central would be the right way to say it. It's very dry down there. You know, we're hearing of crops aborting in southwest Saskatchewan as well, with the heat, of course. Lots of crops flowering out there, lots of canola flowering on our drive, lots of peas flowering. It doesn't like this heat either.
And so we got that going on. We've got some dryness in Ukraine, um, I'm hearing out of Russia. We've got some poor wheat quality coming off in the US. Weather's been pretty darn good, but they've got a little bit of heat coming in as well now. And so we've got this little weather market, and thank goodness we do not thank goodness because I don't like the impact it has on yield. It's going to shave some bushels off for sure.
But yet there's a bunch of you listening here saying, man, I love this heat. I love that I'm getting some of this heat. Now. The smoke's certainly going to help us out, too, a little bit. But the crops are behind, and there's a lot of areas that have had really, really good moisture until now. And so those guys are, you know, I talked to people that said, hey, I'm happy not to get any more moisture for, you know, for a while now. Bring on the heat, and let's get these crops going. And so it's, it's like that every year across the prairies, folks, there's good areas and bad areas and everything in between.
And so we've got a weather market, and thank goodness we do, because it's going to provide you with a selling opportunity.
Canola the other day was trading at 06:05. Oh, I had a buy order in at 06:05. And I pulled it the day before anyway. So I had a short on. Anyway, that's besides the point, but it's now rallied to 678. Okay. And we've got resistance here. You know, you could say a little bit at 680. You could say there's some at 696 as well, right in that range. But the thing here, folks, is you're getting an opportunity to do something.
Now, you might sit here and say, well, Ryan, you know, I sold canola at 660 a couple weeks ago. And, you know, by golly, gee, I'm just not comfortable now doing much of anything. In fact, I'm a little bit worried about production. Well, you know, you could add a call option to that contract potentially, if it's at Bungie or Vitera or Cargill, you could add some type of call option to that. You can protect yourself against that production worry. If you have that, you could also sit here and say, well, geez, I don't want to sell anymore, but I don't want to let this slip past me. I could do a put option here, right? You could actually do something to protect these prices.
Yeah. Look at that view, folks. A little smoky out here, but, uh, not a bad view.
Anyways, this is, uh, an opportunity to do something.
And when you're the most uncomfortable as a, as a prairie farmer. You're sitting there saying, geez, man, this heat, it's terrible. It's no good. I'm not selling anything. I'm locking up the bins. And other people say the same thing. More often than not, there's a selling opportunity in there.
And so I would encourage you to take advantage of this in some way or fashion. You know, maybe it's to figure out how to sell some 2025 crop. Maybe it's extending sales here. Maybe it's buying a put option. Maybe it's learning a new contract that you haven't used yet. But this is an opportunity. Summer, spring, and summer. Bring these rallies and bring these opportunities. And I just want you to remember that we are still in a bearish trend here overall, a long term bearish trend.
And I'm not a believer that production has been impacted enough here to rally prices significantly moving forward. Now, we're recording this like, July 23, and if it doesn't rain here for five weeks, then sure, in between now and then, there could be, you know, a scenario where I change my, my tune there and say, okay, yeah, that did have a bigger impact. We did shave a couple million tons of production. We are going to rally up another buck or something like. But we're flirting. We have $15 canola targets hitting now for new crop in portions of northwest Saskatchewan.
You know, 14s, mid 14s, all, all over the place now. Um, and I can't sit here and say that the market's going to hang on to that long term. I still think we're going to make some harvest lows here that you're not going to enjoy, and you're going to sit back and say, geez, why didn't I do anything? And think of last year, folks, we had a tremendous rally. I don't have it right in front of me, but we had two summer rallies, right? You guys remember the $18 canola?
It was the best selling opportunity we had. And maybe, just maybe, that's a similar play developing right now.
Carryover is still going to be higher this year than it was last year, and it's going to be higher next year than. Than it is this year.
And then my friends in the US tell me the soybean crop isn't made, but they're starting to pencil in record soybean yields, record corn yields. I don't know, folks. Like, again, I could be. I could be an idiot. I might not know what I'm talking about here, but I believe this is going to be a selling opportunity. It is a selling opportunity to take advantage of. And I told the folks in the lunchbox crew, I said, hey, sit tight. We're watching this market here to see where we're going to extend, and we're letting this market play out. And, hey, you know, I had some farmers that wanted to get some call options on, wanted to make sure that their behinds recovered just in case of production issue or something like that. But, you know, I. Yeah, there's all sorts of things you can do right now, all sorts of scenarios for you to look at, but I would strongly challenge you to get out of your comfort zone and figure out that contract out there that makes sense for you, where you could get a little bit more profit protected.
Now, you know, I look at canola, it's doing some good things. I look at wheat, though, and what I said a few weeks ago, it just, it remains the same. You know, those 30 to 40 cent rallies and, and then they stall out. They, you know, spring was down like $0.07 today. I thought for sure we were going to test that high from a couple weeks ago. No dice. We just go up 30 or forty cents, and then we pull back. It's not a surprise, folks. We knew that, right? We've talked about this already, but geez, it would be nice to get wheat to pop up just a little bit here so we can make another sale. Darn it.
But anyways, on the wheat side, I see a quality issue brewing, not a production issue. I don't. I don't see a production issue that concerns me at all anywhere. It'd be nice to see a bit more demand out of India, but I see a quality issue. I see a low protein, poor quality wheat issue, and I hope that you out there listening to this, grow a 13 five protein or better. I hope you get a big yield, and I hope you get really good quality and that you can command a premium for that. Spring wheat is commanding a much larger premium over Kansas here. Over the last couple months, that's been improving. That spread has been getting wider between those two. So spring wheat growers are going to be a little bit more excited here.
Okay, what else do I have? Soybeans. They're bouncing a little bit. Corn is trying to bounce as well. Again, some weather, hot weather coming in there.
But for me, folks, you know, at the end of this is to figure out how to sell this rally. This is not a recommendation today to execute, but to figure out how to sell this rally, snug up your sales into the end of this calendar year. Make sure you got your cash flow in play and then also get a little 2025 done as well. We're going to focus on that, too.
Okay. So there's some hard work ahead of you, folks, and I hope you're up for the challenge. I certainly am. Have some fun with it. And, hey, rallies are a good thing always. And there's lots of different things you can do to take advantage of that. What else do I want to say on markets? I saw yellow peas. I saw ten in front of them in Edmonton region. Now the Edmonton, Alberta region, 1050. If you're, if you're still seeing prices north of 1111 50, you're probably, probably want to bite that.
You know, I understand you can harvest and store them, and I think Kyle mentioned this a few weeks ago to store those yellow peas into the new year. But again, folks, we're just seeing this market starting to slide a little bit and it gets worse before it gets better.
Okay, now let's talk urea.
And I got my secret agent guy. Not allowed to really name names, but I did reach out. I'm gonna try to get a little more fertilizer context for you because the inbox, the what? The futures inbox is just blowing up. And in fact, this is actually should slide into the, the pioneer seeds mailbox this week. So I, I'm gonna add it right now because it's important and I want you to hear it. But the pioneer seeds mailbox did blow up with questions about buying fertilizer, and we saw a little uptick in urea prices. You know, I saw some, some 650 and that then that went to 660. And then the guys that were 670 went to 680. But we did see nh three prices drop just a little bit. Those are out now, folks, in the 1111, what was it, 1140 a ton. I should really reference my notes so I don't get into too much trouble. But right around there on the NH three. So I asked my buddy, I said, hey, man, happy July 23. Listeners are getting restless looking for a market outlook on urea. Are you seeing anything worthwhile that I can talk about? I don't see any urgency to buy, but I'm also a bit of a, I told him I was a bit of an idiot, but, you know, I don't know.
And he says, don't worry, Ryan, you're a smart guy. There really isn't a lot going on in urea. There is a lot more interest in Canada as we have seen very little engagement in the US so far. A lot of folks are waiting to see where and if things settle after taking an initial position to have some tons through the first part of the summer.
So how I'm going to deduce that.
And again, folks, I'm no genius, but if I was selling fertilizer and I took on a small position, I need to sell that position. I'm going to try every little trick in the bag, right? The classic one is to raise your price for a couple of days, get everyone nervous about it, and then they call in, say, hey, what's going on? With prices going up? Okay, well, what can you do? I think I'm going to pull the trigger. And then they all of a sudden, they say, hey, yeah, we can get a deal done. Let's drop it. $10 for you, and away we go.
Anyways, folks, I believe that the folks that are selling you urea right now, I'm just going to say this urea specific.
They actually don't have a lot of conclusive evidence or conclusive facts that the urea market is going to climb or climb substantially. Because you got to remember, folks, money is still not cheap. So if you're gonna put some money out there, you know, it could be at 5%, six, 7% interest, maybe it's a 10% interest.
There's, there's a cost to that. And so I was asking farmers who were asking me, I'm like, okay, well, what's your retailer say? Like, what's their excuse? And I, I got a whole bunch of nothing. Like a whole bunch of nothing. I even got a, well, because the price just goes up throughout the year.
Last year didn't. Last year, it went up and down and up and down and up and down.
And of course, that spring price is always the highest. Not always, but it certainly was this last year. But it moves, it moves around, folks. And I, to me, I'm still a bear in these markets. I'm a bear, a long term bear in wheat, corn, soybeans, canola, urea. It's in there, too. I'm a commodity bear yet. And I, hey, maybe hope, hopefully I'm wrong. I'd love to pay more for fertilizer and have prices go up 20% too, like commodity prices, right? Have canola and everything go up 20% would be great. And sure, I'll pay a bit more for my urea, but I don't think that's going to happen. And I think american farmers, when I look, listen to american analysts or read their stuff, they're trying to figure out how to, how to break even here this year and next year they're trying to figure out how to, you know, mitigate losses. They're talking about severe cutbacks from us farms on all sorts of different things and inputs are going to be part of that. And I don't think the american farmers excited to do anything right now. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised in western Canada if we have a heck of a sale on NH three this fall because the american farmers are kind of sitting on their hands trying to figure out what to do.
You know, I listened to one guy say the other day, he's like, well, thank goodness my clients who are 21% hedged or sold, thank goodness they're going to get an extra seven bushels of soybeans and an extra 30 bushels of corn because they're going to outrun the, their cost of production. They're going to use those bushels, extra bushels to be profitable or close to profitable.
But that can't be a reality for everybody. And to me, that still doesn't circle back to being bullish. Urea. That urea values are going to climb. And so my summer fill. Guys, listening to this, I get it. I understand.
I understand that you're a little bit stressed out because you always buy your fertilizer now. And nine times out of 1019 times out of 20, it is the right move. And it still could be the right move. I'm just not bought into it right now.
I just think that there's still potential for prices at a worst case scenario to hold sideways so you can keep your money in the bank, not pay that interest, maybe make 5% on it and you'll still be further ahead.
My buddy who texted me what I deduce out of all that is that you've got your retailers in western Canada that have a small position on that want to get rid of that small position at their profit of 40, 50, $60 a ton. The faster they do it, the better. And then they'll come in and reposition again.
And I think it's really small out there, folks. If you did buy already though, I just say make sure you're not sleeping at the wheel on your 2025 crop marketing. Be alert because there can be some good decisions made on that front as well to help balance that out. But folks, I don't know. I'm gonna dig into this more. I'm gonna try to get an expert to join the show here in short order and I will certainly continue to share with what I find out.
All right, folks, let's see if we can bring in let's bring in a couple clips here. Let's try to get let's try to get Trent McCray with Upl. Let's try to fit him in. Let's see what that gets us. Okay, we'll try to do Trent or SJHl. We'll see what the editor picks here and yeah, and we'll go from there. So come back yet for for eating your veggies and we'll wrap up the episode after that as well.
Alrighty folks, I'm here with Trent. We upl been hanging out at egg in motion all week here, having a great time. Plots look fantastic. The team's had a lot of fun here. And Trent, why don't you just introduce yourself and your role.
[00:26:59] Speaker C: Thanks Ryan. I'm Trent McCray. I'm a country headquarter, UPL Echo Solutions Canada.
Been with UPL for goodness. It's been over 20 years now. Different versions. Your legacy companies that UPL acquired along the way. We were I was part of that science which is now incorporated into uplift. Yeah, it's been a great journey. Come from a farming background in Saskatchewan. This is I live in Alberta now and this is feels like coming home.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: You're like me because I'm from Saskatchewan as well. But also I live in Alberta now and you kind of have each side of Edmonton you're it to the last onto the yop.
[00:27:42] Speaker C: Oh yes. It was such a fun spring and what yet just a hard pill to swallow at the end, but lots of hope for next year. Yeah, I don't know. It was something for sure.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: It was good experience.
All right, so UPL, you know, 20 years, you know, within the organizations, you know, give us a little bit of background on UPL and a little bit of history for you there. You can dive in a little bit and help the listeners understand.
[00:28:09] Speaker C: So really exciting company to work for.
You know, to be honest with you, they're still relatively capacity, probably a little more eastern based with their potato products over a course ten or so years but more recently when they had part of risk since but globally around it's got to be about 55 years, 60 years now. And based in India is where our basic and base manufacturing organization that over the course of the past 15 years is really, really good.
If I went back to 2500 now we're the fifth largest.
We're the fifth largest building a real significant growth part of that, a lot of acquisitions along the way in different parts of the world and really a lot of active strategic acquisitions in terms of one where the company wanted to stick to portfolio development, what's the changing environment of agriculture in addition to their all their protection pretty much.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: A lot.
[00:29:34] Speaker C: Of investment we're getting there in Canada, regulatory processing such as is there a.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: Product in your portfolio right now.
[00:30:06] Speaker C: We would have probably the most prevalent one is it's very new. Last year was really holiday season's first year launch was called Wave. It's a CBD so it's new to market. There's been a lot of history behind CD.
It's a few years now in Canada with a lot of companies starting to participate in the space. But you know, I really like my position as a leader in terms of not just the technology and the research around what is the box, but also I think creating a consistency, there's a lot of variability.
[00:30:51] Speaker A: I have learned so much about seaweed, everything over the last couple of days here I think heading into my biggest learning the importance reality. But anyway that's good. Okay, so under your model here's opening.
[00:31:12] Speaker C: So open ag really when it came.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: Together.
[00:31:20] Speaker C: And how we go about developing solutions and they're really being relevant, you know, not just now growers profitability.
[00:31:32] Speaker A: But.
[00:31:32] Speaker C: It'S so if I was to sell a hacking, it's collaboration, it's an innovative way to develop. Historically there's, you know, there's lots of different ways to get to market what they've got.
UPL has an element within our corporation, but we're also at this company. It's about all the entrepreneurship companies, all sorts of development going on that we have a lot of skill to developing technology, partnering with companies like that, creating an opening network for researching, advancing technology, scientific based but quick way.
It's about that collaborative, we're seeing more of that. We started that message probably four or five years ago. Now I start to hear that resonate elsewhere in industry. So yes, it's how it's good.
We like to think we're probably the originator of the thought process, a lot of it. But at the same time I think it's bigger.
[00:32:54] Speaker A: Collaboration, transparency all.
So we're not quite done the 2024 growing season yet. But does anything stand out from UPL's perspective?
[00:33:11] Speaker C: Well, like every year it's fraught with its challenges, but yet the excitement.
So it was a little challenging to start a little bit of a push later.
Even our eastern training business, two to three weeks generally, I would say saving, that's really exciting. Certainly we've been strong growers and getting those products, lots of our new products. We sold out of several of our new products, giving those out to market. The rave or select combination underside business, our big Jerry.
So we're excited that we launched five new products last year and to have those kick off and really build that growth and growing and more of that understanding of the UPL is and the technology and innovation of the business. And it's exciting. It's rewarding.
[00:34:23] Speaker A: I know, Vern, that you sat in here.
It's been just talking about some of the products they've been using.
[00:34:29] Speaker C: Some of the successes that they've seen.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: Up there say they're looking for more bushes to market.
Trent, I appreciate your support of the Winter Futures podcast. We have a fantastic team that's been in the chat with a lot of them the last couple of days, a lot of energy, smart people as well. And it's been great. So I really thank you.
[00:34:53] Speaker C: So I'm hoping I'm leading well because I think I've got a really bright team behind me.
[00:34:57] Speaker A: Yeah, they've been great.
[00:34:57] Speaker C: Awesome.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: Thanks so much for that.
[00:34:59] Speaker C: Thanks, Ryan. Appreciate it.
[00:35:00] Speaker A: All right, folks, again, I can't thank you pl enough. They treated me really, really well at their booth and, you know, we got all sorts of clips that we took. Again, the background noise was not our friend. We did what we could and look for those later on throughout the year as well, and even later into this winter.
All right, folks, for eating your veggies here, let's keep moving along. But for eating your veggies, again, number one, you're sitting here July, end of July. I want you to just your best guess at your yield production. You don't have to tell me. Cause you know that if you send an emoji with what your crop looks like, I'm going to sell that information to the government. But just assess your crop and do your best at your yield prediction. I know it's hard and it feels impossible, but just try your best from there. Review your contracts and review your percent sold and then your cash. What do you have for cash flow covered? What do you have any, what are your next gaps? What month is that where you have a gap? And then you can, with confidence say, hey, I'm good for these months. I need money in X month, whatever that is. Maybe it's November, maybe it's December, maybe it's in the new year. And then you can formulate a plan to say, I have never done this contract, but I know that I need to take advantage of this rally. I don't want to face a buyout. Boom. What can I do. How can I tackle this? You know, how can this look? And so, you know, that's. That's number one, I guess, for eating your veggies. That was like five things right there. But number two, this is a summer weather rally. Is this going to be something that we look back and say, well, geez, this was the start of the next big wave. Higher because we didn't see rain again for the year and we had a production loss again? I I'm not in that camp, but we'll see, right? It's. We're living it right now, I think it's a rally that you look back and say, darn, why didn't I do more? Darn, why didn't I try to figure out how to tackle this thing? Like, how. Why didn't I figure out the scenario to sell and sleep at night for our farm? I'm gonna be honest. It's uncomfortable. You know, I'm talking to.
To my dad, my brother, and I'm saying, hey, guys, this market's rallying. I'm gonna continue to present options for the farm that allow you guys to sell at a profit and not face a buyout and. And try to get somewhere around 100% hedged, because if it wants to go up from there later on, I feel very comfortable on. On coming up with the strategies to participate in that. And so I. What I can't do, what I can never do. I wish I could, but for some reason, I haven't figured out how to let a market, a market peak pass me by, and then two weeks later sit there and say, oh, yeah, well, that rally that happened, I want that again, and I'm going to sell that this second time around. I can't figure out how to do that. I never could. Maybe you can. If you know how to do that, let me know. So when I have the opportunity, I want to figure out how best to take advantage of it because I don't know how long it's going to last.
Alrighty.
So that. What was that number two, officially? Was that number two? But again, folks, we're having uncomfortable conversations, and I'm presenting the strategies to say, this is what I would do. This is how I would do it. This is the. If the market goes down, this is what it looks like. If it goes up, this is what it looks like. But let's protect margin. Let's protect the value that we have out there. And I know you guys are listening and you're shaking your head like, this guy, you know, this guy standing on this deck looking at that river.
What does he know? Like our farm here, it's hot out. The sun is hurting and damaging our crops. Why the heck would we be selling crop?
Well, folks, the market is also looking at it, too, and they always overdoes it. They always think it's worse than what it is. Except for the real droughts of 21, the real droughts of o two. Um, and some of you are in a real drought as well today. I get that, and I sympathize with that. But honestly, folks, it's just at this point, it's still not that bad. Okay, that's my opinion. Uh, number three, what could the number three thing. Hey, it's end of July. Take some vacation. Take some time off. You've been living in the sprayer. You've been, that's the other thing. Fungicide. Airplanes flying all over me right now. Uh, this weekend. It's a busy fungicide application. You don't spray fungicide if you're worried about not getting a crop. Right, and I get it. Highway 16 north is wetter. Manitoba is wetter. Lots of fungicide application going on there. Central Alberta, dry. North Edmonton, dry.
Southern Saskatchewan, southwest Saskatchewan, dry. Right. But there's still lots of fungicide going on in all sorts of areas, too.
Take some time to yourself. Go, go fishing, go golfing. Do, do what you enjoy, enjoy some vacation, some off time. You guys do not get very much vacation or off time. You don't get to turn off very much at all in the summer, if at all, right? You know, I'm at my father in law's where, you know, where he's raking hay, he's bailing. You know, I did hand him like a couple of nuts he was repairing a tire. I'm like, here, I'll hold this for you. And like, you know, that's been my usefulness out here. But the point is, lots of guys are hanging, too, and there's just not a lot of time to shut down. Harvest is around the corner. The heat's going to move this crop along, so make sure you get a little bit of downtime, whatever that is for you, an evening, a day, a week. Just take some of that because you'll need it before you get into harvest.
All right, folks, I hope you enjoyed episode number 36 again.
A bit of a hodgepodge out there, of course. Fun recording on the deck here. I'll be back in the UPL studio next week. And yeah, if you like the show, tell your friends.
We are.
It's a little show, folks. It's a little show for western canadian farmers, but it is building a little bit of momentum here right now, and it's because of you. You tell your friends, you tell your buddies, you tell your neighbors. And I appreciate it. I certainly do. So thanks for tuning into this show. Episode 36 stay safe out there. Take care.
I'm out.
