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Episode Transcript
[00:00:45] Speaker A: All right, folks, welcome into the live show of the what? The Futures podcast, of course, recorded each and every time in the UPL studio. And, Chuck, I have good news. The little red button is saying that we are live, and I got the email as well. So here we go for a Friday morning. Friday morning. Here we go. Yes, folks, we did record five wonderful minutes, but it was just me and Chuck on that one.
All right, I. I'll try to. If you're listening, if you're on X tuning in, if you're on YouTube, I will try to find the chat here where you can toss in some questions, and we'll do our best to see them and to answer them if they. If they come in.
Now, Chuck, I appreciate you joining the show. First guest ever to come on live.
So no pressure. No pressure at all. We should have a lot of fun with this one. All righty.
I'm also.
I'm trying out a new camera and a new battery, so anything could happen for this show. Anything could happen.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: So I could be doing a solo shortly.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: You may be solo in five minutes here as well. Yeah.
You know what to do. You got all the notes in front of you. You're good to go. So. All right.
So, Chuck, obviously, harvest time.
You know, I. I don't know how the connection is in the.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: In the.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: Well, I guess it's a little frosty this morning at my place. How about your place? Little cool over there.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: It was a little chilly. I thought last night it was going to. We might be in trouble, but it was six this morning when I got up at six, and. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, I think we're okay out here. It's all, you know, worried about the soybeans and the corn at this point. Other. Rest of the stuff doesn't matter anymore, but that's what we're worried about.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I.
I'm going to have to convince my wife that we can, you know, like, ice wine, you know, the grapes, get that ice on it. We're gonna have to make ice tomato sauce and ice salsa or whatever because our grass has that little crystal look to it this morning. So I'm gonna be in some hot water now over that one anyways. All right, Chuck, I thought, you know, harvest time, I thought we could go over some of the bigger themes here that are on my mind and then just run through. I wrote down 10 different crops here. Just a comment or, you know, a minute on. On each crop. We won't start the timer on you.
If you want to go longer, that's Fine. But it is 10 crops, about half of what you cover.
But I thought we could go through the ones that farmers are, are asking about the most. Alrighty.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: Okay, so I want to start off with themes here for this morning, and I want to just talk about the, the, the narrative out there that these crops are getting bigger as the combines roll. Now, last year, remember, the crops were as big as they could ever be mid July.
And then we went backwards this year.
Early spring drought.
You know, crop data coming in suggests larger crops. What are you seeing? What are you hearing out there?
Is there something going on with the size of this crop?
[00:04:04] Speaker B: Yeah, it is a big shift, in fact, from the last, I would say even from the last three or four years, I would say not just compared to last year. So, yeah, we're dealing with some yields. And, you know, you hear some of these yields and you kind of go, come on, that's, you know, like when you start to hear green lentil yields in the 50s.
Like, I've never heard of that before.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: I mean, I've heard the 10s and 15s too. So don't get me wrong, they're not all, but I went, holy smokes. Like, can they even be that? Like, I've never heard of that.
So you start to hear those. I think, you know, in a big crop year, you tend to hear those. Like when it's a terrible crop, you hear all of the lousiest yields. And I think when it's in a big crop, you're hearing all these big yields because people are like, they're going, wow, that's, that's just crazy.
But, but the, the general theme, I would say is that it's, you know, it's bigger than expectations and in many cases, a lot bigger than expectations. So spring wheat yields that are 20 bushels higher than what they were expecting, or, you know, peas, you know, 15, 20 bushels higher than what, what people were expecting. And so it's.
Yeah, we're still trying to dial in on that. We tend to be fairly cautious in, you know, when we lower or raise yields during the season, you know, because sometimes these things get overblown and things like that. But I think this year we're playing a little bit of catch up. And so it's quite different. And I may be jumping to the conclusion of the call already, but compared to the last three or four years, we've had grain buyers generally pursuing farmers like, do you got this? Do you have some of this?
Are you willing to sell? I think this year it's going to be flipped around where farmers have to be the more proactive ones and say, do you got room?
You know, and that type of a thing, I think it's that shift in mentality is, is going to be a little tough to take, you know, and a little, a little hard to adjust to because, you know, I've seen comments guys say, well, geez, I'm just locking the bins. Well, yeah, you might be having them locked for a while if, if that's the case. I think it, it that that whole thing, buyers aren't going to be begging farmers for grain this year, I don't think.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm with you on. I'm with you on that one. I do think there's just a little change in marketing style. And earlier this year I had Sarah from Trigger Green join the show and we talked about how it had, you know, buyers were putting out those specials. You know, my posted bid is, for an example is 7 and then here's my offer at 7:50.
And then the calls would come, kind of come in.
I'm with you. I think this is going to be a little bit different and it's kind of part of some of my themes here.
My third one we'll get to in just a second. Now, when it comes to yield data like I'm seeing, obviously we had, I call it like a northern prairie drought. Right. So the peace country, you know, a lot of folks I talked to up there, maybe about 80% of a crop, something like that, outliers on both sides of that.
That's where the most like, farmland is. That was under drought, Northeast Alberta as well, you know, up in that cold lake area going down into St. Paul, like, you know, very dry there.
And then we get over to Saskatchewan, though, I. Nothing really stands out for me on the, on the dryness side.
And then Manitoba, maybe the Swan River Valley area, a little bit dry there as well. But that northern drought, a lot of trees right. In Saskatchewan, a lot of trees where the drought was this year. So.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: And I think the bigger story isn't even the moisture, to be honest. I think it's the mild temperatures because we've had, you know, again, three, four years of, you know, a lot of extreme heat during. And it's during the flowering, the reproductive season for most of these crops.
And this year was mild. Like it was like there. I could count probably on one hand the days over 30 degrees out here anyway.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: And you know, especially during flowering, it was almost ideal. So that's why I think like people's yield expectations kind of got adjusted lower during the last three or four years and now it's kind of okay under good conditions, we're seeing what the genetics can really do.
And so that's why I think there's this surprise factor for, for a lot of people.
And, and you know, maybe even this. All of the smoke that we had, especially out east here, all of this wildfire smoke that we had was, hate to say it, but beneficial.
I was, I was telling you a quick little story. I was out with some Australians were traveling through from the States and they came up through Canada. So I took them out to the, to my brother's farm. And so we were out there standing in the field and, and so my brother is kind of saying, yeah, that maybe this about the smoke might be helpful and whatever. So this Aussie pipes up and he says, he says, yeah, busloads of farmers are driving up north and like lighting wildfires.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: So anyway, yeah, new agronomic practice come and come to a farm near you. Yeah.
So, okay, so I'm with you on the, on the yields. And for me, I'm getting the pictures of the combine monitors and I'm getting the wheat and the barley, specifically these big smiles about some record setting yields for those fields, those farms. Right. Anyways, now, okay, we got maybe some extra bushels here. What about the export side, like moving this crop along because for me, set it for two weeks here. I'm a little bit worried about exports. I'm a little bit worried about moving this crop out. But I know you're here to help me get through this, to move past this and say it's all going to be fine. So how are we going to move this thing?
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Well, how about it's not all going to be fine, but it's mostly going to be fine. Okay, Just like in the.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: Knocking me off the ledge a bit.
[00:10:06] Speaker B: He's mostly dead, right? He's not completely dead. He, he's mostly dead.
So sorry for another obscure reference.
But anyway, it's one of my favorite movies, by the way.
Didn't know that about me, did you?
[00:10:21] Speaker A: But learning a lot, Chuck. Learning a lot today on the export.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: Side, this is a bit of the, like, this is the darkest days right now. Like, it feels that way. Right.
And so for a number of crops, I mean, you look at the pea market and you look at the canola market, like those are real obstacles in the way of exports and it's going to change the stream, if you will, or the pattern of exports to Some degree, too. So, for example, China tends to front load a lot of their purchases and they did that especially last year with canola. They bought so much in the first two, three, four months. And then we're relatively quiet during the rest of the year. And then, of course, then it dropped off completely later on.
But, you know, compared to that, if you look at Japanese purchases or purchases from the UAE or Mexico or Europe, they don't do that front loading. So they're spreading it out more evenly across the year. So you won't get this big surge at harvest. So, so it is going to look kind of ugly compared to what that pattern normally is. So it's going to be spread out more evenly.
And it, and it is very much going to vary by crop. I mean, we just had a, we just had a record wheat export year. We just finished that up at the end of July.
Records for chickpeas as well. Like for a few crops, we had these record years of exports.
And so there are some positive things, and I don't know that the conditions have changed to make that not happen again this next year. The wheat market is probably going to be more or less steady or stable or, you know, compared to what it was this last year. So there's no reason to say our wheat exports are going to drop off or, you know, some of these crops are going to drop off. It's just right now we're staring this big crop in the face, you know, and farmers are, and I understand the, whatever. You're harvesting this crop and you're looking at your yields and going like, everybody else is getting this too. I better, I better get going. So it adds to that selling pressure that happens, that normally happens. Right now everybody's a little, a little or a lot more motivated. I mean, you've had the calls, I've had the calls saying, like, what do we dump right now? Like, we got to dump something. What do we dump?
So you were getting those kind of calls. So that adds to the, to the, this, this worst environment that we have right now. But, but no, I think for, for a lot of crops that don't have these tariff garbage on them, you know, I think, I don't, I don't see a reason why exports will be down same time. Are they going to be able to keep up with the increase in production? That's the, that's the real tricky part. Right.
And I think, you know, the other part of it is too, as much as we don't like lower prices, lower prices tend to buy more Demand.
So, yep, you know, so it may be just a necessary evil that we need to, to get stuff moved out and so on. So, you know, when you have six or seven dollar yellow peas, well then you get Pakistan or Bangladesh or, you know, coming in and buying more. So, you know, so there, there is a bit of an offset effect there too.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: So, you know, I look at that and say, so we need, you know, lower price to get more, try to get more export business. And that's been. A few line companies put out their videos and podcasts as well. And that's what they're saying too. Like we have to get to a price that gets some of that demand going.
The one thing I made note of here is US wheat exports are up 15% year over year.
Do you think that's coming out of our exports a little bit or is it more like a Russia type thing? Or just. Is there anything that kind of stands out on US Wheat exports?
[00:14:29] Speaker B: No, not really. I think, I think it's a positive signal that that overall side of the market, you know, if their hard red spring exports are up and you know, that's a positive sign that that's a stronger part of the market.
Like movement wise, not price wise yet, but movement wise.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: And so, you know, it also means that, you know, if they, if they do move out more of this early on, then we have some more opportunities again later. I mean, we have unfortunately, you know, some bigger production estimates coming out of Australia now. And that is adds to the little bit of the negative tone on several of these markets too. But that was mostly anticipated, so was already being priced in.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: Yeah, fair enough. All right, my last theme before we get to these crops here. I got 10 crops I want to just touch on price recovery.
I'm looking for like a reference year. Like if I. Is there a year that seems similar to 2025 in your mind? Like, is there anything that you can look back and say, oh, we saw this similar thing back in, you know, whatever it is.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: You're testing my memory here, Ryan. That's, that's always a bit dodgy.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: But I'm not good, I'm not good at looking back either. Trying to figure out spreadsheets, you know.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: Usually do those kind of things. What does tend to happen, you know, like I'm still fairly confident for most, most of the crops that we are going to see a seasonal recovery. So this is still seasonal. It's, it's deeper and it's, you know, pushed later because of the delayed harvest. That seasonal bottom is Pushed lower and pushed later than it usually is. But for most of the crops, again, the ones that aren't facing these trade barriers, well, even Canola, we're gonna see a recovery, but it's gonna be, it's gonna be a little bit later and it's gonna be muted.
It's gonna be, it's gonna be, you know, people are gonna kind of go, meh. It's not going to be a radical, you know, you know, you know, take off kind of price environment. So that tends to be. When we have bigger crops, that tends to be the, the pattern, you know, I don't recall is 2013. 1. It's 2020 was maybe a little bit that way, but it's, it's a little bit. Yeah, it'll. It'll tend to shift that a little bit. And then like I was saying before, when you have, for some of these crops, you don't have that big fall purchase window, then you, it'll tend to spread that out a little bit more. So, you know, for something like red lentils, for example, and we'll talk about, more about that later, but, you know, I think there's room for some strength there. But even in a normal year, red lentil bids don't typically rally hard at harvest time.
It tends to peak in spring. So there's going to be some patience required for, for a bunch of these, for probably most of these crops because as prices do start to rise, all of this stuff that's sitting in bins, it's going to get put onto the market and we'll tend to keep that lid on that, that movement as well.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So 2013 is the year that I wrote down, but 2013 was a gong show for all sorts of reasons. But what I want to highlight for 2013 is that we had maybe those seasonal lows were little bit later in the year.
It seemed to be that way. Then we had a recovery that started and it kind of found a peak on a lot of these.
I didn't look at the specialty crops, but canola, wheat, it had a recovery and a peak going into that mid November. And then that stats can report in the first week of December just, just crushed us. And of course we had a movement issue after that. We had a terrible winter, so on and so forth. But I, I would just, you know, if we're a caution to farmers, you know, tuning in here to this show, I would just say, you know, look for that little window of recovery, you know, be one of those farms that. That's maybe a Bit more aggressive on getting your some deals done at that point. And because that stats can, you know, it can, it can move markets one way or the other, but it's just a watch out. I'd have, you know, some of the old traders that I used to work with, you know, they, the saying is, you know, a big crop gets bigger, a small crop gets smaller. Right. And so just kind of a word of caution there.
[00:19:05] Speaker B: Well, and the one thing that I would, I would mention too though is because 2013 was like a dozen years ago and the ability to forecast crop size and things like that I think has gotten better. Not just stats, but so I don't know that we'll be.
The one thing I do remember about that year is that it really caught people by surprise and I don't know that people are going to be caught by surprise this year. I think it's already being priced into like quite a bit bigger yields are already being priced into, you know, what's happening in the cash markets and in futures and I think we're already seeing that happen. So yeah, hopefully, you know, we'll get rid of the bad news, the bearish news early and you know, and then move to a, you know, it's not going to turn radically bullish but just to a normal kind of a pace. The other thing is too, is, is that that December stat scan report, people, people have gotten over the last 12 years have gotten a little more skeptical about those numbers as well.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: Fair enough, Fair enough. Yep, you bet. All right. Okay, so I got 10 crops listed here in order of, of how often they come up on my phone right now. So I want to start off with.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: I'm going to say green lentils. Let me guess, green lentils.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: I've got, I had red and green as their, as category one, but then I did separate them. I put reds first and greens second. But you can start.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: You can start wherever you want because actually the last question on my phone here from late last night was about green lentils. So why don't we start with the green lentil market and just a comment on what stands out for you price wise.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that one. Yeah, let's get the really bad news out of the way first and then we can move on from there. Yeah, the green lentil market, I mean it is, it's basically collapsed and it's still trying to figure out those yields as I mentioned earlier, like just some eye popping yields out there. Some like disappointing ones too, don't get me wrong, but some eye popping yields and that and the acreage thing, I was looking at the Alberta AG or Alberta afsc, their crop insurance records because I was trying to sort out did green lentil acreage increase as much as stats can said? Because it's up.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: Like it's a big time.
And in Alberta there was as many green lentils insured as there were red lentils. So it was a 50, 50 split in Alberta acre. Oh wow.
Yeah. Oh wow. Oh wow is what I said too.
Or something. Or something.
[00:21:39] Speaker A: You might have thrown a curse word in there. Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: So. So that idea that there are lots of green lentil acres and a lot of small green lentil acres out there too, that probably increased the most.
So, so we have that and then these eye popping yields. And the problem with green lentils is as we were talking before about lower prices, buying more demand. That's hard to do with green lentils. You know, we sometimes look at India as buying kind of these excess green lentil supplies to substitute for their pigeon peas.
The problem with that right now is that they're also buying cheap pigeon peas from Africa.
So, so they don't necessarily, even if their pigeon, India's pigeon pea crop is not great, they can still, they don't have to substitute, they don't have to use green lentils as the substitute. They have other sources.
So it's going to be really tough to market green lentils this year.
And to make matters worse, if they weren't bad enough is you do have a limited marketing window. I mean people disagree about how long it takes green lentils to discolor, but at some point they do. So you can't hang onto them for years and years like you can with reds.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Okay. Yep.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: So, so there is, there is a more urgency to, to move them as well too.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:02] Speaker B: I mean that's, you know, a year and a half, two years down the road from now.
But yeah, so, so that one is like to talk about a seasonal recovery that I don't see at all. Like, I think there's going to be every time it pops, a half a cent or a cent a pound, there's going to be so much dumped on the market, you know, just go right back down again and stay flat.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: And it still hasn't quite found its footing yet.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: Okay.
All right, well let's try to spin this into reds then. A little, a little better optimism in the red.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: I think so. And, and the reason, the reason is while a red lentil acres according to StatsCan were actually down this year.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: According to Stat scan. So, so yeah, you have bigger, you have bigger, big yields again for those.
But it's not, it isn't as much of a production increase or in fact, production may be roughly flat in western Canada. So. Okay, so that's relatively positive. Like, I think it's kind of gotten caught up in this selling fervor or furor that's happened.
[00:24:09] Speaker A: Everything seems to.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: Yeah, so. So it's gotten caught up in that.
The other thing is too, is that red lentils, you can buy more demand from places like, you know, south. Other South Asian countries, prices drop, these other countries will step in and buy.
So I think that's gonna, that's gonna help the market. I think Turkey will be a larger buyer as well, too.
And so that's. I, you know, I've, I've. I'm more optimistic for a recovery in reds, you know, versus no optimism for greens. There's some optimism for reds, but it is gonna, it's gonna take a while for that to. To work through the system. And Australia did produce a record crop, by the way. Or is producing a record crop. Yeah, so that, that's not helpful.
But I think with lower prices, we'll see movement and then eventually the, you know, some sort of price recovery a little bit later this year.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: All right, sounds good. You did mention, you know, more of a spring type seasonal peak for red lentils earlier in the recording. So there's, there's that too. Now, do you want to.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: Sorry, one other thing. Gotta throw in. One other thing is we don't know what Indian farmers are gonna plant this, this winter. So that's when they plant their lentils. So, you know, that's a, that's another wildcard in the mix too.
[00:25:24] Speaker A: Okay, fair enough. Now, do you want to keep going down with pulses? I had Durham next, but below that, I had yellow peas and green peas. Do you want to just keep going with pulses?
[00:25:33] Speaker B: Yeah, we have been.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: We have a green pea bid again. So there's some positivity there. Yes, $10.
We have a bid.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: Okay.
You know, it is something that we've been watching and warning about ever since China put these tariffs on. You know, like, in some ways you, you know, we, we focus on the China tariffs on canola. But, but I think the impact on peas, I mean, while you look at the prices, you know, you know, yellow pea prices dropping from 10 bucks down to what, 657 bucks and something like that?
[00:26:09] Speaker A: Yeah, 625 to 7.
[00:26:11] Speaker B: Like that. That to me is a much bigger impact than the impact on canola, to be honest.
And, and here's the other ugly thing. And I texted you earlier.
[00:26:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: This week about, about that. Is that India. Because prices have dropped so much, India is talking about putting tariffs back onto yellow P imports.
So like, that would just. Then you may as well just, you know, I don't know, start burning them in your pellet stoves or something like that. It's, yeah. Like it's, it's going to be really, you know, again, you can buy a little bit more demand from some of these other countries and I think that's going to help. But if you have both India and China out of the market, what do you have left?
Yeah, not much left.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:00] Speaker B: And so let's, you know, maybe we should all be cheering on Scott Moe as he goes over to China and, and tries to, tries to fix things over there.
[00:27:08] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, the, yeah, the, the yellows. Someone asked me to budget a price for yellow peas for next year. You know, they said, you know, we're trying to figure out our crop plan and, and we're harvesting. Fertilizer application will start right away. And I said this is crazy, but I'm just going to say seven and I hope it's a lot better than that. But I, I think I start with a seven. I don't think I want to go down into the sixes at this time.
But yeah, like it's, it's tough until we get some clarity around China or, you know, maybe Scott Mo will go down there and fix things for us in the next few weeks and, and we, I can put an 8 in that budget. But.
[00:27:50] Speaker B: And he'll be elected, you know, for the rest of his.
As long as he wants to be elected for.
[00:27:56] Speaker A: That's right. Yep. Yeah. Okay. What. So greens, you know, we do ship some greens to China as well, but we, we sell small quantities to pilot countries. The last I checked, you know, green peas went from here's a bid to no bid, no movement, and now back to some type of bid out here. What are you thinking on the green pea market?
[00:28:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, China is about a quarter of our exports, so not nearly the. And India is not in that picture at all. So we don't need to worry about Indian in what India is going to do for Greenpeace.
It's a little bit like the green lentils, though. Is that beyond our regular customers? It's really hard to buy a bunch of. There's not a bunch of countries out there. Like, if you think about the use of green peas, you Know, either in, you know, in dried, in. In bags, like for human food. It's mainly human food and it's all, you know, like, how many more bags of dried green peas are people gonna buy? Or, or, or rehydrated? You know, they used to China, they would rehydrate them and freeze them.
Like, how many more frozen peas are people gonna buy? You know, all of those kind of things.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: You know, so it's really hard to boost demand for green peas, so we will be looking at a heavy supply situation for that as well, too.
But again, we're not as beholden to China, but I would think that a lot of that trade for the next year has already been done.
And so it's going to be really limited dribs and drabs of export movement and selling opportunities for farmers. So again, like we were talking about right at the beginning is they'll have to be vigilant and they'll have to be the ones in contact with buyers to say, you got an extra two bits or you got it, you know, whatever, for a green pea bid right now and then be willing to jump on those when they do show up.
[00:29:55] Speaker A: It's going to make a Note here, Christmas 2025, buy something for your grain buyers. Just get on their good side. There we go.
[00:30:05] Speaker B: Meals in the fields for them instead of them doing them for you.
[00:30:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Bring you a steak. Let's, let's get some better bids going. So green peas, we had more acres, from what you can tell, right. This year, more acres. And then I did hear of a quality issue in southern Saskatchewan on some high bleaching.
I don't know, more acres, bigger area, more yield.
Is that quality going to come into play?
You know, Yeah, I think there will.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: Be enough decent quality. I mean, they can, they can make it work. I, I'm not discounting the, the, the quality losses and, and it's probably something we should have talked about for, basically for all. For a bunch of crops is some of these quality issues, like with this getting the rain in, in July and then all this regrowth and in the Durham and, you know, all of that kind of stuff.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: So there's there's all kinds of issues in chickpeas. All kinds of issues going on in the case of green peas.
Yeah. Or they just have more.
They'll have to color, sort them a little more vigorously or. I'm not sure how that process all works, but, you know, I don't think it's going to cause a huge amount. It's not going to cause a real shortfall. But you would see, you will see those great spreads widen out and again for a bunch of crops, you'll see that, that happening.
[00:31:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I saw it was 10 or $11 for under 3% bleach and then $8 for 5.
I want to say 5 to 6% bleach but I, that could be wrong but something like that. So I think it was two to three dollar spread on those. And anyway. Okay, let's keep moving on here. Now I wanted to switch gears to Durham because I was looking at Durham prices yesterday in central Saskatchewan and I saw a 750 and it wasn't long ago where that bid was at 875. So where, where are you at on Durham? Maybe quality, any quality issue on Durham obviously must be some bigger yields coming in with a drop like that. But where are you at on Durham?
[00:32:17] Speaker B: Yeah, there are bigger yields but Durham is one of the ones where I think some of the quality issues are going to be the greatest. So hearing all kinds of downgrading lightweight black point which I, somebody told me I don't really understand what black point is. I can get a visual picture of it or HVK or you know, different. So there's, there's a bunch of different quality issues now. I don't know whether the second half of the Durham harvest is going to be better, but it's, you know, that staginess of the crop as well too that's, that's causing will cause. Cause a bunch of issues. So I think that's gonna, that's gonna really widen out those, those spreads if they haven't already. I would imagine they, they have already. I, I don't have that top of top of in hand right now. But you know, we'll, we'll still see that the Durham market is, was already going to be like we're finished. I think Durham was one of the ones where we had a record export year this last year.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it was.
You know, we're not going to be able to duplicate that because Africa wasn't North Africa wasn't a disaster this year.
European crop is bigger and they're exporting more right now and things like that. So you know, we're not going to be able to repeat last year's record, which we really would really be great if we did if we. But even, you know, here's the thing about the Dura market and we've is, is that even though we were exporting at a record pace, bids were basically flat. For like especially the second half of the year they didn't budget.
[00:33:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:52] Speaker B: So that tells me that there's, there's still, you know, fair amount of Durham sitting in, in bins and so yeah, I think, I think that's one where we'll see, you know, some, some modest growth, but I'm like a recovery but it's going to be really hard fought and again, you know, it'll be worth finding the buyers who need to fill a train and that type of thing.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: At a certain spec. Maybe. Yeah, maybe you got the spec they need or something like that.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: I mean the one thing about you know, all of these crops is and jumping back to some of the themes earlier but that, you know, it's really, it's really caused people to look at their crop budgets and figure out their break even prices again based on if you have, if you have, you know, an 80 bushel wheat crop or a 60 bushel wheat crop that does a lot to your break even price and things like that. So you know, people need to, to re. Recalculate those and see where they're at.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: Yeah, we did an exercise here in August, early August, just going over that total total dollars coming in for each farm and in some cases we layered in some crop insurance expectations as well. But just to give a big picture sense and you know, in some cases we, in a lot of cases we had some shortfalls and now with these bushels coming in, we're just like a grower the other day said well Ryan, what do you think about me selling this extra wheat? And I said, you know what, we had a gap of I think 180 grand on the whole farm. And I'm like selling that is going to fill.
It was 80 grand worth of that gap and you still got three other crops to harvest. So you know, like if you think about it that way, I don't know, we're trying to get to plus. So. Yeah, anyway. Okay, so do you want to switch to, to spring wheat now we talked Durham. Do you want to switch to spring wheat? Keep on that kind of that wheat theme?
[00:35:55] Speaker B: Sure.
You know, spring wheat is one that that's been, been getting dumped on all last year and you know, and especially in the last few months and things I have people just talking about, you know, wheat is a dog and it's just. But it's also been really steady.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: Relatively steady. Right.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: You know, it hasn't been hammered to the same degree as some of these other crops.
It's still not, you know, wonderful and it's, you know, it's not super bullish or things like that, but it's, it's been one that's just been steadier because it's part of a, it's a much larger global market.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: It's a slow grind.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: Lentils and that's Canada.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: You know, spring wheat or wheat in general, like, that's, that's part of the whole thing. And so it tends to moderate those kind of, those moves as well, for better or for worse.
And so, you know, that's one where again, I think we're going to see some strength. Right now. We're in the middle of, in the middle of this weakness.
You know, we look at the, you know, the US Corn market is actually starting to recover from its lows and that's a bit of a seasonal move as well, too. And then maybe the wheat will get, you know, pulled higher along with that. So, you know, that's one that, you know, aside from bin space, that's one where I might not be dumping it now.
And you know, again, there's, there's, you know, 11% protein out there and we're hearing 18% protein in the piece, you know, you know, so you get the whole, the whole massive range there. But yeah, I think that's one where you maybe it, you know, if you've sold some earlier, then for sure you can, you can afford to, to sit on that, I think, and, and wait for some of that seasonal, seasonal tendencies and seasonal improvement and yeah, yeah, I.
[00:37:46] Speaker A: I, I think spreads. There's, there's a small protein premium that started to pop up here for some 14 and a half percent. So I'm a little bit curious on, on how that develops, if there's anything there or not.
Not that optimistic on it, but it's, you know, take note of that.
[00:38:03] Speaker B: Did you want to say something again? It's not a, it's not a wheat specific comment. All these things are coming to mind as we're, as we're chatting.
And so, you know Britt Nielsen, right?
[00:38:13] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:38:14] Speaker B: And she messaged me the other day and she says, you know, I'm hearing that that rail freight is going to be going way up.
And I, so I dug into it a little bit and I went back and I looked at last year and the rail freight started the year really high and I'm not sure how this works with revenue caps or things like that, but the rail freight, you know, continued to drop during the year.
And so if you looked at it in October, November, you know, Whatever, Wherever your point is, by the time you got into like early spring, it was like 12 or 13 a ton. Lower the rail. Okay.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:38:50] Speaker B: So even that, if you're looking at, at, you know, well, even if prices in general are staying flat, you know, you can maybe pick up something and I'm not sure if it has to do with rail freight or the freight, the revenue cap, but you know, there's something that, you know, you know, they may give you a better basis or a better cash bid or whatever.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: We did see basis improve all, all year long. The, the futures maybe had that slow grind, but those prices just kind of kept staying and then did find some peaks in the spring. Now my strategy for wheat this year is, has been very aggressive. Moving it in these early movement programs, I want to call them, they're not, they don't feel special. So I don't want to call them special.
But just with farms that are comfortable with re ownership strategies. Right. Like re ownership down the line. And again, I don't think throwing it all in the bin and locking it up is the way to do it right now. But we will see. Time will tell.
[00:39:48] Speaker B: And there were those special specials, you know, just before harvest really got underway. So. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:39:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
All right.
We've got barley or oats. Anything stand out on, on those? That's crop.
What are we at now? Crop six, no, seven and eight. So we got barley, oats, and then we'll finish with canola, flax. Okay.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: Barley.
You know, I think some of the quality, there are some quality issues for sure, but I think the people that I've talked to that have taken some off, they're, they're, you know, there's some with chitting and you know, that kind of thing that they notice. But, but there's, I think there's going to be plenty of malt barley out there, malt quality barley and some again, some really nice yields, especially in Alberta.
Well, and probably Saskatchewan too. But that central Alberta area, you know, they're really, they've, they've been in this bit of a sweet spot this year.
And so I think we're going to have lots of barley. The concern is, and this is talking to a guy, a broker from southern Alberta, but he says, you know, cattle numbers are, we're struggling with, you know, getting feeder cattle. We're struggling, you know, with, with the rain we had later in the year pastures or whatever. So they're not going to be putting them on feed as early as they usually do and so on. So our domestic feeding Might be kind of challenged.
Of course, when I talked to him, corn was at its lowest low.
[00:41:23] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:41:24] Speaker B: And so corn looked like they're, you know, it's going to be flooding in and now it's bounced and it is actually back at a premium to barley and to feed wheat and so on.
But again, if you have quality issues with feet with wheat, quality issues with Durham, some of those kind of things, some of that's going to flow into the feed channel. So I think our domestic feed usage is going to be lower this year for barley specifically, so we really need to rely on the export market, which is essentially China. So thankfully they haven't put tariffs on barley yet.
[00:42:00] Speaker A: Did they just forget about that one or.
[00:42:04] Speaker B: I don't know. Let's hope they just kind of keep forgetting about it. Yeah, so we really need that.
I think barley, again, it's people dumping it right now and so on, so it pushes it even lower, which means that there is some room for a recovery. But it's going to be pretty quiet. I think the, you know, on average our malt premium is 50 or 60 cents a bushel or something like that, which is historically low, but it may not, it may not, you know, it may not improve much from that during the year. So that's the quick and dirty on barley.
[00:42:43] Speaker A: So what you're telling me is the malt offer I got is a buck 70 higher than our local feed price. I should probably, probably jump on that one on that spread.
[00:42:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Talking to one of the malsters earlier in the year, you know, he's putting out these bids and, and like he just couldn't. Nobody's. Nobody was interested.
I kept thinking, yeah, you might want to be interested.
But I think now they're starting. He's getting more calls and yeah, just like all of the buyers, right, they're getting stuff offered to them.
[00:43:14] Speaker A: The other I chatted with, with, with David, who's my feedlot alley contact, contact, and he's saying very similar things.
The other thing I'll note in here is so seasonal bottom, he said, usually comes in at the end of next week for, for feed Barley and Lethbridge. So that might get pushed a little bit.
But he also said, you know, for the, you know, the market, you know, the reseller market, like they've booked everything into next spring. It doesn't mean they're right, but they've booked the values that they are coming to the farmers with. There's carry in there, we're in a carry market and all that stuff. But he said Your, your gains are just really limited when, when everybody thinks that this is how it's going to play out, you have to change their mind and sometimes we can't do that until the next growing season. So. Yeah. Anyway, all right, good stuff there.
I'm seeing oats, you know, prices drop a little bit. Seeing some premiums for gluten free oats right now.
What big crop I'm, I'm thinking on the oats is with the wheat. The barley oats must be similar.
[00:44:21] Speaker B: Yeah, there's, I mean the yields are, are big from what I'm hearing. I'm not hearing much about test weight or things like that on the oats, so.
[00:44:28] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:44:29] Speaker B: I can't really say, you know, whether it's plump or thin. I would imagine with the rain later in the season that helps it plump up and so you shouldn't have those issues.
But yeah, oats have held up better than, than a lot. I mean we were going into the end of 24, 25 with some fairly low stocks and so, you know, I think, I think that's one that's gonna again, it hasn't collapsed.
[00:44:54] Speaker A: That's right, yep.
[00:44:55] Speaker B: And, and to me that's a bit of a positive sign if it, if it hasn't collapsed yet.
You know, I think that's, and, and harvest is especially in eastern prairies is further along and on the, on the oats.
So if it hasn't done that yet, I think we're, I think we're in some decent shape for oats. Again be a good sized crop and I don't expect, you know, a rally to the moon or anything like that.
But you know, we don't have to, you know, compared to some of these crops where you just drop down to the super low seasonal low with oats, you haven't really, you know, it's kind of dished out at the bottom but, but not a. So that's a, to me that's a positive sign and it's mostly the US market so you know, we need to keep supplying them well. But no, I'm, I'm, it's one of the crops I guess that I would be a little bit more optimistic on.
[00:45:50] Speaker A: Good. Well, we need some of that. So that's good. I'm with you on that one.
Okay, we got canola and flax to wrap up here. Canola, I believe I read this morning was 2 or 4% harvested in Saskatchewan. So very early on from a yields perspective, obviously Scott Mo going over to China to try to smooth things over for US over there.
You know, I was reading your latest report yesterday. You've got carryover climbing a little bit year over year. Anything else kind of standing out in the canola market for you?
[00:46:24] Speaker B: Well, I mean, you know, if China were to drop those tariffs, I mean, heck, we're, you know, we've got them all priced into the market now, and we also priced in that would be bigger Australian crop and things like that.
But, you know, I, I think that's one where we are. I think we've probably, we're probably oversold or we're close to being oversold now. I think some of these bargain buyers, like maybe Europe, uae, Pakistan even, we used to ship, we used to export or there have been years where we've exported 6, 7, 800,000 tons to Pakistan.
So that's not, it's not China, but it's not nothing either.
And so, you know, and we have the Cargill plant coming on and later this year and the Dreyfus expansion in Yorkton and, and all that.
So those are all helpful things.
You know, I, I think we're gonna struggle to, you know, you know, like, I, I don't. I'm not big on price prediction as, you know, but, you know, I think we'll struggle to get back up to where we were just before harvest.
Like, the thing on Canola is that's one of these ones where yields can really vary a lot depending on the growing conditions. And this mild year, I think that one might be one where we see even bigger surprises on yields than some of the cereals. So that makes me. Makes me a little bit nervous. But I think we're going to see, you know, some other countries step in and, and do some buying to help offset that. Talking to a broker.
Yeah, broker, yesterday.
And so you were talking about Australia and Canola going into China. He says. Yeah. That's a bad thing, is it? No, no, no, that's a good thing. We want Australian barley to go into China so then we can move into Japan or increase volumes to Japan, where Australia normally supplies.
But I had to think too, is that that's great for this year, but if Australia regularly has a inlet into China.
[00:48:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:27] Speaker B: You know, later on once this gets resolved and we can cross our fingers and hope Mr. Mo is successful and, you know, that, you know, who knows? Miracles do happen.
[00:48:41] Speaker A: Well, and I think too that the Canola has the potential to pop and pop when there's a positive headline, you know, with the biofuel policy stuff to pop when, you know, it might be the Simplest thing where Mo gets back and says, you know, we had great talks and this is what we figured out, like, you can have those pops.
It's got to be ready to rock and roll when they happen. So. All right, let's wrap it up here with flax, which is the crop that I sit there and I, you know, I sleep well thinking about flax margins.
Price is still holding on. I know harvest for flax is probably ahead of us yet, but. Any comments around the flax market?
[00:49:25] Speaker B: Well, it's a little bit like we were just talking about with oats is the fact that it's dropped, but not precipitously.
So to me that's kind of favorable. We had more acres this year in Canada and in the US and things like that. And we'll see what the yields are. They'll probably be good like every other crop.
The, you know, I, I don't know that I would be, I don't know that I would be sitting back. I don't know if I'd go into this fall being completely unsold on flax at, you know, at 16 bucks or whatever the, whatever those bids are right now. I, I think some of that should, some selling should get done. And the reason I say that is because, because Russian and Kazakh crops are a lot larger than they were last year.
And so at some point, you know, Europe will buy form from Kazakhstan and from Russia. Even with tariffs, they buy from Russia and China. We haven't sold much into China for years now. So that one will, we won't have access to that market. So it'll still be largely the US And Canada, Canadian demand. So wanting to, it may get tougher a little bit later on in the year. I don't think the price is going to collapse, but you know, it's, again, it's margin wise that still works, you.
[00:50:52] Speaker A: Know, and yields might be, yeah, yields might be very good for flax. So. Yeah, for sure. All right, Chuck, well, we kept you way over time here for Friday morning. I do appreciate, appreciate you joining the what the Futures podcast live show. How can people get your, your information? You still doing free trials out there? How can people access your content?
[00:51:12] Speaker B: Yeah, we, we, we want people. It's not just, it's not just we're trying to hook people with a free trial. I don't want to have someone subscribe if they haven't tried it out and know what they're getting. So if you go to left fieldcr.com there's a button right on the homepage for free trial, whatever, and we'll put you on for four weeks and then we'll, we'll ask you after that whether you want to continue or not. And you know, that's the best way to, to know what we're doing and, and whether it fits for you. So we've got, we got a number of different products and different reports and so on. So.
[00:51:45] Speaker A: Yep, perfect. Perfect. And folks, if you want to catch any of my stuff, head over to Ryandenee Ca. You can find out info on the conference on the left Lunchbox crew.
All that stuff. Podcast is all up there as well. So thanks so much, Chuck, for joining me on Positive Friday here. Hope everyone has a great harvest weekend and you can catch this episode as a podcast here shortly as well. If you didn't catch it all, it'll be on the podcast on, on your. Yeah. Favorite podcast channel shortly. So take care, Chuck. Have a great weekend and we'll talk to you real soon.
[00:52:19] Speaker B: All right, sounds good.
[00:52:20] Speaker A: Thank you.