Episode Transcript
[00:00:21] Folks, welcome back to the what the Futures podcast. I hope everybody, everybody's having a fantastic start to their positive Friday.
[00:00:28] I shouldn't say start, I don't know what time you actually listen to this thing, but anyways, I hope you're having a good day, whatever day of the week it is that you're tuning in. Of course. Episode 15 is brought to you by John Deere again, John Deere, we appreciate your support of the what the Futures podcast. Much more to come from them in the very near future. And February is a big month. I think commodity classic here is later this month, so we will stay tuned for what's coming from John Deere updates at Commodity Classic. I am recording at the farming smarter conference here in Lethbridge, Alberta. My first time in Lethbridge, Alberta. It's a great place to visit. Had some great mexican food last night and nice little downtown area. So it's been a good couple of days here. As you can see behind me, I'm recording in the Agai three booth here at the show and I love that slogan behind me. You're not average so your crop protection shouldn't treat you that way. They are very busy over at AgI three. If you're looking for an alternative or something different for your risk management needs in 2024, go look them up. Agi three AI, you can see it on the banner right behind me. All right, folks, I am here bright and early, but we are going to give these earbuds a pretty good test today because I've got music playing behind me and people starting to filter into the event. So we'll see what happens. You never know. Might even have a special guest pump by.
[00:01:58] As of recording here, it's going to be a little bit of a shorter episode compared to the last couple just because Internet connection has been a little bit of a struggle here. So we'ren't able to record with anybody else. So we'll keep it short and have some fun with it. Do you guys remember back in episode one? We're at episode 15, we're not even that far along. But episode one, I joked would be the least listened to episode. So I was kind of joking about the sound quality. Could be poor yada yada because it was going to be the least listened to episodes. Well, sometimes you call the easy ones because that is the case by a long shot. It's actually pretty fun to see how the numbers here for us have climbed over the last couple of months. And episode one is way at the bottom. So if you want to give episode one a little bit of love, go listen to a couple of minutes of the numbers. Perk up a little bit on that one. But anyways, it was kind of fun.
[00:03:03] All right, a little bit more of a serious tone here for just a moment, folks. But just in regards to mental health, just for a second, I know that I could sit here and talk about markets and give some indication or suggestions on what to look at.
[00:03:29] I just want to know that. I know that it's extremely stressful out there.
[00:03:36] It's painful like I'm recording on February 15 on Valentine's Day, the canal market just gets crushed here once again. And I just want to remind everybody tuning in to check on your people, check on other folks, check on your neighbors right now.
[00:03:58] It wasn't an easy year, and it's not an easy year for most farms out there. It's been extremely hard this winter, especially for crop marketing. And yields weren't spectacular for many in 2023. So I don't know where your local watering hole is or what your vice could be, or maybe it's something like going and shooting skeet or tossing rocks down a frozen sheet, whatever makes you smile, whatever that is. Don't forget to fit that in right now.
[00:04:30] Escape for a little bit. Hopefully go chat with some people, do something you enjoy and feel a little bit better, at least for the evening or for a couple of days.
[00:04:43] We don't know each other. If you're listening, I probably don't know you or know you very well, but I'm also here all the time. If anyone wants to connect, just message me. I'm always up for a good bullshitting session and I know it's tough slugging out there, folks. So I don't want to say keep your chin up or put your boots on or whatever the sayings are. Instead, reach out to the people around you and to your neighbors and your other folks. And if you can get together for coffee, whatever it is, I just think it's important right now to get together a little bit. It's the dead of winter. I know it hasn't been as miserable, but it's the dead of winter. It's been a tough year farming, tough winter of crop marketing. But just connect and that will help everybody out.
[00:05:30] All right, again, short and sweet today for our show. So I've got my hot topic. I have two of them we'll get to. I've got just one egg headline I want to talk about, USDA, some outlook stuff, some crop price updates which aren't very fun. And our Ethan Veggies section as well. And then at the end, I might tee up who's coming up here in the near future. It's actually been a busy week of recording with the podcast. We have a couple of specials coming out. One of them being with Christy from rebellion Farms and just putting the final touches on that hopefully goes out over the weekend. But Christie's farm experienced lack of payment from a grain company.
[00:06:15] We're going to talk about that a little bit in great detail. So that episode is going to be specific to that and a couple other things on the go. So next week I'll try to make up for it. I'll see if I can get Mike Lee with us, our russian Ukraine agronomist. He's going to come in and help us out. Apparently a big crop coming in Russia already, so we got to talk about that. And we're going to have weather as well. Get a bit of a spring update on our weather forecast.
[00:06:45] Of course, you can follow our journey here. What the futures across social media and coming soon to TikTok as well. I've been convinced that I need to get on TikTok, so apparently a lot of you are. And I guess I got to get on that space also. One last thing. Here I am clearing out the last of my clothing. I don't have a lot left. I've got some earmarked for donations and a few things like that. But I got a couple of hoodies left, a couple of t shirts. If you're interested in any what the future's clothing or swag, just send me a message with your size, and then I can send you what's left. Send you a picture of what's left. It's not much, but I do want to clear out for the spring. I'll always have hats. What? The futures hats. I've got more coming, and maybe I'll have one item kicking around, one piece of clothing or something. I don't know. But I just like to clear this out because I'm not in the retail business and I'd like to get some shelves space back in the old garage.
[00:07:48] All right, positive moment for this week for me.
[00:07:52] So I went out for my daughter, and I were out last, it must have been last Friday, actually, and we had an appointment, and my daughter's three. And I asked her, where do you want to go for lunch? It was like late morning, and she looked at me and she said, dad, let's go to Costco. And I said, I want to go to Costco for lunch? She said yeah, let's go to Costco. So we go to Costco. Of course you can't go to Costco and just have lunch. So we bought a few things, did about eleven taste testers. I'm not sure why we even needed to grab a hot dog at the end, but we did.
[00:08:30] So of course the cafeteria area where you stayed is full and there's this older couple and they said hey, you're looking for a spot to sit? We said yeah. And they said well if you don't mind, come sit with us. Sure. I said are you sure though? Because once we sit down we're going to have a lot to tell you. And they said oh, that's fine. So anyways, we sit down with this couple, we find out that they're retired. They move from Vegerville to Camrose. And as we're talking, this gentleman, he retired from the AG was they built a grain elevator at Legacy junction just outside Camerose. I should have looked at the date, I want to look at the date before recording. But anyways, this guy, one of his jobs is he had to go to 15 or 18 communities and let them know that they were shutting down their local elevator and that all deliveries were now going to this behemoth, this mega facility at legacy junction. And I just was thinking about what type of those meetings would have been tense, it would have been something new, something strange. And that was his job here. At one point he went and had to talk to all these communities and let them know that we're building this massive facility and that's where you're going to be delivering. I think it was Alberta Wheatpool that built it. Anyways, he talked about how the facility was so new and exciting. It was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They had hot food when you were delivering. You could have a lunch or supper or whatever. They always had coffee on.
[00:10:24] They were paying trucking, which I'm assuming is more of that canadian wheat board freight assistance thing, but I'm not sure. We didn't get into that. But honestly, by the time we finished talking about this place, it sounded like a paradise. You had to deliver further, but it was an amazing experience. So anyways, you just never know who you're going to run into. And we ended up chatting with them for it must have been close to an hour and it was just a great little visit. We ended up knowing some of the same people and we had worked in some of the same facilities as well. He worked out at Star and I worked out at Star, so it was pretty cool to see.
[00:11:04] All right, second positive moment.
[00:11:07] Speaking events. I've now got like five on the calendar here into March, so thank you for reaching out. I'm chatting with a bunch of farmer groups, and if you want me to come out to your event, just let me know. Reach out. And I'm looking forward to them. And then my last one, I know it's been tough crop marketing, so I got three positive moments for this week. But when you finally, you sold something and you don't know, maybe it was a big sale, a lot of bushels, and you're nervous that I made that sale and the market's going to climb and I'm going to look like an idiot. But when you do make that sale and then the market drops and you look back and say, jeez, that feels pretty good now. Like I made that sale and I'm a buck or a buck 50 or whatever it is ahead of the market. That kind of happened for me this week. Like that feeling, because wheat futures have absolutely collapsed here this week. We fell through some support.
[00:12:10] So now you look back and say, jeez, that sale I made in December actually feels pretty good. So I hope you get that little feeling as well because I got a little bit of that this week.
[00:12:19] All right, mailbag segment. I don't have any new questions here, but it is brought to you by pioneer seeds, which is, of course, tower Farms, and Jacob and Becky Boychuk. We give away a bag of canola seed every month that's worth like $800. And we have a couple of people in, Tyler's in, Scott's in. So far. A couple of questions coming through, but a quiet week. All you have to do is email. Ryan at whatthefuturespodcast CA that's all you have to do. Ryan at whatthefuturespodcast ca.
[00:12:49] Ask me a question. It could be a crop marketing question. It could be about weather or whatever. You can ask me anything you want and I'll try to find you an answer. I'll google it for all of us and we'll get the answers for you. And if you do that, you get your name entered to win number one, a bag of canola seed. But the podcast here is also giving away a trip to Nashville, Tennessee, trip for two with marlin travel. And I got to get my mom on to talk about nashville here in the next couple of weeks. So we're going to give that away at the end of March. All you have to do is ask a switch to the hot topic here.
[00:13:31] And I've got two. Okay, well, number one.
[00:13:37] So wheat futures have just fallen apart.
[00:13:46] Well, if I look back, where is it in my show notes here?
[00:13:52] So back in like episode, I don't know, 6810 for sure.
[00:14:01] 1314. I talked about selling wheat, sell wheat, sell wheat. I've been selling wheat since late last year. I've been selling wheat in big chunks, selling wheat, and it really hasn't burnt me at all at this point. But as we sit here in mid February, I just want to highlight as a hot topic that wheat has fallen through its support level, a major support level. And are we going to see rallies again? 100% we are. But as of recording here, bright and early, it's down another nickel. May is trading at 658. I kind of was using that, pardon me, that 690 level, $7 as support.
[00:14:53] Well, here we are now at 658. And when you look at the charts, I'm not a chart expert, please talk to an expert. But to see it drop down to 615 for futures or $6, not out of the question.
[00:15:10] The demand has still been strong across the prairies. I would say I've been pretty happy with demand, and even today the demand seems fine.
[00:15:19] Basis levels are still hanging in. Not as good as they were, but still pretty decent. Like it hasn't been a big game changer.
[00:15:26] But I would say I just need you to know that for wheat, we have fallen through the support. We are making our way to our next line of support, which could be down another $0.50 here. We'll see. But as you can see, the trend, right, everything is under the gun here and under pressure. And weed is no different. Spring weed is no different. So if you haven't done anything yet, folks, do I throw it in the eat your veggie section once again?
[00:15:54] I've been talking about it so much, but I get it, folks. You can be a bull in the spring. I get it. I'll be a bull in the spring, too. We'll all be bullish in the spring. We got to get there. We got to get there. We're not there yet. Second hot topic here is you guys have all seen this now. So canola demand has picked up. Okay, I got a message from a green company. Don't want to pick on them too much here, but I'll just say it. I won't read it word for word. But it was about delivering your canola and then pricing it whenever you want between now and July. If you want to price it in May, it's a $5 fee. If you want to price it in July, it's going to be a $10 a ton fee. Okay, but what I want to say, folks, and if you've delivered grain to them on this today, don't beat yourself up. But what I want to say is if they need it, and we're seeing basis specials all over the prairies, all across the prairies from your line companies, we sold over a million tons to China. They're filling that in. Okay, so you have that demand.
[00:17:07] Why would you just bring it to, like, why would you just say, hey, here you go. So I could think of a few reasons. Number one, if your canola is coming out of condition, or you are worried about your canola coming out of condition, that's a reason, right? Because heated canola is worth a few bucks less per bushel.
[00:17:28] Maybe you want to get delivered before roadbands. Come on. Maybe you've been stalling, installing, and now you're like, hey, I want to clean this out before roadbands. Okay, that's another reason. But your reasons are about logistics and about condition and maybe cash flow as well. But if you're doing this deal, you're pricing right away. It doesn't make sense. You know what I mean? Right. And so you're not making the company work very hard for it, because what needs to happen, markets are falling, farmers do not want to sell.
[00:17:59] And so you need to get to a price point that gets that excitement going, gets that selling going, and maybe they throw out, like, I've seen a bunch of zero basis in Alberta. Maybe they throw at that or something that was at the, you know, maybe they throw something like that, but it's got to be a number that sticks with you that you look, and that's, that's worth it. I want to take a bite at that. Or that's interesting. But if you're just going to deliver it to them, then all you're doing is saying, okay, I'll deliver it. Now, I don't need the cash. I hope that the market rallies in the spring, and it should, but that's the play. And they don't have to work for it. They have it now, okay? And so again, everyone's got different reasons. Crop marketing plans are all about making sure you got the right money in the bank at the right time for the banker and getting the best price possible in that window. But I just don't give it away for nothing.
[00:18:57] If they need to work for it here, make them work for it a little bit. Make them give you something that is worthwhile. You can even do. One of the fun things that I used to do back in the day is I would say, okay, you want my canola today, and maybe I have another commodity to sell. So it's like, hey, you want this? That's great. Give me your best offer. But also you're going to give me a little juice here, a little more on this other crop because I want to move this one, too, or whatever it is. Use both as leverage. And the best one was when you could actually tie that in with something for new crops. They say, you know what? I want to do a ton for ton. I'm going to give you 40 tons now, but I want 40 tons in the fall, and I want a premium over there. And I want that premium to look like X. You can get creative here, folks. It's all a negotiation. And I know you guys love negotiating, okay? So have some fun with this and negotiate. Don't just say, hey, you want it for free? Here you go. My truck's coming. Unless, of course, you need to do it. All right, those are my hot topics. Egg headlines, agricultural headlines. I know I'm not your new source, and I shouldn't be your new source, but the USDA did put out.
[00:20:13] So this week is the egg forum, and they talk about acres, and you definitely have already heard these numbers, but I just want to talk about them anyway. So they come out with projections for acres and so on. Soybean planting acreage for 2024 has come in at 87 and a half million acres. Now, that was half a million acres above initial estimates and a full million acres above the average trade. Guess that's 4 million acres more than they had in 2023.
[00:20:47] So my bulls out there, my canola bulls. Okay, this crop is not planted in the US. Lots of things can change. Ratios change corn rallies, maybe more acres happen.
[00:21:01] But when you look at oil seeds as a whole, and we could see the same thing in western Canada.
[00:21:11] Actually had a great comment from Stu the other day.
[00:21:17] Stu was talking about cropping plans, and he said in his situation, if his canola coverage is strong compared to his lentils, he's still going to put that canola acre in because it's going to give him that best chance to hold his own here on the farm for the next year to tread water.
[00:21:43] Anyways, if the coverage is good, he's going to look at that compared to lentils. Because I believe earlier in our show a couple of weeks ago, we talked about canola acres dropping, but anyways, coverage is going to be super important. So anyways, what I'm saying, canola acres could hold or climb a little bit, too. So I know my bulls here are saying Ryan Canola's rallying in the spring like gangbusters.
[00:22:09] Okay, time will tell. I'm on record. You guys know where I think canola is going here over the next four weeks? I talked about it a couple of weeks ago. I even gave it up in my predictions episode, which is baloney, but you can go listen to it. You guys kind of know where I think it's lower from here. It's lower from here. And when you see something like this where the US farmers are going to plant more beans, pay attention, folks, because if you start to build that soybean ending stock to a level that's a little bit burdensome, then all of sudden a, your oil seed complex is looking a little bit more bearish here, folks. And the pain is it looks like it's not over quite yet. Okay, so both corn and soybeans will start out with some pretty hefty ending stocks, at least from an estimate side and more than adequate carryouts for the current marketing season. Some of the more interesting things, the corn yield. So the yield trends, they have it at 181 bushels per acre. Okay, that's down half a bushel from 2023.
[00:23:26] Soybeans they have at 52, which is equal to last season.
[00:23:33] Now, when it comes to actual yields, they've fallen short of the egg form estimates for five straight years. So I guess we can't put a lot of stock into that quite yet. So that's kind of my big story for this morning. So you got to keep an eye on those trends, folks, because there are implications there. The other thing I had for a story here this morning, and this one's a little bit concerning, especially for my wife, but in the Okanagan, they had a pretty extreme cold snap. And the article talks about the grapes being almost a complete write off for the 2024 vintage.
[00:24:16] $346 to $445,000,000 of damage in wine country, a province over from me.
[00:24:25] Guys, what do I tell my wife? What do we do? Obviously we fill the seller, right? We got to be smart about it and hedge our risk here, but we got to get something bought and get something stored and cover our bets because it looks like the 24 vintage is going to be nonexistent. So if you enjoy a glass of red every once in a while, or I guess from the Okanagan, it's more white.
[00:24:51] Do the smart thing, I have to put that in eating our veggies this week, get that supply stocked up because those grapes are in a little bit of trouble and there's a lot of damage out there from the cold snap.
[00:25:05] All right, what else did I have here for hag headlines? There was one other thing.
[00:25:11] All right, I'll have saving for the next episode. Failing me. Failing me at this time.
[00:25:17] I don't know if you guys can hear the music just humming in the background, but it's fantastic.
[00:25:24] All right, crop price updates.
[00:25:30] A couple of things for me to highlight here.
[00:25:34] I would say let's not spend too much time in here, but canolas 13, I guess I'll call it both old and new crop.
[00:25:44] You guys know my thoughts though. It's still going to get worse for the next month. So again, stop slugging out there. Canola futures.
[00:25:53] We did lose some ground yesterday. Valentine's Day was a little bit of. A little bit of a rough day.
[00:26:02] May is trading down to 580 just. We've been trending sideways the last week to ten days and we did trade these levels back on February 7, but it looks like we're going to break now and that's going to be towards the downside in this market. And everything I've read lately continues to talk about markets grinding lower, at least for the short term here. So I know my bulls are going to hang in, but that's where we're going. Spring wheats. I did see an 850 out there in southern Saskatchewan for spring wheat, but for the most part, we have a lot of low eigth out there from a futures perspective here. We've lost about what, $0.40 here lately? Basis has not picked that up from what I can see. And now we're trending towards the low eights. And even for our family farm, our buyer sent us a message and bless her heart, it's drumming up business and making a recommendation for the farm here. But the wheat price had a seven and like a mid seven and the target was for a mid seven.
[00:27:19] I don't know about your farm, but our farm ain't making any money at mid seven. So guess we're going to have to wait it out a little bit longer. At our place. It's hard to lock in a loss before you plant seed in the ground. In fact, in most cases, I don't recommend it.
[00:27:37] You have a lot of time to market the 24 crop and to book a loss this early, you just have to be determined that the markets are never going to recover from these levels, and that's why you would book it. But in my career, in my past, whenever I booked a small amount of crop at a loss, it just never really panned out. It was never my highest contract, that's for sure. So I don't know. We'll see if history repeats itself, but that's kind of where we're at for spring wheat peas. I'm still seeing some old crop yellow peas at 13. There's a lot of twelve s out there as well.
[00:28:18] And I've got new crop tens.
[00:28:22] Yellow peas are basically holding in. No big changes out there. Old crop, you'll see those varying prices because some buyers need to fill some cars and other buyers are a little bit covered. So new crop, ten to 1025. Now, just think about this, though. If you go to crop rankings for a second and you take your spring wheat price down at $8 and you hold your peas at 1025, your spring wheat is dropping all the way to the bottom. Pardon me.
[00:28:56] Low protein spring wheat is going to come in at the absolute worst here. But you're like a couple of $100 an acre. You got to pay your overhead out of that, you're taking on losses. It could be 50, $8100 an acre on your spring wheat. So again, I'm not super excited about spring wheat, but when I look over at the yellow pea price of north of $10, if that's in your rotation, why wouldn't you go ahead and take some of that, right? Take some of that margin when you can.
[00:29:28] Green peas, I've got 1950 as a high across the prairies. For old crop, I'd give a shot at 20 out there. See what happens. New crop, lots of varying bids for new crop green peas. 1250 is the lowest price. I've got a couple of 1250s. I got a 1350, and I got a 14 as well. So green peas, for new crop, you got to make a few extra phone calls. Oats, I basically got $5, $5, $5. Lots of $5 oats out there.
[00:29:59] Malt barley. I've seen some old crops still as high as about seven, southern Saskatchewan. So keep an eye on that one. If you have malt barley and someone's going to come give you a seven right now, you have to take that, guys. You got to take it. Okay.
[00:30:17] All right. And then for new crop malt, I got 635, 650, and 675. So it's all basically in line with freight and all that good stuff.
[00:30:26] Flax, I've got 1550 on both sides. Old crop and new crop as well.
[00:30:33] Yeah, I know there's a little bit in there to digest a whole bunch of stuff in there.
[00:30:43] I looked up other bids as well. Nothing really caught my attention. For lentils, red lentils, I had old crop, 32 ish cents, 32 and a half. New crop, thirty cents per pound. And then for green lentils, I didn't see anything that really stood out. It seemed very consistent yet on green lentils for both old and new crop.
[00:31:06] What else I look at for prices?
[00:31:10] Yeah, I think that kind of covers it.
[00:31:13] All right, so eating our veggies and we're going to wrap up the show here, folks, in a minute. The crowds pouring into the farming smarter conference in Lethbridge, Alberta. We've got last week for eating our veggies because it's the right thing to do, quote unquote, seek the advice of a professional.
[00:31:31] But I asked you to price new crop malt, barley. So I want to say good job, dad.
[00:31:38] Dad must have listened to the podcast. Got some new crop malt on the book. So good job, man.
[00:31:44] Spring wheat. I've been asking you guys to price spring wheat forever, so I'm not going to put it in this week because you were supposed to do it already. Okay, but if you didn't do the malt, you can still do that. Get after that malt. So we'll carry that one forward for wheat, though, I don't know, it's still going lower, folks. But hopefully you listen to the advice in the last six or eight episodes because we talked about it a lot.
[00:32:10] Green peas, we said last week, don't mess around. Prices will drop and they are starting to for new crops. So if you're a green pea grower, you don't have any new crop covered off yet. Get after it. Secure the bag, folks. Go and lock that up. We talked about generic chemical. I haven't seen much change in price there, but just some good buys, I would say. And then hopefully you did learn a new strategy last week. But if you haven't, let's carry it forward for this week as well for your eating the Veggies section. All right, folks, I'm going to wrap up the episode with that. You will see a bonus episode over the weekend here with Christy Friesen from Rebellion Farms. We're going to talk a little bit of mental health and then what happens when you don't get paid from a grain company? So we'll cover that off. And then I have a couple other things in the hopper as well. So quite a bit coming from the what's the Features podcast here in the next couple of days. So I hope you enjoyed this one, folks. Again, I am in the Agai three booth at the farming smarter conference. Strongly encourage if you're looking for an alternative to your risk management plan in 2024, give these folks a call. Go to the website. They will respond very quickly. They are engaging with millions of acres right now across the prairies and farms. Are checking out to see what's available to help them manage risk here in 2024. It's an alternative to crop insurance, crop protection, yield based crop insurance, as you can see here right below me. So give them a shout and see what they can come up with for your fun. That's it folks, I'm out.
