Crop insurance prices are solidifying seeding intentions!

[00:00:22] Speaker A: Howdy, folks. Welcome to the what the Futures podcast, episode number 16. Of course, each and every episode is brought to you by our friends over at John Deere. And you know, out here in western Canada, we see a lot of different crop conditions. Fortunately, our friends at John Deere have a whole new lineup that can handle any crop in any condition. There's three new high horsepower nine RX tractors. There's a couple of new combines, a new high tech s seven, and of course, the X nine combines. There's even a new C series air cart. And I know this is the one my buddy was texting me about the other day. He's quite excited about the air cart. Check them out for yourself, folks. Head over to John Deere, CA, see what's coming our way this year. Lots of exciting equipment here at John Deere. All right, folks, let's set up the show here a little bit. I've got some mailbag questions, so thank you so much to Aidan, Brad, and Chris for asking a couple of questions. Here we have a few people in the draw for some canola seed. We're going to give that away next episode from our friends at pioneer Seeds. That is, of course, Jacob and Becky boychuk of Tower Farms. They're the agency that's been stepping up and helping out the show. So we got the mailbag, my hot topic. I'll just chat crop insurance numbers for a second. And the influence on Acres, my headline of the week, Dr. Cordinier's latest in the brazilian soybean production number. After that, we can talk crop prices, futures a little bit. And then for eating our veggies, we're going to actually talk about a presentation I did earlier this week. I've got Bret waltz with Bampwx, and I've got my mom making her podcast debut. She's a travel agent with Marlin travel. We're going to talk about Nashville. As you know, the podcast would love to send you and a friend to Nashville, Tennessee. All you have to do is ask me a question. Ryan, at whatthefuturespodcast. Ca. That's my email. Ask me a question about whatever crop markets, inputs, equipment, stuff, whatever it is. Send anything farm related. Send it my way. It's as easy as that. We're going to give away a trip to Nashville. Flights, hotels, that's all you have to do. And it couldn't be easier, folks. Couldn't be easier. All right. Of course you can follow our journey across social media. We're on X, we're on Instagram. We are on LinkedIn Facebook, we're on just about everything. And soon we will be on TikTok. Apparently I'm getting old, but I need know. Get onto TikTok. That's where it's at. And yeah, gotta get after it. All right, so let's get going here. My positive moment of the week. I only wrote down one for this week, which is strange, but I think I had three last week. So I guess we're evening out here a little bit. But I got in front of a group of farmers. I've done a little bit of presenting here lately, but this was my first. Well, it was Tyler that reached out to me and he said, ryan, come talk about markets to a group of farmers here. And I said, okay, like five or six. He's like, there's going to be 50. Okay, cool. I used to do these presentations all the time, but my last real market chat was back in 2022, just about two years ago, actually. I did a little tour of speaking events and my presentations. I'm not the smartest guy out there, right? So I don't put up a lot of charts and I don't put up a lot of s and Ds and stocks to use ratios. Honestly, I don't do a lot of that. It's more about having a conversation about what's going on in the markets and then trying to give a sense of what things might look like in the next little while. And I went through that presentation and I think I offended some people at certain points because I certainly did not say what folks wanted to hear. It was a little bit of a spicy presentation at times, but we did end it on a positive note. And if anyone here watches Ted Lasso or Ted Lasso on Apple, it's a great, it's three seasons, it's a soccer coach thing. American coach going over to coach, can't remember the name of the team now. Dropping. Losing my mind here today. But anyways, it's a great show and he's a big motivational guy. So we had that believe. He had the believe poster on the last slide. And I just told growers that it's been tough. Farmers have felt frozen in their crop marketing plans. Okay. I see it when I chat with growers here you are sending out these vibes where you're paralyzed in fear when it comes to crop marketing. But I believe in that room, in that group, and I believe in you listening as a farmer that you're going to work yourself out of this state of paralysis or frozen, being a frozen marketer and start to build confidence in your marketing plan. So I hope that I was able to give them a bit of confidence, but I loved it. I love getting in front of a group of growers. We had lots of questions, good interaction, and I have a bunch more coming. I think I've got five on the calendar right now. And I know had a company reach out that wanted to get some booked as well. So if you're tuning in, you're in the industry. Or honestly, if you want to get a group of farmers in your shop and have me come out and do my song and dance, hey, it might not work all the time, folks, but you can reach out and I will bring the projector. All right, so that's my positive moment of the week. Okay, let's go back to the mailbag here briefly. So I'm going to answer two of the questions for the sake of time. And also, Chris, great question, man. Like, fantastic question. But I need to phone at least one friend, maybe two, to get any idea on how to answer that. All right. It's a sensitive one. So Aiden reached out and he basically asked, and I won't read it word for word, but he basically asked. A couple of episodes ago, I talked about those contracts where you get that small premium right now. And then for the premium, you put out an offer for matching bushels. So if you have 100 bushels and someone's going to give you price of canola is $13, but they're going to give you 1325, that 25 cent premium in exchange for an offer of matching bushels for a futures price set in the fall. So again, maybe I'm not the best to be answering this, but if you get your extra $0.25. Now, they may say futures have to be November, futures have to be $600 on October, whatever, 10th. We'll say if there's $600 on October, 10 or higher, you owe me matching bushels at 600. Okay, hopefully you're following along. If the market is 550, you don't owe them anything. Okay. If the market is 650, well, you owe it to them at 600. Now, the numbers and all that, I don't want you to get too stressed out and confused about the numbers. What I want to say about these contracts, that you need to be number one, comfortable with what your offer is on the back end. Are you content with that price? If the market rallies and you sit here and say, hey, I had information at the time, it was my best decision, I'm good with it, then that's step one. Okay, but you have to be comfortable with it. The other thing to recognize here is it's going to handcuff your decision crop marketing decision ability later in the growing season. Okay? So follow along here. Let's say canola futures. Once upon a time, knob of 24 traded at 750. Maybe you did something there. Maybe you did your 1st 20%. Okay? And then now you've sat here and there's been a small pop in the market and you do a little bit more and you do a little bit more and all of a sudden you find yourself heading into the growing season or maybe at the early part of the growing season and you're maybe half sold. Now some of you just fell off your chair, Ryan, are you nuts? 2021 wasn't that long ago. Half sold. You're crazy. Okay, let's pump the brakes. Let's just pretend. If you're half sold and the market starts to rally, something happens in the US, it's dry. Bret from Bamwx will talk to us here in a few moments about weather. But you maybe want to sell more, but you can't because you have this firm offer out there that is dangling and you don't know if you're going to have to deliver on those bushels or not. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. Maybe the markets went up a whole bunch and it looks like you're going to have to, but you really don't know. And so it does handcuff you. I've experienced it where I sat there and thought, jeez, is that going to hit or not? Can I sell more? Do I have to hold back? It's part of it, that contract. If the market rallies and you don't produce the bushels, you got to figure out how to settle that thing. It's going to live there and you're going to have to deal with it. So it's a tough one. So just be cautious. The people that you're dealing with on these contracts, we'll consider them the experts in this. Right? We should. And so let them guide you through it. And also make sure they send you the one page or the sell sheet because they're selling these folks. They're not just giving them away, they're selling them. Right. They all have a goal. They need to sell some of these and some of them have budgets that they need to sell some of these things. Right. So just remember that you're part of a pitch. Right. So know what you're signing up for. Review the sell sheet, talk to a know, figure out if you're comfortable with this or not. So hopefully that helps. Aidan, thanks for the question, man. I appreciate it. Second question. Final question. Brad. For this week, Brad was wondering about. So AFSC crop insurance values came out in Alberta and green peas are insured at 1225 a bushel and yellow peas are insured at 871. Bit of a spread there. So Brad was wondering if that price and that spread would really impact acres. And so here's what I'd say, Brad, to that question. So that spread already exists. It has existed for the last couple of months. So we've been selling green peas at 14 and $15. We've been selling yellow peas at 1025, 1050. Can't say for sure if there's been an eleven, but that spread has been even a little bit wider and that spread has already attempted to buy as many acres as possible. Now, if you're bored one afternoon and you want to pick up the phone and call a seed grower and say, hey, what do you got for green pea seed? You might have a busy afternoon, there's not much kicking around, so you're going to have to make a few extra phone calls there. So I believe the damage is already done. And that's why when we've been talking about green peas and selling new crop green peas in the eating our veggie section, we've been aggressive, as aggressive as you can be. And actually, that leads me to another point here. I just got to write it down because I don't want to talk about it quite yet. There we go. So AFSC now has just confirmed that and we'll see what Saskatchewan has for a number. And Manitoba, I can't remember if they separated out green and yellow peas for a price and insured price. I want to say no. I was trying to google it here while recording and I can't find it. So I'll have to circle back and add to this question as well, or to this answer. But I believe it's already happened, my friend. I believe the spread has been there. It's influenced the acres. The only thing that this price does just bugs the yellow pea grower just a little bit. It's a little bit annoying because why is it 871 when I can sell them for ten or 1025? But my projections for yellow peas, again, take this with a grain of salt. But it wouldn't surprise me. My number is 850 a bushel. It's been that for a while. I think farmers at the end of the day, that could be the average price. And my problem is that I need to gain more confidence in India. So I need to talk to chuck more at left field. I need to figure out how to be more confident in India and their purchase power for canadian yellow peas, because I just don't like the China situation and the Russia China connection there. So I'm picking on yellow peas a little bit myself. But, hey, you never know. Never know what we'll see here. All right, again, mailbag. Again, you can get a chance to head over to Nashville, so send those questions in, Ryan, at whatthefuturespodcast ca. Okay. Okay. My hot topic of the week, actually, before I get to that, I just want to talk about act of God real quick here. Okay, so I have two scenarios for you and farmers listening, tuning in. Negotiations. Negotiating is a blast, right? You love negotiating on your equipment purchases. You love negotiating buying crop inputs like negotiation. Farmers love negotiating. Don't forget to negotiate with your grain contracts. Okay? And here's two examples from this week. Scouts honor. These have happened. First one's malt barley. So, once upon a time, we could get an act of God on the entire malt barley contract. And in some cases, you still can. But what used to happen is they'd say, hey, our price is whatever, $7, and we'll let you do, like, 70 bushels with act of God. So you could lock in 70 bushels at $7, and away you went. That, then went down to, like, 50, and then that went down to 20 bushels. Okay, but it's a negotiation, folks. And even though you might not be able to negotiate price, maybe you wanted 725, but you can really only get that seven out of them in markets like we're experiencing today that are in a bearish pattern. You might. I don't know, but you might want to be more aggressive, and you might want to sell more bushels at the seven, and you might want to extend your act of God on those bushels. And I've seen it happen. It was 20, then it went to 50. It's a negotiation, folks, for that farm. They felt comfortable at 50 bushels on their molt barley contract at whatever price they got, and they were able to get that done. It's 20 on the contract. It's 20 to everybody else. But negotiate. If you feel like there's a need for your farm here, you can negotiate it. I saw the same thing on green peas. Green peas. We normally, we get 1015 bushels with act of God. That's it. Have fun with it. But in my situation, I'm bearish the green pea market, because of reasons we just talked about moments ago, we were able to get an act of God on up to 50 bushels an acre of green peas. Remember, I keep saying, like, secure the bag. Well, if you can take $14 green peas at 50 bushels and secure $700 an acre, I don't know, folks, that looks pretty interesting to me. So anyways, folks, it's a negotiation. Don't forget to negotiate. And again, you might not get, might not be able to move the price up from nine dollars to ten dollars like you want to, but maybe you have to sell, maybe every sign points that you should be selling and just negotiate those act of gods here just a little bit. All right. That's what I love about doing the podcast, is just talking about the stories that exist across the prairies and bringing a little bit of transparency because it happens out there, folks. There's lots of different stories even I'm not privy to. But you guys do a great job of negotiation, so let's celebrate that a little bit. All right. Crop insurance numbers again, AFSC's numbers came out. I'm not going to talk about this a whole bunch, but what happened to me when I saw these numbers, and I apologize. I don't really have the lentil scenario in here at the moment. I was using this for a presentation further north, so I'll provide more context in the near future if I have to. But what it did, AFSC's numbers came out, and it just solidified to me that growers are going to plant that canola. Okay. And the reason is that you're insured at 1463, a bushel in Alberta. Saskatchewan's numbers will come out soon and it won't be that much different. So you're insured at that value, and it moves it to a very profitable level. It's a lot better than the 13 that we're staring out there. And so it moved into that one and two spot in my rankings, canola and specialty canola. Right. So the canola acre has been bought from insurance. It's going in. Then from there, we also saw the same thing with malt barley. It moves into my three spot at 737 that's going to buy the malt barley acre. Feed barley at 635 is good as well. A top five crop. Now, with feed barley, you can plant these crops after experiencing some very volatile weather and dryness, you can plant these crops and sleep a little bit. St. Jeez. These returns aren't what they were the last couple of years, but they're actually not too bad. It buys these acres in, folks. That's what this does. I've got green peas coming in in the 6th spot, but yellow peas totally fall off at 871. They totally fall off into that 13 spot. They're really pushing back here. And same thing with wheat. The wheat scenario is, again, higher. The insured price is higher than what you can get today, but below a break even, in my opinion, for a lot of farms. And it just shows tough slugging. The most upset grower in Alberta, from a crop insurance perspective is the soft white grower, because you're insured at 572 a bushel, which is not good, and you can sell it and you crop for eight. So it's one of the few crops where I look here and know, what could I sell this for? It's like the only one where the price is way higher than what it's insured at. So in Saskatchewan, you'd sell it at eight, bring that to SCIC and say, hey, I've sold it all at eight, insure me at eight. And there's an option where you can do that. Oats I didn't talk about yet. It's at 511 a bushel, so it still holds in that top four spot. So anyways, insurance does drive behaviors and acres, and it will certainly see that this year. Once again, egg headlines again, folks, I know that you're in tune with what's going on. You read the headlines every day. But I just wanted to note here, south american crop, soybean crop production levels, they continue to decline. And most of the private analysts now, or the private firms, they're in the 140s. All right, so we saw some 150s, we saw some 149s. We even have some one hundred and forty five s. And I think Dr. Ordina, he's kind of the guru here when it comes to south american production number 145. I don't know, find it on here. He is down. This is telling me 147, but I thought I saw 145, but 147 is what we'll say for now. So he cut his brazilian soybean output by 2 million tons. All right. And every firm is cutting their production down a little bit. So you'd think that that would boost these markets a little bit. Just a little bit. Unfortunately, not really seeing that soybeans had a rough day today. Down twelve cents. And I'll tie it all together. You add in Argentina, which has been raised by many analysts here lately, put the two together. Still staring down a record crop in a demand story that's faltering or pulling back so I guess that's why we're not seeing it but wanted to highlight that those numbers are continuing to decline. All right, crop price updates, folks. Honestly, it'd be a lot funner here if we could talk about bullish markets instead. I have a big board behind the studio here and the only thing that really stands out to me today and I probably haven't done a great job of checking into prices this week, but honestly, like canola spring wheat, feed wheat, like feed barley, everything is. There's nothing super great on the board. Yellow peas, though I did see some 14s pop up for old crop yellow peas again. Now, last time yellow peas were at 14. We put our hand up and said, hey, sell those. And so we're going to do that again. 14 is out there again, folks. Negotiate that. Get your old crop yellow peas priced. If you want to have some fun with it, tell them, hey, I'll give you some old crop at 14, give me some new crop at eleven or twelve. I don't know, maybe they'll do something with that. But give that a go. Other than that, folks, jeez, green peas are hanging in. I don't know. I don't really have anything fresh to talk about. That's really exciting. So we'll keep moving on. All right, let's do our eating the veggie section and then we're going to get to Bret waltz of Bamwx. Okay. So I just wanted to go over again. I did this presentation and I had a couple of tips here and I've been harping on you guys. Do your cost of production, figure out your break, even, make a crop marketing plan, sell this, that or consider selling again. I don't know you. I don't know your farm. I might be out to lunch. Seek the advice of a professional always. But here's my eating the veggies for this week. Okay? And this is from my slide deck, my presentation. Number one, evaluate everything on your farm. So 2024 is not the hard year when it comes to financials for farming in western Canada. In my opinion, 2025 and 2026, those are the hard years. Okay? 2024 is not the hard year because you have enough weather stuff going on that I think you're going to see opportunity to price in rallies. Okay? And your insurance prices are higher today than when we get this report next year at this time they're going to be down another 1015 percent. Whatever it is, they're going lower. This is not the hard year. Okay? I want you to evaluate everything on your farm. What are you paying for a dollar out? What are you getting back in return? Okay. Review your financials, review your services, review your inputs, review everything that you're doing and see where you can gain some efficiencies here or save some money. Again, if you're spending a dollar and getting that plus in a return, then obviously it makes sense to keep it. But you should evaluate everything. Our farm, we went through an exercise of evaluating, doing some evaluation around some of the services that we have on the farm, and then we decided to put up the service, review it, review our level of satisfaction, the benefits, the pros, the cons. And then if we were to take it, know what could replace it, at what cost, what risk. And we went through a few exercises like this on the farm and made some decisions based around that. Now, maybe there's someone listening and saying, ryan, let's say, Ryan, you're insane. That's not how you do it. But anyways, that's how we do it. We're looking at everything right now. We're trying to lean up a little bit because it's going to be tough here the next couple of years, in my opinion. I'll be the first one to be bullish, guys, but it's tough slugging. Okay, evaluate everything. Number two for today. Okay, let's go. To create your ROI goal, return on investment. So now you know your costs, you know your break evens. Pick a goal to aim for. If it's 5% return on investment, 4%, 3%, whatever it is, those are normal goals. If you want to put 1020, 30%, you can. It's just not achievable. Right. We've seen that the last couple of years, but we're not going to see that in 2024. But you should set a goal on what pays all the bills, what gives me an opportunity to maybe expand or grow the farm. And if I sell at these prices, with x yields, certain yields, I'm going to survive and I'm actually going to build up the war chest for the next opportunity. Figure that out. Okay. And the third one, I'll just say I've been contracting in smaller increments. And I think that for you to gain your confidence back for crop marketing, that would be one way to do it. Small contracts. I've done a whole bunch of 2024 crop marketing like I have. Right. Time will tell, but some of the stuff's been done for a while and it feels good. It feels good to get something down on paper and get after it a little bit. It feels good to start executing your crop marketing plan. I'm positive I've said that on the podcast as well, but it feels good. Smaller contracts might start to help you build up your confidence again, and I promise you, you'll feel better. Starting to pick around the edges again. Sell the green crops, green peas, green lentils. There was oat opportunities out there to look at. There was weed opportunities a couple of weeks ago. There's yellow peas out there for new crop. There's things you can do, and I strongly encourage you to brush off the dust on that plan, and you'll feel better. Okay? But contract in smaller increments. I'm going to leave that for eating your veggies for this week. That's what I want you to think about. And you can reach out if you have more questions around that or whatever, but that's what I would put out there. Okay, let's get to Bret with Bam WX next, and then I'll be back and we'll get going with Marlin travel and that trip to Nashville. So Bret waltz coming up. All right, folks, I've got Brett waltz with Bam WX joining me here once again. Bret, how's your day going? [00:29:16] Speaker B: It's great. It's been beautiful here. It was 66 degrees here yesterday. Maybe got up to 68, I think, so it just feels like spring. It's easy to forget that it's still late February, but we'll take it. [00:29:27] Speaker A: Are you getting that kind of. That spring energy yet? Like, my wife all of a sudden is like, looking out the window, and she's like, hey, we're booking our camping. We're planning our spring projects already. And I'm like, it's February. Are you getting that spring energy down there as well? [00:29:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I am. We had an event yesterday where we got to spend some time outside, and I'm just like, it was sunny and in the. It was great. And I was like, I'm ready for this every single day. Ready to dust off the golf clubs, ready to put out the patio furniture. So I'm ready. I'm all for it. [00:30:00] Speaker A: Perfect. All right. One thing I look forward to at this time every year, you guys do a great job of webinars and kind of taking a peek at what's coming for outlooks. Anything on the horizon? [00:30:15] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. So next Wednesday, February 20 eigth, 11:00 a.m. We do have our annual planting season webinar, so we're going to go over what conditions are going to be for the planting season. Late frost and freeze risk? Are there going to be increasing dry areas or maybe areas that are a little too wet? And then, of course, severe weather. And I think that is actually really good timing because I do think in the US we're going to have an uptick in severe weather as we work into next week. So it's bmwx.com slash webinar. It's free to sign up. I would highly encourage anybody to hop. [00:30:48] Speaker A: On and join us, and I will do my best to put it in the show notes as well. So make it nice and easy for folks. Awesome. Okay, let's chat some weather now. Let's talk about us weather. What's on your minds right now when. [00:31:02] Speaker B: It comes to, I mean, I think the big story is just how warm it is. I mean, really coast to coast over the next two weeks, it's just well above normal. And really for a lot of the ag belt in the midwest, it's just ten to 15 degrees above normal pretty consistently. And again, as I mentioned earlier, it has felt like spring. It's going to continue to feel like spring. But then I think attention next week turns to the pattern getting a little more active. And I do think some early season severe weather potential is on the table to end February and to start march for the central part of the country into the Ohio Valley. [00:31:37] Speaker A: When you say severe, is it from a cold weather perspective or from moisture? What, what would you say? [00:31:45] Speaker B: No, that's a great question. I'm talking mainly about tornado threats, wind threats, hail threats. We've got a powerful cold front that's going to work through really right through the eastern plains in the Ohio Valley. I think it's next Wednesday. Later next Wednesday. And so two days in a row of know, wind threats, maybe a couple tornado threats, hail. I think that's on the table next Tuesday and into Wednesday. And so again, kind of weird to be talking about for late February. It's been a long time that I can remember us having severe weather chances this early in the season, really in a widespread manner. [00:32:24] Speaker A: I know you'll cover it in the webinar next week, but is that giving you any indication for what's to come later on this spring? [00:32:33] Speaker B: Yeah, somewhat. But I also think that in situations where we have strong El Ninos like we've had this year, sometimes we get a fast start to severe weather season because it tends to be warmer into the early part of spring, but it tends to slow down a little bit in El Nino years or coming off of them at least later into the season. And so really it's just kind of typical of what normally happens when we have these strong El Nino states. [00:33:02] Speaker A: Okay, what about as you take a peek further north into Canada here? Our pattern has been very, I'd say, consistent for quite a while. We did have a cold snap here in January, but it's nice. And know the little snow I have is melting again here. Once again. Is that going to change or is it going to stay the same for a little? [00:33:28] Speaker B: You know, it's interesting. You all are up into Canada, far enough north that as the jet stream really shifts north with these storm systems that I was talking about, into next week in the US, I do actually think that there's some opportunities for some additional winter weather, maybe some snow chances over the next seven to ten days or so. I think there's a system early next week and then maybe another one into next weekend. And so while I wouldn't say it's notably cold, I actually do think that you all have in a spot for a decent storm track the next seven to ten days. I don't necessarily think that's going to stick around, though. I think the further you work into early March, that kind of backs off. You get a little bit warmer and a little bit less active. [00:34:10] Speaker A: Okay, well, we'll cross our fingers because I don't know anyone that would not take a snow right now. We'd all appreciate some of that weather. So we can't get on our snowmobiles here, Bret. We can't do anything right now. Everyone's getting. [00:34:28] Speaker B: Yeah, we've had some of that with snow removal companies around, you know, need the snow. Need the snow. We got a little bit. Last week lasted for about a day. It's been gone for a while now. [00:34:38] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. All right, so webinars coming up. That's going to be the big one. We've talked about the US, we've talked about Canada. I know there's been a little bit of chat about South America. Is there anything there you want to touch on briefly? [00:34:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Argentina really actually kind of started the season off decently compared to last year, which was so hot and dry. But I do think that the season there is ending on a hotter and drier note. And so that's an area of concern that I think needs to be watched. And then you look at a year like 2016 in parts of Brazil, especially central Brazil, it did dry out kind of further into March and April. And so I think that that is a risk, though. There could be some timely rains in the short term. [00:35:22] Speaker A: Okay, I appreciate that. Okay. So anything else you want to cover off heading into the webinar? [00:35:29] Speaker B: Yeah, leading up to the webinar, I just wanted to let people know that we do have a little 20% off promo for agriculture, the agriculture industry. So if you reach out to us, you can go to our website, bamwx.com and hit the contact bam button. We're happy to help you out and get you in on that 20% off promo just strictly for agriculture to kind of celebrate the start of the season here. [00:35:54] Speaker A: Yeah, awesome. Well, that's great. Folks can definitely check that out. I did a presentation the other day to some growers. There was about 60 growers in the room and it's a bit of a marketing type update. Strange, I never gave any advice on where to sell your crops, but still managed to speak for about an hour. But anyways, I gave like a little bit of a homework list and a to do list. And one of the things I put up there was just subscribing to a weather service and I actually highlighted more of a US based weather service because in my opinion, and I'm not a weather person at all, I have no idea what I'm talking about. But the severity of the weather this year, it's going to be, in my opinion, it's going to be key to keep an eye on what's going on in your backyard, Bret, what's happening down in the corn belt, because it's going to have an influence on these markets and markets are in the tank. It's been a tough winter, markets trending lower. But if there's going to be any excitement, we're going to want to watch that us weather. So that was one of my little takeaways for the group, folks. If you're tuning into the podcast today, save yourself 20% and reach out to BAMWx. So thanks, Bret. Appreciate you coming on here once again. I'm going to tune into the webinar next week and we'll chat maybe later part of March and see what things are looking like for spring. [00:37:22] Speaker B: That sounds great. I really appreciate you having me on and I always look forward to it. And yeah, hope to see you all at the webinar next week. [00:37:28] Speaker A: Awesome. Thanks, Bret. Take care. [00:37:30] Speaker B: Yep, thank you. [00:37:31] Speaker A: All right, another update here from Bret. Always appreciate having those guys jump on the pod. And again, folks, spring weather outlooks, I just encourage you to jump into those and even have them on in the background, see what's shaking out there for weather around the globe and in the US. And you never know, it might just impact your crop marketing plan here as we enter the spring of 2024. All right, we're approaching the later part of the show here. We're going to bring in my mom making her podcast debut, angel with Marlin travel. She's going to give us some insight on Nashville, Tennessee. And of course, folks, I've harped on it enough this episode. Send me a question, I'll try to get you an answer. And we're going to give that away later on this month. You'll notice haven't put it anywhere in social media, just listeners tuning into the show, getting a chance to potentially win a trip to Nashville. If I were you. Again, this is selfish of me, but if you share this with a friend, the show, again, number one, thank you. If you shared the show, I appreciate that. But if you went and said, hey, there's like 20 people in this contest, I'm going to go talk to my buddies and maybe there's a way where someone else wins and they take you with them. Maybe you say, hey, Bob, put your name in here. If you win, if I win, we're going to Nashville. We're going know, check out some Tennessee whiskey or whatever it's going to be, I don't know, share the show with. Folks, I appreciate all the comments and all the feedback I get. So let's get into it here with Marlin travel. All right, folks, I've got angel Denis joining me from Marlin Travel in Saskatoon, as you can probably tell by the last name, this is my mom joining me on the podcast here. And of course, folks, we are sending two of you away. A pair, one winner, but a pair of tickets to head to Nashville, Tennessee at some point in 2024. That's basically up to you, but we're going to draw for that later on here in the month of March. And to get entered, all you have to do is ask me a question. You email Ryan at whatthefuturespodcast ca, of course, that is sponsored by pioneer seeds Jacob and Becky Boychuk of Tower Farms. Send me a question like Brad, Aiden, Scott, there's a few others I'm missing here. They've sent in questions here over the last week and you're going to hear those answers shortly. But good ods, folks, to get entered to potentially win a trip here to Nashville, Tennessee. So, mom, how's your day going? [00:40:17] Speaker C: It's good. Busy, but good. [00:40:20] Speaker A: Good. [00:40:20] Speaker C: Trying to sort out a curling bond spill next weekend? [00:40:25] Speaker A: Yes. Nice. And I know you got travel plans coming up here as well, but before we get into that. Why don't you do a little intro about your background? Is this the first podcast you've ever been on, by the way? There we go. There's the s. Okay. All right, let's just do a quick intro. What's your story? [00:40:47] Speaker C: My story? I've been a travel agent. It will be 20 years this year, and I'm retiring this summer. For real? I've traveled. I was lucky and blessed enough to be able to travel to many places. Europe. The only place I haven't been to is Asia yet, but it is on my bucket list. [00:41:14] Speaker A: And is there something that stands out, a trip that stands out or a location that stands out for you as the best one? [00:41:22] Speaker C: Depends what you're looking for. You want to relax, you want to enjoy some sun. You would go to Mexico, Dominican, Jamaica. It's been phenomenal. If you want a history lesson and sea culture and things like that, you got to go to Europe. [00:41:39] Speaker A: Yeah. What about for you and dad? What's the best one you've been on? Every one of them vacations are all good. Hey, no bad ones. [00:41:48] Speaker C: When you're married to a farmer and you take him on a holiday and he leaves the farm behind, he's a totally different man. So every holiday we've taken has been the best. [00:41:59] Speaker A: And you did get him to go across the pond into Europe this couple months ago. There you go. [00:42:06] Speaker C: But it had to do with farm. We went to Agritechnica, so that was a boost, but at least I got to see what I wanted to see as well. [00:42:14] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Nice. All right, and what do you got next for holidays? Where are you going next? [00:42:20] Speaker C: Mexico. Puerto Vallarta. [00:42:23] Speaker A: Nice. [00:42:24] Speaker C: It's always pretty much a guarantee of beautiful weather. The people are awesome, cool beers are cold. [00:42:36] Speaker A: And you've been there a few times. Right. So you have a little sense of community down there now. Right? You know, some people. All right, so for the podcast, we initially thought we'd send someone to Vegas. That was the initial conversation. And then after doing a little bit more research and talking to some folks, Nashville, Tennessee, seems to be a little bit of a buz or a hotspot right now. Have you been to Nashville, and is there anything that stands out? [00:43:13] Speaker C: Yes, I've been to. It's. They call it the new Vegas without slot, but it's music, music, music. It's party going. You go down to Beale street, you can go to where BB king, Elvis Presley, they all started. And it's absolutely. There's, I think it's called Parthenon. There's a roman building there that's built. It's a replica of the Parthenon. That's amazing to look at, too. There are, uh, music hall of Fame, but you cannot forget the grand old offering. [00:43:56] Speaker A: Right. Is that still, like. Is there shows regularly then over pretty much every day. [00:44:03] Speaker C: Every day. And it's like you really don't know who's going to be on that night, but it's all great performers and people that you've known, like you might. Oh, gosh. When I went, who did we see now, I can't remember, but it was a new and upcoming singer that was out number one hit. It was just amazing. [00:44:28] Speaker A: Nice. So you got lots of music. How about the food? How's the food over there? [00:44:33] Speaker C: Wow, that's great. If you're on a diet, it's not so great, but you've got to broaden your horizons and check it out. [00:44:46] Speaker A: Yeah. I think over in the big city here where I live, they call it, like, nashville hot chicken or something like that is a popular thing that's popping up in restaurants. So I'm assuming there's some hot chicken to grab in Nashville, Tennessee as well. [00:45:01] Speaker C: Yeah. And if you want to as well, there's this boat. It's called Johnny Cash. It's called a general Jackson. [00:45:10] Speaker A: Okay. [00:45:11] Speaker C: And you can take dinner cruise on that in the evening. And it's got entertainment, great food. Yeah. [00:45:21] Speaker A: Any day trips out of the city there. Was there anything you popped out of the city for and then came back? [00:45:27] Speaker C: Yeah, you could scoot down to Memphis, Tennessee, and check out Elvis Presley's graceland. It's a couple hours. [00:45:35] Speaker A: Yep. [00:45:36] Speaker C: But there are tours that you can take to do all these things. Our favorite tour company that we use for day trips and specific, like the Granule Opry, things like that. We use a tour company called Viatour. And anyone can book on Viatour. They just go to our Marlin travel, 1363, and go to other activities. And they can book directly and have help or backup. If you need extra help with your booking, then we have control of. [00:46:13] Speaker A: Oh, okay. And that's a site where you can look at all the tours and everything going on? [00:46:18] Speaker C: Yeah. And there's pages of them. [00:46:21] Speaker A: Nice. Okay, so Memphis was one of the day trips there. Elvis's home, so. Yeah. [00:46:32] Speaker C: And there's also this estate. It's called the bell Mead estate, and it's a winery, and they also breathe Thor bread. So, like horses, like wine. You want to take it. The property is unbelievable. You can even take a tour to see all of the country western stars home if you want to. [00:47:02] Speaker A: If you're into. How about did you go look at any Tennessee whiskey tours or anything like that? [00:47:13] Speaker C: There's plenty of tours include for breweries. [00:47:23] Speaker A: Well, it sounds like a party. Definitely sounds like a party. [00:47:26] Speaker C: But I guess I'll have to go back to check it out. [00:47:30] Speaker A: Yeah. You always have to leave something. [00:47:32] Speaker C: You do it all in a small amount of time. [00:47:37] Speaker A: No, when we were in Hawaii, there was something that we missed and we missed it for a reason. So we can go. [00:47:44] Speaker C: Yep. [00:47:44] Speaker A: Cool. Well, thanks for joining me to touch a little bit on Tennessee here. Nashville, Tennessee. Is there any hot vacation out there right now that's catching some buz? Like are people booking a different spot that's popular right now or is there anything that stands out vacation wise. [00:48:09] Speaker C: With everything with COVID with little kerfuffles, you want to call them, with the airlines and things like that? People are a little standoffish. But this year has been actually pretty smooth sailing, which is nice price wise. Dominican and Cuba are affordable, some Mexico getting pricier and pricier. Jamaica is still at the standstill. So there's really not depends what you want to do. People like Mexico because it's only a five hour flight and compared to Dominican it's a seven. All these things. One thing I wanted to point out is that Edmonton and Calgary are super lucky because they have flights going out pretty much every day to any destination and the pricing is great. Also going to Nashville, direct flights from Edmonton. Direct flights from. [00:49:12] Speaker A: Yep. [00:49:13] Speaker C: So if you have a winner from that area, they're going to enjoy that. [00:49:17] Speaker A: Well, I hope they invite me along when they win. So thanks for joining us today, mom. If anybody wants to get a hold of you, do you have an email address? I know you're retiring this summer, but in between now and then, best way. [00:49:31] Speaker C: To contact you, Denise at Marlintravel, CA all right, perfect. [00:49:37] Speaker A: Okay, thanks again, mom. Have a great time in Mexico. And again, folks, all you have to do is email me a question. It could be a grain marketing question, a farm business question. It could be anything. I actually got some hard ones here. Chris from up in the peace region. Can't remember the exact name of the town. Spirit river maybe. Maybe that's it. He asks a doozy of a question. I don't even know if I can answer it on the podcast this week. So that's all you have to do. Email me Ryan at whatthefuturespodcast ca his question was about equipment, equipment prices and so anyways, folks, anything and everything's on the table. So just send me a question and you'll get entered to win potentially a trip for two to Nashville, Tennessee. Thanks again, mom. Take care. [00:50:24] Speaker C: Bye. Love you. [00:50:26] Speaker A: Well, that's going to do it, folks, for episode 16. Thank you so much for following along the journey here. I've got lots of stuff coming out. My episode with Christy of rebellion Farms here should drop any moment. I've got egg eye three for a special episode coming out on Monday. So if you're looking for some different options here on risk management and crop insurance, check out that episode with Ray Bouchard that drops on Monday. Lots of different things going on with the podcast, folks. So I appreciate everything. I appreciate you guys tuning in, reaching out, commenting. I'm almost basically out of swag. I got a few orders to fill here, but I'm down to the nitty gritty. I've got some box of stuff going out to Manitoba. We're got a young couple getting married. We're going to support their social events and some stuff over there. Got some hats going down into southern Saskatchewan as well, but not a lot kicking around here. So thanks for those that reached out just about out of swag, but that's it folks, for episode 16. Stay safe out there. I'm out.