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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Sam.
[00:00:54] Alrighty, folks, welcome into the live episode here over at what the Futures, of course, recorded each and every week in the UPL studio. It's been a minute. No episode last week, I think our first blank here in 2025. I know there was a few short ones earlier this summer, but our first blank. So I got some messages saying, hey, what's going on, dude? Where is, where's the podcast? So we were out doing our one last camping trip of the summer, of course, 30 above, nice and warm and hanging out at Buffalo Lake. So big shout out to the farmers between Buffalo Lake, Erskine, Statler area, all the way down a big valley. Got to see lots of combines, lots of swathers going, lots of harvest activity.
[00:01:51] All right, folks, I'm going to, I'm going to just check the chat here. Bear with me.
[00:01:58] We are going to, we're going to see if I can get this figured out.
[00:02:03] Let's put a. Hey, folks, in there, just to see if anyone's tuning in from, from the combine here today. This is, this is just me solo trying to, to produce at the same time. So we'll see if anyone pops into the chat here. If you do, if you're hearing this, if you' along on X, if you're on YouTube, you know, go throw something in. Throw in a question. I got a couple of emails, a couple questions to answer, but, you know, if you have the GPS set and you can type a question, go for it here in the chat. I'm assuming that you have to be on YouTube to throw the chat in there, but I don't know. We'll see, we'll learn, we'll figure it out.
[00:02:47] Also, big thanks to all of you subscribing to the YouTube channel.
[00:02:52] We had a goal of 500 subscribers by the end of summer, and by some miracle, we added 50 new subscribers here a couple days ago. I don't know how you guys pulled this off, but you did. And we hit our goal of 500. I think it was 503 when I checked this morning. So thank you for that. And tell your friends, tell your neighbors, if you work in Canadian agriculture, let them know about the what the Futures podcast and hit that subscribe button. Wherever you get your podcast, wherever you get your.
[00:03:27] I guess YouTube is the other one.
[00:03:29] All right, well, harvest update here.
[00:03:34] I guess we should give you that from the farm. We are, you know, we, we got some momentum. We got the green peas off quality, exceptional. So we're happy about that. And we also had a decent yield on those green peas they, they, they did hit a nice profit margin for us. And we'll talk Greenpea markets in a second, but they did hit a nice profit margin for us. And we actually got a bit aggressive on some sales about a week ago here.
[00:04:05] And apparently a little bit of crop marketing luck, which we all need every once in a while, right? We all need that.
[00:04:14] Then we switched over to malt barley, and we went to take a bite out of the malt, and then we went home for a couple days, and then we went to take another bite of the malt, and then we went home for a couple of days.
[00:04:28] Finally, my brother said, all right, enough is enough. Let's go take this thing.
[00:04:35] We brought a sample in the stuff. The moisture's through the roof, guys. All right, through the roof. But you know, you're sitting there, it's 30 above the last week of August, and you're like, come on, right? I want to be out there doing something. So we went, took it, and one of the big things, we brought in a sample. We said, hey, you know, buyers, what do you think of this stuff? Right off the bat here, it's got to go through the dryer. But initially, what do you think? They said, you know what, there's no chit in here, no chilled kernels. You know, if. Go take it, try it, let's see what happens. But give yourself the best chance because there is a lot of malt barley that's not making it this year.
[00:05:12] And I was chatting with growers last week or the week prior about, hey, do you think my barley is going to make it? Do you think it's going to make malt?
[00:05:20] You have to be better than the others, right? If your stuff looks better, even though it's not perfect, maybe protein's too high, maybe you got some factor in there that normally wouldn't make it. You just have to be better than the others. So if you're better than the others, you say, wow, this isn't great, but you're better. They'll take it, right? They still need to take malt, and we got to make it, turn it into beer at some point somehow. All right, all right, I'm just going to go and throw this in here.
[00:05:53] Just going to put another note here just to see. I got nothing coming back, so hopefully I'm in the right spot.
[00:05:58] But there we go. Just trying to get the chat, see if the chat is if I got this thing figured out. All right, okay, so here's. That's where we're at. Took the Malt, running it through the dryer as we speak.
[00:06:13] My brother's the magician on the dryer, just keeping things dialed in nicely and. And then wheat. We're going to go grab some wheat on Wednesday.
[00:06:23] Again, the farm, you know, has invested in a pretty darn efficient drying system here over the last number of years. And so we, we plan to use it every single year.
[00:06:36] We. If we're not making good use of that investment, if we're not using it. And so we go and take stuff off, you know, take off a bunch of tough wheat, and we'll just zip it through and. And keep moving on. So it looks like the plan is Wednesday for. For some wheat here on the farm.
[00:06:53] All right, so I. I woke up this morning. I want to. I want to do it. I'm not going to rant. Told myself I wouldn't rant too much about this, but I just want to talk about some social media stuff in a second.
[00:07:02] I want to talk about before I get to social media. I just want to talk about the heavy dew this morning. So maybe there wasn't in your neck of the woods, but I know it. You know, where I live, very heavy dew this morning. That. Like a smoky fog. And then the farm, you know, six hours away, seeing the same thing, heavy dew. So I'm assuming a bunch of you got that heavy dew here this morning. And it just reminded me of when I was a grain buyer.
[00:07:34] So I was the one interacting with the farmers, you know, trying to convince farmers that, hey, have you seen my $7 wheat special?
[00:07:41] Oh, sorry. This was Canadian Wheat board day, so never mind.
[00:07:44] Hi. We have wheat cars and you have room on your permit book. That's how the conversation went. Anyways, so I was dealing with farms, talking with farms, and trying to convince farms to sell grain.
[00:07:58] But the graders, the graders at the elevator, they love this morning. They loved it. All right, because anytime there was a weather event at harvest, this is when they would come in the office, a big smile on their face.
[00:08:15] You know, never bought the office donuts at all in the entire year. Never. But today would be the day they would roll in with fresh donuts for the office as well.
[00:08:26] All right? Now, I'm not here, I'm not here to tell you that this morning's do change the grade pattern in wheat.
[00:08:34] No, I don't think so.
[00:08:36] But any weather event at harvest time, they would come in whistling, you know, kicking their heels together. Because this folks, this is the time that those grain graders, that those folks that have a budget, a facility Budget, you gotta turn your facility. You gotta make X amount of dollars, usually seven figures. You gotta make this, and you gotta make this by taking product A and product C and turning it into product B.
[00:09:12] Right? This is why you only get 10 cents or 5 cents for a number one wheat. But you're discounted 40 cents for a number three hard red spring week. Because they're going to take those two and they're going to make that into number two. Right?
[00:09:27] So they love these events because the worst, as a grain company, the absolute worst years are when there is no weather events where harvest just goes, starts and stops at the end. There's no moisture events, nothing changes and there's a short crop. If there's a short crop and they have to be competitive with each other, then, yeah, then they, they don't make a lot of money. Those years when there's a lot of bushels out there across the prairies, a lot of volume to move, just taking, you know, more volume through your facilities, you know, number one. But if you can have a grade pattern, establish an established grade pattern where you have a whole bunch of different stuff going on.
[00:10:12] And they even love it when there's wild cards in certain parts of the prairies where it's some weird phenomenon. One area, you know, like high green canola from a couple years ago, okay, we're going to take that stuff, these heavy discounts and we're going to take a bunch of our good stuff over here, you know, blend it at the coast. Those, those facilities at the coast, that's what they're made for. They'll blend in house across in your prairie facility. But, and then of course they do very creative blending at the coast. I, I don't think that's a surprise to anybody listening, you know, even, you know, you, you make a sale to whatever country you got a, a wheat spec, but then you've got so many percent you're allowed of other grains or something like that. That's why some of these companies will have a rye bid. It never gets moved out as rye. It says other grains in their vessel going to whatever country. Like it gets sold at a, at a higher value, I'd say in most cases.
[00:11:07] All right. Okay. So the heavy do this morning.
[00:11:11] All right, we'll, we'll keep the rest of that there. There was a good question on this, so I'm going to skip that for now. So let's go over to social media. All right.
[00:11:19] And you know, thanks for hanging out with me. If you are checking in the live show from, from the cab of the Combine. I do appreciate you hanging in the live stream brought to you by the Crop Marketing Made Cool conference. We're going to be in Moa December 9th to 11th.
[00:11:35] You can check out those details on the website. Ryan, Denis, ca. We have not released the agenda yet momentarily. We will be doing that here.
[00:11:46] Yeah, maybe even for Friday's podcast episode. We might, might pull it off for then we will see.
[00:11:52] But get your tickets if you've applied, you have the link to buy your tickets now. If you have not applied yet, go ahead and do that. We are, I don't know, I don't even want to say it. I know we've been selling tickets every day or so, but we're getting up there. Okay.
[00:12:08] All right, so let's talk. I want to talk social media for a second. All right.
[00:12:16] And I know that this may fire up a couple people.
[00:12:24] Okay. But I have to, I have to talk about this because this is the reason the Crop Marketing Made Cool conference. This is the reason that this came together last year that, that you know, we put in the time, effort, energy to get a conference organized. It's because of these statements on social media and it's about the impact of the drought of 2021, the impact, the negative impact it's had on farm margins and farms, farm profitability the last number of years. I, I said when I was chatting with Yvonne who handles all the behind the scenes marketing stuff, puts on the conference, does all, anything cool that comes out of this show, Yvonne's working on this stuff in the background, pulling all this together.
[00:13:14] And I said Yvonne, these farms, they're frozen. They're frozen from fear about these big buyout stories. And they were facts, they were tales and stories and things got probably at times a little escalated and what the actual bio costs were, but I experienced them. I was working with farmers during that time. Our own farm had a buyout. These are all real scenarios.
[00:13:42] But the problem I have on social media here is that someone put a comment about hey, I wish I would have had more forward sold. You know, I wish I would have. I think they had like six, six something peas for something feed barley, canola, maybe 13 bucks. Weed at six something. I wish I would have more sold or, or something like that. Or hey, the guys that have forward contracted, you know, they're smiling this year.
[00:14:13] And then one after the other in the comments is oh yeah, well remember what happened in 2021. Remember all these guys that pre sold in 2021, all those big buyouts that they experienced. You know, I'm never going to pre sell anymore. I'm not pre selling. I, you know, I, one guy said like, hey, I think about 2021 all the time.
[00:14:38] And that causes me to just sit here and say though it's okay, I'll do marketing later on.
[00:14:45] What I want to say folks is if you are taking any stock in these conversations, if you're taking any stock of the folks saying, you know, don't worry about forward contracting, remember what happened in 21.
[00:15:00] I feel bad for you. I feel sorry for you in a way because you don't have to go and forward contract everything.
[00:15:10] But if you are taking that much stock into what some of these people are saying, these comments about forward contracting, I think you're a little bit lost in your farm business plan. I think you're a little bit lost in your margin plan. All right. About your farm's goals.
[00:15:25] It is way bigger than that. And if the one event, a 20 year event, because we had the same thing happen in 02, if those 20 year events impact your crop marketing for that next 20 years, that next cycle, whatever it is, I feel sorry for you. I feel bad for you because you are missing out on opportunities now.
[00:15:45] The last thing, the reason the conference got put on here is because everybody's marketing plans, they're, they're different.
[00:15:54] Everyone's goals are the same. Make the most amount of money.
[00:15:58] By the time I need to write a check to my input supplier or I need to pay my bills, like make the most amount of money and then I'll meet my cash flow obligations. But make the most amount of money within my cash, cash flow obligations. That is the goal. And so if someone on social media is telling you, oh, you know, don't forward contract anything, those guys are nuts. Remember what happened in 21. They look like idiots.
[00:16:21] Like number one. I think that it was definitely some education, some tuition got paid that year. I know we learned some things in 21 and then we also that education for us this year we implemented some different strategies that we didn't really do in 21 until much later. But this year when it was dry in the spring, Yeah, I spent 10 bucks a ton on a little bit of price insurance in case the drought was going to linger into July. Right. So there's tuition there, there was tuition that was paid and learnings and that's what it should have been for everybody. Learning opportunities on how to be sharper and smarter with your crop marketing. The other thing too, you know, when you look at Those buyout stories, a lot of those buyout stories were on hedgeable crops, right?
[00:17:09] And so people buying out contracts, big canola contracts, big wheat contracts, you don't have to, you know, subject yourself to those buyouts. You don't have to be part of that narrative.
[00:17:22] Right. And then in 21, you didn't have to be part of it either. But those were hedgeable crops. A lot of those big buyouts. I heard all the canola buyouts of, oh, a million bucks on a canola buyout. Yeah. Well, you can do stuff. You can do stuff to protect yourself against buyouts.
[00:17:38] The reason the crop marketing made cool conference happens and it's going to happen again this year is so that you don't look at those comments from social media and put any stock into that.
[00:17:49] It's your farm, it's your plan. You need to do the best to your ability to kick some butt, make some margins and tackle each year as they come. Every single year is different in crop marketing.
[00:18:03] But I can honestly go back to my highlight reel of crop marketing decisions. And even for this year, the highlight reel is already starting when I have folks delivering $9 week contracts today and the price of wheat is 690.
[00:18:21] You know, that's just a small little highlight reel from this year when we have farms that over this last week message and say, hey, you know what? I have never been 100% hedged before in the in Canola, but man, am I happy that I'm 100% hedged in canola at north of 700 bucks a ton. Like the highlight reel. Their stories are there, folks. The stories are there too.
[00:18:48] And the other thing is that the stakes are higher right now. So I, you know, someone could probably check this out and let me know the actual statistics on this.
[00:18:59] But you know, when we went through the, the rally of 2020 and 2021 and we peaked, well, sometime in 2022, I think it was right early, maybe spring of 22 was the peak.
[00:19:14] Like even within that, that historic rally, you didn't have everything sold and you had another crop year to sell. People did very, very well those times. And there was margin there. It was about making the most margin possible, but there was margin there. Now the stakes are high.
[00:19:32] The stakes are high because we are in negative margin territory.
[00:19:37] So, you know, if you can forward contract at a profit, I don't know why you would not look at that for 2026. I don't know why you wouldn't consider that for 2026 to sit on your Hands all year long, get your crop in the bin and say, now I need to market this and now I need it all gone by March.
[00:19:57] You're going to leave a lot of money on the table. So I don't know, I get revved up when I see it on social media.
[00:20:04] I know it's just a bit of a cesspool over there, but make your crop marketing plan your own. And if you're putting stock into what those folks say about forward contracting, you should come down to Moose Jaw and check out the conference because you're, you're going to pay a little tuition to be there, but you're going to be a better marketer when you leave. All right, okay, enough of that. I had more to say on that, but it's getting too, I'm going to get all worked up and curse and it's going to get too intense. So we'll, we'll keep moving along here.
[00:20:37] All right, so there was no podcast episode last week. If you subscribe to the email with the futures email, you did get a weather outlook.
[00:20:46] So that was pre recorded for the Lunchbox crew members the week prior. So you did get a harvest video there. Weather video. And as they said, as bamwx said it, first half of September, you know, looking pretty good here. My long range forecast looking pretty good as well.
[00:21:09] So.
[00:21:10] So you have that. So I, I did ask for some questions. I got a couple questions that came in and hang on. Just have to let my wife know that I'm recording live here. She's asking me to grab stuff from outside.
[00:21:25] There we go. All right, Chantel, I'm on there. Where should we get? All right, so a couple questions came in and the first one came in from Terry. And I know Terry's saying this tongue in cheek, but he says at the rate of the decline in the Canola market, how long for it to hit $0.
[00:21:50] So. All right, Terry, I know that one's a little bit tongue in cheek, but we do have to go find a harvest low. All right, we have to go and find a harvest low. Not always, not every year, but with the growing conditions that we had with the storylines that surround our market, with the issues we have right now with trade with, with China.
[00:22:17] Anybody else find it kind of weird that the, that we had a trade person from China here last week, the day that the p. Market kind of crumbled. Anyone else find that a little bit strange?
[00:22:32] Anyways, Terry, so yeah, this Canola market, we've got support, we got support levels penciled out Here you, you can throw in some support at, you know, 6. We're trading as of Friday's close, 626 on the November, you know, you might want to throw some support here at like, throw you a 615 support line. You could throw a 600 in there. A 580, a 560. Those are all levels of support.
[00:23:01] You know, we've traded as low as, what, 570 earlier in the year. We've got lots of action here between 570 and 580.
[00:23:12] So, you know, my anticipation, what I'm expecting, my expectation is that we are going to go and find that, that level. We're going to go find that 580 level. All right, that's maybe it's 600. The 600 hold as support during harvest. Maybe if the weather gets really nasty on us, something like that.
[00:23:34] But I expect that we're going to go find something in the 500s. I, I look at every other commodity out there, it's going to find its harvest low as well. And I expect Canola to do the same thing. All right, unless some positive biofuel story comes out or something like that. But my anticipation is, if I was a betting man, I'd be betting on this market finding that 580. Now, I'd also expect it to go and find a new low.
[00:24:01] It may not, but it wouldn't surprise me to go and flirt with 550 for a little bit.
[00:24:08] Okay, now we're talking about, you know, a dollar to $2 of downside yet here during harvest.
[00:24:17] And the one thing, the one thing that I'm keeping a close eye on is that we have harvest results coming in.
[00:24:26] And you know, Chuck Penner had this in his, in his latest update as well. But we had a, a summer of cooler temperatures, and that seems to have contributed to more bushels.
[00:24:41] Now, there are outliers. There are areas that are harvesting crops below, below their crop insurance index. So there are, those are out there as well.
[00:24:54] But they always, they always are, folks. Maybe 2013 is the exception to that. But there's always isolated events that cause yield loss. And we're talking about 70 million acres. And so there's always going to be some highs and some lows. But when I look at the statistics coming in, when I look at the actual numbers coming in, you may not want to hear this. I certainly don't want to say it out loud, but there's, yeah, there's a little bit of a crop out there early on in this harvest. We got a Long ways to go.
[00:25:27] A lot of things can happen yet. Crops not in the bin.
[00:25:30] But yeah, we had a, a year where it was favorable to grow a crop after mid June.
[00:25:40] You know, before the first half of June, it was, we were in a joke and then it changed. All right, so, Terry, yes, we're gonna go find a low as a. We're not going to zero, Terry. We're not going to zero, but we are going to go find a low. It's going to be somewhere in the 500s is my guess. And if that has to impact your marketing, then I'll leave you with it.
[00:26:03] Second question came in from Keaton, and this was about, you know, if you have a heavy rain that impacts quality at harvest time, what type of influence can that have on your prices?
[00:26:18] And so Keaton, I, you know, I think that is, it's a, it's a tough one to answer, but I'll give you, I'll give you my best shot at it because we have had a major weather event, a major rain event that did cause some quality concerns. We have, you know, if I, if I want to look at one major, you know, quality issue right now, I, I believe malt barley is, is the, is one crop that is, yeah, in, in a bit of trouble here. From a quality perspective, I, I think with malt, you had those, you know, some dry crops that, that didn't, you know, get, get the rains.
[00:27:06] You had some crops that, that got a lot of rain, got some second growth going in it.
[00:27:13] Then you had crops ready to harvest. I got a bunch of rain. I think malt is definitely something going on with that, quality wise. Same thing with some Durham. All right, now, when you look at the impact of price, I don't think anyone listening here saying, hey, malt barley under pressure, quality wise, we're seeing a rally in price. We're not seeing a rally in price yet. We have to sort out this crop, sort out the demand and then see what that looks like.
[00:27:42] And, you know, the consumption of malt has been going down.
[00:27:46] There's some carryover supply yet. There always is, you know, so we'll see what happens. From a price perspective. The jury is going to be out on that one until late next month in October, maybe even November, trying to figure out what's out there and the reaction to price from there. But malt is one where I would say there's a good chance of a malt barley price climb here.
[00:28:10] At least a holding, but maybe even a climb the way results are coming in. Second one, you know Durham is having. And there's an impact on Durham as well. Durham values are dropping though, you know, for this early demand the Durham values are dropping. There's a wide grade pattern out there. There are some issues not impacting price yet.
[00:28:28] You know, we'll see what comes out quality wise. Green peas as well. Green peas have issues with, with bleaching in some areas and what, you know, what can we see on, on price there?
[00:28:45] If you get through harvest, I'll say Keaton, you get through harvest, buyers start to figure out what they have for quality. All the samples are submitted, they know what they have that's going to impact price. And you might see a whopper of a, of a price offer for some number one Durham out there. You might see, hey, I'm looking for, you know, a green pea with under 2% bleach, you know, and you might see a whopper of an offer out there.
[00:29:13] Typically though, we don't see any immediate price action unless, cross your fingers, knock on wood, you get some rain events to start here, they don't slow down and you have immediate impacts. Then you could see price climb with that. So it's, it's a bit of a loaded question. It's a big question. Is there impacts? Yes, sometimes they'll take a little bit of time to sort themselves out and, and we'll see what that looks like. But I would say Malta has a chance here to at least hold the one thing with malt, right. A feed barley keeps dropping then that can pull malt down with it. But we'll see what that looks like in a few weeks. Same thing with Durham and those green peas for a red spring wheat.
[00:29:57] Yeah, it's not going to rally the market, you know. Yeah, I'll leave it at that.
[00:30:03] All right, so I got a question in from Kent.
[00:30:07] What's your strategic opinion of the Canadian dollar?
[00:30:11] I also missed the first few minutes but is there going to be some protein spreads? That's a really good question, Kent, because I had a little wheat story here lined up for in a few minutes so let's jump to that right now. So we are seeing, when it comes to protein spreads, we are seeing, I wouldn't say that this is, you know, a game changer by any means but we are seeing some protein premiums for up to 14 and a half percent. So we're seeing 2 cents per tenth from 13 and a half to 14 and a half percent. I do have some messages out to try to figure out if there's something bigger to this.
[00:30:55] If there's something better than that out there.
[00:30:59] But if you have some high protein wheat, you may want to temporarily sit on that just to see how this plays out.
[00:31:06] Now I'll add just a couple things to that when it comes to protein spreads.
[00:31:12] So on the flip side, if you have low protein, you may want to convert your contract.
[00:31:18] With most companies, you can convert your contract once, but you may want to go and just convert your contract. Once you drop a load of wheat on your contract, your spreads will be locked in. All right, double check with your buyer to make sure that's the case. But that's normally what happens. But you can, if you haven't delivered any wheat, you can still convert that. So you can say, you know what, I locked in a 13,5 protein. What's the discount to go to a 12 and a half percent, and if it's, you know, a couple cents per tenth, something like that, you know, you would want to convert that and lock that up, lock in your low protein discount.
[00:31:52] So what tends to happen? So when I was, you know, when I had my, my other company and was consulting with farmers one on one back in, you know, 15, 16, 17, 20, 18, it was like clockwork where Richardson Pioneer at harvest time would be looking for 14% protein wheat they would sell at the coast high protein vessels. They had customers coming to them saying, hello, Richardson Pioneer, we want your high protein wheat. And so my clients that had traditionally high protein, we would move our sales, our early sales would be at Richardson because there was a very good chance we would get some type of bump protein, bump or premium for that high protein.
[00:32:36] On the flip side, you know, the Cargill merchant at the time, maybe he's still the same person, but there, but they would say we all, we never sell above a 13 boat, ever.
[00:32:49] And so for my clients with low protein wheat or 13 or under, we would go over to Cargill because their discounts were better.
[00:32:59] So right now it looks like we have some early vessels.
[00:33:02] Multiple companies jumping into the fray here as well. So I'm not sure exactly what that signifies, but that's, that's promising. And 2 cents per tenth up to 14 and a half. Now you are the master negotiator. You farm in Western Canada. You love negotiation. If you have high protein wheat, I would throw it in the bin for now until we figure this out. But if you don't want to throw it in the bin, you can go and do some negotiation. Now the other thing, I had some wheat sold here at 757, 60, 765, 2, red, 13 5. I can pick up the phone and say, hey, I want to convert my contract. I think I have high protein, or I do have high protein. I want to convert that and turn that into a 770 or a 7 up to about what, a 785 with that math? So just something to take note there. You guys can convert your contracts again if you think you have low protein. Check out the discount schedules, make a few phone calls, talk to different buyers. This is a negotiation piece, all right? This is a negotiation piece for you and you can leverage other companies.
[00:34:12] Used to do this all the time. I'd have it sold at one company, leverage all the information, though, and say, hey, you're in the business, grain buyer. You're in the business of buying my business, you know, every year.
[00:34:22] So I have made a mistake by selling you this stuff. Your protein premiums stink. Why don't you be somewhat competitive and they would be, they would do something. All right, now I just, I want to check one quick thing here.
[00:34:37] I did get a message about some high protein over at G3,725 a bushel, 2 cents per tenth to max at 20. Yeah. All right, so there's a few companies playing in that high protein game.
[00:34:54] I would lean towards binning the high protein, but we'll see over the next week. A bunch of wheat will get harvested this week and we'll check out spreads. All right, strategic opinion on the Canadian dollar.
[00:35:08] I have been appreciate the double question there, Kent.
[00:35:13] I have been playing the Canadian dollar and I do apologize. I was away last week, so I'm a little bit slow at what's transpired here. I thought the Canadian dollar trend was maybe moving down.
[00:35:29] Let's see, sideways pattern for the most part, down. Over the last three months, I've been treating the Canadian dollar as working against us. From a grain price side, I've been thinking about the Canadian dollar as playing more defense because I've been worried that the Canadian dollar was going to rally against a lower US Dollar.
[00:35:54] That's definitely not what's playing out at this time.
[00:35:58] And so, you know, I would say, sure, we've gone from 72 to 72 and three quarters. But I would say at this time, not a big trend adjustment here for me to be. To be concerned about, to impact our selling decisions a whole bunch. I'd still lean towards playing it a little bit more defensively where the Canadian dollar's not gonna drop and save our butts to help us export more crops here this winter. But we'll see.
[00:36:33] I'd still play it a bit more on the defense side where it's working against us again. We have a low here of the year at 69 and a half. Currently trading at 72 and 3 quarters. We've been as high as around 75 last harvest. All right, Ken, that's a great question. I might do some follow up here on, on Friday's episode.
[00:36:54] All right, Appreciate all those ones. I'll see if anyone texted anything in. Looks like we are clear.
[00:37:00] Harvest photo contest. You guys keep a an eye on our social medias. We're going to start putting some of those out there. We've had some great, great entries and beautiful pictures here coming in during this harvest again we are giving away a trip for two to Halifax, Nova Scotia. My sister in law just got back from Halifax yesterday or the east coast. They had a great time. And so Halifax, you're going to go to the Canadian Curling Olympic Trials at the end of November, November 22nd to 30th. You have two tickets to every curling draw. You have the access to the VIP lounge for all your meals. Your flights are included. I've got your hotel booked as well.
[00:37:46] You're going to have a great time in Halifax. All you have to do is go to Ryandani Ca, check out the photo contest, submit your photos. That gets you in and if you have a what the futures flag.
[00:37:59] I don't have one on the desk here. If you have a what the futures flag, you can take a picture with that flag in the shot on the combine, the green cart. That'll get you an extra entry into the contest. So we want to see, we call them the, the pirate flags. We want to see our crop marketing pirates out there this harvest. So take a picture with the flag and we will get you an extra entry here on that great trip to Halifax. Of course working with Curling Canada to get a couple of curlers on the show this fall. So stay tuned for that later, later this month.
[00:38:36] All right. I think, I don't know how many entries we have actually didn't look here after the last couple days but they've been coming in quite consistently. So keep at it. Ryandenee CA photo contest. That's the harvest contest here and send in those great pictures.
[00:38:53] All right.
[00:38:54] Now I want to go to, we have to pick our winner for our speak pipe, our voicemail option here last month. We want to give some love to that. But before we do, I just wanted to chat about a couple things here.
[00:39:10] So we talked the canola market We've talked a little bit about wheat.
[00:39:15] Now I just want to go on wheat for one more second here. So we were talking spreads a moment ago. The other indicator that there could be a large crop out there. Again, you guys don't want me to say that out loud. I don't want to say it out loud either.
[00:39:30] But if there is lower protein coming in in the wheat crop, that's another sign of some bigger yields out there. All right, I, I, I'm not going to spill the, the spill the beans. Yes. I'm not going to spill the beans here on today's show.
[00:39:45] But you know, the lunchbox crew, farmers across the prairies, you know, communicating, and this is one of those important times as we talk about harvest conditions, we talk about quality, we talk about yield.
[00:40:00] Those farms, they have a pretty good sense on what's going on across the prairies. I know it's only, you know, 70 farms or whatever you want to say, but it's a pretty good swath across the prairies and those guys have a good sense on what yield is looking like here.
[00:40:19] So anyways, another indicator, though. Now, I wanted to say this, add to this because we talked about this on the last show, but my. Marketing wheat, right, Marketing wheat. So these early wheat specials or premiums coming out at seven and a half, or maybe it was seven, seven, 25, seven and a half, whatever you got.
[00:40:39] And then those specials disappearing and then seeing that price posted on the website after that. You guys saw that, right? I said, I said on the show that you're gonna see like a 750 and then all of a sudden you're gonna refresh your screen and stare down at a 650 one day.
[00:40:55] And I was looking at a few bids here this morning.
[00:40:59] Refreshing the screen, staring down a 680 or a 690.
[00:41:05] I've got my sale on at 750.
[00:41:08] All right, I've got my sale on at 760, whatever it is. 725, you've got your sale on. Now you've refreshed that screen.
[00:41:16] The bids from the buyers are in the sixes.
[00:41:20] And by golly gee, Spring Wheat caught a little bit of a bid. Last corn caught a bid. Chicago Wheat caught a bid last week. You know, not much, we're talking about a nickel here, but the futures are actually showing a little stability right now. Now, I'll say. I think spring wheat's going lower. I do, I think spring wheat futures are going lower, unfortunately.
[00:41:46] I do think we'll find a harvest low. Yet, I don't think we're there yet.
[00:41:50] But I've been selling, you know, wheat at 750, whatever it is, and then going and taking honestly in some cases, $0.10, $0.10, and buying upside in the Kansas City market or the Chicago wheat market or even in corn in some cases.
[00:42:10] Going and taking a little bit of risk, getting my floor in a little bit of risk and participating in upside in those other markets. I think corn in Chicago and KC could have a little different story than spring wheat over the next few weeks. All right, I'm trying to turn $7.50 into something better. $8, whatever it is. I'm trying to turn that into a level of profitability, but that's what I've been doing is. And I got, you know, farms are just rifling weed out the door right now.
[00:42:39] They're just taking it all in, replacing their risk on futures. I think Kansas City, the most we spent is 20 cents on a call option to be bullish. All right.
[00:42:49] Anyways, KC was up 4 cents to close out the week as well.
[00:42:54] Chicago and corn were up again. I'm not saying that this is the start of the rally. I'm just saying that's a strategy we've been looking at. And hey, is this a turnaround point? Am I going to turn my wheat into Something north of $8 here shortly? You know, we'll see. Time will tell.
[00:43:10] Now to take your wheat. I said to take your wheat and throw it on a basis contract.
[00:43:14] I didn't like that. To take the free storage programs out there. I didn't like that either. Okay.
[00:43:20] I didn't mind taking price moving wheat and reowning a strategy with your broker. Again, talk to your broker about the strategies that make sense for you and your farm and your risk tolerance. But that's what we've been. What we've been doing already.
[00:43:35] Okay, the other thing here with wheat that, you know, the chase is on.
[00:43:40] If there is. If there is a big crop out there, it's going to get uglier yet. All right, folks, it's going to get uglier yet. We'll see how it turns out. The. The merchants. I was standing in front of a grain elevator the other day, took Finn for a drive on his. His truck nap. Because now we're a family that makes coffee at noon as well, because there's no more napping in our house. Finley has decided that he's two and a half and he doesn't need to nap. Or two and three quarters, I guess.
[00:44:08] So we were a napping house until last two weeks and now we are a house that drinks coffee after 12. So we're transitioning.
[00:44:16] Anyways, standing in front of a line company, I took a picture and said, hey, you know, don't let these guys eat your lunch at harvest time.
[00:44:25] And I just want to say that like harvest time, that's their gravy time as well. All right? That's when they, that's when they make, make their big money is at harvest time.
[00:44:39] But the crop marketing. I'm going to throw the handbook in here.
[00:44:44] I got to update the handbook for December. But there's 12 months of the crop marketing plan checklist. There's 12 months on here.
[00:44:53] And September has the least amount of stuff to do.
[00:44:59] Okay? It's got, it's got two things.
[00:45:03] Check your wheat grade and protein spreads and review your grain storage plan. That's all I have in the month of September.
[00:45:10] Doesn't feel like that right now, does it? Doesn't feel like that is adequate.
[00:45:17] But when I look at the months of April, May, June, July, August, some of these months have seven, eight different things to do.
[00:45:26] The month of September, it only has two. That's it.
[00:45:32] And the reason for that, this is execution time. In fact, I'm going to change this for this. I'm going to do this right now for December.
[00:45:44] It's time to execute the plan.
[00:45:47] All right, Execute.
[00:45:52] That's it, execute. Scratch everything else out. Just execute.
[00:45:58] This is the time when those merchants, those folks, this is when they're. This is when they are eating your lunch. All right? This is when they are eating your lunch. Sometimes weird things happen. Little premiums, little specials, little opportunities happen. That's great. You can react to those.
[00:46:13] But this is when they're eating your lunch. Do you think that they sold a bunch of yellow peas off the coast that worked back to $7 across the prairies?
[00:46:25] No, no. They're just filling the last of their sales. They worked price down.
[00:46:31] They were nine, they were 858. They worked their way down to six something, seven bucks. They're, they're not making a pile of money on it. But don't worry, they haven't made any extra sales quite yet. Those are coming, but they haven't made them quite yet.
[00:46:45] If you're in a position today where you're stressed out, if you're in a position where you are making a lot of decisions out there, you're busy pulling off this crop, plus you're making all these selling decisions, I'm going to make an assumption that, you know, from a financial side aspect, you know, probably some struggles out there. Probably some struggles, all right? I don't want to say struggles and you could be doing better. I don't want to say it like that.
[00:47:12] But this is a time of year where you want to execute, where you want to deliver the grain that you have sold. When you want to sit there and say, I've got cash flow covered to this week, this day, whatever it is, whatever makes you feel good, this is the time where you execute the plan. This isn't the time where you get on social media and throw tweets out there saying, oh, people that pre sell or, you know, remember what happened in 2021. Like, this isn't the time to be doing stuff like that. This is the time to be executing your plan. All right? And if you are sitting there and saying, hey, these markets are down, doesn't impact me at all, then that is. That's good enough.
[00:47:53] That's great.
[00:47:55] You may not have to sell till into next year. You may be sitting there flush with cash. That's fantastic. But if you're sitting there pulling your hair out, stressed out, making all sorts of big decisions right now, I.
[00:48:09] Yeah, again, come to Moose Jaw, all right? There's nothing that very little written down here in September because this is execution month. This is the time to execute the business you have. Don't let the line companies eat your lunch, all right?
[00:48:26] Our market's going to get worse yet. Yeah, I believe so. I believe they will.
[00:48:31] But hopefully you hear that and you say, let them. I'm wait. I'll be there and ready for the next opportunity when it comes, because I've got cash covered for the next six months, whatever it is. All righty.
[00:48:43] Okay. I think I had more to say to that, but slipped my mind.
[00:48:48] All right. Now, I've been picking on the line companies a bit this week, so I, you know, I'm not going to apologize for that, but the other thing that happened this last week is, you know, I had a farm delivering some green peas.
[00:49:06] And so I got lucky. I got lucky with, you know, sometimes crop marketing, a little bit of luck appears. And so I. I made in the lunchbox crew. We were talking green peas early last week, and we made a whopper of a sale a couple days here before Wednesday. So I guess about a week ago, made a whopper of a green pea sale.
[00:49:29] And I didn't know that Wednesday was going to be the strangest day of. Of these bids getting pulled. I didn't know that beforehand it just honestly, the price had popped up a little bit and we just looked at the margin, no emotion involved. Looked at margin and said, you know what, that pays the bills. It also offsets some of the loss in wheat. Let's pull the trigger. And we did.
[00:49:55] So a little bit of luck on that one. What I want to say about Wednesday, Wednesday's the day that I would say all hell kind of broke loose here in the pulse market is I would boil this down to poor communication from, from the line companies out there, from your, your buyers. So Greenpea buyers especially, I would say, I think they were waiting for something to materialize here and then it didn't. And then they, you know, the rug got pulled. I've heard all sorts of stories. I heard, you know, that some companies want to cancel high priced contracts and so they're gonna look at some way to get out of those.
[00:50:43] I heard that, you know, some other countries behind the scenes also stepped up and are playing hardball. Some contracts got canceled.
[00:50:55] You know, I don't know. I couldn't tell you if that's true or false or what's going on. But I believe that the scenario actually hasn't changed much.
[00:51:05] But what we are experiencing is poor communication from some of these companies.
[00:51:10] I believe some of these companies knew that their green pea movement wasn't going to be very good or available and they just waited until harvest to communicate that. I think it could have been communicated a lot earlier.
[00:51:25] So, you know, you went from $14 green peas to $7 or no bid or whatever it was. Again, why, if you can't move these things, then why do you have a $7 bid for green peas?
[00:51:40] Like now you're just being mean. All right, now that's a hit below the bell, below the belt. Pardon me on that one. Hey, sorry we can't take your $15 green peas, but at 7, we could write a contract for you if you're interested.
[00:51:55] Come on, guys, that's not how this works. All right, So I don't know. I've got to try to get Chuck on the show this Friday to talk about Wednesday and what he feels transpired in that. I did message him during it and said, do you hear anything? And he said absolutely nothing. I haven't heard nothing going on except, yeah, these price drops. So we'll see. I'll get Chuck on the show and we'll try to sort it out.
[00:52:23] All right. All right, folks.
[00:52:26] Okay, are we bullish any crops right now?
[00:52:29] Not really. We got to do speak pipe Wrap up. Can't believe we almost went an hour here today. That was not the plan. Told my wife it was going to be 15 minutes, but here we go. You guys know I like to rant.
[00:52:39] Anyways.
[00:52:40] Voicemail you go to Ryan. Pardon me? Mess this up all the time. Go to what the futurespodcast ca click on the voicemail button and if you do that, you get entered in for a monthly prize this week. All we want you to do is go out there, hit the voicemail button again. What the Futures Podcast ca hit the voicemail button, say, hey, I am Ryan and I am 10% harvested in Dormy, Saskatchewan. All right, so tell us what your percent harvested is. Throw that on the voicemail and you'll get entered in to win.
[00:53:18] This month's prize is going to be a John Deere multi tool.
[00:53:22] So that's fancy. And two of these Tumblr John Deere Tumblr cups. These yeti cups just go to what the Futures Podcast ca click the voicemail button. It's as easy as that. And we'll draw for that at the end of September. Now we have to pick last month's winner. So I got witnesses here. Kent, are you still with us? Because you're going to be my witness on this one.
[00:53:43] But I've got the names in here.
[00:53:46] All right, we're going to mix them up and make sure I'm not looking at it.
[00:53:50] And we have John Deere wrenches. That's what we're giving away from last month. And these wrenches are going to Justin in Cutknife, Saskatchewan. So, Justin, congratulations. Justin left a voicemail for the what the Futures podcast. And you are getting yourself some John Deere wrenches, my friend. 11 piece wrench set, metric wrench set. And they're sitting in that box right at the bottom of the camera shot right there. There you go, Justin, we will get you hooked up. Congratulations again, folks. The voicemail contest brought to you by the Crop Marketing Make Cool conference, Moose Jaw, December 9th to 11th. Get your tickets now.
[00:54:38] All right, folks, I think that's it for the live episode. Thanks for hanging out with me on this Harvest day, Labor Day, I saw the rioters beat the bombers in a thriller.
[00:54:49] My mother in law, she does not text me very often, but she does send me messages when the riders are playing.
[00:54:57] And so I had no clue what was going on in the game, but I got emojis last night. I knew the riders had pulled off something, some miracle, because they were. There's a lot of excitement at the in laws there.
[00:55:11] All right, folks, my positive moment for this week. Let's go with, you know, what? We had, you know, camped camp the Last week in 30 degree weather, hit up the beach, the train rides. The kids got to ride on Double Dime, which is the evening train at Old McDonald. They rode on Triple Nickel, which is the 10am Kids train. And then we even did the train out of Stetler, Alberta something tours. I can't remember what it's called, but if you're ever in Stetler and you have time to jump on this big train, we went 40 rail miles down the road, steam engine train, had a steak dinner. It was awesome. We had a great week camping in that settler area. And yeah, I think it's 29 nights in the trailer this summer. I was hoping to hit 30, so might have to convince the family for one more quick getaway here in September. All right, folks, have a great harvest day. I'll be back Friday with the what the Futures podcast. And you know what, in fact, I'll be back a little sooner. We're going to do another live hit on Wednesday afternoon, so buckle up for that one. And of course, we'll come at you with a fresh episode here on Positive Friday for the what the Futures podcast. My name is Ryan and I'm out of here. Take care.
