Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] 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.
[00:00:16] Hey there. Welcome to the what the Futures podcast. Of course, always recorded in the UPL studio. I am your host, Ryan Denis. I've spent my career working with farmers across the prairie provinces on the crop marketing side. I was a grain buyer for a little bit, worked for Cargill for some time, had my own shop for a little while as well. And I've been entrenched in crop marketing here for well over a decade now and having a great time with it.
[00:00:47] The what the Futures podcast is your weekly dose of clarity in this complex world of crop marketing. We're almost at the end here of season one. We have like five episodes left.
[00:00:58] And I hope you know my goal was to help farmers across the prairie provinces with their crop marketing decisions, and I hope I was able to do that over the last year.
[00:01:11] This episode is another solo episode. We did one about a month ago, and the feedback was quite positive. We have amazing guests. We had Chuck Penner on last week. We had Quentin with JGL. We've had Kyle Sinclair, Brittany Nielsen, David Lee with Marketplaces is going to be joining me next week. Brett Waltz with Bam WX. The list goes on and on, folks. We've had some great guests here in season one. This episode is all about crop marketing. All right, we've got the 2025 version of crop power rankings. And you'll know, you'll see why it's subversion in a second.
[00:01:52] We've got a market update.
[00:01:54] So we're here middle of September.
[00:01:57] You're, some of you, wrapping up harvest, you know, days away for many. And so now you're sitting here saying, okay, well, now I know what I have. I know what I have to deliver or what I've delivered. And what's the outlook to the end of the year? I'm going to talk about that today and give you a bit of an outlook. My opinion, anyway. We'll see if it's worth anything. We had a grain company that cancelled its license with the canadian grain commission, so we'll talk about that. And then, of course, we've got an update on the crop marketing made. Cool conference. Hit that subscribe button, folks. I post weekly, and you can stay up to date by subscribing to the YouTube channel or on your favorite podcast platform. I noticed on Apple Podcasts we have a 4.9 going on there. A few more ratings came in. So thank you for those and again, I don't know what they all mean, but, hey, maybe we're doing something right there. All right, let's get into the episode. And now a word from our sponsor, John Deere. There's a whole new John Deere lineup that's out right now. New tractors, new combines, there's a new air car, two, all with built in intelligence that keeps getting smarter. Check them out at John Deere dot ca. All right, so I'm my own guest this week. This is usually the segment where I have some phenomenal industry talent join me to cover off an important topic, but I wanted to give a little bit of my guide to marketing into the end of the year. And throughout the episode, we've had little tidbits here and there of a few things, so this won't take that long. But I, I thought we could talk about some, some marketing for into the end of the year and a few different crops.
[00:03:46] I still don't have a big theme to cover with you guys yet in this segment, and then I thought we could just talk about some power rankings, a version of them. Okay. Chuck Penner is going to have some better stuff for us in the near future, but let's start with something, just an idea on something here. Okay.
[00:04:04] All right, so general themes, marketing from September 18 to December 31, basis for wheat and canola, generally prairie wide. When, when we pull in all the data and they say, oh, the Saskatchewan basis is this.
[00:04:25] Those continue to improve into the end of December with canola. Obviously, China thing could change that just a little bit. But even with that, I still think basis improves into the end of the year. Okay.
[00:04:41] Areas, locations can be different. You may not see those basis gains, you know, to the same level of same effect.
[00:04:51] But generally speaking, basis levels, in my opinion, improve as we go into the end of the year. We have early demand here for red lentils, yellow peas, malt, barley, those first trains, first vessels, feed barley, same thing.
[00:05:07] I actually believe that demand and price pull back between now and the end of December.
[00:05:19] In there you might catch something exciting, but I believe that your time is generally now on some of those crops, like the feed barley, specifically some of the early malt. Right. Like your time is now on even yellow peas. I know you want to stick handle this the next couple weeks, but, you know, there is just a short little window here to capture some of this yellow pea demand, red lentil demand. If Australia is going to pull off the crop that is brewing over there, your red lentil prices, hey, they may face a bit of a setback here in the next couple months. Right. So those ones, I I still think you got to be proactive and get some of that marketed. Okay. Oats. I think prices just stay firm with slight gains.
[00:06:08] I think larger gains in oat prices happen later on this winter. And I think even Durham, not saying Durham and oats are related, but I think a similar pattern can develop for both of those crops. I think that every time you get oat prices there, they'll be quiet, steady for a couple of weeks and all, they'll pop up a little bit, and there'll be a little special that pops up and. But I think it's going to be like, let's call it slow and steady between now and the end of December. I don't think we see fireworks on oats until. I think next summer could be pretty exciting, actually, for, for oat growers. Canola futures, we talked about canola basis, canola futures. October 1 is, is a huge day, and there could be some negativity around that just leading into that day where the trade's like, oh, man, what are they going to do? Are they going to do something right right away? There could be negativity that leads into that. But all signals, for me, every sign points to higher futures into December. And I strongly believe that the stats can report.
[00:07:11] I don't know how you pick your targets. I'll try to help you pick some targets into that report.
[00:07:18] But if that number prints a, with a one seven, heaven forbid, a 1717 like, wow, we're gonna see that thing spark. Right? So how do we take advantage of that again? I. Oh, I hate doing that. I hate doing that. But it might even be worthwhile. Never mind. Scratch that. It is always worthwhile to let it happen and then see you, you know, make some adjustments from there. But that might kick off. Who knows? Another run higher, or maybe it spikes with that anticipation into their report. We'll see. But scratch the target thing. We're not doing that. We want to see the report come out and go from there. For me, I, again, I own canola puts mid October. I'm going to make some decisions on my January puts. And hey, told us to the lunchbox crew, you know, if the harvest lows are in, don't count on me to pick the harvest low, because I'm, I'm still, I'm a bearish. I believe the markets are bearish. Right. And you're going to get your harvest dip. And to me, it just, it was a hard one to buy. Hopefully, it's in but I'll look at it again here in mid October. Wheat demand futures slowly climb into early December. I think we covered that already. And it's because winter wheat planting in the US in the black sea right now it's dry in the black sea. It was raining as of recording in the us winter wheat belt. But it can get some upside going in these wheat markets. And, you know, I, I still think the wheat market can find a little peak here heading into early December some point over the next couple months, and from there it can pull back. And sometimes we won't trade those levels again for, till the next spring or summer or even beyond. So I think for your farm to stay very close to this wheat market on a better improving basis, you know, basis levels and futures and just capture, I think, a decent quote, unquote decent wheat price here between, you know, let's say over the next, let's call it like eight weeks, something like that. We'll keep, keep an eye for that. All right. So that's my general themes. I hope that helps a little bit. Now, my next thing here in my guide is that we are still in a market downtrend. I know that's not what you want to hear, but the Americans, the yields that are being reported early, the early yields are, they're good. Minnesota's not good. Was, the parts of Ohio weren't great, but they're good in a lot of like, unbelievably good in a lot of areas reporting. Okay, we're going to see a us carryover. I think it's going to climb, us carryover into next year is going to climb corn, maybe mostly on the corn, 2 billion bushels, I think is approximately the expected carryover. We'll see. But if you capture one thing out of this is that, in my opinion, we're still in a downtrend. And as the market climbs here this fall, and I'm already, I've done some of this this week, but I'm grabbing the carry in some of these markets. I'm talking about hard red spring wheat, Kansas Wheatley, canola, corn, beans.
[00:10:40] These markets are paying trim, not tremendous in the right word. They're paying full carry or close to full carry in a lot of situations. And, you know, go in and grab that.
[00:10:54] You don't have to grab it, you know, on Friday here as you're listening to this. But go and grab these opportunities over the next weeks and months. You know, if the market shows you a bit of life here, go and take a peek, especially if you're profitable. Go take a peek at what's playing out into next year and take some action there. Okay.
[00:11:17] I still believe that when we look at this in a, you know, a year from now, I will say that I think we're even a bit lower. I. I don't mean to put more pressure out there than what you're already under, but it wouldn't surprise me to sit here and be sitting lower yet into next year.
[00:11:41] Lots to happen, lots to go on us election yet production cycles everywhere. Lots of things can happen to change that, but all things equal production. Normally, yeah, we might be sitting a bit lower. All right. And last thing here, power rankings. Now, I said this is a version of power rankings because I just default to the farm to start with. So I actually. I didn't put any lentils in here on this first one, which is. Right there is a little bit of a, you know, makes it incomplete. But my power rankings for, you know, areas.
[00:12:22] I had flax come in as my number one crop. Green peas came in at number two, oats as my number three, which I think is my wild card. That may fall out of the top five. Malt, barley and rye. Fall rye. That's what came into my top five. But the oats, malt, barley, rye, and canola are with. Are within just like, a couple dollars an acre. You could easily massage that number to throw canola into the number three spot. Okay.
[00:12:53] Now, there's no lentils in this scenario, so we would have some lentils play in. There's no canary. See, there's lots of different crops not in here yet. But the point here, what do these crops have in common? Flax, green peas, malt, barley. What do they all have in common?
[00:13:12] Production shortage. Right.
[00:13:16] We have to buy some acres, and I think oats can maybe fall into there as well. But our oat millers, they don't do a great job of trying to buy acres in nice and early. So we'll see.
[00:13:27] But tight carryover expected in those crops. Right. Quality an issue with malt. Quality an issue with green peas, flax. We'll see. Maybe flax will surprise me, but acres are so low. Right. Things just tighten right up. But flax in my scenario is by far my number one crop. Like, between flax and canola. I got flax up by $100 an acre between those two.
[00:13:50] And, of course, the wheat markets again, it's really hard to predict price. A week out. I've got a week a year out. I've got yield price. I've got my cost for seed, for chem insurance. That gives me my total fixed, and that gives me a gross margin that I'm working with. You can do these yourselves. You can make your own power rankings. You should. And you might want to use different numbers in yours. But on the wheat side, you know, low protein spring wheat comes in at number 15 out of 15 crops don't grow low protein spring wheat next year. You know, the high protein hard reds in the number 13 spot those. You're listening to this and you're still like our farm, we're still going to grow a bunch of wheat. It's, you know, we have to. So, anyways, hopefully some of the other crops offset wheat, or maybe wheat gets a nice yield for us and changes the math on this. But we're losing money on wheat. We're losing money on feed barley. Feed barley and high protein wheat. I've got neck and neck right now, you know, some soft white, some cps red. Those are a little bit higher in the rankings. Yellow peas are just right middle of the pack. Still profitable on the farm, but middle of the pack. And then faba beans fall a little bit below product cost of production for me. But anyways, folks, again, I encourage you to do this yourself.
[00:15:20] I was chatting with a farm the other day, and he said, ryan, power rankings are cool, but, you know, if flax was the number one crop in his region, he'd say, that's great, but I'm going to put in some adjustments on expenses in there. Like, it's not as clean or clear as what you have in here, which, of course, I get. Some crops are higher risk, right. Some crops are more work or higher storage risk. Whatever it is, maybe it's harder to market.
[00:15:49] Lots of different things come into play. That's why you should do your own. But I'm just trying to get a sense here of what, you know, what could pay the bills and how things are looking. And I do have. I do have lower prices penciled in. Okay. I do. For next year. That's. Yeah, that's where I'm sitting.
[00:16:09] All right, folks, that's it for this segment. I hope that that was helpful. And, of course, I'll promise to get some great guests back with us next week. All right. One of my favorite segments in my positive moments of the week, I'm sure some of them land okay with you as well, but. All right, well, I got my new Cardinals hat, so there we go. My cardinals beat up a divisional rival. I'm a big NFL fan. And, oh, yeah, we have. Oh, yeah, my trophy is way back there, but my. I did win the fantasy football league last year, so it's. It's on display for the season now. So we did have a nice win there. I I also.
[00:16:47] Oh, yeah. Okay, well, I don't know how you guys. Like, I saved some money on. On my insurance, my house insurance, vehicle insurance. Right. That stuff. And, like, I saved 15%.
[00:17:04] And anyways, that's the positive moment of the week. My last little thing on that is. Wow, what a painful process.
[00:17:13] No wonder there's experts out there to go over insurance. Like, I just couldn't. All the serial numbers on the farm, everything you have to look at there, like, no wonder there's. There's experts that do this as a full time role, because, geez, just personal stuff is unbelievably painful. All right, last one. Hauling. I wrote hauling weight off the combine. Okay? So I've had some conversations with some. Some clients and some farmers here the last couple weeks or so, and what was interesting is that this fall, in a lot of areas, the elevators were very quiet, and so we had done some.
[00:18:01] We'd done a lot of selling on wheat, you know, 858, 75, 925, 950. We sold a lot of wheat. And I had a farmer that I do some work with call me the other day, and he's like, mandy Ryan. I'm scared. I'm like, well, what are you scared about? What's going on? And he's like, I am the only one delivering at the elevator, or there's, like, three of us.
[00:18:25] It's basically like, I have my own giant bin. And he's like, did we screw up? And I'm like, what do you mean, screw up? He's like, well, there's nobody here. Why are we hauling in wheat? And nobody else is hauling in wheat? Like, it's so quiet. And I heard that from a few areas, guys. Not just there, but in a few areas that the elevators were kind of quiet. I told them, like, dude, your average price is, like, $9 on your wheat.
[00:18:56] I think we're good, man. That's a positive moment for me. And it worked off. Combine movement worked. Not in every area, right? There's talk about western Canada here, but it worked very well. Positive moment for me. And, hey, we secured the bag at those prices. We cashed those checks, and the grain's gone. So, hey, that's a positive moment for me. All right, so let's get into the what's cool and crop marketing segment for this week. I've got a. I've got a hodgepodge here of stuff to get through. That's why the solo episode, I figured there was enough to cover here this week. So let's get into what's cool with crop marketing. Well, India, they have extended the yellow pea, canadian yellow pea imports to the end of December. Right. Chuck was on the show last week. He had it at 50 50.
[00:19:49] I should have tried to convince him for like a 5149 on that one. But anyways, it happened and, you know, maybe my, my crop marketing blunder of the season is going to be that, you know, I was an aggressive yellow P mover. We'll see. Time will tell, folks, but that's good. I hope it translates into some stronger bids. Yellow P bids are up just a little bit here as well. So hopefully that continues and we can move more yellow peas here at higher prices over the next couple of months. But we're going to want to have those peas probably, you know, in about a month ish, what, mid October? No, no, we'd be good until mid November to get those out there. So we got some time here. Hopefully bids creep up a little bit. But I do have more on this in my crop marketing update here in just a couple of minutes. But that's definitely something cool this week. What else do we have that we can say is more positive? Oh, let's go to positives first and then we'll go into some stuff that's maybe not quite as positive, but.
[00:20:51] So movement of grain like contracts, hauling in October contracts two to three weeks early, hauling in November contracts.
[00:21:06] Now I'm recording this. September 18.
[00:21:11] In some parts of the prairies, November contracts for canola are being called in.
[00:21:18] Can you guess what's in white? Can you guess what one of the top three things is in eating your veggies this week? Yeah, it's phoning to see if you can haul your contracts early.
[00:21:29] It's a good sign, folks, for some slightly higher prices. Now you need the demand to be there as well. Like the November demand to be there. But yeah, contracts are moving and they're moving early. Pick up the phone, be the squeaky wheel. Like, give it a try. If you got it contracted, why not? What else do we have? Canola specials.
[00:21:51] I almost fell off my chair and I wrote this in the email, but I almost fell off my chair when bunge started to put out September October canola specials.
[00:22:02] I'm sure you guys realize how monumental that is because this company, they had that sold out sign, right?
[00:22:17] And to all of a sudden start taking and having specials that, like, that is interesting, folks. And it's not just like the September canola special in an area that is just harvesting canola. I get that. I get it. Let's get something in. We got cars coming. Like, I get that special. And there's a bit of that going on. But to throw it in October as well, folks, like, if you're trying to look at warning signs here or, you know, flashes of what's potentially to come, like, there's some signals here that are, that are starting to resonate. Right? Like you're with me on this, right? You're starting to see. No, contracts are moving early. Interesting. Oh, they got a special on interesting. Like I. I think, what am I on record here for a canola crop? 18 million tons. Well, probably lower than that. Okay, what else do we have? Protein spreads. I said I'd give you guys an update. Unfortunately, I don't have anything exciting on the premium side. Okay. I remember locking in with Vitera. It was, what was it? One 1.2 cents per 10th up to 15 protein. You guys remember that? I think we talked about that here, right? I. What was the update here today? It was half a cent per 10th to 14. Five.
[00:23:45] A hill of beans, folks. Not much difference at all. I wasn't excited about the 1.2 to 15, but I guess it was something, right? The positive here is that discounts are getting better across the prairie. So those discounts for lower protein are getting better. And the other positive is that a whole bunch of our wheat crop is actually grading very, very well. I don't know the exact spread yet, but. But even with some rain, I'm still seeing in a lot of areas some good looking wheat crops. We'll see where we go here on the rest of the spread. But discounts are getting better. So protein discounts getting better. If you have low protein, honestly, you just gotta flex a little bit and not take a discount for low protein. But anyway, you can email me about that. We'll talk about it. But it's getting better. All right, now let's switch gears to some stuff that's just not quite as positive. Fertilizer I wanted to talk about because it is a huge, seems be a huge topic right now.
[00:24:46] So I have, I am not a fertilizer expert at all. Okay. What happens with me is that I speak to a lot of people in the industry, okay.
[00:24:58] And, you know, we talk and I get a handle on prices and I get a handle on what people are watching. And some of those things I wouldn't I'm definitely not a fertilizer expert. I just seem to gather information. So the experts are saying, and I already have a lot of respect for them. The experts are saying, you know, prices holding to, you know, climbing slightly moving forward. Okay.
[00:25:25] And everyone's got their reasons for why. And I get some of them, some big world stuff's happening that is supporting price.
[00:25:35] But then you go to the grower level and again today in the, in, you know, something that I listen to, based out of the US, they talked about the bare minimum for application of fertilizer. The bare minimum to replace the nutrients, definitely not topping anything up, but the bare minimum. And then also less corn acres. Okay, we got a long ways to go, but I just look at the folks that buy the stuff to put it in the ground or apply it that are not engaged to do that even, you know, I think about as you look at your financials for the farm and look where to allocate dollars, you know, when, when farms lose 1020, 30% of their canola bushels like there, that's a lot of cash there, obviously. Right. And I just, I don't know, I just have this feeling in, you know, the pit of my stomach that the market holds or declines into next year. And I don't know, I guess you got to go with the experts in this one. But yeah, anyone that I've talked to and actually it does come up here in the pioneer, pioneer seeds mailbag. But if you're going to apply it here right away, then I'm. Obviously you got to buy the darn stuff. But I. Yeah. All right. A couple things on barley Malt. Barley, I am not impressed by the export programs from barley through the line companies.
[00:27:10] I think that if you are trying to negotiate with them, you know, if you want to be on the early vessels that are going out here in October, I'm with you. I'd love for you to get more money and get a higher price, but I'm just not seeing a lot of demand and I'm, and I'm actually seeing a fair amount of sellers at posted bids.
[00:27:35] Now if you're going to deal with a domestic malt, starts a different ballpark. In my example today, I was chatting with a farmer. The local elevator was at like 575.
[00:27:47] Okay. And the domestic maltster was a dollar a bushel better than that, plus freight.
[00:27:55] Now, pros and cons to both. There always is.
[00:28:00] But that's pretty, that's a pretty big chunk of change difference. Right. And we. Yeah. Anyway, it's there's that spread out there. So domestic's different, but the export programs, I don't know. I am a little bit disappointed at how it's starting to play out here. We'll see. Right. And then, of course, feed barley. Strong demand right now. We've got some boats that are going to leave the coast here in the next couple of weeks. The way it sounds. Yeah. You're going to want to be on those boats if you can, if you got feed barley.
[00:28:29] I'll tell you why. To make your move here in just a little while. And then. What's my last one here? Australian crops. They are, they are. They're doing well, folks. They are doing well. So, you know, lentil growers, you need to pay attention to Australia. We got to keep an eye on what they get for canola here and for wheat as well. But generally speaking, it's going very well there. And I always watch for that to see if it'll give us a bit of, you know, just a little bit of strength or upside potential.
[00:28:56] Right now it looks like Australia, if anything, if they're gonna, you know, their contribution might be the slightly lower prices, you know, when we look at it. So. Yeah. All right. That's what's cool in crop marketing for this week. All right. For this week's housekeeping items, I've got a couple here. Let's start song of the week. Let's get that one out of the way. I've added a couple songs to the playlist. It's on YouTube. Music under what? The futures hashtag harvest 24. But I added a couple of, what are the kids call it? A couple of bangers in there. And I also added the top gun anthem. So what I. What you could do, if you want to have some fun with it, is, you know, imagine the chaser bins pulling up, right? And you just be like, hey, just 1 second there, tractor operator. I just got to get my theme music going. And then you put on the top. Top gun theme song. Wouldn't that be cool? The guitar cuts in as you're unloading. And then that great big solo towards the end as well. And then off you go. I don't know. Check it out. Let me know how it goes. All right. What else do we have here? Okay, I got to get this one out of the way, too. So I could talk about.
[00:30:11] We've talked about them too much, in my opinion.
[00:30:15] I could talk about eggfinity every week. Okay.
[00:30:19] Farmers across the prairies continue to suffer from lack of payment from egg finity. And there's all sorts of things going on in the background that I can't talk about yet. It's still happening, folks. It's still out there. Shame on these folks over there that, that are not paying farmers that have been owed money from this past winter.
[00:30:45] The leaves are turning right. Anyways, I just, I still have to say that because it's, it doesn't, even though I'm not talking about it as much. I don't want to talk about it and you don't want to hear about it. It's still happening. All right. The other thing I talked under housekeeping is northwest terminals in unity. The primary elevator license was canceled effective September 18.
[00:31:09] Now I put out a tweet to the grain commission because the canceled and revoked are two words that have come up here recently.
[00:31:22] So northwest terminals was cancelled, purely was revoked. One of those seems to be a little friendlier than the other. And I think revoked is worse as my understanding. And I think that, you know, I do work with a lot of growers in the unity area. Communication has been, I'd say, pretty darn good.
[00:31:45] There are arrangements being made. You know, it's, I think it's been a proactive thing to cancel. It is my understanding now. It's still like if you have grain over there, you still have to deal with this stuff. Like you can't just say, oh, it's going not bad, it's gonna be fine. Like, no, no, still go and deal with it. But hey, you know, like this, I talked about this a little while ago.
[00:32:09] As a farmer you need to be cautious.
[00:32:13] You need to, you know, reference check. Hey, could we credit check some of these buyers maybe? Like can it go both ways? I got credit checked for something today and I, you know, it's been a while since that's happened, but you know, it happens all the time to get credit checked. And I don't know, I just feel like why couldn't we turn the tables and say, hey, how's your credit doing? How's your cash flow doing over there? I don't know. Maybe that's not allowed in this industry. But anyways, another one is still folks there. It's not, it's not going to be the last one. All right? That's all I have to say. There's going to be more over the next twelve months. I don't want to say guarantee it, but it's going to happen. Okay, last thing for housekeeping, the drum heller conference I'm going to throw out. I wrote it in the email but I'll just say it as well.
[00:33:04] I'm looking for a speaker to come in and talk about. I wrote cost savings, but I don't want it to be cost savings because cost savings does not just because you're cutting and saving money, it doesn't translate into margin and into profit. There are cost saving things that are important that you need to analyze and look at the. But I'm more looking for like efficiencies and, you know, areas where you've or someone out there has made tweaks, positive tweaks. Maybe on the efficiency side that helped lower cost of production or helped add yield or something like that. And maybe it's a farmer panel. You know, I'm kicking that idea around. But the Drumhaler conference here. Yeah, that's one topic that I think is important that you guys are going to want to hear. And I'm just curious if you know of anyone that would speak so you can email me, Ryan, at what the Futurespodcast dot ca. I am learning through this experience. I like, I've set up my own conferences before, like a one day type thing. Like, you know, some of you listening. Have you sat in the room in Vegarville with, you know, 100 people with me, if we did a taste of a beer tasting thing, I'm in the corner like cracking beers, pouring everything. It was a gong show. But yeah, I've done some of this before. I haven't done anything to this scale, but not everybody wants to play. All right. I was a little bit naive in that at times over the last couple weeks and it's really, really eye opening and I am going to talk about it in person in Drumheller as well. But it is pretty cool to actually see some of these conversations. I have chatted with some great people that are enthusiastic, that have so much to bring to the conference. I am so pumped about that. I did jump the gun on the agenda. I thought I could release it today, talk about it today.
[00:35:05] Not quite there yet, but I have had some great conversations and I'm working really hard to try to get it finalized here before the end of the month. The other thing I want to add in here is great companies, the bungies, the cargills, the Viteras.
[00:35:26] They have a portfolio of, I believe they're over the counter contracts is what they're called, OTCs. I believe for you guys out there, I thought it would be important to review those because I realized that not everybody is comfortable or wants to or can open a futures account. Right.
[00:35:47] But there are different strategies that you can use with some of these companies.
[00:35:54] And I thought it'd be really cool to have someone come and speak in regards to these contracts and maybe put us through a simulation, a scenario and like, you know, use these.
[00:36:07] I'm wondering if maybe myself, or maybe myself and a few of my advisor friends, maybe we're the ones who can pull that off and present those to you and play a game. I think we could have a lot of fun with it and learn at the same time. But I'm curious if you could, you know, you know, my email now, but if you could let me know on that topic, I thought it would be pretty important for a lot of you. And I know in our farm we have a futures account. I was chatting with a guy the other day, he has one too. But we both have some strategies operating at some of these companies. So you can do both, right? Yeah. So I'm curious about that too. Last thing on the conference, I think you can head over to Ryan Denis Caddenhe slash conference. The website is rolling. It's going. You can join the, like the waitlist, like you'll get the update when the agenda is released. Like that email will go to those folks first. You can go to the website, put your name in and get registered for that. And then you'll also be the first to know when the window is open to apply to attend the conference. Now that might not fall great for some of you or that might rub you the wrong way, but just let me explain, all right, before you get hasty, you know, let me explain.
[00:37:33] What I mean by apply is that it's, there's two things that are super important.
[00:37:42] Table stakes. Is that then is it table stakes?
[00:37:46] I think it's table stakes that have to happen. Number one, everybody presenting has to add value to your farm operation through educating and showing us how to be better crop marketers and business, farm business decision makers or something, if that makes sense. Right? So when someone is presenting is so important to me that it's not a sales pitch, like the utmost importance. I had a great chat with a fellow today and we were actually talking about some of the conferences going on and how in many cases those presenters are up there for free or have paid to be up there. Again, the cell. Right. Why would you do it for free? Anyways, the second thing is that it's farmers in the room, okay? I have been to conferences. I am guilty of buying tickets to conferences, you know, and standing in there as an industry person and taking up space.
[00:38:53] Honestly, we don't have the space to give up.
[00:38:57] Who knows what we get for numbers. I told my Yvonne, who helps me on all things marketing business related up every area. Yvonne does great work and in all categories. And when we started this, I said, Yvonne, I will put this conference on for ten people.
[00:39:13] Like I, if I can help ten people make some better, stronger decisions, help them with their crop marketing plan, I will. Let's do this for ten people. It looks like it's going to be a few more than ten people. The way, you know, the feedback's coming in. We again, we don't have the agenda out yet. I think that's important for you, but by applying you actually have to go and fill something out. We're not going to ask you for anything super personal. We're not going to ask you for a bunch of details. We're basically going to say, hey, where are you from? What's your farm about?
[00:39:49] What do you want to come here to learn? What's your pain point in crop marketing or in farm business decisions? And who's coming from your farm?
[00:39:58] Is it mom and dad are coming? You know, mom and dad and an uncle? Or is there a daughter in college that's coming to take over the farm and they're coming to this as well? Like it's important for me that we get the farms in the room, we get the farmers in the room and then we get your people in the room. And so like I would love to see some youth at the conference. I would love to see. I, like I went to university.
[00:40:27] I was a very poor university student, by the way. I didn't get opportunities to do any of this stuff. And maybe that's because it was the wheat board back then or whatever, who knows? But I didn't get to go and learn about anything crop marketing related. So if you're sitting there like hey, I want to bring my, my, my grade twelve kid or my, you know, the youth on the farm, like I'd love to see that as well. Like we're talking about setting aside some seats for like the grade twelve class in, in Drumheller. Like we haven't figured that out yet, but we're thinking about that. We're thinking about, you know, maybe reaching out to some of the colleges to see if there's anything there that lands because we want the youth to be involved as well. We want them to be a part of this and, you know, learning opportunity. So that's why it's an application. So don't get too ruffled. We want to make sure that we know who's in the room, why they're coming, and it's all good. Okay. I hope you're okay with that. All right, that's it for housekeeping. Wow, that was a bit much for housekeeping. All right, folks, we have the pioneer seeds mailbag, and we know what we're giving away this month. We have the update we are giving away.
[00:41:42] So again, qualify, you got to email questions to the show, but we're gonna pick a winner. We are going to do a in the field supper or harvest party, depending on how it lands. Okay. Because we are going to choose this at the end of September. We know that there's going to be a pretty good chunk of growers done, you know, by the end of September. So we're calling it, like, could be a. Could be in the field event, but it could also be a bit of a harvest party or, hey, maybe you finish your nh three application and we have a party after that. But there we're gonna partner. Pioneer seeds is gonna partner with a local caterer. They're gonna get all the fixings for that party for you. And we threw a value on it at about $750. So, you know, just. Just so you have an idea here, it's gonna be a decent party. It's not just gonna be some pizza hut or something like that. We're gonna get a local caterer, bring all the fixings. And I'm hoping to stop in as well. I'm really hoping to be able to figure out how to stop in with our winner. And I will say that this one is for western canadian farmers. I know we got listeners in a few different areas, and thank you for tuning in, but this prize will stick it to into the western Canada region because my passport actually had to get it renewed, and it's gone. So I couldn't actually go to the US if I wanted to right now. So a couple questions this week, and I kind of talked about this a little bit already, but I did get one from Zoltan just in regards to these canola basis specials. Okay. And also, you know, the direction of futures now, for Zoltan's area in his scenario, you know, when you start to see this, these canola specials, from your crush plants, to me, it's a signal here of better things to come now, you know, demands maybe can slow down. Things can happen. You know, we are. We do have the whole china thing hanging above us right now. So, you know, we have to be aware of some stuff out of our control that can hurt us. But, you know, the crushers are pretty consistent. They, you know, knock on wood that we don't have any rail issue or anything like that, but they're pretty consistent. And to me it's just a sign of things to come. If futures don't do the heavy lifting, then basis can do some of it. Not the same, but it can. And even if futures rally, I still think that. I think the industry has their work cut out for them. You know, sitting on your hands all summer waiting for the bumper crop to show up.
[00:44:28] That obviously didn't work.
[00:44:32] The elevators have been a little quieter. They're pulling contracts in early. We're seeing all these specials, right? Like it's, it didn't, it certainly didn't, it didn't help anybody. It didn't help the growers and it didn't help the buyers. Now the buyers are going to have to work for it because prices are not exciting, they're depressed. Margins are, are terrible and brutal across the prairies. We need every, every penny we can get out of this stuff and it's going to be a battle all winter long. So, zoltan, just buckle up, man, and get ready to battle it out with your crushers and get some better bases there.
[00:45:10] All right? Multiple farms asking about fertilizer. And the big question was, I want to apply it next month. What do I do? Do I buy it? Well, if you're going to apply it, I, you know, correct me if I'm wrong on this, guys, but I don't think anyone's going to let us apply it and not pay for it. So is the price of fertilizer going to go down over the next month? My answer to that is no.
[00:45:38] But I've also been telling growers, it's been quiet.
[00:45:42] You know, if you want to get active right now and get a deal going and done, you might save yourself a little bit of money here by being first to just get something done when nobody else is. Now, I will tell you the range in urea prices in my area, I'll say my area for now, 635 on the low side, 685 on the high side for the same product, the same month, same terms. So as per usual, folks, there is always going to be some variance out there. But, you know, the 635 again, we're paying a little bit more than last year and in a lot of cases it's not that exciting. But if you're going to apply it here right away.
[00:46:28] Nh three, whatever it is, fines, lots of conversations around fines, other things like that. You know, getting floated on. Yeah. You can buy it and be ahead of the little run in demand here. Okay. I know that's almost counter to what I've said in some parts of the episode here today, but, you know, if you're waiting till spring.
[00:46:48] Yeah. Like, I sit here and say, geez, there's a big story brewing here, and I will it come to fruition and lower prices? Like, there's a big story here, but yet, if you need to apply it in the next month, well, let's get after it, right? And here's the last one. Have we made a market bottom that came from multiple farms as well? Oh, man. My answer is going to be loaded here. So on wheat.
[00:47:13] On spring wheat, there can, and there likely will be a worse bottom here down the road.
[00:47:23] Okay. But I see some strength. You know, end of August, we're at 565. We're now at 613.
[00:47:31] I know the market's pulling back a little bit here as well, but it wouldn't surprise me to see this pop up another 2030. What can happen?
[00:47:43] We have some different stories that are supporting this market right now, which I'll get to in. In this episode in just a second. But you can get this false strength into winter and have some stories that rally this market, and then you get into, you know, December, late December, January, February, and the market's just kind of crater again, and it's tough going. So is the harvest low in? Yeah, yeah, it seems like it on spring wheat, but that doesn't mean that it can't go lower later this winter. Okay, I hope that makes sense on the canola front. If. If China. If we weren't in a political.
[00:48:24] I was gonna say jousting match. I don't know what to call it. But, you know, I I would say that with all the data coming in that the harvest low is in. I hold canola puts. I still do. Okay. Because I think that headlines from China will be negative and can push this market lower. But also, if. If we hear nothing about China and we do see that demand continue, export demand continue, then, yeah, we're. We're. We're going higher here, folks. It air. All the science point to it, but one little one out. October 1 is a big day for me. October 1 is huge. Does China come after us on that day? I know the investigation could take twelve months, you know, so on and so forth, but it wouldn't surprise me if they say, whoop. If we did this one faster. We're ready to rock and roll. Here's the 300% tariff or whatever it is. So. So that's my word of caution there. But if it was just on production.
[00:49:25] Yeah, I think there's upside.
[00:49:27] Even with all the big us yields coming in. Keep the questions coming, folks. Ryan at what? The Futures podcast dot Ca, the mailbag sponsored by pioneer seeds. And we are going to draw for this thing.
[00:49:40] Oh, let's try to draw for it on the 27th. Okay, let's. I know 30th is the last day of the month, but let's do it on the 27th because I want to come and line up this party. I want to get going on this. So if you can email me questions for next week's episode, there's a whole bunch already that'll be entered and we will get your harvest potential harvest party going for our winner here. Alrighty, sounds good. All right, let's get to eating your veggies.
[00:50:14] Of course, brought to you by the lunchbox crew. Head over to Ryandini CA to check out how we can work together. And I collaborate.
[00:50:22] If you want your meat and potatoes, head over to Ryandini ca. In the meantime, let's get to your veggies here. Number one, sell and market some feed barley. Catch that export demand. Us corn is making its way up shortly, very, very soon. And export demand is not a guarantee of a significant export demand. So, you know, if you're a feed barley seller, I know there's some specials out there across the prairies. Take advantage of them while you can and get a bit more feed barley moved out. Especially if you're telling me, like, I don't want to sell it now, but I'm going to move a bunch in December.
[00:51:04] Try to do it now, in my opinion. Number two, check in on your contracts and what you can deliver early.
[00:51:10] You know, maybe you're going to help that grain elevator out. Bye. Hauling in some November stuff a bit early, doesn't hurt to ask, especially if you have a truck ready to go to deliver. And the last thing is setting some of those targets for next year. 2025 wheat, 2025 canola soybeans. Throw corn in there as well.
[00:51:33] Here's the thing that you, that I want you to just know you don't have to. Even if you're a farm that contracts in a thousand ton increments, you know, nothing's under 1000 tons or 5000 tons, whatever it is, you can still go set a target and all that does is trigger a phone call, an email, or a text message. You could do 20 tons, 40 tons, whatever. All you're doing is getting a signal that, hey, my target hit. What's going on? Do I need to do more?
[00:52:10] Am I content with watching this and setting a target higher?
[00:52:15] It just. It helps you with the call to action. You don't have to throw the farm out there, you know, if you're whatever. Like if you do, you don't have to do all the volume. You can just do a little bit, trigger that target.
[00:52:26] Trust me, that far out on a futures only target the difference between 40 ton and a large number, you're actually, your odds of it triggering on a lower volume are higher, especially in these thin markets like spring wheat and canola. Okay, so that's my three things here for eating your veggies. Eating your veggies this week. In closing, if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend, neighbor colleague in your local ag community. Spread the words folks. I appreciate it. Of course, prices may change and even strategies may change by the time you listen to the podcast. Most recording is done on Wednesdays, so just know things change.
[00:53:08] If you'd like to be a guest on the show, email myself. I've said it too many times on the episode already or head over to the website. Have a good weekend, folks. I hope you enjoyed the solo episode this week. Take care. Have a good harvest weekend.
[00:53:24] I'm out.
