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Good Afternoon,
As the ancient Chinese curse goes, “May you live in interesting times.” May is off to an “interesting” start. We have been finding a fair amount of grain. Just not trading much. Buyers and sellers seem to have a difference of opinion on pricing. We saw markets dip at the end of April, but the cash feed prices are coming back strong in May. We have seen feed wheat bids of $14 FOB farm in Manitoba. Seems that there is still good demand, but as I have said before empty feed bins aren’t an option. Some people feel that these prices have no were to go but up, however, I am inclined to disagree. There is a point where the loss that you will face from feeding your livestock is so big and you can’t get a position to protect yourself financially and producers will be forced to sell at whatever the market is. If that happens breeding stock will likely follow the fed stock to market. Just economics 101. Long term not good for agriculture in Canada. For our readers in the west we are seeing feed barley bids in Alberta approaching $10/bus delivered to Lethbridge - unfortunately many producers are expecting that number picked up in the yard and are going to have to keep waiting. 2 CW Rye bids are around $10/bus FOB. Feed bids for White wheat are trailing feed bids for Red wheat at $12.25/bus white vs 13.50+/bus red. Seeing milling oat bids drop significantly. Last week we had bids around $9/bus this week they are closer to $8/bus and dropping. That being said, we still have real interest in any feed grain. Looks like barley acres are predicted down with oats picking up much of the diverted acres. This is supported by the pole that I had taken while talking to producers. I wouldn’t be surprised to see soybean acres in the US rise more than predicted just because beans are not hogs for fertilizer. If this happens the North American feed markets should stay strong for most or all of next year. This doesn’t mean $11 barley and $12 corn but just good profitable prices. Here in MB, we have the opposite problem that Western SK and AB have. We have too much water. The area from Portage to the east side of the Red River is going to be 25 to 30 days later than normal. This likely will change planting intentions to some degree. More barley less corn maybe? We are seeing good new crop prices, $8.00 barley, 6.75 oats, 11.50 wheat, $30 brown flax, $13.50 green and yellow peas, 38 cent red lentils, $0.98/lb yellow mustard, $1.10/lb brown mustard. The pulses, mustards and flax have AoG clauses. If any of this is interesting to you, call the broker you have been working with. If not, call head office and Reed will put you in touch with the right broker. All contact numbers are at the end of this newsletter. Just remember to give us a call for a second opinion on prices when you plan on doing some marketing. We kick tires for free and with feed grains we kick about 50 tires at a time so we have pretty good coverage. Just a little note before I sign off. If you have any bins that have not had tops pulled, please check them. We are seeing crusted peas, barley, oats and heated canola. The grain all went in very dry, but it is that time of year. We can find markets for all qualities, but it is better for you if the grain has no issues. Till next month, Richard Chambers Marketer - Brandon, MB 204-729-1354 - Office 204-761-8320 - Cell richard@qualitygrain.ca Good Afternoon, Well as we all know this is a day for the jokers to have a great time fooling their family, friends and coworkers with harmless pranks. Unfortunately, the world is in the grip of some pranksters who are not interested in creating laughs or anything resembling humor. Between the Ukrainian war (as there is no other way to describe it) and our useless government's response to this situation. This has created so much uncertainty in the world grain markets that no one can predict where it is going. The only thing that we are finding that is consistent across the buyers we work with is no one wants to be caught in a long position. Everyone is buying hand to mouth. But the urgency we saw 3 months ago and then again when the Ukrainian war started seemed to have left the market. Prices on just about all commodities have drifted lower. There are still homes for everything that we have offered this month. But there is a big spread between what buyers and sellers think is a fair price. Just a couple of interesting things I have run across this week in regard to supply and transportation. On the supply side we had a buyer who was looking for about 500 MT of good oats for a groating facility in the US. He was talking strong prices, possibly up to $10 in good freight locations. This sale vanished when the buyer found MB oats from a reseller for $1.00 bushel less in SE MB. This tells me that some buyers are solving their long positions proactively. On the transportation side of things BN Rail has raised their fuel surcharge from $0.12/ mile to $0.47/ mile in the last month. Someone will have to cover that increase and I know you guys can figure out who will pick up the cheque in the end. On the grain side just for interest’s sake I will mention the highest price for a commodity that we have ever traded (to date I will add) yellow mustard at $4650.44/MT delivered to Southern Saskatchewan. $186,000 for a super-b. On a more ordinary note, barley is still trading around $390 to $400/MT, feed wheat $410 to $430 depending on location, milling oats $9, feed oats $6.50, brown flax $37, yellow peas $17, green peas $15. These are just general prices. If you would like, we are more than willing to get you firm bids picked up in your yard. We do still have good demand for all commodities, especially heated canola. Premium prices considering the price of good canola, but it varies so much with quality. Until next month, Richard Chambers Marketer - Brandon, MB 204-729-1354 - Office 204-761-8320 - Cell richard@qualitygrain.ca Good Afternoon,
Well, I hope you have survived winter so far as it has been a very unpredictable one. Temps up and down like a rollercoaster. Big snowstorms in some areas, none in others. It just reminds me of the markets. I was talking to a producer on Friday, and he was wondering what to do. Markets had been up a bunch since the Ukrainian invasion and on Friday gave it all up. My suggestion was to just wait and see what Monday brought. Back up again. As I am writing this HRS wheat sits up 47 cents/ bushel US, canola is up $46/MT CAN and corn is up 35 cents US. With similar increases on Monday. There is no way to tell when it will settle down. We have been seeing our buyers being very reluctant to bid this last week. They seem to be very concerned about being caught on the wrong side. Demand is still there for all commodities. Just further out time wise for movement. It has become harder to get new crop bids for off combine movement. Buyers are partly covered and waiting for some indication of what their end-users are paying before they own too much grain. Not saying prices will move down for sure but when you are at these levels there is much more downside than upside. We do have good demand for heavy barley in MB and eastern SK. Over 50 lbs, under 13.5 moisture will be the specs required. If your barley fits in this range, then it would be $9.15 to $9.20 depending on location. Going south for pearling. If you have some, give us a call. I mentioned snow earlier. I was wondering if some of you could take a second and reply with your location, depth of snowpack and if you had much soil moisture at freeze up. We will share what info we get with everyone to maybe give you a bit of a handle on where different areas are for potential moisture. Please don’t treat these questions like Stats Can. I.E., don’t make it up as you go. LOL. Garbage won’t help anyone. One thing we still seem to have no trouble getting bids on is heated grains of any kind. And the values are pretty good considering the discounts that as example 35% heated canola would normally face. So let us know if you have some in a bin. The two things that are for sure is the quality won’t get better and blending is a risky way to fix a problem. The first loss is almost always the best one. So give us a call. There seems to be a bit of sentiment on the yellow pea side of things that we might see a bit of renewed demand from the US. If so we might get back to the levels we had in 2021. Let us know what you have so we can keep you informed. As usual we are here to help you with your price checking. If you have a price in mind don’t be afraid to share that with us. We are in the business of getting you the best price not just putting deals together. An indication or a target price helps us with that. We are seeing buyers willing to step up to a lot of reasonable offers from producers. Reasonable is important. $50/MT over the market isn’t going to trade. Where as $10/MT might. So give us a call and we will help. Until next month, Richard Chambers Marketer - Brandon, MB 204-729-1354 - Office 204-761-8320 - Cell richard@qualitygrain.ca Good Morning,
It has been a wild ride in the markets these last 18 months. We have seen all commodities other than wheat climb to record high prices. We have seen the futures market make swings in a 24-hour period that normally take weeks to achieve. We have seen both producers and buyers say this is crazy but let it run. This seems to have led to decisions being made on feelings rather than fact. In the fall most producers were saying it’s a short crop, so the sky's the limit and by October it seemed that they were going to be right. Buyers had to pay up or have, either, empty feed bins or nothing coming into process. We saw amazing gains in some commodities such as flax. We traded $48 a bushel during that time frame. (FYI this is $75,000 for 1 x 40 MT load). Turns out that if prices get too strong buyers find other sources for what they need. Flax is now trading at $35 to $38/bus. Not cheap but likely sustainable for this crop. We have been pricing new crop at $25/bus. This is an example of where new crop pricing has moved to. We traded close to $7.00 for new crop oats before Christmas and now it's hard to find $6.00/bus. New crop Yellow peas have softened a bit as well. But still are going to be profitable at $12 for a good #2 and up to $13 for a specialty no glyphosate pea for later delivery. Priced some new crop barley at mid $6 for off combine as well. From the conversations we are having with producers there seems to be strong interest in oats and yellow peas. Both crops with decent new crop pricing and a much lower nitrogen bill attached to growing them. I am not sure if it is too late to price some at good levels but if you have none priced it might be a good idea to consider this. I do think wheat and barley will be the 2 crops that give up acres to oats and peas. Still decent new crop malt contracts available. $8.25 picked up. We haven’t priced any new crop wheat but have heard from producers that there have been some pretty good opportunities to lock in wheat. We have been trading some $9 barley picked up in MB and SE SK. Limited tonnes. $11 feed wheat in the same areas, $6-7 feed oats and 8.50 milling oats. We do have demand for more feed wheat in that area as well. Have buyers looking for 1 CAN canola as well. $23 picked up for Mar/Apr. Some days that looks good 48 hours later it is $.50/bushel short. Call if you would like to get on our canola list as I think there will be some opportunities going forward. It seems that the crush margins are still strong so until supplies are too costly or hard to source crushers will keep going. For them it is a good thing that export canola hasn’t been moving at last year's pace. Just my thoughts for this month. If you have any comments or questions, contact any one of the brokers on the list below and we will do our best to help you. Remember, even if you are just kicking tires, we can kick them faster and with more complete coverage than you can. We deal with dozens of different buyers from across Canada daily. Until next month, Richard Chambers Marketer - Brandon, MB 204-729-1354 - Office 204-761-8320 - Cell richard@qualitygrain.ca Good day,
Well, another year is behind us. For some producers it has been a bumpy ride with drought conditions limiting yields. Other areas of the prairies have been very fortunate with good yields and record high prices. Anyone who is not satisfied with these price levels may need to sharpen their pencils. As we all have seen before, a stretch of high prices leads to greater production which takes care of the high prices. I would suggest that a person keep that in mind as we are in the run up to seeding. Keep in mind the old Wall Street saying when it comes to marketing your crops. “Bulls make money, Bears make money and Hogs get slaughtered!!!” Speaking of new crop prices. There has been more interest from producers regarding new crop prices. We have been seeing oats trading in the $6.70 to $7.00 FOB farm for Aug/Sept/Oct movement. We just had a buyer offer $6.70 picked up for new crop barley with Sept movement. That is in SE SK. This buyer is looking for Eastern SK and MB barley. Price depends on location. I don’t usually push any marketing plan but personally if I was seeding oats (as half of western Canada is) I would want to have some of my production priced. Oats are even more attractive with fertilizer prices where they are. One thing I would suggest to anyone with bins that haven’t had a load or 2 pulled from. Check the tops!! In the last 3 weeks we have had 4 different lots of malt barley rejected for rusty grain beetles present in the loads. Most malt buyers have 0 tolerance for bugs and I know some feed mills lose their minds if bugs are found in the sample. Might be a good idea to give a bit more money to your electric utility and freeze that bin down. We are still seeing strong prices for most grains. Brown flax has dropped off its highs with most bids below $40/bus. (Manitoba and Eastern SK price) Yellow peas in a good freight location are still worth $18 picked up but for further out (spring movement). If you had to move them in Jan, you would likely give up at least a buck. Feed barley is still strong at $9 to $9.10 picked up which is impressive as we have traded corn delivered to south east SK for $9.75/bus. That is 385/MT for corn vs $415/MT for barley. Barley is landing in Lethbridge at $9.60 and seeing corn land at $10.50/bus ($440 barley vs $410 corn). Feed wheat is $11.00 to $11.50. Milling oats without glyphos are in the $8.00 to $9.00 depending on location and timeframe. Best prices are for April on. We are still seeing strong demand for heated canola, but movement is a bit further out as well. Truck availability is a big part of the issue. Just a note on that subject. I have a feedlot who has bought corn screenings from the US. The trucking outfit that was to haul them is down to 25% of their drivers who can cross the US/Canada border because they aren’t vaccinated. This shortage of drivers for north south routes has driven freight up by 50% and reduced the availability to a trickle. It seems that Covid is the gift that keeps on giving. It sounds as though the latest variant is maybe going to be a good thing. We are all going to get it and then maybe Big Brother can get his nose out of our business and let us get on with living our lives as we see fit. That was my last rant for this month. Stay safe, check your bins and don’t get frozen solid. And as always call, tx or email if you need to check and see if the price you found is great or not. That is a big part of what we do for free at Quality Grain. Until next month, Richard Chambers Marketer - Brandon, MB 204-729-1354 - Office 204-761-8320 - Cell richard@qualitygrain.ca |
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May 2022
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