Episode 51

November 08, 2024

01:14:35

It's a CONFERENCE SELL OUT! Special Guest: Roxane Lieverse of Rabobank

Hosted by

Ryan Denis
It's a CONFERENCE SELL OUT! Special Guest: Roxane Lieverse of Rabobank
What the Futures!
It's a CONFERENCE SELL OUT! Special Guest: Roxane Lieverse of Rabobank

Nov 08 2024 | 01:14:35

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Show Notes

Episode #51 was recorded in the UPL STUDIO! Big thanks to show sponsor John Deere.  

 In episode 51 of the What the Futures Podcast, host Ryan Denis dives into key topics crucial for Western Canadian agriculture producers. Ryan kicks off season two by discussing the implications of Trump's election victory on crop markets, including potential trade impacts and tariff concerns. Special guest Roxane Leiverse from Rabobank Canada explores trends in agricultural banking and provides insights on farm expansion, rent popularity, and global market complexities. Weather expert Bret Walts joins to discuss recent weather patterns, winter outlooks, and their implications on farming activities. Featuring a sold-out upcoming conference offering tangible crop marketing strategies, this episode is a riveting guide for making informed farming decisions amid market volatility.

00:00 Welcome to Episode 51

01:46 Special Guest: Roxane Leiverse from Rabobank Canada

03:25 In-Depth Discussion on Agricultural Banking

09:48 Global Food and Agriculture Insights

18:08 Challenges and Trends in Canadian Agriculture

32:19 Upcoming Crop Marketing Conference

37:53 Housekeeping and Sponsor Acknowledgements

40:33 Excitement for the Crop Marketing Meet

 42:47 Conference Ticket Giveaway Instructions

45:07 Housekeeping and New Ideas

50:34 Weather and Harvest Updates

56:59 Positive Moments of the Week

01:09:17 Labor Challenges and Solutions

01:13:12 Closing Thoughts

View Full Transcript

Episode Transcript

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey folks, welcome to the what the Futures Podcast where we break down complex market trends into simple, actionable advice. It's your quick guide to better farming decisions. Hey there folks. Welcome to the what the Futures podcast. Episode number 51. I know it's season two, but we're just gonna keep it rolling with episode 51, of course. Always recorded in the UPL studio, the what the Futures Podcast is where we talk about crop marketing for Western Canadian agriculture producers. We're talking about Western Canadian grain farmers, folks. This is where you come for crop marketing information, of course. I'm your host, Ryan Denis. I grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan. I've spent my career working with farmers on the crop marketing side of the business. Worked with farms in Alberta and Saskatchewan and I can add BC in Manitoba now to that list because with the Lunchbox crew we have expanded into those provinces as well. Anyways, welcome to the show here. If you could do me a favor, if you can go over to the YouTube channel and hit that subscribe button, I would appreciate it. Or go wherever you get your podcasts. If it's Apple or Spotify, give us a subscribe there, give us some ratings. I haven't looked at ratings for a long time. Actually I should check those out. Maybe we have new reviews. You never know. And if you don't want to do that, well then head over to Ryan Denis ca subscribe to the weekly email blasts. Most of the time I talk about crop marketing. I've been talking a lot of conference stuff, but it will get back to crop marketing here over the next days. I've got an exciting episode coming up here. I've got Roxanne Leverse with Rabobank Canada. She's going to help me kick off season two. Of course, you guys all know she's coming to the Crop Marketing Made Cool conference as well. But Roxanne is the head of agricultural banking in Canada and we have an in depth conversation and discussion about some pretty interesting trends to keep an eye on farm expansion. We talk about talk about rent maybe increasing in popularity versus buy across the prairies. And great conversation with Roxanne. I'm super excited that she's going to kick off the conference for us on Tuesday night. The down in Drumheller here on on December 3. Also in this episode I've got Brett Waltz with Bam wx. We're going to talk weather. We're going to talk a little bit of Canadian winter weather as well. So tune into that. What else do we have? Trump won the presidency this week. The Canola market surges higher. Are these related? Stay tuned for that. And I don't want to derail this episode. It's the first one of season two. I don't want to go into the weeds, you know, I don't want to go into the ditch here on this topic. But if you can just join me at the end of the episode. Instead, let's do this at the end. There's a new business venture coming out. It's going to launch in western Canada the week of agri trade and it stinks. And we need to talk about it. I need to talk about it. But we're going to do it at the end of the episode. All right, let's get going. Let's get after it. Episode 51. And now a word from show sponsor John Deere. If you think about it, you've got a lot of connections. Connections to family, the community, your land. Well, here's a connection you may not think about. How's the connection to your machines? You know, your tractor, your sprayer, your combine with a JD Link modem, you can easily connect them to John Deere operations center. There you can gain valuable insights into your machines, know where they are and what they're doing at any time, monitor speed and fuel levels, even compare machine performance. If you're not already, get connected by heading over to JohnDeer CA. So Roxanne, I want to take a step back here and just give the listeners a sense of you, where you come from, what your role is at Robbo bank and what gets you excited each and every day. [00:04:25] Speaker B: Well, thanks. Thanks for the opportunity to have me on Ryan. I'm actually really excited about today. It's not often that I get to share some information about the bank to a broad based audience who appreciate the opportunity. So a little bit about myself. I'm born and bred Albertan from northern Alberta. Pretty proud of that. I grew up on a cow calf operation in northern Alberta, particularly in that peace region. Pretty wild up there. I came up through the 4H system, learned agriculture from, you know, homesteading, breaking the land, putting cattle through. And now today we've got a nice size operation that that still is owned by the family. Unfortunately many family farms there was five daughters and only one can can feasibly feed their family in particularly over the last decade in cow calf. It's been tough, right? [00:05:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah it is. [00:05:18] Speaker B: And so the decision was made for myself to go a different direction and so I decided on finance. I started as a bank brat, as I call it. I've Done virtually almost every role in a traditional Canadian banking system. And then two years ago I had the absolute pleasure and opportunity of a lifetime to basically come in and set up the agricultural banking franchise for Ravel Bank. So Ravel bank is the world's largest food and egg bank. We are a Dutch cooperative which makes us quite unique in the Canadian banking environment because we don't have shareholders, we have stakeholders. [00:06:00] Speaker A: Okay. [00:06:01] Speaker B: Our customers come first, our employees second, and then our societal obligations. So it's a hard thing to sometimes understand because our motivations don't always align to the traditional quarterly dividends that a Canadian bank needs to generate right outside of the Netherlands where our head office is. And we've been banking producers for 125 years. We only do food and egg. So that is the value chain of food and egg. So everything that is growing all the way to food Delivery, operating in 40 countries, we only do primary producer lending and Rancher lending in 10 of those markets, including Canada. So pretty unique and special thing to do to not only build a franchise in a very well banked market like Canada, but to have a really unique position as far as just focusing on food and egg and trying to bring producers further along the value chain line from a global perspective. And I think that's really where Rabo gets quite interesting and is a real differentiator for the Canadian market is our deep global understanding of food and food production. [00:07:14] Speaker A: We're going to get into that in more detail here shortly for sure. So just going back here just a little bit, but was ag finance, ag banking, were you always on that path for in agriculture or did you start somewhere else and then the agriculture side kind of, yeah. [00:07:34] Speaker B: So literally have done almost everything in a bank, whether that's being teller, pushing customer payments through all the way to where I am today. It was only about nine years ago that I had taken a role dedicated to ag. Part of that is I had taken a mat leave and I was looking for something that was going to be able to support kind of my home requirements. I've got a set of eight year old twins, but at the time they were six months and I wanted to get back to work. So I needed to have something that was going to permit me to, to do a really great job, but have that balance. And really I found that interestingly enough in agricultural banking. So although I had grown up on a farm, my entire career up to that point had been broad based, diversified international markets, that type of work. And when the opportunity came to come back to banking in agriculture, I Thought, well, you know, I could do this for a couple years. This will get me through to a point where my kids are old enough. Turns out I was. This was the thing that was missing in my career. It is the only place in finance where your customers are incredibly authentic. They're producing something that actually matters. And not to say that other industries don't have this, but you know, there's something about going out and kicking dirt and then, you know, going back in the fall and seeing, you know, a full fledged crop being harvested, then going to the grocery store and being able to identify that item that I'm buying comes from this operator. I think that's pretty special. I think if you think about it or other types of services, it's hard to understand that value proposition. But agriculture, it's indisputable. It's the one thing we've never been able to, you know, substitute. We think about energy. You can substitute it for different types, but food is constant. It's the time that we've, you know, as a civilization have gotten here. So I just think it's really a special place. And I just, I love the customers, I love the journeys and it's something that I identify with. Right. It's brought me a long ways personally back to my roots which is, you know, pulling calves and feeding in -40 and my family still pulls me north to help out in those periods. And I wouldn't have any other way. It's the, it's for me the most rewarding part of finance. [00:09:58] Speaker A: Well, I appreciate that context as well because it is a field to fork industry that we're in and sometimes you lose, can lose sight of that with everything going on. So that's cool. I want to tell you a little bit about how I learned of Rabobank back in the day. All right, so this goes back around eight to 10 years ago and I received, I was working with a group called Agri Trend at the time and I received some rabobank research. Someone in the organization sent me a report, a PDF with all these insights. And so I get this report and I read everything in this report and I'm like, I need to subscribe to this. Like I subscribe to all sorts of things. I need to subscribe. So I start like searching online and I finally get a hold of someone at Rabobank and I'm like, hey, I would like to. I read this, it's fantastic. Like what's your subscription fee and how can I sign up? And they're like, yeah, actually that's for our clients. So, you know, it's, it's a client report or something like that. And we don't sell that. We. I'm like, okay, then I'd like to become a client. And I didn't fit the parameters back in those days, so it didn't work. But that's how I learned of Rabobank was this great piece of insights and global perspective. Can you tell me what's going on with that today? Why is that there? [00:11:34] Speaker B: That's actually the foundation of how we speak to customers. We always say we lead with knowledge, we follow it up with a global network, and then we talk about finance. And we actually very much follow that process, even in our Canadian entrance. So for us, it's really like agriculture is complex. People tell you this all the time and then you're going to have people on the other side say, actually agriculture is not that difficult. Like, you never meet people in the middle. I'm of the opinion that agriculture is complex. The, the risks are complex. And when you think about financing a producer, the best thing that you can do as a lender to manage risk is to understand the complexities of the farm. [00:12:16] Speaker A: Good. 100%. Yeah. [00:12:19] Speaker B: Now, later on that we're a global bank. So weather conditions in Argentina are quite different than weather conditions here in Canada. And then you have countercyclicality, Right. They grow at a different time of year than we do. So all of this to say that in 2024, we are global, fully integrated food system. There is no, I shouldn't say there isn't. There are countries that are completely closed off from a food security perspective. Think about North Korea as an example. [00:12:50] Speaker A: Sure, yeah. [00:12:51] Speaker B: But when we think about the 40 countries we operate in, they're all completely interconnected. I mean, it's globalism at its basic level. Right. We grow one thing here, it gets produced somewhere else and it gets fed into third place. So the reality is, if you want to be a lender in agriculture, you can't just have, you know, a broad stroke understanding of agriculture. You have to intimately understand it. And that's where our research team comes in. So we have the world's largest group of food and egg researchers. There's well over a hundred of them that just every day get up in the morning and try and understand not just, you know, things that are quite now basic, like weather patterns, but what are the next technologies? When we think about a billion extra people in the next decade, how do we feed them? Where are they going to be located? What are the, you know, sustainability concerns, whether it's, you know, water depletion, aquifers, you know, less rainfall, all of that, like, it's just really gotten substantially more complex than the family farm with 100 acres growing food for subsistence. Right now, today, producers. I would say a great example of this at the farm gate is there was a time when I started banking where producers were just selling, you know, whether it's off the combine or this year's crop before they planted next year's crop. Now today, I've got producers that are not talking about next year. They're talking three or four cycles out in their generation and are trying to find ways to hedge or lock in pricing, et cetera. So the complexity has only gotten bigger. I'm not totally sure that without understanding that we have a financial system that's going to be able to support that level of complexity. I think on paper we understand it. But I can certainly tell you that if you only look at the Canadian context, you're missing probably 70% of what is actually driving the producer revenue, farm gate revenues, which is stuff outside of Canada. So that's really where and why we do the research, we offer it to customers, but we always lead with knowledge, really firmly understanding what happens, not just at your individual firm because you're going to make your own business decisions, but understanding that where Argentina is in their growing cycle, what's happening in India, right? Understanding what are the proposals, what are some of the things that the average consumer certainly doesn't know about. Certainly the Canadian banking system isn't necessarily thinking about either. So we're able to do that. The other thing that we often overlook as well is that local knowledge, right. Having somebody sitting at the Chinese ports to understand what's actually happening there can be really powerful. When we're talking about some of the trade disputes that we're having, or looking at what's happening in Mexico with the animal protein complex or the maize complex, right? Like having those local knowledge you don't get when you're just looking at it from a Canadian looking out the window. So we also have strategically placed our researchers in the markets where food is not only grown, but also consumed, to try better inform the full farm to fork. And that's why we do that. [00:16:16] Speaker A: Okay, so, and actually for the listeners here, just a bit of a sidebar, but if you go to your favorite podcast platform and type in Robo bank, you're going to get a list of different podcasts that they put out. Some are monthly, some are a little bit more often, but there's some fantastic content out there. And Roxanne, the one other thing I'll add to that is it's big picture. Like I find that it's big picture forward thinking content, forward thinking research, I should say. You know, of course there's some nearby stuff that's covered, but it's, it's larger trends and perspectives, which I think as a producer is very important and powerful to be able to capture that. Yeah. [00:17:06] Speaker B: And I mean, just add one thing, Ryan. I mean, these are also real people. At Rabobank. We don't have a research team that are like, you know, in this black box that you don't really know who to talk to. I mean, our global strategist for grains and oilseed has been in Saskatchewan several times. Our head of proteins, beef proteins has been in Alberta several times. Saskatchewan as well. Like we've got berry people coming into B.C. and Quebec. Like, it's not. We can get to that local level. It's just driven by more of a customer need or a customer request. And I love that they publish their phone numbers and email addresses at the back of every one of these so you can pick up the phone. They're real people, they do answer. And I think that also speaks a little bit about kind of our identity, which is much more like we want to work and partner with producers. They need to feel that they actually know people. And so that's also part of that whole knowledge piece is you can get fairly local if that's something you're interested in. [00:18:07] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. Okay, good point. Not to pick on anybody out there, but the one thing that comes across when I chat with farmers and we're chatting about banking and finance is that the folks that they sometimes are working with don't have an understanding of the farming operation or the seasonal tendencies or some of the trends. And again, not to go and pick on anybody in the industry there, but this is a hurdle that many farmers face across the prairies. And I think not. I think, but I know that with what you guys are doing here on the research side, that is one area that is not a hiccup over at Rabobank. [00:18:51] Speaker B: And sadly, I think I would also lean into that and say it's probably going to get worse. Remember that a lot of egg lenders come to lending because they're similar to me. Right. There was only certain number of roles on the farm, so somebody had to go outside. And what did you want to do? You wanted to stay as close to the farm as you could. So input, dealers, finance all of the like things around the farm gate are filled today by people that generally are off the farm or at least one generation away. Be honest, these farms are really big, really sophisticated. They want their. Often people want to go back to farm and there's a place for them. So I think that population of like natural talent pool is getting thinner and thinner and I think we all have the same challenge. It's not just in finances. Everybody that's surrounding the farm gate, how do we continue to support that with people that actually understand that and they don't necessarily have to come from the farm, but how do we get them up to speed so that they don't, so the producer doesn't have to do all that heavy lifting. I think there was a period of time where it was like assume that a producer would be okay with explaining to you how their operation works. I think producers, they want you to have a baseline knowledge. They want you to understand what makes them different and unique. And so I think we all have a challenge. Everybody that's trying to support agriculture, it's going to be a tough decade or two because there's just lots of retirements and some of these, these wise people are leaving and reasonably so what are we bringing in to support the farm gate? I don't think anyone's got it figured out, but I certainly feel like knowledge helps. [00:20:32] Speaker A: I would agree with you. I actually had a conversation with some farmers the other day and it was a grain buying role across the prairies. But what they are seeing there is folks entering the space and not having that background. And so they were asking me if I thought that trend would continue. And my answer was if there's a person there, absolutely it continues. But if technology or AI or someone changes that role, then that's the change. But if it's people, then yeah, it's similar to what you just said. I worked for a company that was, that was pretty famous on getting folks from all over to join. And one time I was traveling with a new sales rep and this person sold inputs. And we're driving down the highway and he looks out the window and he looks at me and he says, what's that? I look out and I'm like, what? What? And he's like, that yellow stuff, that field. I'm like, that's canola. You sell that, you actually sell that. Seeds and anyways, but yeah, we, we got them up to speed, but it took a little while, so. All right, okay, so let's talk a little bit more here about maybe Canadian agriculture. Canadian farms and how that trend aligns with maybe your goals at Rabobank. What are you seeing in the industry here that gets you excited and what are you guys focused on here at Rabobank moving forward in the short term? [00:22:05] Speaker B: Yeah, so we're very focused on primary production financing. So Farmgate really stick into our lanes knowing who we think would be a good customer and partner of ours. We just really, these are not transactions, these are people, these are relationships that we're building. And so there has to be alignment for us that often looks like a more progressive producer, somebody who thinks about not just what they're doing, but what they ought and could do better, who are not afraid to actually look at their financing partner as a partner. So really and honestly, people that value the global, the global insights. Now as I say that the Canadian farms are far more sophisticated than ever. However, they're also highly leveraged, more leveraged than we've ever seen historically. There's just. It is one of the fastest growing debt markets globally, yet we are still only the fifth largest export nation globally when it comes to food production. Okay, so we produce the best in the world, but we love to send it somewhere else. And so there seems to be a bit of a value delta that is slanting towards Canadians needing to do more more. But somehow we haven't been able to make that jump globally when we think about our peers. So I mean, certainly excited to see some of the transitions. Earlier this year we had 40 Australian producers, some of the largest producers in Australia visiting Canada. This falls into kind of our networks where we bring producers together and they traveled Alberta and Saskatchewan. It was grains and oilseed focused. And one of their comments, because we had done a few tours at different academic institutions, they were like, wow, the Canadian landscape and support around educating people on agriculture is just like far superior. So I think that was really interesting to hear because I actually see at the farm gate more young people wanting to get back to farm. Let's be honest, agriculture and food production was pretty sexy as a result of, of COVID And I just hope we can keep that enthusiasm bringing people back to working at the farm Gate. Technology continues to be a big investment. And then I think we talk about the sustainability kind of goals that our consumers are asking for. What does that mean at the farm gate? I think that the trend there is probably still fairly early. It's probably the new sea, honestly. But I think that there's just, there's a lot more complexity. So I'd say farm gate wise, great to see New People coming to the farm of all ages, stages of life, but certainly overweighted in that younger space. We see firms getting larger, more sophisticated, higher debt loads and complexity through the roof. [00:24:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, if I go back to one of the comments there. So you said farms are more leveraged than, I don't know if you said ever before or what your exact words there. [00:25:09] Speaker B: But historically, yeah, absolutely. [00:25:13] Speaker A: So my question was that was specific to Canadian farms or North America. Yeah. [00:25:17] Speaker B: But even when we think about our global peers, we're just frankly in some senses maybe over levered. When we look at the Canadian farm debt relative to receipts, we are leading the world as far as indebtedness. [00:25:31] Speaker A: Okay. [00:25:32] Speaker B: Interestingly enough, we also have the lowest cost debt market globally. So for a producer who's borrowing in Canada, you are materially cheaper than if you're going to borrow almost anywhere else in the globe. Australia and New Zealand are pretty close behind us, but the US you're probably 25 to 50 basis points more expensive. And certainly if you're in dairy or poultry in the U.S. it's, it's materially more expensive, probably a full point or point and a half more expensive. So I just say that the Canadian producers have been incented to take leverage which may not actually be resulting in improved financial results. At the farm gate. We think about your per acre cost of debt. It's, it's all time highs. And so that's something that we find we talk a lot to the producers we work with about. I'm not sure if all of our peers in the Canadian banking system are on that same journey, especially because they've come at it from a different perspective. For us, what's really important is that we don't let lever get out of control such that the farm gate doesn't have a real productive improvement because these become conditions where we've seen globally pullbacks and land values, a micro recession within an industry. And I think we've got some conditions that would suggest that there are reasons to pause and think about why we're doing things. [00:27:01] Speaker A: I, I smirked a little bit there when you said pause because you know, some land has traded well. Any land deal that I followed here this fall has gone at, you know, records, record setting prices. So the, the pause is not quite there yet. But you know, on, on our farm, you know, my dad and my brother, you know, in our conversations when we look at expansion, you know, I bug my dad at times because he's probably the more aggressive one out of the group, out of the three of us. And I'll start doing some numbers. I'm like, all right, dad. You know, I know that you, you have your hobbies out there, but I hope that if we do this, you'll be smiling every mile that we, that we're on this quarter or on this land, because we are paying to be there. We're not making anything at these levels. So we're, it's, it's a hobby. So if you want a cheaper hobby, there's golf or maybe fishing. But yeah, it can be a hobby when you're not making money there. So hopefully he's really enjoying it, and. [00:28:04] Speaker B: I hope he does as well. I. But as I say that, I mean, I've never met a producer that didn't tell me that their next quarter was cheaper than their last. Right. And so I think up to this point, what has been really, really okay is that the productive values and the improvements, whether it's coming from efficiencies, equipment, you know, lower input costs, have been able to keep up. What was really interesting, we haven't seen the 24 data yet, but 23 was the first year. And I use Saskatchewan as a bit of a bellwether because we have a lot of really good data there. The government's really transparent, and that's always appreciated when you're trying to understand trends. But it was the first year that we've ever seen since the 1980s where the productive value fell below farmland appreciation. Keep in mind as well that that's one of the few markets in Canada where you just can't be an institutional investor and buy land wholesale. So it's really an indication that farm gate receipts are going down, and yet the land value continues to go up. So I look at this as an interesting observation. And when you look, for instance, to the US when you see markets where that inversion happens, we start to see the incremental number of acres owned versus rented, the rented increases. Right. Because you just can't conceivably see that. So I think we will see kind of a generational turn if we don't see these kind of level off, which there's no reason to believe that productive values in 24, after another hard production year and perhaps not making, you know, having. Where you don't have insurance to make sense, to kind of make you whole because yields weren't down quite enough, that we would see a period where land prices come down. I don't know if we have the mechanics for that yet. Although fundamentally it would make sense. No farmer wants to be selling for less than the transaction that just happened. Right. I actually think the next generation of farmers probably looking at and saying I'm going to be renting more. And so a strategy around rentals and managing your landlords will be really interesting and important for that next gen who's trying to either get into farming or increase the their total number of acres. So yeah, I'm not optimistic that everyone sees the problem as we do from an economics perspective, but I do worry about the frothiness in the market and I really do hope that producers and frankly other FIs are taking pause to go what is actually happening? And is this the market that we want to continue to pump money into when at the end of the day a hurting agricultural economy because we've loaded on too much debt is not the recipe for long term success. [00:31:03] Speaker A: In conversations with growers here this fall there's been a lot more discussion about expansion through rentals as well. So yeah, I think you're bang on there. That's great. Really great perspective, Roxanne. That's fantastic. I want to wrap up here with a little bit of conversation around the conference in Drumheller that's happening in just under a month. But my first question to you is what is. And I've been asking this of everyone. What is your walk up song when we are calling you to the stage? You are a keynote speaker. Night number one. What's the tune that we're going to play to get the crowd pumped up? [00:31:44] Speaker B: I am going to. Now you're going to. I'm going to admit something that I fairly embarrassed about. I actually am not able to retain song names or artists. So I am like the one person that you might not want to ask. I'll come back to you, I'll ask my staff what it'll be. But I can honestly just tell you I'm excited to have been asked to participate. I think what you guys are trying to do here is a really cool thing. I know that in agriculture we've over marketed producers and a lot of these conferences they feel like just a social event for the industry of agriculture, not necessarily talking to producers. So I love the premise. I'm really excited to kind of meet a bunch of producers and more importantly, I think for me what I was very impressed about is the effort to give them something tangible at the end of it. So it's not just a conference for the sake of like attending a conference, but you're actually going there to learn and take something away that you can actually action at your farm gate. I think that's pretty special. And I also think that producers can see the value of that. So I'm back to you on the, on the, on the Walk up song. But honestly, I'm really excited either way. [00:32:57] Speaker A: If you don't get one for me, then you're at my mercy. And so I've got. What did I write down as well? Yeah, it's. I will get you something good for sure. But so I appreciate those comments. And, you know, in the background, we've been working very hard. We're creating this booklet for people to take notes in and write down actions and take with them because the goal is to create a plan that they can execute for many years to come up with their farm's crop marketing plan that can be duplicated over time. And we've been working really hard in the background. All right, so your presentation, you're going to kick us off here Wednesday. Pardon me, Tuesday night, first night of the conference. Just give us the calls, notes, we want people to still attend. So just very lightly, what are we going to talk about? [00:33:48] Speaker B: Okay, done. So I'm going to speak a little bit about the complexity of decision making at the farm game and potentially the risks of not making decisions enough way. So just trying to work, you know, doing my job for a lot of years. This. The whole complexity around decision making isn't getting easier. And it's honestly one of those things that people either love or they hate. There's nowhere in the middle that you meet. It's like, no, I'm reasonably okay with making decisions. They say, like, I push it until literally the last minute or they're the gun out of their pocket ready to go make a decision with 30% information. So it's really about just trying to understand the where you are in that decision making matrix and how do you just get a little bit better at it? I don't. I think all of us are on a journey on this. But just some observations and things, anecdotal, things that, you know, I've uncovered over the years that hopefully help producers just get a bit more comfortable being uncomfortable with decision making. [00:34:55] Speaker A: That's a great way to kick off the conference. I'm. I'm super excited to see, to see you in person and to go through that experience because you can have all the information you still need to figure out how to make that decision. And it's going to be a great way to kick off the conference. Roxanne, thank you so much for your time today. Any other words of wisdom for our farm listeners out there? Across the prairies. [00:35:19] Speaker B: No, I would just say, you know, a, I appreciate the time. B, if you haven't bought your tickets for the upcoming conference, please do so. I really think this is a unique opportunity that Ryan's opening up for producers. And then kind of lastly, I mean, as you're starting to think about planning into 2025 crop year, you know, I would just say to producers, you got some hard decisions to make this year, particularly when it comes to increasing costs at the farm gate and potentially not, you know, strong commodity futures at this point. So if you have complexity around this, the best thing you can do is just ask for help. Help comes in a lot of different forms and it's not just from a bank's perspective, but, you know, advisors around you. But sitting on the, sitting on the sidelines and just moaning and moaning about it is probably not going to make things great for you. So I would say earlier you get out and make some decisions and build an advisory team to support you. That's going to be really key, I think, going into 2025. [00:36:26] Speaker A: Excellent. Great words there, Roxanne. Thanks again. Have a great rest of the week and we'll see you in Drumheller. [00:36:32] Speaker B: Likewise. Take care. [00:36:37] Speaker A: All right, folks, housekeeping for this week. Before I get to the conference stuff, I just, again, we're. We're kicking off the next season here. I just want to take a quick moment. Just UPL and John Deere, they both put their hands up to keep going, to keep, you know, supporting the podcast here with the futures moving forward. Can't thank them enough for, for that. You know, I get to upgrade equipment, I get to buy a new camera, I get to put up more lights, work on the set as well here over the next few weeks. So thank you for helping me keep the lights on and keep the show going and also allowing me to just continue to create the ag community and transparency that I set out to do when it comes to crop marketing in Western Canada. So thank you for continuing. We also have some fun stuff coming up with ag careers and we have one more sponsor. I can't announce anything quite yet, but we're getting close to a partnership here and we'll have our roster for the next season. So again, thanks for all the support there. All right, the conference, I can't believe it. So the conference starts out with the idea or just a tweet on X that would farmers be interested in getting together for this type of conference? And when we first set out, I thought even if we booked the boardroom in A town, and there was 15 or 20 people there or whatever. That would be great and super exciting and, you know, you guys have blown the roof off this thing. We. We pulled applications on Tuesday. Tuesday night we stopped accepting applications, and now we're here on Friday and we've sold out over 150 seats. Incredible. Absolutely incredible. I want to thank you and I want to thank everyone here that is investing their time, money, energy to head over to Drumheller and participate in this. It's incredible for me to see this. Your tickets, you know, if you've bought tickets, we had a little snag with printing, but they're in the mail now. If you're listening to the podcast, your tickets are with Canada Post, making their way across the prairies. You'll see them in your inbox at any moment and you can let me know when you get them. All right. You can send me an email or whatever. I'll be excited when you. When you get them. But farmers from Beast, from B.C. all the way across to Manitoba are coming to Drumheller for the Crop Marketing Meet Cool conference. Again. I can't believe it. I can't believe that we're going to have over 150 people together to spend, you know, two and a little bit of time, two and a half days together, tackling all things crop marketing that you could take with you moving forward to execute your plan in 20, 25 and beyond. Super cool. All right, now, if you didn't get a ticket yet, we do have partners that still have their tickets to some tickets to give away, like they're doing their own thing. But just, you know, stay tuned for that if you're a customer of theirs. Yeah. Watch your inbox for some of that. And you know what? I should just keep rolling with this. So the what the futures podcast. I did put my hand up for the last. The last two tickets, officially. Okay. And the reason I did this is I know that for folks out across the prairies, it's. It's not easy. We like. I've been doing a lot of meetings with farms here the last couple weeks on the consulting side of what I do. And, you know, when you have a year where you've spent a lot of money and you produced a crop that is just good enough that you don't get anything from your insurance, but yet isn't high enough to cover off all your expenses, so that 10, 20, 25%, 30%, in some cases, it's an. It's a loss that you have to figure out how to Cover yourself on the farm. And that's what a lot of prairie farms are going through this winter. That, that is reality. So what I'm trying to say here, so what the future is. I grabbed the last two tickets. I know that not everybody, you know, can necessarily afford to shell out a bunch of money here to head over to Drumheller, but it's going to return itself multiple times over throughout the next year and beyond. But I got these two tickets to give away. And if you're a farm where you've sat there and said, I really want to go to this thing, but I can't quite swing it, head over to the website. I was going to do email. You can email me ryanthefuturespodcast.ca send me an email, of course. But go over to the website ryandini Ca. You're going to see a tab there that says something around this conference ticket giveaway. And so click on that, put in your details, answer the questions on there. And I'm going to pick a winner. I'm going to announce it. I'm going to have to announce it live on probably X. Or maybe I can figure out how to record this. Apparently I can record the podcast live. So if I can record it and put it across the social media networks, I'll do that. But I'm going to announce the winner on Friday. Let's get a date here Friday, November 15th, because we have a zoom, a pre conference zoom call for all attendees on the Monday the 18th. So 15th, let's do this. Go to the website. Ryan, Denis, Ca tell me why you need to be at the conference and I'm going to pick a winner from that. You're going to get the last two tickets to the Crop Marketing Made Cool conference and I'll pick a winner live. I'll email you as well to confirm your victory, your win. But yeah, let's give away these last two tickets and go from there. All right, let's see here. So I've talked about partners, I've talked about the conference being sold out and I've got my giveaway on the go. Oh yeah, the 15th will announce. Let's say, let's say you have to get your application in by the evening of the 14th anytime. That night is fine because on the 15th I'll pick my winner in the morning and I'll try to put something out on social media during that early afternoon. Okay, I'll get my. Yeah, early afternoon. That should work good on that Friday. All right, last thing for housekeeping. This is separate now. From the conference. But I was thinking. I had a conversation with a industry professional here the other day, and we were talking about, you know, trying to find a way to rate buyers in Western Canada. So I'm talking about. Let's just say the what the Futures Grain Elevator is. Just say it's in Dormy, Saskatchewan, and you go to this website and you say, hey, the what? The Futures Podcast Elevator. You know, phenomenal coffee. I'm going to give them four out of five stars because they. The dockage was a little high on the canola, and I had to argue about it, but the coffee was good, the lineups were great, the bathroom was clean. And, you know, I had a great conversation with the buyer there. You know, like, imagine or. I don't know, what do you think of this idea? Like, what do you think if you could go to a webpage and if someone listens to this and wants to create it before me, or if it's already out there, Happy to have a conversation about promoting that on the podcast. But is there a spot for this, or is this an idea that we should look at? Because I don't want to turn it into a firestorm, you know, when it doesn't have to be. Like, for example, if someone 10 years ago crossed you at the elevator and you. That story continues to, you know, haunt your dreams. Well, I don't really want it brought up now, especially if all those people are gone and that situation's changed. So I want it to be relevant. Like, we can review. I can go to any establishment in the city and review them all and provide my comments about service and how things are going. And I think that this could be very positive. I think we could spin it where we. We offer an award at some point every year where we, you know, we have an award ceremony with the best, you know, the best location across the prairies, the best experience. The. Maybe we have different categories. Maybe there's. And then we can also be transparent about what's gone poorly and what's not gone well and who is slow to pay. Because my phone rang again this week with two stories that, number one, are very frustrating and stressful for prairie farmers. But again, I got a call about a company putting farms on payment terms. Not the farm not knowing the grain going, and then getting a call saying, hey, we're not going to pay you in one shot. We're going to spread it out. That's not good. That's not a good sign. And then, of course, what I'll talk about at the end of the episode. This new venture as well. I don't know if it's out there. Let me know. If this is something that I should sink my time, energy and resources into. Let me know. And maybe the what the Futures website could get a little makeover here in the new year and we could start checking this out. I'd love your feedback. I'd love some comment. Hit me up on any social media platform, email me, whatever works. I'm very curious about this idea once again. Brett, it's been a minute. How you doing? [00:46:50] Speaker C: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on. And yeah, just gearing up for late fall and into winter. [00:46:57] Speaker A: Yeah, you bet. It's been a while since we've connected and I think one of those reasons is because of, you know, the great warm, dry weather you had in the US Here in the month of October. But before we get into that, this is the first episode of season two, Brett, so I'm just going to keep rolling with the episode numbers. But this all kicked off a year ago, so it's nice timing to have you back on screen. [00:47:21] Speaker C: That's crazy. Yeah, that's crazy to think about. [00:47:24] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a year full of learning and I know when I, you know, reflect on this year, next year it'll be the same, but lots of learning and lots of great guests and conversations and yeah, look forward to continuing on here. So let's talk about the weather that you experienced here during harvest over the last month or so. Like, all I kept seeing was harvest progress, just cruising what was going on in your neck of the woods. [00:47:56] Speaker C: I mean, to be completely honest, it was kind of crazy how inactive it was for the vast majority of October. One of the, I think I said I was actually off for a couple of weeks off on paternity leave. And I came back and I didn't miss. I didn't miss anything because it was so quiet, weather wise. And so, you know, came back and was like, did anything crazy happen? And nothing crazy had happened. I looked at the observed rainfall. It was completely dry. I don't think it rained at my house for about 28 days in a row. And just all things considered, pretty favorable conditions for people to get out into the fields. Obviously, maybe some concern growing that it could get too dry, but I think some of that will be solved ahead. [00:48:41] Speaker A: Obviously the work doesn't end when, you know, the crop is harvested and, you know, the next phase begins, which is fall work and field work. Are farmers seeing a little bit of moisture and relief to go in and do some of that fall work. Now, I know fertilizer application has major implications if it's too dry. So what are you seeing in the next little while here? [00:49:03] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, up in your neck of the woods, it's not, I would, I would call it seasonable, probably more hit or miss rain chances, a messy storm, systems that we'll be dealing with ahead. But I wouldn't say it's bone dry. I wouldn't say it's soaked either. I would just say it's, you know, kind of your normal fall like weather. Further south though, in the US where it was so dry throughout October, it's basically the opposite pattern the next few weeks. It's already gotten very active over the last seven to ten days or so. And I think that especially the central part of the country in the Midwest, US Going to be very wet as we work over the next two weeks. And I don't see a big lull in that pattern for much of November. [00:49:46] Speaker A: Okay, so a little bit of welcome moisture then for farmers in the U.S. nice. [00:49:53] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. [00:49:54] Speaker A: All right. Well, we just got a little bit of snow here yesterday. Just a little bit. But it was enough to build our first snowman. So we're doing pretty good. Yeah. [00:50:03] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:50:04] Speaker A: Okay, so when you look at the dry pattern here from this last fall, this harvest, is there concern that that could continue into next spring? I know some folks, you know, referencing past years have said that, you know, when you have a really dry fall like this, sometimes it can lead to the same type of pattern the following spring. What are you guys seeing in your research? [00:50:29] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, I definitely think it's a concern. I would be less concerned about Canada and the Canadian prairies because typically in La Nina winters, which we're going to be borderline La Nina this winter, it tends to be a little bit more active throughout the winter. Should help you all build a little bit more of a snowpack. Where I'd be a little bit more concerned would be kind of the Central Plains in the United States. If you think back to the last couple of years, not last year specifically, but back in the early 2000s, there were a couple of years there when we were in El Nino where they didn't get a lot of snow over the winter, so you didn't build a snowpack in and that carried over into the spring, and then it was dry spring into summer. And I am a little bit concerned that some of that could set up again. And we're already, as you mentioned, we're already behind. So I think the next couple of weeks are critical to cash in on some moisture while we have the opportunities. I'm not convinced it necessarily sticks around throughout the entirety of the winter. [00:51:29] Speaker A: And just to focus in on one area specifically here for a second, the winter wheat belt in the U.S. what have they seen here for moisture over the last little while? [00:51:38] Speaker C: Yeah, it's gotten a lot, again, similar. It's gotten a lot more active. And I think that over again, the next couple of weeks should continue to see more moisture. Now, again, I think that there's a time limit on that potentially as we get into the core of winter and that storm track could shift a little bit further north into the east. [00:51:59] Speaker A: Okay, cool. All right. So do you guys have anything on the go here, schedule wise over the next couple of weeks? Any long range forecasts on the horizon? [00:52:09] Speaker C: Yeah. So next week, so a week from today actually is our annual winter weather webinar. We'll be chatting about what we can expect for the winter ahead. You know, snow totals. Is it going to be a cold, snowy winter, another warm winter? It feels like we've had a lot of those lately. And we'll also be talking about South American ag weather as well. Kind of getting into the growing season down there. We'll chat about that and folks can sign up for free@bam wx.com webinar that'll be 11am Eastern Time next week, but if you can't make it live, we'll send out the recording, of course. [00:52:42] Speaker A: All right, and so that date, am I looking at the 13th? [00:52:45] Speaker C: Yep, it will be the 13th. [00:52:48] Speaker A: Okay, perfect. Awesome, Brett. Well, I look forward to jumping on that webinar as well and getting some insights here on the winter forecast. You know, we had a beautiful winter last year. I'm okay with a little bit of cold temperatures for this year. And if it comes with some snow, that would be great as well. So, yeah, thanks for joining me here once again. Anything else you want to add? [00:53:12] Speaker C: Well, I was just going to say, you know, for, for you up there, I do think the winter is a little bit different this year. I think you've got more snow. And I also think while it may not be bitterly cold throughout the entire winter, you have more shots of cold up there. I can't say the same about the east coast in the US but we'll talk about more of that next week. [00:53:32] Speaker A: All right, sounds great, man. Thanks again. [00:53:34] Speaker C: Yep. Thank you. [00:53:39] Speaker A: All righty. Positive moments of the week. My favorite segment. Oh, man, you guys are going to roll your eyes on this first one, but I washed my truck on Monday. Okay. I washed my truck for the first time in about a month. And I made two stops after I washed the truck. Two. All right. And at both spots, I'm walking up to Canadian Tire, which is. Apparently, it's Christmas there tomorrow, and a guy stops me and says, hey, yeah, that's a good looking truck. How do you like your truck? I'm like, yeah, thank you. Just washed it, you know, And I thought that was cool. I go over to preschool pickup, and one of the parents is there, says, hey, did you get a new truck? Just washed it. Real confidence builder. You guys know what I'm talking about. When you watch your truck, you're out and about getting some compliments on it. Yeah. Positive moment for the week. Second one. You guys have to help me with this, okay? I'm. My world is being flipped upside down. So Halloween happens. The kids are an emotional wreck the entire day. It's wonderful. We get through it. We survive. Halloween is great. That's what Thursday, right, was Halloween. Friday, we're at home and my wife's, like, rummaging in the. In the pantry, grabbing all the candy, and I'm like, oh, yeah. I'm like, yeah, let's get into the kids candy. Sure. Like, great. I've been waiting for this. It's Friday night. Let's see what they got. My wife looks at me, she's like, no, no, we're not. We're not getting into the candy. I'm like, well, what. What are you doing? She's like, well, we're doing the switch. The switch Witch. Pardon? The switch. Which Ryan, we're doing. We're trading all this candy, and the kids are getting a toy instead. What? What are you talking about here? What are we. The switch. Which apparently this is a thing, folks, where now. And I saw this from a few dentist businesses in town where you bring in your candy, they donated to a good cause, to those in need, and it's replaced with some type of toy. It's Christmas in early November. Apparently, by switching out your candy. I just asked. I said, okay, you know, fine. Apparently, I'm a little behind on what we're doing, but I'm taking the candy. All right? I'm taking the candy. So I got the candy. So that's the positive moment for me for this week. And then, of course, last thing, the conference being sold out is just. Again, I talked about it already. It's mind blowing for me. It's such a huge positive in putting this together and not Only not only in the sense of putting this together this year, but people already reaching out to say, how can we get involved for the next one and when is the next one and are you doing another one later this winter? Like, that has been so cool to see and to experience those people reaching out. And my last thing here on this one is we have high school students that are going to come and join us at the conference. I don't think they'll be able to hang out the entire day the way that if everyone's busy at school in early December. But been chatting with a few principals and they've agreed that it would be cool for their, some of their students, grade 11, grade 12 students, to come and hang out at the conference for a part of the day on Wednesday. So we're going to gear them up with some what the futures stuff, and we're going to get them some hamburgers and some lunch and we're going to show these kids some crop marketing stuff. I never like, the one class I talked to, the graduating class has eight people in it that I, I totally understand that. I had a graduating class of like 12. Okay. And we like. I got to go do work experience at the co op, which all I did was stock shelves at the co op. I wanted farming experience. I got to stock shelves at the co op for work experience. Anyways, this doesn't. These opportunities don't exist. I guess I don't see them exist. So I'm just super pumped that we have some high school students come to hang out with us as well at the conference. All right, that's positive moments for this week. All right, folks, let's talk about what's cool in crop marketing for this week. And I think, I think that what is cool here. Well, what's the cool thing as of recording, is that the market, the election happens the next day. The markets are in the red by the end of trade. Canola has gained $15 a ton. Corn's traded positive. Wheat has come back. Everything's found common sense or common ground. So that, to me, that's a positive. Now, as of recording this, we're all waiting for the shoe to fall, the hammer to drop on this November 7th Chinese tariff thing that, you know, everyone's talking about. So by the time you listen to this, you know, maybe the positivity is going to be a little different. But Canola roars throughout the session, climbs, you know, $15 a ton, and it's got nothing to do with the presidency. With Trump winning the election and everything to do with the strength that we've seen in palm oil, that we've seen in rapeseed, that we've seen in bean oil. And you know, I'm paraphrasing, I don't have the article in front of me, but apparently demand into India for palm oil surged here and that came out on Wednesday. And canola caught some traction with that. Now, I look at these charts, we sold some canola, you know, last week, maybe it was a week prior. Now, anyways, not long ago, looking at the charts at where to make some sales here next, realizing that we need to make some new short term highs here very quickly. And I know the China thing is hanging over there and, and it's out there. And the easy thing to say is, you know, be careful because it's going to happen, right? Is that announcement is going to come out at some point, but when? I don't know, is it going to be by the time you listen to this? I guess we're going to find out. All right, so not related to Trump. Now, when you look at Trump and what his goals are and how this potential setup is for Canadian agriculture, it's not great. It's not great for farmers in the sense of tariffs on products we move from Canada into the U.S. like canola oil, for example, you know, that could be a big one. You know, tariff on that would, it wouldn't be devastating, but it would not be good or positive. You know, the potential trade wars, the renegotiation of NAFTA that's going to happen with Trump leading the charge over there, the tariffs on everything all the time that Trump's talking about, and what does that do for soybean prices and corn prices in relation to China? Well, the positivity seem to be far and few when it comes to, you know, the impact on Canadian farming here and prices. But I also, I wouldn't go out and do anything rash or do anything panicky. You know, at the end of the day, each and every one of you that farm that are listening to this, you have an opportunity to create your individual business plan, your marketing plan. And as things evolve around you, each and every year different, the fundamentals change. Geopolitical stuff happens. It's all part of, part of our part or influencing how you execute your plan. And so I, you know, I, someone asked me the other day about, you know, should we do something here before the election? And I said, well, as a farm like you, you're taking a big swing here. And the swing is, is either going to you're going to crush it out of the park and hit a home run or you're, you're going to strike out here. There's really no in between, in my opinion. So we sit idle and we allow the election to happen and we go from there. And again, Canola market has what, a 20, some dollar a ton trading range today? So pretty wild coming out of the election. And we have some tense months ahead of us and we have a lot of volatility that's going to happen here over the next couple of months. I don't think it's going to be easy by any means. I think crop marketing is going to be a challenge. But for me, I just default to some of the fundamentals here that are supporting at least the oilseed side of our market, the Canola market. And we'll adapt as things happen. When profitability is staring you in the face for next year, in my opinion, you got to take some of that right? And we'll see. But I don't think there's any reason to panic quite yet. Again, as of recording, things could change. Things could change quickly. The other thing on what's positive for our cooling crop marketing, you know, wheat specials coming back. I talked about a bit of a lag there where it got quiet for a couple of weeks and now it's coming back. We're seeing demand in Saskatchewan, we're seeing some demand in Manitoba. We're seeing some specials in Alberta for weed wheat. So that wheat market, they are looking to fill trains again here for November, December. The specials are out. The basis levels are getting better and if futures just helped us out a little bit, we'd have some, some dandy wheat pricing. So I, I like targets out there, folks. I still like having wheat targets. We set some wheat targets here today on the farm and you know, they aren't at, they aren't just slightly above current levels, they're higher than where prices are. But we have some goals in mind here and we've got something for the merchants to aim at for now. What else do we have here for what's cool in crop marketing? I know there's a lot of stuff, but Brett Waltz talks about rain, moisture events for the winter wheat belt in the U.S. that's important. And I also think improved conditions in South America here are also top of mind for me. All right, folks, that's it for what's cool in crop marketing for this week. All right folks, for eating your veggies this week, I've got a couple different ones here. That we haven't talked about in maybe ever or a while. But number one, for eating your veggies, of course it's because veggies are good for you. So it's the right thing to do. Okay, number one, labor. Labor is a huge challenge for many farms across the prairies. Now, right now is the time to start looking for your help for next year. If it's full time help, then it's ongoing all the time. But you can get those job postings out. Now we've got a little bit of work we're doing here with ag careers as well. And I want to point you guys towards ag careers because I know that in the industry when I was in college and when I was younger looking for work, I spent a lot of time on that website looking for the latest and greatest jobs in agriculture. But as a farm, you don't necessarily see a lot of farm postings out there. I see a lot of stuff on social media and I see a lot of stuff on things like marketplace or kijiji. But it to me, if you're looking to attract some top talent here, you can be creative on some of your job postings. You know, I see a lot of like farm labor, I see a lot of operator. I think, I think many of you are offering them more than that on some of these roles. And so I encourage you to get creative with some of the ways that you post and look for labor out there. But ag careers, check out their website. We actually have a little code here as well. If you type in futures for 150 bucks, you can post your job ad for your farm and that's a bit of a deal for you as well. So I know labor's a challenge. I think it's a great time of year to start thinking about this if you haven't already. Second one. Okay, so you have an event here that has gone past this week. A major event that has implications to your farm business. It is time that Trump the u. S. Election is done. Trump has won. Refresh your crop marketing plan. This is a big warning light. Sounds loud. Whatever I got to do to tell you, this is a time where something has happened politically now, but something has happened that you should be reevaluating your plan. Your plan fluid. We know something now that we didn't know a week ago, a month ago, six months ago, we now know for certainty. Something you should be refreshing your crop marketing plan on your farm. Maybe that sounds insane, but honestly, we learned something this week that has an impact. Go and Refresh. And the last thing, a little bit of. It's November. I don't know for us, rent. A rent payment usually goes out to landlords, you know, after harvest, you know, November 1, let's say. But go give your landlords a little bit of love here. Go have a coffee, go have a visit with them, check in with them. They are obviously your partners here in production, in agriculture. And so go give them a little bit of love. And as farms look to expand acres over the next decade, I know land will trade and it will trade, you know, had values that we look back and say, oh, wow, okay, I guess that was a good deal. But anyways, for many farms, your farm will expand through rent. That's how you're going to gain acres here in the next 10 years. So go give your landlord some love. You never know, it might pay dividends for you in the future. So that's eating your veggies for this week. All right, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna close out the episode here, but before I do, this is what I was talking about at the beginning of episode 51. And I need you guys to. I don't, you know, I'm not seeking your permission to talk about this, but I am very curious about your thoughts around this. So it's well documented that there is a company out there that owes farmers money and is not paying farmers. And apparently their social medias all deleted. Website is under construction and they're poof, they're gone up in a puff of smoke. Okay, you might know who I'm talking about. The week of Agritrade, there's a new company that will launch from what I'm hearing, with those same individuals. Okay, yeah, same individuals. Not everybody, but some. Here's the weird thing, okay? For this business to, to function, they need farmers and they need buyers. Okay? The buyers are also migrating over to the new business. So even though those buyers paid this company, this company didn't pay the farmers. They're. They're okay. Apparently a good chunk of these buyers are okay. Next week starting this all up again. And don't worry, this new business, it's going to be a traditional brokerage, right? The buyer is going to pay the farmer directly, but apparently this is going to happen. And I tell you, as a farmer, are you cool with that? Is that okay with you? Because when I look at a buyer in this situation, and I was frustrated with the buyers involved, some buyers paid this company directly in September and a few weeks later, poof, it's all gone. Right. Those buyers are. They're going to partner with this and continue. And that to me is devastating to hear that that would happen in Western Canadian agriculture. And as a farmer, am I out to lunch here? Am I missing something? Because this does not pass the smell test. None of it does, obviously, for me. But what am I missing here? Because as a buyer going out and doing this, this is appalling to me. This is the worst of the worst to continue to enable this type of stuff to happen. Even though the new company is going to be totally legit, the buyer still knows what's what has happened over the last year and a half and continue like nothing. And you know what the buyers, you know what, what they said it, they're focused on trades, volume. If this new organization can link them with farmers and they can buy grain through that, that's all they care about. This is ridiculous that this is going to happen and it's ridiculous that we're okay with it or that we're going to let stuff like this happen. It's insane to me. So if I'm out to lunch, hit me up, Ryan, with the futurespodcast ca I might start a separate podcast just to talk about this stuff because I don't know where to stick it now, every week in this what the Futures podcast. It's not the right spot. I don't know what is, but I'm going to do a little bit of digging and I'm going to go find some buyers and see, see if I can get them to join me on the show to talk about why they're cool with this, why they're cool having moved over and see what they have to tell you guys. And maybe I'll do it as separate episodes, maybe I'll do it as a side project of some sort, but I'm floored that this is going to shake down in Western Canada in the small industry of agriculture, and that it's going to be okay. All right, that's it for episode 51. If you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend, neighbor, colleague in your local ag community. I appreciate you spreading the word. Prices may change by the time we send this out. Strategies can change as well, so just be aware of that. Have a good weekend, folks. From Ryan at the what the Futures podcast, I'm out.

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