[00:00:00] Speaker A: Well, howdy there, folks. It's. It's been a minute, hasn't it? Here we are, 2026. I thought we'd get a little unhinged. For the first episode. I've got four guests, Clarenback, Penner, Como Yaremchuk, all joining me here for episode 105 of the what the Futures podcast. It's about 2026 crop marketing. Let's get into it right now.
Hey, folks, welcome to the what the Futures podcast, your quick guide to better future farming decisions.
Well, folks, it's great to be back in the UPL studio here to kick off 2026. I missed you. I hope you missed me as well. But I certainly missed you over the last couple of weeks. I had a great, great Christmas. Great holiday season. No complaints. We had. When you have little kids and it's Christmas time, it's always very special.
And Finley, you know, just turning three here this week, this was his first, his first grasp that, you know, the big guy was coming. The big guy was coming. He talked all December about what he wanted. And Christmas Day, that little guy barreled down the stairs. He was just freaking out, screaming at the bottom of the stairs. It just again, it's awesome. Little kids at Christmas time. It's awesome. I've even got a little Christmas theme going on here in today's episode as well.
There you go. You can see there's the big man there. Anyways, we'll talk about that in, in just a second, but I hope you had a great holiday season. It's great to be back. A couple of little, you know, you guys don't notice this stuff. Well, some tweaks in this, in the studio back there. I've got my Brett Young canola seed hanging out. Yeah, 50 pounds, just boom, right on top of the fridge. No problem. I did go to workout class this week as well. So I'm kicking off 2026 with a bang here health wise. But some tweaks in the studio, some adjustments, more coming, but having some fun. It feels good to, to come and walk into a nice clean studio, fresh for the year. It certainly does. Now, I didn't put much out over the holidays. Last episode would have been like around December 19th or something like that. And I had full intentions of trying to pull something off, but honestly, I got in the holiday GR and I just, I just stayed there. All right. I just stayed there. I hope you had a great holiday season as well. I thought why not get a little crazy here to kick off the year. I know I'll Get a little bit of hate mail and that's okay.
Ryan, your episodes are too long. I get those. I also get, ryan, your episodes are too short. So maybe we'll meet in the middle here for the first one of 26 and see what you think. But I thought, why not get a little crazy? Why not get a little unhinged, have a couple extra guests join the show? I thought, why not get people that are taking a look at 2026 and give us their opinion on what they see, what they see today, what they're watching out for and provide a little context on how we can navigate crop marketing here over the next.
The next year. So, you know, Chuck Penner put the invite on. He said, chuck, can you come talk specialty crops, acreage numbers, things like that? He said, absolutely, Ryan, I'll see you on Wednesday. Trent, Clara back. I'm like, dude, can we talk some technicals? What do you see? Are we getting more optimistic yet?
Spoiler alert? We are not. But can you come? Yeah, absolutely, Ryan, I'll see you on Wednesday. And then Como making his debut, Brian Como joining us. And just, I said, brian, you've been in this for a long time. Let's just talk about 2026. And. And he said, yeah, Ryan, we'll see you on Wednesday. So, so here we are. And of course, monthly guest Tyler, your m check. We're going to talk NFL football here and a little NHL hockey towards the tail end of the show. Now, my message for 2026 is I don't do like New Year's resolutions, like, oh, I gotta lose 15 pounds or I gotta read three books or, you know, I'm not gonna have a beer till June. Like, I don't do that stuff. But what I. I do a lot of thinking. We've spent the last four years now, we've spent New Year's, I think three years in Jasper. I think the first time we did this was in Edmonton, but the last three years in Jasper, Jasper is a, for me is a. It's a special place. Jasper, Alberta, it's a beautiful place. But when I moved to Alberta, we.
When I, you know, got my first, like, big job selling John Deere, working at the John Deere dealership, selling some acreage equipment. Like my first real, like, job job. You know, we went to the mountains to, to celebrate when Chantal and I got married in Jasper in, in 2010. When we lost our daughter in 2019, one of the first places we went in those months was Jasper. And so for me, Jasper, I go now with My kids and we go to bargaining. I know you should say, I should say skiing. We're not there yet, but we go to bargaining. We go skating. My kids, first time on the ice, both with the mountains around him. It's a beautiful place. Anyways, we really, really enjoy it. So I go there and I think and I do some pondering and I try to figure out my. My plan, you know, for the next year, moving forward. And 2024 was very chaotic for me. You know, the podcast gets going in in 20, late 23, just trying to get things better and improving and working on it and getting more comfortable. I get the Lunchbox crew growing and going In June of 24. 24 was chaotic. So I said for 25, I'm just gonna. Not gonna do much. I'm just gonna stay pretty steady, take in a bunch of information and. But not make any big decisions, take on any projects, not do anything really creative either. But for 2026, I have defined my North Star. And you've seen this in the email, if you subscribe to the email.
Also, before I get too far in the episode, I think we're like 40 subscribers away from a thousand on YouTube. So if you're checking this out, if you're still hanging out here with me in, like, minute. What are we minute seven already? If you're still here, if you can go hit that subscribe button. YouTube keeps prompting me that if I hit a thousand, something great's going to happen. So I've just imagined that they're going to, like, release a balloon or something in the sky or maybe send me, like, a candle or, I don't know, something like that. So I don't know what's going to happen. But if you could hit the subscribe button, I'm a little curious on what, what that is. I really hope it's a balloon that they float out into the sky.
But anyways, for 2026, I'm focusing on leveling up. I'm going to level up this year. And what I mean by that is my projects that I have ongoing, I'm going to put my time and energy in improving those projects, improving each project on its own and then within certain levels. So I've identified my, you know, I'm not going to share today. We don't have enough time. We got four guests today, for crying out loud. But just, you know, spending time and energy improving each project, I found my weak points, the areas that I want to focus on. So now I'm focusing on those projects. All right, so that's my, my north star here for 2026. Now I, I, I get it. I'm, I'm quite specific, I'm quite direct in what I want to achieve. And, and I hope that you spend some time going over, you know, what that could be for you, what your North Star could be for 2026, what your plan could be for 2026. I didn't do a best or worse, I didn't do anything. Predictions wise, they may be okay for entertainment purposes, but if I, if I sat here on today's episode, said, everybody, listen, for the last three years, I have nailed or gotten very close to what market action is, has done or happened. I've figured this out. I'm going to tell you all the secret and if you follow this, you're going to kick butt and you're going to win in 26. Like, nobody's going to sit here and say, this, this, this guy, you know, this guy on this podcast who I, I'm not going to take that. And even if it's completely right information, even if it's completely correct, and in fact, I don't even know until it's all said and done, right, nobody does.
So it's not going to help if I tell you, hey, prices are going to fall another 10% this year. By the time we start the year and finish the year, it's going to be down another 10%. What would you do with that? Right, Ryan? What am I supposed to do with that?
Well, when am I supposed to sell this? You know, so I went away from that. I have done some predictions in the past, I have done some of that stuff, but it's not overly helpful.
So instead I was like, you know what? Let's get some of the best and brightest minds in crop marketing in Western Canadian agriculture. Let's get together and let's figure this out for 2026. So that's what today's episode is, is about. All right, now, what you're going to get from me this year, I'm, I'm leveling up my podcast preparation. We are leveling up the podcast in general, working on a few different things, getting some new guests in, some new maybe features coming shortly here that you may or may not be interested in. We'll see.
But that's what you're going to get from the podcast. You're going to get just a little more, all right? Hopefully a little better and a little bit of a, let's call it a fantastic experience from the what the Futures podcast. All right. So let's go with that for now. We got a lot to chew through on this show. I want to say, though, if you're listening to today's episode, everybody that I talk to that I bring onto the show here, everybody's rooting for you, okay? Everybody is here to try to give you an edge or benefit. Like, honestly, that when we talk here, even off camera, when we're not recording, like, if the stuff sounds negative, nobody's here to increase the tension, increase the pressure.
Nobody's here to give false interpretations out there either. Like, at the end of the day, we want you to win.
We want you to take a look at what's coming up, you know, coming ahead this year in 2026, 2027.
And we want to see you execute to the very best of your ability.
And so it might be about planning, it might be about strategy, it might be about execution, but that's what this is here for. It may seem or sound or feel negative at times on where we think markets are going and how they're reacting, but we hope that with that information, that these markets don't go down forever.
They go up and down all year. And when they go up, we want you to be able to execute and take advantage of that. And when they go down, we want you to feel confident that you can wait for the next up opportunity, that you're not a seller in the bottom of that market or when the pressure is highest.
Like, I'm here for the first week of December. Pardon me, of January. I'm wearing my don't stop believing T shirt, right? Yeah, I got Santa Claus on it again with little kids. If you can't believe in Santa as an adult now, you're completely lost the plot because I never been a bigger believer than I am at the age of 40 now with. With little kids. But don't stop believing, all right? Don't stop believing in what you can accomplish for your farm, for your crop marketing here in 2026.
Okay, guys. All right.
Thanks for hanging in here with today's episode. Let's kick this off. Let's bring in Chuck Pinner with left field commodities.
All right, Chuck, Wel. Welcome back to the show here. First episode for 2026. How. How is the end of 2025 for you? How are things shaping up here for this year?
Well, it's.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: It's good. It's, you know, kind of. Ryan, when you get to my age, you know, you don't look forward to these things quite as much as you used to. Yeah, you're reflective, but, you know, anyway. But I'm not going to get all, you know, sappy on you.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: Well, I'll get sappy with you. I got little kids. Christmas time is just bonkers this year. It was awesome. And yeah, fun time of year. I even have the Christmas cheer continuing on here as we record in the first part of January. So I'll talk about that later. But anyways. Well, Chuck, welcome back to the show. I know you have a busy start to the year here for 2026. You got a little workshop coming up here shortly, a couple of them.
Let's start with that. I just want to know a bit more about what you're doing presenting at these events. I want to know if there's space and. Let's talk about that.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. We're, we're doing a couple of workshops. One in Saskatoon this Friday, January 16, which is crop production show runs Tuesday to Thursday. And then this is for the Friday if anybody wants to hang around for another day.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: And then we're doing the same one in Brandon the next week, which is Ag Days, Tuesday to Thursday. And then it's the Friday of that, of that week. And so we're calling these planning without prediction workshops. And, and I really do want to emphasize workshop in terms of not just me standing up there all day and, you know, you know, you know, whatever, doing whatever good, learning from each other and all of that kind of thing and that kind of. But the idea is, is that there's a whole lot of structure or patterns or things like that that are, that are in grain markets that we kind of recognize. I mean, you all know about harvest lows and, you know, and all of that kind of stuff like, that's no news to any. But in terms of going back and looking at how those have panned out over the years, how consistently they happen, what's the magnitude of changes from here to here? And then is that something that you want to build into your marketing plan in terms of thinking about timing of sales and all of those kind of things. And I don't expect somebody to just like go whole hog and say, okay, I'm going to sell all of my wheat in May, but you may want to think about heavying up then. Right.
Or, you know, like those types of things or.
And so we're going to, we've got like tons of data that we've gone through, crunched and all of that kind of stuff.
And seeing how that would have performed if you had taken the extreme example and then compare that to some other scenarios, looking at some new crop pricing, when are the better times and the worst times to do some new crop pricing?
And again, based on how these patterns have worked over the years.
So like, in my mind, like, you know, you know, you know, I don't, I don't want to just, you know, look back, but, but there is something to those. They're based on real market behaviors. And so then you look at, okay, 25, 26, the year we're in, or going looking ahead to 26, 27, is there anything in there that's so different than the past bunch of years that would make markets behave completely differently?
[00:15:29] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:30] Speaker B: And there are those kind of things. Like when you look at, for example, for pulses, if you go back a whole bunch of years and you look at price seasonality or things like that, there are exceptions. And one of them was in 2017 when all of a sudden in December, India dropped, put tariffs on peas and on lentils and the markets just barfed.
So that was an exception. But is this year, you know, and you never know with any, you know, 100% certainty, but is this year that much different?
And so I even started comparing price responses like, you know, from, from the harvest, you know, when, when you normally have the harvest low, usually early September, and in our prices in the end of October, end of November, end of December and so on. So how many years do prices rise from there and what's the magnitude of that and, and how many years out of the last 10, let's say that prices have gone up from middle of September to end of October, end of November, end of December, and then later on as well too.
But it's actually quite remarkable that even this year for some crops, and not all of them by any means, this year is an exception for some crops. But for wheat, for canola, even for yellow peas, prices did rise from those September, from that September timeframe.
It's not huge amounts, but you know, I think it's enough to pay the carry and more than pay the carry and, and those kind of things. And I mean there's other, other ways to, you know, to, to, to lock in carry and those kind of things with some crops, but for cash rated crops, not really.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: So anyway, so that's the kind of stuff that we're going to be working through and then trying to take that back into a marketing plan. And I know you guys did a ton of that at your conference about building a marketing plan. So this is just another angle or a take on that. And you know how to incorporate some of that stuff. And yeah, so that's what we're doing. And so we have a. We're almost full in Saskatoon. I don't want it to get too big. I want it to be a nice group discussiony kind of a size.
[00:17:34] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: We got more spots for Brandon still available and still a couple left in Saskatoon. So they can go to our website, left fieldcr.com and then right on the homepage there's more details about it.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: And are you, are you covering like some specialty crops in this examples as well? Are you just hitting what we have, the big ones?
[00:17:56] Speaker B: Yeah, like it's, it's all of the crops that we normally cover. So that includes like and it's broken down by green lentils and red lentils and so it's all of the crops we work through. We use wheat as the main example. But there's reference guides that provide all of this information for all of the crops. So that'll be one of the takeaways from the, from the session as well too. So that if you're, if you're you know looking at yellow mustard, when is a better time to forward price yellow mustard? Well you can flip open to that section and you can okay look to see, you know, so, so yeah, we certainly not time in one day to go through like 16 crops and you know a bunch of subtypes and all of that kind of stuff with each of these measures. But give them the tools that then they can take this and go okay yeah. And then you know, thing to plan out your sales when you want to make sales and things like that.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: So awesome. Awesome. And so are, are you, is it just, is it just you up there or do you have other people joining you? I'm afraid yeah, you're the guy.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: So the sessions run from 9 till 3:30 and that's probably about as long as somebody could stand listening to me.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: So. Yeah, I don't know Chuck, I think last time I saw you speak they wanted more. They wanted more.
[00:19:05] Speaker C: So.
[00:19:06] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, good stuff. Good stuff. All right. Well that's awesome. That's a great way to, to kick off the year and get, get your farms crop marketing plan dialed in here for 2026 and beyond. So good stuff. Look forward to, to talking to you after and seeing how all that went and your learnings from there as well. So good on you guys.
All right, so this I want to you know, set the table a little bit for 2026 here. How are you feeling Chuck, when you look at the 16, 17, 20 different commodities that you're. You're checking out here and researching.
How are you feeling for this year? Do you. Do you feel that we're heading in a better direction than the last couple years?
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Well, you know, you know, the answer I'm going to give you is it depends by crop. But, you know, there are bright spots like there. There really are.
And. And some of the crops, you know, when you look on paper, you look at the S D for certain crops or things like that, they don't, you know, they're. They're. There's lot. You know, we grew a huge crop this last year, but they're not looking extremely heavy. And I mean, spring wheat would be one of those.
Where we're going at a. We're exporting at a record pace again this year.
Just look pulled up those numbers, which is better than last year, which was a record. So we're even recorder this year.
And so, you know, like, crops like that, you know, the ending stocks aren't going to be massive, but the hope is that in some cases, in some ways, the low prices are going to discourage acreage.
You know, this is one of those years where sometimes there's a lot of competition for acres.
This year, some of these crops are trying to shed acres.
And so it's kind of a. It's a very different way of thinking now. You know, farmers will mostly stick to their rotations anyway, but. But there is that kind of a thing, and some crops desperately need fewer acres.
You know, canary seed would be one of. Would be one of those.
And so there are some crops where we have.
We have a. You know, we're going to have just a.
Was going to use a bad word, but we have a whole lot.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: It's a family show, Chuck. It's a family show.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: Yeah, we have. We have like, ending stocks that are like almost 100% or in some cases, even over 100%.
Green lentils would be one of those, you know, where we really, really, really need to lose some acres so that the market can get back into balance for something like canary seed. It's probably going to take two or three years before. Before we get back to any sense of tightness or whatever in that market.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: So. So some case. So some of those crops, some hope for some of them, you know, need a lot more patience or just kind of a lot of people to just give up on it and, you know, dump what they have or. And I know they're not going to D seed.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: No, they'll keep that One somewhere, somehow.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. But lose acres and things like that. You know, one of the crops that I've been perennially negative toward has been mustard, and I'm actually getting friendly toward mustard now.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:22:16] Speaker B: And because of last year, we, we dropped acres and we had a low quality crop.
[00:22:21] Speaker C: Right.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: So this year, you know, you know, one of the things that I'm noticing is that, like, new crop bids for, especially for special crops. There's almost nothing out there. It's crickets. And I know you sometimes wait for the crop production show.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: But we've had years where we've already had new crop p bids in October.
So just the lack of any kind of bids is just telling me that there's no urgency. Nobody trying to buy acres and so on.
[00:22:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Like I usually look at aggregate in November is like the starting point on a few different bids. But yeah, one email I got yesterday from a broker was like, everyone's asking. We got nothing, like nothing on. On much of anything right now. And it leaves a lot in flux. One, one other thing I'll add here as well, about acres for 20, 26. And I want to see your acreage guesses here or to have a conversation around that. But the. I talked to seed cleaners, a few of those guys, a few seed, you know, sellers, and I got a different answer from everybody on what was going on. And I'm like, perfect. That just means that there's no real scary one that everyone's sinking all their acres into. It's very. I got one was like, oh, I'm cleaning way more Durham this year. One guy's like, I'm cleaning way more oats.
One was way more spring weed. I'm like, all right. Like, there's nothing.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: And then one day I was selling way more yellow pea seed than he expected, like, anyways.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: Well. And nobody wants to stick their neck out because, you know, you got these possibilities that could just be. Could turn into really huge shifts in the marketplace. You know. You know, mentioned the word binary. Right. So, you know, like, with respect to canola tariffs, Chinese canola tariffs, it's either here or it's here. There's no in between.
[00:24:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: And so which is it going to be? At some point, China is going to drop those tariffs, but is it going to be this year? Is it going to be in 2020, the next year, or whatever, however you want to measure it, or a version.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Of it, you know, drop it somewhere, Maybe a new tariff somewhere else? I don't know.
[00:24:32] Speaker B: Yeah. So so there's all kinds of possibilities and nobody wants to stick their neck out yet.
And, and you know, and in some cases the new crop bids would be so bad, like they're just like a stink bid and so nobody wants to have their name attached to that either.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I think I read somewhere there was like a six dollar yellow P bid for, for next year. I'm like, yeah, like so you have.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: A number out there but nobody's taking you up on it, right?
[00:24:59] Speaker A: No, it's just the placeholder. Here's, here's a number. Like I, I don't know anyone that would, would look at that and be like, I gotta, I gotta hitch my wagon to that one. That, that is the winner for me. So anyways, so. So you talked a little bit about on and off switches. You know, not no real gray area for some of this stuff.
Do you want to talk about India? Is there anything different out of, out of India when it comes to our tariff situation? Is there anything different lately from, from China that you've seen like this that's impossible to predict? Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: Especially China because they're really not based on market signals at all or anything like that. So it's just either, you know, you know, you know, it could go, could disappear in a hurry. You know, there are rumors that Carney is going to head out to China in a few weeks and you know.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: Is that going to be something vacation coming up? Yep.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: You know, fingers crossed and you know, whatever. Maybe you'll have to start buying their EVs, I don't know. But anyway, but within respect to India, the one thing that I am watching that makes me nervous is that red lentil prices there are continuing to drop.
And that's what triggered the yellow P tariff was really low yellow pea prices. Seeing a similar thing happening in red lentils, I mean right now it's at 10% already, but are they going to boost that? I mean the one thing is that the 30% yellow pea tariff I don't think has really stopped trade. And most, for the most part it's just raised prices in India.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: You know, it's kept our prices flat, but they didn't collapse either.
[00:26:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: So, you know, a 30% red lentil tariff, you know, that might be manageable. Not great, but it would take out some of the upside, but it wouldn't stop trade entirely, in my opinion.
[00:26:55] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:26:55] Speaker A: Okay.
And going over to Australia for a quick second, everything was kind of tickety. Boo. Last time. Everything was fine. The big crop coming, maybe some quality concerns I haven't paid attention lately as Australia. Did that change or did they just harvest a big crop and quality ended up being okay?
[00:27:13] Speaker B: Yeah, it did. And you know, and especially with respect to lentils, but even the barley crop and, you know, just about everything came off, you know, in big, big volumes, especially Western Australia.
But no, no, no late season disasters or anything like that. It, in fact, the red lentil crop might be even a little bit bigger than what they were talking about before. So.
[00:27:35] Speaker C: Okay. All right.
[00:27:36] Speaker A: Okay, so your last, Your last report here. By the time this podcast goes out, you will have released another, you know, your latest report, but the one I'm looking at was right before Christmas and was your acreage guess, some of your acreage guesses, your traditional one, because you do that earlier one as well now. But what stands out from an acreage perspective in that report? Like, is there anything you want to pull out of there that, that you think is the most noteworthy?
[00:28:07] Speaker B: Well, I think one of the things that, you know, over time, you know, the more years that you do this, and it's been, oh, probably about 15 years now for me that I've been doing these is, is you realize that for the most part, you know, aside from special crops and your main, your major crops and things like that, there are the, the adjustments are relatively small.
People stick to their rotations. There are people talking about, you know, the decision between spring wheat and durum wheat in some parts of Saskatchewan, especially, probably what we're seeing in general this year, you know, some of the common themes, because these aren't just our guesses, like we're talking to people too and so on.
But, you know, we heard fairly consistently that acreage of pulses, especially peas, maybe to a lesser extent lentils, was gonna drop. And, and I think that's, you know, that's justified. Same time people talking about canola being higher because it's still the one that pays the bills. You know, that, that same old, same old story. Right. And yeah, so. So we kept hearing about that, you know, barley's probably, you know, a little more attractive choice, a little friendlier.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: You know, and even spring wheat, it's, it's, you know, it's. People are always slagging spring week, but it's still, especially with the movement that we've had the last two years, it's again, one of the ones that's paying the bills just in terms of getting volumes out the door and. And so on. Not, not in terms of price, but.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: Just in terms of not paying the full bill. But, yeah, 80 of the bill.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It's keeping you in craft dinner. How's that?
[00:29:44] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
So. So there's. Although. Sorry, I digress. We. We had our grandkids over the other day, so we had to buy them craft or not. Oh, sorry. Couldn't be craft dinner. It had to be Annie's.
[00:29:56] Speaker A: Oh, yes.
[00:29:57] Speaker B: It's $5 a box. Like, it was what?
[00:30:02] Speaker A: Yeah, that used to be.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: You get, like, I don't know how many for a dollar, which you bought Kraft Dinner.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:30:08] Speaker B: I'm that old. Yeah, I think.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: I think I saw Kraft Dinner the other day for a buck 50 a box. I think the. The original.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: We're not allowed to feed them craft dinner. It has to be Annie's.
[00:30:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: My kids. My kids won't eat pasta at all. So I don't know what we're gonna do over here. Lots of fruits, which is a killer.
[00:30:26] Speaker C: So. Yeah.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: Anyway, I don't know how I got there, but yeah.
[00:30:32] Speaker C: So.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: All right, so looking at 20, 26, like, I think if I have to put my neck out there, and this is not a statement that puts my neck out there, but I just think that you're going to grow what you're good at. I think at the end of the day, some crops will get a little less because price dictates that, but you're just going to stick with what you're comfortable with and what you think you can grow the most bushels of.
In my crop rankings, wheat climbed compared to past years, which was a bit of a worry for me because it climbed in the rankings, but not because it was paying better, because everything else was paying worse.
[00:31:14] Speaker B: Yeah, fair enough.
[00:31:15] Speaker A: So. Yeah, but.
Yeah, so I think people are just gonna spray the field and to do the stuff they're really, really comfortable with and.
Yeah. And not go and chase something. I don't know.
[00:31:29] Speaker C: We'll see.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Just with respect to that, we do these gross margins, and they're very gross, and they're based on, you know, using standard methodology all through the years.
And so our. On average, or typically. And I think we put this in the report, I'm not sure, but. But basically, the. This gross margin for, you know, brown soil zone, dark brown, black soil zone, all of them dropped between 90 and $110 an acre this year.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:31:56] Speaker B: Like, across all crops, like, it's just. Holy smokes.
It's a lot tougher. And we don't have a government throwing $80 an acre at our oat.
The oat production either. No, no, I think that's a good thing. That's. It's just counterproductive in the long run anyway.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:13] Speaker B: But we digress. I digress again.
[00:32:17] Speaker A: Oh, Chuck. There we go.
[00:32:18] Speaker B: See, I'm starting to do the old. The. The really old politician. Whether you like Biden or Trump, the really old politician thing, where you just start going off on tangents and.
[00:32:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to bring it back in. Bring it back in.
All right, I see.
So you have dark brown soil zone, black soil zone, brown soil zone.
You got canola and flax, you know, leading the pack. You got chickpeas leading in the.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: I know. I just like that one. Just baffles me.
Those prices are so terrible, but they're the best of a bad lot, really.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And then you've got some mustard in there, some barley as well in those rankings. But yeah, like, you kind of look across here and.
Yeah, well, yeah, you're picking on malt barley here, which is. Which is okay. I. I think the malt malt side is there's a lot of frustration out there right now. People are frustrated. And there's portions of Alberta where you can get more for your feed than you can for your malt, which isn't exciting.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And in that case, like the mod. The model that we use or the methodology that we use uses lower, I mean, lower nitrogen for malt barley, but also, you know, quite a bit lower yields. And so that. That's why feed barley can. It's not just a strict price difference either.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just looking at some of your changes here year over year. I won't go through all of them, obviously, but, you know, some of the ones that stand out is that higher, you know, the higher barley acreage, which I, I can definitely agree with, even from a forward contracting perspective, some barley prices out there that are not that scary for next fall.
You got flax, canola up a little bit. Your oil seeds are all kind of up.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: Oil seeds up. Yeah.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: Yep. Specialty crops down again. We grew a lot of.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: Except for mustard.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: Yeah, except. Yeah, mustard. Your biggest gain on here, up 30%. You gotta make some T shirts on that one.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: I'm going next week in Saskatoon. I'm actually speaking to the mustard growers meeting, so this year I'll have some good news for them for a change.
[00:34:26] Speaker A: There you go. Yeah. Oh, man. Something positive as you look Forward here for 2026. You talked about wheat strength in wheat demand, but is there anything from like a price movement perspective that you'd look at and say that could be a bit more positive over the next 12 months than where we're at today.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: I referred back to this whole thing about the tariffs and are they on or are they.
And that's the, that's the huge wildcard. I mean, I think, I think we could see a very much stronger, very much. Anyway, you know, stronger canola prices, considerable rise in canola prices if that were to take place. But what we also have in the canola market is, is all of this biofuel policy in the U.S. and that, you know, they keep talking about an announcement and it keeps getting kicked down the road and so on and so on. So if they finally, you know, do something and say, yes, canola oil will qualify for, you know, the same rins or the incentives as other oils. And it's not a given that Canadian or Mexican inputs are part of that. It's probable, but they can still change that on a dime.
But that could also be positive. Not as positive because there's still limits in terms of how much crush you have in Canada or in the US of canola capacity.
[00:35:46] Speaker E: So.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: But, you know, that would certainly help that kind of a situation as well, too. So I think there's. On the canola side, if one or both of those things were to drop. Yeah, absolutely. There's big upside there. You know, I think, I think wheat is again, if you have people leaving a certain crop and maybe even oats might be one of those. If you drop oat acres this year, then suddenly that gets a little bit tighter again. And so it's part of the regular dynamic in markets of low prices, curing low prices. It's just a matter of how quickly that happens or the size of that cure if you, if you do those kind of things. So, so there's a, there's a number of those where if you're a bit of a contrarian, then for sure you, you might see a bit of, a bit of a response or a decent sized response.
But it does take some guts to go against the flow that way. And patience. Guts and patience. Typically for those kind of situations, you.
[00:36:48] Speaker A: Know, for the farmers tuning in this week, do you have any, any like, advice or a tip that you'd share for, you know, to contribute to their crop marketing plan in a positive way? Is there something that you could add here as we wrap up our segment?
[00:37:03] Speaker B: You know, I would say be patient, look for opportunities. I mean, you talk about that all the time is, you know, look for the, you know, here's A special. Here's an opportunity, you know, add to sales, you know, pick up sales and things like that. But I think there's, you know, when, when things are doomy and gloomy like they kind of are right now. You need patience and you don't want to get too caught up in that negative whatever. I mean, we talk very, again, talking about the wheat market. We've been talking very negatively about the wheat market, but basis is not bad and movement has been, has been absolutely amazing. Yeah, so that tells you there's real demand there.
You know, like it's strong demand there. And Canadian wheat isn't cheap compared to other countries either. So we're selling lots of wheat at a premium relative to other, other wheat. But so that tells you that there's, there's some real stuff going on there that, that we're not quite aware of. The other bit I would say is that I think China and their stockpiles of corn and wheat and, you know, aren't as big as we think or their poorer quality. I think that's going to factor in later in this year as well too, where they start to ramp up more purchases and on. So again, I would say, you know, don't, don't panic right now. Don't just give up. Throw up your hands and say, I'm just gonna, I, I'm, you know, I'm done for the year. I think there is room for, for a lot of crops and not all of them, but for a lot of crops to think in terms of. Well, let's, let's give this some time to work higher yet. Yep, seasonally.
[00:38:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Awesome. Well, great, great plug at the end there, Chuck as well. Folks, again, couple spaces left for Saskatoon for the workshop.
A couple extra ones on Brandon available the week after.
Please go check out Brandon and report back to me because we do have a conference coming up there later this year. Okay, let me know the hotspots in Brandon and in the businesses we gotta, we need to partner with. But Chuck, thanks for joining me to kick off 2026 here. Appreciate your perspective. Keep up the good work and yeah, have a great week in Saskatoon.
[00:39:03] Speaker B: Likewise. We'll be in touch.
[00:39:04] Speaker A: All right. Always great to have Chuck join us on the show. A very popular guest on the what the Futures podcast. If, if you have time, if you can get a spot to his workshops by. I've seen just a little like sneak peek.
If you can make it there, it will pay dividends for you. I strongly encourage that you go and check that out in Saskatoon or In Brandon Manitoba. Now, I'm curious and you can email me ryanfutures Podcast ca I am curious about your acreage plans. If you, if you feel like sharing them or not, that's up to you.
But I see, I see you guys, you know, spraying the whole field here. I see you going with what you're comfortable with, what you feel you can get. The biggest, you know, bushels, the most confident in growing the crop. Like I, that's what I think you're going to stick with.
But if there's something that stands out, I'm always curious to hear that I should update my crop rankings here shortly. I will get some malt pricing out next week, apparently. And of course, with the crop production show in Sask tuned, we'll start to get some pricing as well. So just a little curious on, on what we see there. You know, a couple other things here with, with Chuck, I would just say the on off switch for geopolitical reasons. I think that's a super, super important one to just, again, tough to navigate, but a very true statement. It's up, you know, light switch on, times are great. Update, you know, tariff update or whatever it is is a big gain to the market. And then when it's not happening, the switch is off and it's, it's just very, very frustrating and, and brutal. Let's go over now to my conversation with Trent Clarenback. So we'll do Trent Clarenback, we will do Brian Como, then we will do Tyler Urim. Check and talk a little football and hockey. And then at the end, I'm just going to set up the episodes here for the next couple months. Pardon me, next couple weeks. We have our guests lined up for the rest of this month. We'll talk about that. Talk about what you could be working on here for eating your veggies as well. And pause a moment. So let's keep it moving with Trent Clarenback from Clarenbach Research.
Alrighty, folks, we continue with our theme here for our first episode of 2026.
We've got Trent Clarenbach with Clarinbach Research joining us. Trent, happy New Year. How you doing?
[00:41:35] Speaker D: I'm doing great, Ryan, and Happy New Year to you too. It's, hey, it's going to be a great year.
[00:41:40] Speaker A: I'm excited, I'm excited for the year. Maybe it's, maybe it's just because it's early January, but I, I've got this like, positive belief on the execution side of, of, of the farm business of the crop marketing, like I'm feeling good about, about my preparation here for, for 2026. So maybe, maybe I've still got into the, the rum and eggnog here or something, but I'm still feeling okay. How are you feeling as we start the year off?
[00:42:10] Speaker D: I am a bit of an optimist, so I think everything's going to turn out wonderful. But yeah, you know, there's going to be certainly some challenges and I think, you know, I think times when their margins are tight and in down trending markets, I think being proactive and having a actionable plan in place is going to be very important. I think this could be one of those years.
[00:42:32] Speaker A: We're covering all sorts of things here to set the table for 2026, but I wanted to get you on because you certainly, you're looking at all sorts of different markets.
You follow lots of different things out there. But when you look at your general sense or general feeling, you know, for the next 12 months, like have we turned a corner?
Are we, is it time to start feeling a bit more optimistic about our direction of, of commodity prices or.
Yeah. What's your feeling as we, as we get going here this year?
[00:43:09] Speaker D: Well, I think it's, I think I'm hopeful more than anything. I don't really, you know, we're still in the downtrending market. We're just coming off recent lows and canola and a lot of markets. So I mean, anytime you're not making new lows, I guess that's a reason to have some sort of optimism. But you know, this downtrend, in my opinion, as I define it, still still continues and we haven't had a retest to some critical, we haven't completed some chart patterns which I consider part of every, every, every downtrend. I, so I really do think that the price starts rallying in any of these markets. We need to be very cautious and be proactive and take some sales when we can make them because I, I just do not think this downturn is over. I think we have further lower to go and in pretty much every market that I look at.
[00:44:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
All right, well, you've said this in the past, like rewarding a bear market. Rally markets don't go down in a straight line forever. You get opportunities where you get a balance in a rally. And do you feel that for the 2026 year as a grower in Western Canada, that you want to take advantage of these, of these rallies, not sit on them, not, not necessarily stay patient, but execute?
[00:44:33] Speaker D: Yeah, I think so. And have A have a plan, understand where these potential selling will take place on these rallies. So, you know, try to maximize that the best you can. And we have, you know, you and I talk about different techniques and different levels we look at, you know, and I think we need to be cognizant of those. And you know, I think even approaching, you know, marketing doesn't have to be binary. We don't have to make an all or one all or none decision. Right. Yep, we can. You know, that laddering strategy that we talked about last fall, I guess with Canola, you know, that proved to be, you know, worked out well. You didn't catch maybe the high, but you certainly got to participate in the rally. And I think we need to have strategies, strategies like that going forward.
[00:45:17] Speaker C: So.
[00:45:18] Speaker A: Yeah, what about from like a, a volatility perspective or maybe not volatility, but even the range of, of trading within a price. Like, do, do you expect 2026 to be a very active year with large swings and I don't know if this is a fair question to ask, but an active year, or do you expect it to be a little bit more docile or calm when you look at highs and lows of prices where there may be a little tighter than some of the past years?
[00:45:48] Speaker D: Well, I mean, you take that rally from the fall of 2020 up till the high of 22 as kind of vertical almost. Right.
And then of course, that it came down at a probably 45 degree angle or 50 degree angle, and it's been trading sideways like I'm looking at Canola for. And that's probably representative of most of the crops. Yeah, but you know, Canola's kind of gone sideways for the last two, two years. Right. So I mean that. So I would say in relative terms, it's been, hasn't been volatile compared to the previous years. But you know, that volatility will pick up again, I'm sure. I just don't know whether this is a, you know, this consolidation is a stage one accumulation or a part of a straight stage three distribution or, you know, continuation of the stage four decline. It's just tough to determine. But the volatility, you know, we, when I say it hasn't been volatile, there's been like 200 swings in canola. Right. But it's not like 500 moves. Right. So it's. I, I think with the world, the way the world's going with the trade disruptions and you know, if, if we're in World War iii, that's what's going on Then I think we can see anticipate greater volatility going forward.
[00:47:05] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I'm curious about.
Like I, I don't know who can sit there and predict, you know, what will happen with Greenland, if it will be sold to the US or not or what will happen with that or China and Taiwan or even the US and Venezuela.
There's a lot of stuff going on and yeah, with that is uncertainty and things can get kind of wonky or wild, but yet I look at a chart and I look go back a year or two years and it just seems to be this slow decline overall. Regardless of what's happening, you still look at it from a bigger perspective. It's like, yeah, sideways maybe to slight decline.
I don't know.
[00:47:54] Speaker D: There's little reason to think the decline is over. And talking canola and you know, I think there could be some rallies, but anything on the longer time frame, I think we're going, I think it's going lower with today's information.
[00:48:07] Speaker B: So.
[00:48:09] Speaker A: Well, our theme coming out of, you know, when you come out of Moose Jaw and we had presenters from the US and presenters from Western Canada, but you know, one of the themes was, was also, you know, look at The Globe in 2025, look at production too, and look at all the stuff that we, that we grew. And even this morning I'm just listening to the latest out of Brazil and Argentina and you know, barring the weather, the next few weeks, here again a setup for a pretty strong production year. So, you know, how are you going to get that money to come in to this market, you know, to come and buy this market, get us excited about commodities and where they're going. And it's tough to do that when you're growing a lot of stuff, is it not?
[00:48:58] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. You know, I think the, we need to hope for a sector rotation into commodities. Now there's, there's been signs and a buddy of mine works in the stock market. You know, we've been looking at a commodity boom coming and you know, the venture stock TSX venture has really displayed that in the last six, eight months. But so we might be seeing a shift into commodities some, but a slow sector rotation back into commodities, which would be, which would be the, the fuel, the liquidity for the, for a rally and. Well, everything, I guess. Right.
[00:49:37] Speaker C: So.
[00:49:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
All right. So of course, you know, as farms or we're buying inputs or we got to, you know, plant these crops. You know, when you look at the decline in price, you know, when you Turn your attention to, to crude oil or the energy markets, fertilizer markets. Are you seeing anything different in those where they are set up for rallies and gains and higher prices in 2026 or do you find that we're all following the same trend?
The output, the cereal, the oilseed, the specialty crop, that price is continuing to grind lower. Is it the same in energy and fertilizer?
[00:50:25] Speaker D: Yeah. So down in Moose Jaw there and had the opportunity to with, on your, on your panel there. The question was posed then and, and that hasn't changed. You know, I still, I still see oil going.
I've had $45 for almost a year as a target publish that but it hasn't been hit yet.
I think it's there. I see people talking $30 now, $18 like it's. You're always going to have the extremes.
[00:50:51] Speaker A: But yep.
[00:50:52] Speaker D: If that's the case then, you know, and, and there was a failed rally in, in US LD futures too. Right. So they're coming off. So I don't think I'd be in a hurry to price diesel fuel. You know, I kind of wait and see where this market goes lower.
[00:51:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:51:09] Speaker D: In, in, you know, and if the thing is, if oil's dropping down, that's probably a good indication where the economy is going in the world. That's probably not.
Probably doesn't mean well for any of the markets. Fertilizer, just like I have the urea futures chart again, it's thinly traded and everything but it suggests to me that we're going to see lower urea prices.
[00:51:34] Speaker A: I meant to post this question to the lunchbox earlier today, but I was curious about calendar year end. What would, what would happen?
And it looks like it was just super quiet. It looks like the retail sector didn't have the urgency to get those checks and those monies for year end and the farmers didn't feel the urgency to write those checks. So I would need to double check that. But to me it was quite quiet for the calendar year end.
And then just going back to fuel, we've seen some diesel offers out in that 90 cent level for, for summer, summertime summer product I guess and then also some other ones as low as 80 cents with some special terms on that one. I'd have to. If you're listening, you'd have to email me on that one because there's an explanation behind it that maybe we'll tackle in the next few months. But anyways, yeah, I got asked the question like do I buy at this value? And my Answer was, I don't think so. I don't see any reason to, to jump up and spend that money today.
So.
[00:52:48] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:52:49] Speaker A: All right.
Now, some of the outliers here, Trent, you know, would be, you know, what is happening in, in silver and gold. Like, does that lead to. Or copper. Hasn't copper gone bonkers as well lately? I didn't look. I should have looked.
[00:53:09] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, copper. Let me just pull it up here. Copper. Yeah, it's.
I mean, it's bonkers. Could be a good way to describe it.
It's like making new monthly highs. I mean, that's the sign the economy's strong.
[00:53:24] Speaker A: So that's what I was going to try to say. Like, is there anything on the, on the metal side that we can look at and say there's, there's optimism coming for the future? Because I. Copper used to be Dave Ryman, one of the, the analysts I first kind of worked with, he'd call it Dr. Copper and he'd be looking at copper to see, you know, is this a leading indicator on, on better times ahead for, for wheat and canola and.
[00:53:57] Speaker D: Anyways, yeah, so maybe what's going on here is this is.
Maybe we're seeing strength in, in the other markets around the world, namely maybe Japan might be. Their rates are going higher. So maybe I haven't looked into their, what their stock price is doing. Emerging markets are making new highs. Europe stock, basically, without getting into a real audit of it.
Basically, I think the United States stock market has underperformed most major stock markets in the world. So maybe this is Europe's and Asia starting to shine here, and maybe we're being left behind and maybe that's what's driving the, you know, driving the, the copper and copper price. Maybe. I'm not sure.
[00:54:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's interesting. I'd like for peace of mind to sit here and say, well, look at the copper chart. And then in six months, see, hey, well, look, copper was showing us this in January. Now things are picking up on, on canola and peas and everything else.
[00:54:59] Speaker C: So, yeah.
[00:55:01] Speaker A: Anything else, you know, you wrote today about, Was it farmland and gold ratios? Is there anything else that you want to share with listeners heading into 2026 here again? We're, you know, we're trying to set the table. We're trying to identify things to maybe focus on in 2026 or watch out for. Is there anything else we haven't covered that you want to shed some light on?
[00:55:22] Speaker D: Well, I think there's going to be a real Shift in the world financial credit situation. And I caught Robert Angelic's podcast today with Dan Eberhardt and that was really interesting. Robert, he's got a really strong knowledge of the macroeconomics and financial credit systems.
[00:55:52] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:55:53] Speaker D: And his, his goal with this whole podcast and he's been beating this drum for a while now and he's been consistent with it with me anyways, is worries about abilities of financial institutions to lend money, willingness and ability to lend money. And I think we're starting to see some tightening in some situations.
And if there's a worldwide recession, as he anticipates there will be, then that'll be exasperated. So he's really encouraging people to talk to your experts, you know, get a plan in place, manage, you know, upcoming loans, get your ducks in order, talk the language that your bankers talk in. And I think that's, I think that's going to be a very, very important, critical component coming in the next 24 months.
[00:56:49] Speaker A: Interesting. I, for those that want to check it out, I, I'm just scrolling. That was a live recording from earlier today, so I don't see it out. I'm sure Dan's going to edit that for a few days. But Dan Abrahart with Growing the Future, that's where you can check out that interview or that recording again. I'm sure it'll, I think Dan was going to put that out. I didn't ask him, but I'm sure he will.
[00:57:14] Speaker D: I understand he is, yeah.
[00:57:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Awesome. So when you think of, you know, the way that Robert Angelic's looking at things and then taken to, you know, respect your own research and what you're looking at, do you find that there's some, a little bit of alignment in, in looking at the future. Is that a fair comment?
[00:57:38] Speaker D: Yeah, like I'm a economist by schooling, right. Trying to explain, like what he's saying is, it's not all new to me. Like it's, I understand it, I understand what he's saying. I can see what he's saying. I share those beliefs.
He is very articulate and he's got more hands on experience and a great track record.
So he, and he's talking with bankers and lenders all the time.
So he's got a really good insight into that, into that, you know, financial world that I don't have. So yeah, yeah, there's, there's alignment. I mean it's, Robert doesn't, well, he think. He doesn't. He agrees the technical analysis in the, in the stock market, not how it can be effective. But yeah, it, it aligns with what I'm seeing on the charts and what I'm feeling and, and you know, we're not seeing, I'm not seeing, I'm not seeing a bunch of red flags right now, but you can, you know they're there somewhere. Right?
[00:58:41] Speaker A: So, yeah, I think that may be a topic that we'll continue to talk about over the next few months. And I think that' big one that I don't want to start unwrapping more today because we do have a big show to kick off 2026, so we'll leave it at that. Trent all right, so we were talking about inputs, fertilizer, diesel fuel output. Is there, is there any commodity or anything that stands out that could perform better in 2026 than some of its neighboring crop? If I could say that.
[00:59:19] Speaker D: Well, I've been anticipating hard red spring weight to rally.
[00:59:25] Speaker A: Please dial that up for me because I need, I need a wheat rally.
[00:59:29] Speaker D: I've been, yeah, I, I've been writing about that. So I think that's still holding my, that's still my belief at the moment, but the longer it takes to happen, the less conviction I have.
[00:59:41] Speaker A: So.
[00:59:41] Speaker D: But it's, I was seeing some signs that just looks stronger than Chicago and a few other things. Right. So we'll see if it happens or not. That's maybe the best thing I can see on my radar.
Nothing else comes to mind at the moment and that I don't anticipate that to be a game changing rally either, so.
[01:00:05] Speaker A: But it's such a snoozer of a market, you know, like just, it's done stuff, but it's just in relative terms, it just hasn't done anything. And since the spring, like you got some action in the spring, got a little bit more exciting in the spring, but coming off those highs in June, it's, it's been a tough six months for wheat. I, I've been trying to will it into rallying as well, but I, I've not had any success yet, so you never know.
[01:00:39] Speaker D: And then just looking at Kansas City too here, so maybe we're going to see some life in hard red in Kansas City. Actually, those charts aren't that horrible. Yeah, I mean, I, I would think if there's probably any, my best signs of hope would be or bearish or any, any potential bull. Most bearish crops would probably be, you know, hard red winter or hard red spring.
[01:01:01] Speaker A: So least bearish crops. Is that how you said it?
[01:01:04] Speaker D: Least bearish. But I Think they're setting up. They're setting up for.
I still think there's a potential for a rally in those two crops.
[01:01:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree with you. Those charts are, they're interesting right now. And yeah, fingers crossed here that we can light the fuse on those ones. Yeah, light the fuse.
[01:01:25] Speaker D: So, like the fuse.
[01:01:26] Speaker A: All right, man. Well, I do appreciate you being on the show to kick off 20, 26 and yeah, all the best to you this year. And, and we'll have you on in short order. I can, I can guarantee you that.
[01:01:38] Speaker D: Well, thanks, Ryan. I appreciate. Always look forward to the opportunity.
[01:01:41] Speaker A: All right, take care, man.
[01:01:43] Speaker D: Take care.
[01:01:44] Speaker A: All right, let's. Let's keep moving along here. Of course. You know, one more thing with, with Trent, you know, when I, I wanted to figure out the general direction moving forward and of these markets and, you know, on the buy side, on the input side, fertilizer, fuel, I think you're, you stay, you know, the patience. On the buy side, you want to stay kind of patient and buying those inputs. But then on the sell side, you know, the trend that we're in, when you do see a rally in this bear market, you want to be. Have those strategies dialed up. You want to know how to execute because it's.
I expect some tough slugging ahead this year. I don't think that's any surprise to anybody. And, you know, Trent's been dialed right into this market the last year and a half or the last couple years since I've followed him. He's been really dialed in. So appreciate his perspective. Now let's bring in a newcomer to the show making his podcast debut. Brian Como is the chief analyst and risk management specialist for ICL Agriculture Markets. That's Ireland. Como and Lafoy based out of Winnipeg and Vermilion, they've got. Got presence in both areas there.
And I thought Brian, Brian covers all markets, but wanted to get his perspective on what he's seeing here coming up in 2026.
All right, folks, we've got a new guest on the what the futures podcast here from course. Kicking off 2026. Setting the table, we've got Como, Clarenbach, Penner Whopper of an episode for you this week. I'd like to welcome in Brian Como. Welcome to the show, buddy.
[01:03:31] Speaker E: Thanks, man. It's good to see you.
[01:03:34] Speaker A: So you're. This isn't new to you. You're on camera every day. You're talking about markets. How you adjusting to all this, how you adjusting to your, your YouTube presence out there, your.
Your Exposure. How's, how's it going?
[01:03:49] Speaker E: Yeah, you know, our. We've been putting out videos on YouTube just to try to, you know, keep, keep relevant and see if we can, if we can expand, you know, expand our audience. And as much as I hate hearing my own voice, it's.
It kind of is one of those necessary things. So, yeah, we have a good time.
[01:04:10] Speaker A: So you don't re. Listen to your, your episodes very often, then you just kind of put out in the world and, and, and get ready for the next one.
[01:04:16] Speaker E: Yeah, if I make any mistakes, the listeners let me know because I don't, I, I don't, I don't listen to them before they go out. Yeah, it's pretty funny.
[01:04:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I get, I get a few of those as well. They're like, you said this. That's completely wrong. I'm like, oh, okay. I'm sorry. I'll try to say properly next time, but I'm not the smartest guy. I'm just here. So. Anyways, well, I really appreciate you coming on the show. My goal here in 2026 is to, to get more professionals here from Western Canada, more analysts, more industry folks on the show. And of course, you're going to join us in Brandon Manitoba for the conference later this year, which I appreciate.
But, you know, you've been. It's not like you just started this. You've been doing this for a while. Why don't you give me and the listeners a little background and then also just talk about your projects today. What do you guys got going on today?
[01:05:05] Speaker E: Yeah, sounds good. So we started a. We started a market consulting business called ICL Agriculture Markets.
We have three partners. It was born kind of out of the ashes of some Cargill restructuring that happened about a year ago or so. And, you know, we all had our strengths and we wanted to capitalize on that. And so we do, you know, market consulting, one on one with clients. We do do some content creation as we were talking about on the videos, as well as reports and things like that that we send out to those who want to subscribe to them. And, you know, we do some speaking engagements, which you mentioned, and just. Yeah, just some other things like that, Educational opportunities and things like that. So, you know, I, I do have some gray hair. I've been in this, in this business for a while, and I think this will be my swan song here. So, yeah, we're, we're excited and know it's a good time to be in this business.
[01:06:03] Speaker A: So you and I, do you remember we Were together at Vitera. We were down. Didn't we do training together in Saskatoon or Regina or something back in the day? Wasn't that Vitera, like, way back?
[01:06:16] Speaker E: We, I, maybe Vitera. I definitely know. We were at Cargill together.
[01:06:22] Speaker A: Yeah, we were at Cargill.
[01:06:23] Speaker E: Yeah. I, I followed you after fbn, we just, yeah, we just keep.
It's a small, It's a small, it's.
[01:06:31] Speaker A: A small space and prop marketing is a very small space, but there we go. Yeah. Yeah. I'll have to do some thinking, but I'm positive there, there was a, I want to say like a Vitera training session in like 2009 or something. I'm gonna do some thinking, Brian, I'll get back to you. That makes sense.
All right, so you're working with, you've got advisors across, you know, spread out across the prairies or, or how's this kind of work?
[01:06:57] Speaker E: We mainly deal with a core group of clients in Alberta, you know, particularly eastern Alberta in the, along the Yellowhead corridor there.
And that's what started our business is we had a lot of, A lot of people that were looking for, you know, for a full scale marketing opportunity or full scale marketing advice and things like that. So that's, you know, our main bread and butter. We do have some other advisors that we, that we work with. They don't work with us, but we support them, we help them to grow their own, their own business in this space.
So that's. Yeah, it's. Again, we're very new. We're not even. We're about 10 months into this. So, you know, lots of, we had lots of interest and lots of great conversations, and this being one of them.
[01:07:46] Speaker A: Awesome. All right, well, I appreciate you being here on the show and sharing some insight with us. I want to talk about 2026. I want to set the T here for 2026. How, like, to your core, Brian, how are you feeling about this year? Like, are you feeling a bit of optimism? Are you feeling some negativity, like when it comes to the prices of the stuff we're growing in Western Canada? How you feeling as we head into 2026?
[01:08:11] Speaker E: You know, I feel pretty good. Although, you know, you could, you could say that I'm an eternal optimist or at least that I see the silver lining in a lot of things.
You know, last year was challenging because, I mean, I can't believe it hasn't even been a year yet since Trump took office in the US that has created a lot of ripple effects in agriculture markets that have even had some other spillover things.
We had huge yields, which feels good going into the bin, which I think is the silver lining. But that has come along with lower prices and things like that. But I think the yield offset some of the reduction in price. So, yeah, overall, that makes me feel good. I think that even if we return to averages or the mean yields, I think that. That we should celebrate that. And.
And I think there are some opportunities for prices out there to.
To get some opportunities. Yeah.
[01:09:07] Speaker A: So are. Is there any. Any storyline that you're paying, you know, very close attention to here?
You know, is. Is, you know, we're early part of January 2026. Is there something that you're like, this is my.
My hot button topic. I'm keeping an eye on this thing for. For, you know, the next number of months here. This is very important that we should pay attention to.
[01:09:33] Speaker E: Yeah, I think. I think there's a couple of things. I call it the Trump Effect.
There's been lots of chaos. A lot of it has simmered down. So I do expect that crazy tweets or truth Socials or whatever they're called might. The market might not trade them with as much vigor as they have in the past.
There's obviously the opportunity for a brokerage of a deal between Ukraine and Russia, and I think that could be something to watch as far as potential support to prices in wheat and even some other grains.
My bias is that will be a very difficult thing to have happen, but I think it's something that we should watch for because I think the market might react to even small rumors of such happening right now, even for the next quarter. Definitely looking at South America and what their effect on the market's going to be, just the size of the crop, how much they sell to China. Yep, all of those kind of things. So I think, you know, right now, South America is very important, and I think it will continue to be for, you know, the next. Into the next quarter. You know, March, April, things like that?
[01:10:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I think there were. From a weather perspective, Argentina has faced some challenges, even though I believe they had a dandy of a wheat crop. And. And then Brazil, again, you're talking about it, an entire country. But it looks pretty good over there so far, doesn't it, as of, you know, early January?
[01:11:04] Speaker E: Yeah. Very, very good. Some of the very early soybeans are starting to be harvested now.
I mean, the USDA is calling for 175 million tons of production out of Brazil, and there isn't really a lot of Concern areas.
You know, again, that's up from like 171 and a half last year.
And you know, that's a, that's, that's a big increase.
You know, even, even from acreage standpoint. Every year, acres in Brazil seem to keep going higher. Actually, you know, that's, that's not even hyperbole. Like this year, acres grew by 3% this year from last year and then 2% the year before. It's just been this constant growth.
And you know, some, some will feel that there, there's some damage being done to say, you know, rainforest land and other things. But from a market perspective, that's one of the, that's one of the reasons why Brazil continues to grow their, their, their production is because of how many acres they are continuing to add.
[01:12:07] Speaker C: Yep.
[01:12:07] Speaker A: Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, for sure.
Rest of the world kind of losing acres to urban sprawl or whatever you want to call it. And yet South America, Brazil, adding, adding acres to the, to the pie. So yeah, as you look at your crop marketing plan here for, for 2026, you know, to those listening or tuning in, do you have a, you know, a go to strategy or, or something that's kind of come to light the last couple days that, that you'd highlight here for us or anything standing out.
[01:12:43] Speaker E: I think what's standing out right now is kind of the market structure and how much carry there is in the market.
Like I was saying, there's always silver linings and things. And so the, you know, the, the prices being low and the market tilting bearish. That means that there's carry in the market that can be taken advantage of if, you know, if acute delivery isn't, isn't part of the necessary marketing strategy.
You know, the carries were, were really big as we got into the beginning of December, almost full carry on some of those markets like Canola. Now there's still really good carry in the Canola market. The, the wheat market is more steady, but that gives you a lot of opportunity to, you know, sell deferred and use reentry strategies to get back in on the front month. And you know, that's a lot of our conversations are, are around that right now, which is just taking advantage of what's there. The bird in the hand.
[01:13:44] Speaker A: Yeah, and the interesting thing too is that, you know, you can go grab that carry in the market. Maybe you get a little pop, a spike, the market climbs you, you grab something down the line and then all of a sudden you're seeing the strong demand for Canadian wheat or these really wonky canola basis to, to fill cars like you can, you might get lucky and attach those two together and pull off a, A, a dandy of a price at the end of the day.
[01:14:12] Speaker E: So yeah, yeah, you know, I think, I think wheat is getting to that point where we've seen that the bin doors stay closed under a certain level and buyers have to bid up using basis or premiums or whatever in order to get it moving.
And the exports of wheat are just, just phenomenal out of Canada. And I think that's, you know, a large reason for that, unfortunately, is the decline in, in Canadian canola exports. So wheat has to make up, you know, a big part of that. A part of that. And so I think, you know, there are opportunities for, for marketing wheat when the prices, you know, little pop in futures and a little premium all of a sudden gets to people's target levels and as we were saying, with the yields starts making, it starts making profitable sense. So yeah, yeah, target is very important right now too.
[01:15:06] Speaker A: Yeah. So, like, what do you call this, Brian? Like what do you call this environment of, of, of these grain. The grain facilities, the buyers out there? Like, we've, this is going on the second year now where you just wait for that price, that special or, or a better price to, to arrive to fill these darn cars that are coming next week. Like, like what do you call this? Or do you maybe it's not even what is it called, but is this what selling grain is going to be like for the next number of years? Like just throw it in the bin, wait for the company to be short for these cars and pull the trigger? Like, it's strange.
[01:15:46] Speaker E: You know what? I kind of hope so. In some ways, the futures are driven largely by more, you know, global fundamentals.
You know, we don't have a lot of control over the futures for most commodities. Canola, of course, we do have a little bit more pull, but there's, you know, a lot more pull from Canola is coming from biofuel sector or even palm oil or soybean oil, things like that. So, you know, the Canadian fundamentals, yes, play a large role, but not the only role.
And I think that a lot of what's happened recently and you know, we've had very good years over the last four or five years as far as, you know, farm marketing, good profitability and things like that.
And I think that has allowed farmers to, A, get a little bit more comfortable with their cash positions and B, that I think they've invested in storage and bins. And both of those things kind of combined allow the. Allow for a lot more flexibility in marketing. And so, you know, you don't necessarily have to be beholden to the elevator company when you want to sell.
You know, you can. You can kind of play it a little bit and work. Work with what works best for you. And I think that's a. Been a really positive thing for farmers in the last few years.
[01:17:06] Speaker A: It, to me, it's. It's like, you think about the crop we grew in 2013 and that it's different, but the marketing environment we had that winter, like, it was horrible to try to move grain that winter. It was like a historically terrible event to now in 2025, 2026, growing the biggest crop we've ever grown, locking it in the bin and saying, all right, call me when you need it. Like, it's incredible, the change over like, a decade. So.
[01:17:39] Speaker E: And even, like, you know, even the market, the use for some of their commodities, like, I'll go back to canola. Like, you know, our. Our capacity to crush canola now is over 14 million tons.
By the end of this crop year, it should be 15. It should be 15 million. With the Regina crush plant opening are. We're not beholden anymore to the same export programs on. On our canola. We have a lot of domestic demand, and as long as the EPA doesn't screw us over, we probably have a customer south of the border there that will continue to use canola oil for bio. For biodiesel, and that opens up the market. I know a lot of trading, trading firms have been opening up the South American market for our wheat, which traditionally went largely to Asia. So that's. That's changing as well, and all of those things kind of add up over time. So, yeah, the biggest crop we ever had is not as big a deal as it was back in 2013.
[01:18:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it's nice to see a little bit of a different swagger than back then, so. Good stuff.
All right, Brian, anything else on your radar here for 2026 that we need to pay attention to? Do you feel like we may end the year slightly higher on prices than where we're at today?
Do you think we'll be fairly neutral, or do you think there's risk for more downside?
[01:19:07] Speaker E: I think most of the downside is likely baked in, you know, the large. The large wheat production globally.
You know, the Australia is the last to harvest for this crop year. It's coming off. It's known that that's big. So I think now the big question marks will come, you know, in wheat on the North American growing. Growing season.
Global wheat carryouts have actually been dropping for a while. So I think that, you know, there is some opportunity. There is some opportunity in wheat. I think that we can see Canola the same. You know, I think the big elephant in the room there is the Chinese purchases and the trade row that we're having with China right now.
[01:19:46] Speaker C: Yep.
[01:19:47] Speaker E: You know, as I was saying, I don't have a lot of hope. And, you know, maybe that's because of.
There's a. I think there's a lack of.
It's kind of like a push pull. Right. The Canadian government has to figure out if they want to continue to keep, you know, farmers upset because of the policy with China or if they want to keep the auto industry upset. So, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a big, It's a big balancing act for them for sure. I think that the, the expansion and crush will be.
Will be important as well.
And you know, margins for crush right now are really, really good. So there's really not a disincentive to. To crush that Canola.
[01:20:33] Speaker A: Yeah. I wonder if somehow some way there's a happy medium. Not a happy medium, but some. Something in between that satisfies, you know, China a little bit, taking some of the pressure off. I don't know what that would look like, but I guess we'll see. I. Again, Chuck Penner mentioned, you know, the Canola market being kind of like an on, off switch, where if there were some positive changes, you know, the light turns on and the market's gonna have a great run if they remove these tariffs. But if they don't, it's just brutal and not very fun. And there's no in between really right now. It's either it's going to be really good or, or continue to be bad. So anyways, I'll digress.
[01:21:20] Speaker E: What do you think about Canola acres? Like, do you think that there's enough disincentive because of the problems in marketing that there will be a reduction in acres this year?
[01:21:30] Speaker A: I would view view acres as a slight increase at this time. And in some of the conversations that, that I've been a part of, not a scary number or anything like that in, in Mother Nature will potentially change this as it, as it can. But, you know, from a numbers perspective, I see a lot of folks penciling in Canola and, and it penciling a little higher than a lot of the other crops. So that acre Hanging in, which is again, with all the problems we have, still penciling as one of the best is, is interesting. And you know, I chatted, this is just one example, but, you know, chatted with a few farms that, in an area where they traditionally don't grow as much canola and, and some of those farms, Pennsylvania and some of their highest acres in one case in their, in their history and in another case, the highest acres in a number of. Of years. So again, I, that's very small. We're talking about a couple people here. You know, let's not get crazy. But it's interesting when those types of comments are out there.
[01:22:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:22:42] Speaker E: And I mean, the yields were amazing. If even if you get small pops in pricing and you get similar, you know, similar yields, and maybe that's just a recency bias, but, you know, there would be a very good return on investment there.
[01:22:56] Speaker A: And I, the other thing too, I, I view this a little skewed because I, you know, I don't want to talk my book here a whole bunch, but, you know, NAV of 26 canola futures traded at 700 or better didn't. Did they not, Brian? And you know, we have, we sold some of that.
[01:23:15] Speaker D: Right.
[01:23:15] Speaker A: So 50, 60, 70 bucks a ton higher than where we're at today. That's a, that's a big difference. So again, I don't know how hopefully a bunch of people did that and, and bought some confidence and growing that canola acre for this year. But yeah, so we are working with a bit of a better margin than what's currently out there today.
[01:23:36] Speaker E: So anyway, oddly enough, there's, there's a carry right now still to the, to the nav or from the July to the nav. So there still is some opportunity there for, you know, hedging new crop, particularly if you have the ability to get, you know, to have upside exposure if the market it, you know, decides to take a run.
[01:23:55] Speaker A: Yeah, you bet. All right, Brian, how could people get a hold of you guys? What's the best spot to check out your content?
[01:24:02] Speaker E: Our website is Canadian ag markets.com so that's a nice, nice, simple.
[01:24:07] Speaker A: Nice and easy.
[01:24:08] Speaker E: Nice and easy. And the YouTube channel is YouTube.com what is it? Slash Canadian Ag Markets, I think is how you get there. Or you might be able to search it there.
That's if that's probably the best ways.
[01:24:21] Speaker A: Yeah, if they toss your name in the, in the search bar on YouTube, I'm sure it'll find you. So it's good at that. So right On. All right, folks, go check out Brian's content. That's Brian Como. Go check him out on YouTube. Thanks for being on the show this week, Brian. Look forward to having you as a guest for the year. And we'll cap it all off in Brandon Manitoba in December. So. Yeah, thanks for that too.
[01:24:44] Speaker E: Sounds good. Thanks, Ryan.
[01:24:46] Speaker A: Take care. Well, folks, there you have it. You have from a crop marketing perspective, again, a whopper of an episode here. We're not done yet, but a whopper of an episode. Some fantastic points by everybody. I, you know, even I, I felt Brian was maybe a bit more positive overall, which is nice to see. But, you know, obviously we need to be a little scrappy.
Need to be a little, I don't know, maybe we'll talk unhinged here in, in later episodes, but it wants to be a little scrappy. Want to make sure that we're preparing ourselves to, to execute here in 2026. So some very good perspective. I appreciate every, all three of them joining me here. Yeah, look forward to doing stuff like that. Yeah. Throughout the year anyway. All right, so I got one more guest here. Tyler joins me on a monthly basis and we were scheduled for this week and I thought, you know what, we do have a packed show, but why not? I wanted to talk NFL football, wanted to get an update on the NHL season. We've hit the halfway point now, Olympics around the corner.
So let's bring in a friend of the show, Tyler Uramchuk from Daily Face off to get us caught up on all things football and hockey leading into wild card weekend.
All right, folks, let's welcome back Tyler, your Remchuk to the what the Futures podcast. Tyler, happy New Year. How you doing, buddy?
[01:26:16] Speaker C: Yeah, I am good. Starting to get back in the swing of things after the holiday break. So yeah, doing, doing really well.
[01:26:22] Speaker A: How big was your holiday break? Like you do a show, you do shows every day. So like did you have like a one day hiatus or did you string that into a couple days off?
[01:26:32] Speaker C: We do a pretty good job of like in the days leading up to Christmas we pre record a Christmas special. We pre recorded like a Family Feud thing at our office. So it kind of looks like we put out a new video every day. But I was able to go, I think I went three, four days without being on camera, which is honestly the longest I'll go all year is, is that four day break. So I loved it. I like not having the lights on and all of that, which is good. But also there were Oilers games happening, so I Kind of got the itch around day three, day four, I was like, all right, I want to talk about some stuff.
[01:27:02] Speaker A: Stuff. Nice. Nice. Well, this is my first time back in studio in a couple weeks, and even in December, we had a big conference in Moose Jaw. So I recorded like two episodes in December, and. And that was about it. So I. Trying to set up in the background, get the lights positioned again, and. And we'll see. We'll see how it goes. So thanks for joining me this week. So it's been a month since we've chatted. I want to talk NFL football, though, before we. Before we talk hockey.
My Cardinals are Arizona Cardinals. Not even close. Supposed to be a bubble team this year. And I don't know where we're picking, but I think we're picking in the top three or the top five or. Or maybe the top pick even. I think my team was one of the worst this year.
But what are you looking forward to when it comes to your Buffalo Bills and wild card weekend here?
[01:27:50] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, listen, everyone's kind of doing the whole, like, oh, no excuses for the Bills this year. Like, no Patrick Mahomes, no Lamar Jackson in the playoffs, no Joe Burrow in the playoffs. Like, Josh Allen on the AFC side of things is very, very clearly the best quarterback left in the playoffs. So that makes me nervous because now there's expectations and there's some pressure on the Buffalo Bills. And, you know, this is not. This is far from the best roster that they've had in. In the Josh Allen era, we'll call it.
[01:28:18] Speaker B: Right.
[01:28:18] Speaker C: Like, everyone's talked about how depleted and weak the wide receiver room is. Their defense hasn't been great all year, but you know, the one thing, it is a quarterback sport, and the Bills have the best quarterback, so that will help. Like I said, that also comes with pressure. And as far as their defense goes, like, it has been pretty bad all year, but it's also just had a knack for making some really big plays. If you go back to, like, their win over Baltimore in week one, like, couple of big fumbles in that one, some big interceptions, some big stacks when they played the Kansas City Chiefs and beat them. So they've had a knack for making big plays.
Things where I think every game they plan will be really, really tight and it'll be a matter of if their defense or Josh Allen can make some big, unexpected, ridiculous play that kind of flips the script of the game. So they're going to be on the road every week. Playoffs. The. The deck is stacked against them a little bit still, even though there isn't that like premier league quarterback left. But I'm feeling pretty good.
[01:29:13] Speaker A: I mean, it's.
[01:29:14] Speaker C: It's playoff football. I love. This is one of my favorite weekends of the year when you get sort of the six big playoff matchups. It's awesome.
[01:29:20] Speaker A: Unbelievable weekend. And I even have the Monday nighter as well, which I forgot that they did the Monday nighter for wild card weekend and then throw in a little bit of hockey in the mix and it's a heck of a weekend. Now, how did they stack up against the Jaguars Real quick? Like, is Jacksonville. Are they supposed to be here at 13 and 4? Like, is. I thought that was a little bit of. A little bit of a better season than what was expected.
[01:29:44] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, definitely a better season than. Than what was expected in Jacksonville. But they have that new head coach, Liam Cohen, who came over from. He was the Bucks offensive coordinator last year when they had their big sort of surge and Baker Mayfield had the career year, so he's been good for them. Trevor Lawrence appears to be relishing under that. They have a really, really good run defense, which makes me nervous because the Bills are a team that even though they have Josh Allen, like James Cook was the rushing leader in the NFL this year. So they are a team that loves to pound the rock. And Jacksonville has been very, very good at stopping that. And the other thing they have for people who are, you know, maybe more on like the casual side of being an NFL fan, their kicker, Cam Little holds the record. He has the longest field goal in NFL history. And I think this last weekend he got the second longest field goal in NFL history. Like, he's jarring 67 yard field goals, which means once the Jaguars are at the midway point of the field, once they're at the 50 yard line, that's where his range starts. And think about how many playoff games come down to a kick, man. Like if the Jags are in a position where they're down by a point or it's tied and they have the ball last, they have to. They have to get the ball to like the 50. And all of a sudden it's like, all right, they can kick a field goal from here and win the game, which, like, what an advantage that is. And you contrast it to the Bills who are currently right now digging through other teams practice squads trying to find a kicker because they don't have one.
[01:31:01] Speaker A: Wow. Isn't that crazy how kicking the ball that far, how that changes the game like that's that's unbelievable. And the weather, it'll be in Jacksonville, so it's going to be. I'm sure that's an indoor stadium anyway. But no weather impact.
[01:31:13] Speaker C: No, it's outdoor and they got a big pool in the one end zone.
[01:31:16] Speaker A: Oh, nice. Nice.
All right. Any other matchups you're looking forward to the packers and the Bears on Saturday night? I'm looking forward to that one. I'm, I'm a Cardinals fan number one. But I also, I do like the Bears and so I'm looking forward to that Bears packers matchup. Anything else on your radar this weekend for games?
[01:31:36] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, like listen, Bills wise, I'll be watching that Chargers Patriots game really, really close because if the Chargers can pull off an upset that would be unbelievable. But I'll give some love to the Niners and Eagles in that matchup. I think the Niners are like four and a half point underdogs and I think that's actually like a little bit of a sneaky line. That Eagles offense has been really, really bad all year. The Niners weakness has been that their defense has actually been like surprisingly poorest. When you think about all those great Niners teams from the past, it's usually like a really strong defense that's behind it, but it's kind of the inverse this year where their offense is carrying them and their defense is weak. But again, like the Eagles haven't been able to move the ball a ton this year. So I think the Niners are, they're one of my underdogs to watch because I like the Bears in that Saturday night game. I'd love to see them. Like you said, like I'm not a Bears fan, but they kind of got that lovable loser mentality. A really fun fan base. I wouldn't mind seeing them get a win on home field, but I think the Niners are my one big underdog to watch.
[01:32:30] Speaker A: Sounds good. Let's turn our attention back over to the NHL now. The Oilers with the the big win last night. We're at the halfway point of the season.
What storyline are you really watching here? I know that's a bit of a vague, loaded question, but you're we're halfway. The jets and the Canucks are at the bottom of the Western Conference.
All the Senators, Blue Jackets, the bottom of the Eastern. But is there anything that you're really watching here for a storyline as we get into the second half of the season?
[01:33:02] Speaker C: I think the league wide storyline is just, I mean, do you want to call it parody or do you want to call it mush? Like, there are only five teams in the NHL. And I think we might have talked about this a month ago too, but like five teams in the NHL right now have a points percentage below.500. That means 27 teams are above.500 on the year. Like that's insane. And you know, we said it in December, like, okay, it'll probably sort itself out at some point, but like it's not. And you know, I think the west is starting to become a little bit more defined. Like St. Louis, as much as they had a fun little surge there and they've won back to back games. Like, I don't take them too seriously. Chicago, Calgary, Vancouver, surprisingly, the Winnipeg jets, like, they might be the biggest disappointment in the entire NHL right now. Like, I think those teams are trending more towards being out of it. So the west is a little bit more defined, but the east is the one that's fascinating to me because the teams who are at the bottom for the most part are not teams that I think are going to punt at any point this season. Like, I think the Rangers are going to sit there, cross their fingers and say, we, let's hope we get hot at some point and do what Buffalo did and win eight or nine or 10, in Buffalo's case, games in a row and get ourselves back into this. Like, Toronto's not going to punt, Ottawa's not going to punt. New Jersey, they're just a tire fire right now, but I don't think they're going to punt. Like. Like I think everyone in the east is going to hold on to the bulk of their pieces and try to get in right until the bitter end, which the trade deadline is basically two months to the day. It's on March 6th this year.
I think that's going to make for a very fascinating deadline because there might only be like 4, 5, 6 sellers in the entire NHL, which is going to drive prices through the roof.
[01:34:36] Speaker A: Yeah, it gets expensive for sure. The Rangers are at 46 points, so the Sabres are at 48 points, just outside the wild card. And Pittsburgh holds that last spot at 49. Like it is tight out there, even. And Ottawa is just a point behind them. Right. Like it's. Yeah. Wild.
Are we going to have two trade deadlines this year? Like is there before the Olympic roster freeze?
Do we expect kind of two days with some action or how's it setting up over the next few weeks?
[01:35:08] Speaker C: I mean, I think we could because those kind of deadlines, whether they are the final one or not. Those tend to produce some action.
If you remember back to the Christmas break, the night of that Christmas roster freeze coming in, Mason Marchman traded from Seattle to Columbus. Philip Deneau traded from LA to Montreal. So again, two trades happened right before that deadline, and that deadline's only a week long. So I think we will see some amount of action there. But one thing that's important to keep in mind, and I had a capologist, Hart Levine, on my Oilers Nation show yesterday. So this definitely applies to the Oilers, who are one of those teams who are in a cap crunch. The salary cap keeps rolling through the Olympic break. So what that means is if teams can shed some dollars before that three week break starts, they can actually accrue cap space. So one thing to keep in mind that perspective is the Oilers and Andrew Mangiapani, who, you know, I think a trade is. It could happen. While you and I are talking right now, I just got Twitter notifications. I'll make sure they're not an Andrew Mangiopani trade because, like, I think it's that close to kind of being done. But if the Oilers can get to a point where for that three week break, they shed his salary and are $3.6 million under the salary cap. Well, the way the cap works in the NHL is every day you're under the cap, it kind of grows a little bit, almost like an investment. So if you're 3.6 million under on February 6th, by March 6th, 30 days have passed. That's, you know, roughly what, an eighth of the NHL calendar year. Okay. Year 3.6 is now actually going to be worth 4.3, 4.4, 4.5 million by the time the actual deadline comes around. So I do think we'll see some teams make some moves. Maybe it's just roster moves, like sending a bunch of guys down to the American League. Maybe in the Oilers case, it's getting rid of Andrew Mangiapani before that mark. Accrue the cap space, and then you're in a position where you can acquire a player that's a little bit of a higher capit than you could have afforded in February. You can acquire that player come March. So there might be a couple of moves, but they might be more aimed towards teams trying to get further under the salary cap ceiling than it is teams who are doing their true big splash improvement.
[01:37:11] Speaker A: All right, fair enough.
Can you believe that we're trading Maggiopani right now? I don't think we're surprised in a way, but also the first two weeks of the Season wasn't there like a song for him and all these couple goals going in and this Italian excitement. I don't know what to call it. But don't you remember those early days?
[01:37:33] Speaker C: I do remember those early days and I'm sure he remembers those early days as well. But, I mean, the plays fallen off a cliff. He's not a guy who, you know, like last year, I think you could look at not getting the opportunity that everyone kind of feels felt like he deserved. And Magiapani doesn't have that argument. This is a guy who still to this day, his most common line made on the year is Connor McDavid. He spent a ton of time with Leon Draisaitl and it just didn't work. And you talk about those games early in the season. He scores in his first two games as an Edmonton Oiler. He has three points in three games, and then he just stops shooting the puck. He goes five games without a shot. And still at this point in the year, there are more games this year where he has zero shots on net than games where he has two or more shots on net. Like, for a guy who can rip the puck, I do not understand this unwillingness to actually do that and, like, buy into his strengths. So again, he kind of failed when it came to being a top six winger. And he's not a guy who's showing.
[01:38:29] Speaker D: He.
[01:38:30] Speaker C: He wants to take on the assignment of being a bottom six winger. So I think it just means you need a change of scenery for the Oilers. He has a year left on his deal. If right now you're at the point where there's still a little bit of value and a team thinks they can rehabilitate him and. And a change of scenery would benefit him. Yeah, I think getting that $3.6 million off the books for this season, huge. It's also big for next season, too.
[01:38:51] Speaker A: All right, Tyler, Sounds good. One last quick one for you. I want to save an Olympic hockey talk for next month because we are going to get together before the Olympics, so we'll park that because I still think there's going to be some roster changes, especially with some of the injuries and stuff that are happening. But my dad's a Habs fan. The habs are at 52 points.
Pardon me? 52 points. 42 games played. The Oilers. 43 games played, 48 points. Who is going to end up between those two teams? Who's going to end the season with more points, the Oilers or the Habs?
[01:39:22] Speaker C: That's an interesting question. One thing that's been really surprising for me with the Habs this year is they've been a really mediocre home team. Usually playing at the Bell center is like such a strength for them, but it has not been the case at all this year. And I think that's a trend that should change at some point. I don't think the Habs magically became a bad home team. I just think it's maybe some tough luck. So I could definitely see the Habs finishing with more points. I think some of that is, you know, product of the environment in the division. Right. Like the Oilers got to go toe to toe with the Golden Knights and they got those three big dogs in the Central Division that they still got to play a couple more times this year. So I think, I think the Oilers might struggle a bit more with their schedule.
I'd take the Habs. I think I could totally see a world where, I mean, they're ahead of them right now by points percentage, but I could see the Habs finishing ahead of the Detroit Red Wings this year, certainly ahead of the Leafs. The Florida Panthers, we don't really know what they are this season. So, you know, the Habs showed last year they're a second half team when they turned on the jets to make the playoffs. Like they were sitting dead last at some points in December last year and then still managed to make it. So I could see the Habs turning on the jets and being a team that's like at 106 points and it'll be close. I think the Oilers will be like 104 or something like that. But I think I'd take the Habs if you gave me like straight up odds on it.
[01:40:35] Speaker A: All right, well, Leo's gonna appreciate that when he tunes into this week's episode. All right, buddy, thanks for joining us. How can people get a hold of you? Where can they follow you?
[01:40:44] Speaker C: Twitter X at Tyler Remchu? YouTube. I'm live every day 10am mountain on daily Face off and Noon Mountain on Oilers Nation. So we do like a national kind of show on Daily Face off with myself and former NHL goalie Carter Hutton. Then at noon, it's me and Liam talking Oilers for 90 minutes every weekday. So those are the two big ones for me.
[01:41:01] Speaker A: Awesome, buddy. Thanks again. Have a good time down in Jasper in a couple weeks for your big pond hockey tournament.
Yeah, have a great January and a great start to 2026. Take care.
[01:41:11] Speaker C: Yeah, you do. Happy New Year to all your listeners as well.
[01:41:14] Speaker A: All right, well, thanks, Tyler, for joining episode 105 here of the what the Futures podcast. A little something a little less tense here to, to end, end this week's show.
Now it's, it's been a doozy of an episode, a lot of content. I appreciate you hanging out this week and, and spending the extra time here on, on your crop marketing and creating that crop marketing plan for 20, 26 and beyond. Now every plan, to me, it starts with, with good numbers. It starts with knowing your numbers.
I'm at the point right now where I, I believe that cash flow, you're having your cash flow plan dialed in for the year. I believe that is the absolute best starting point. I do realize cost of production, a lot of people want to start with cost of production and I used to, but you do your cost of production, you see what your margins look like and you may, yeah, you may end up seeing numbers that are at a, at a loss, but they're hard to change. They're hard to change. And so I like starting with cash flow. If you can get something done, I like starting with that, then cost production is what I would do. But, but I want to just highlight that we did see if you want to start with good numbers programs like Harvest Profit that pair up with John Deere Operations center, you know, help make you a little bit more efficient in these tasks.
It's important because not everybody likes going through the numbers like I do. All right, or some of the accountants or some of the professionals out there that are working with your farms or even yourself, you may love it, but you want to be, for many, want to be efficient and want to make sure that the experience is positive. So we did see an update coming out of Harvest Profit for the end of 2025, and that was for overhead inputs. It used to be that you had to enter all your costs kind of on one page, but now they, they said, you know what if it's a field specific cost that you want to apply, you know, to that quarter, there's a spot to do that. But you know, maybe it's labor on the farm, you know, maybe it's fuel and you're okay and comfortable with taking that cost over all your acres. There's a new overhead feature, overhead inputs. You can go in there, put in the numbers, it will divide it out over the crops.
Could be fuel, repairs, labor, maybe it's some of insurance to some degree, maybe equipment costs. Anyway, it's quicker, it's easier, and it's just really easy to take those year end totals, pluck them into harvest profit and not be forced to put everything in under one field or one crop. Now, don't get me wrong, it wasn't that bad to do before, but it's always nice to see the folks like Wyatt, customer success rep over at Harvest Profit just working on making this more efficient for us. All right, so John Deere operations center pairs up so well with Harvest Profit. If you want to get started with the numbers here in 2026, check it
[email protected]. honestly, folks, you gotta start somewhere. And for our farm, it's a great tool. Okay, positive moments for this week. Finley turns three years old. Old today. So happy birthday, my boy. My little farmer in training, we got him some farm equipment. He had a great haul at Christmas. He got what he put on. He put two things on his Christmas list. He wanted a tractor with logs and bales. This whole setup from Canadian Tire, John Deere tractor thing. Got that. Got his barbecue just over the moon and. And phenomenal. So he got what he wanted.
He got a bunch of. My brother got a 3D printer, and so a bunch of straw bales, round bale, square bales, hay bales, grain bins he got. And semis with grain trailers. He didn't have those before from grandma and Grandpa. So he's just over the moon. So we got him a bit more, of course, poor kid's birthday right after Christmas. But we're trying our best not to hold that against them and to make sure he has a good birthday. So, three years old for Finn, Wilhelmina, she had a great Christmas as well.
Of course, you know, this kid's just having the best time. Anyways, what I'll say is, what really brought some joy to me is that her Christmas list was a little longer. I think there were six items. Some way, somehow, Grandma bought something off her Christmas list to Santa. And so our kids, they unwrapped their presents from grandma and grandpa on Christmas Eve. She opens it up, tears open, the package opens up. She's looking at it. It's a Barbie with a fishing rod and fish and a canoe thing. Anyways, great little thing. And she just looks at me and she's like, dad, I have to do something.
I'm like, yeah, we can open it up. You can play with it. She's like, no, I have to write a quick letter to Santa to let him know that grandma got me this and to not worry about it.
All right? Santa's magic kid. It's gonna be fine. He'll know. He just knows. And it's amazing that's you know, the spirit of Christmas and the magic of Christmas.
So she is like, I have to phone grandma and thank her for this gift and I have to find out like, how did she know?
And so she phones grandma. This whole thing about Santa, how did you know?
It was quite special. So that was great. Last positive moment for me this week. You know, my dad had a procedure this week. Again, not a huge medical thing, but still, anytime, you know, family member goes through a procedure, you just cross your fingers and hope that everything goes smooth. And, and it did. You know, he's, he's on, on the recovery here for 20, 26. We've got him, we've got him on the, on on the injured reserve list. We haven't put him on the LTIR yet, the long term injured reserve. We haven't put him up there yet, but he's on the injured reserve list for the next couple weeks as he, as he addresses and gets healed up. So good on you, Pops. Glad to see everything went well this week. All right, so let's move to different positive moments. Let's go to eating your veggies and then we will talk about the next few weeks here.
Eating your veggies for, for this week. Number one, it is the beginning of January. Do your inventory, guys. Just figure out your inventory count. You have time go and check those bins out. Do your, if you didn't, if you had the right setup, you know, through harvest profit, you wouldn't have to go and check out, check those bins. But if you have to go and double check, check your inventory and get that done.
Second thing for this week, cash flow.
I, I have six month cash flow in the crop marketing workbook, but I'm adjusting that to 12 months of cash flow. If you're going to go and do six months, go finish it off for the year, have it done so that you can execute your crop marketing plan when it comes to cash flow needs. All right, so get that done in the month of January. It's cold out. It's not cold out, but it's going to be cold out again. Work on this stuff while it's cold out. And the third one, I had set targets here from a crop marketing perspective, but that is not working. What I would say targets can work, but what I would say is you have to take that, tweak that this year and just have that verbal discussion with your grain buyer. There's two instances here in the last couple of weeks where the phone call paid pretty significant dividends. I would say on the sale, like, we, we had, you know, a message to put in a target on some wheat and some canola. And in both cases, having that conversation instead led to just contracts being written up at higher than the target prices. That's a little tweak for you right now is just to if you are a seller of grain or want to be a seller of, of your commodities, you got to start working the phones, guys. You got to start having those conversations. Maybe it's text messaging, but just having those conversations, identifying what you're looking for, what your needs are, and not just saying, here's the target merchant, you know, let us know. But just saying, like, what could we get done here? What could we do?
And that seems to be paying dividends right now. So it's not setting targets, more verbalizing where you want to get a sale done. And also you're finding these little opportunities where cars are showing up or on the horizon. And price, you're getting a little bit better price than what you maybe thought. So those are the three for eating your veggies for this week. All right, now to wrap it up here, we've got.
I want to talk, I want to talk margins next week on the show. I want to talk about crops that maybe stand out and some crops that are maybe looking a little bit scary for next year. But I'm going to have a couple of guests join me because I, I'm a little intrigued here by the folks over at Brett Young in regards to some of these, these forages and some of these seed options that are, are out there, rye grass being one of them.
So we are going to have a couple of folks here. We're gonna have Thomas and Al join me next week and just bring that into the conversation when it comes to looking at margins for this year and then just figuring out what stands out. I'm going to take some bold stabs at average prices for 20, 26 and see if that can help you in your planning and in your crop marketing after that. We're hoping to get David Derwin on the show with Ventum Financial. I believe David's wealth of knowledge when it comes to futures and option strategies. So forward, fingers crossed. Haven't locked that one in quite yet, but looking to get that done. And then it's January, it's crop insurance season already. Prices will be launched here next week, January 15th, you can get quotes for crop insurance. Lisa Porth with AGI3.
We're gonna record and probably record the third week of January, but that should be ready to go for you on January 30th. Now, of course, there'll be stories in there outside of this. There'll be headlines, there'll be what's going on strategy wise with your markets and, and things for you to consider. So a lot on the horizon here at the what the Futures podcast for the month of January. So that's it, folks. You've made it through episode 105. If you actually, if you made it this far, you have to send me a note, you have to send me a text or an email. Ryanothefutures Podcast, I need to know who made it to the end of episode 105. All right? If you do, let me know. I don't know. I got a bunch of these guys left over from the conference.
Actually, I got packages.
I don't know if you're interested in a package. Maybe I could pop that in the mail for you. It's a great little crop marketing workbook.
[01:53:06] Speaker C: I don't know.
[01:53:07] Speaker A: We'll think of something. But let me know if you made it. All right, folks, for the what's the Futures? Podcast, my name is Ryan and I'm out of here. Take care.
