Mid Month Newsletter - November

Good Day,

I just got of the phone with a reseller that I have faith in. He tells it as he sees it. We were talking about the price of feed grains and why they are going down as we are heading into the main feeding season. We agreed that there are several reasons but likely the number one reason is that the US grew a decent crop of corn, and the Mississippi River is at a 10 year low. Back in October it was even closed for barge traffic for a short period of time. They moved in and dredged the 2 main shallow spots. This is good but they were only able to open it up to 1 way traffic. This problem is likely to continue into the spring or until the next major moisture falls.

This has forced sellers to look elsewhere. Feedlot alley in Southern Alberta has become a major place to ship corn. The number we heard was 20-unit trains have been sold for unload Nov/Jan. This has taken the push away to buy either Canadian corn or barley. This has caused delivered bids Lethbridge to drop $20/MT and FOB farm numbers to drop by corresponding amounts. Barley bids into Lethbridge are now around $445/MT delivered for Jan/Feb/Mar delivery with feedlots having good coverage so far.

Will this change and prices go back up? No one will venture a guess on this. I know I won’t. It is something to think about. So far, we have been lucky in Western MB as we still have decent demand from the hogs. This has stopped the drop at $15/MT for now.

Just one other thing that the brokers at Quality have been talking about is how there seems to be large volumes of good oats in bins and many producers have $6 on the bin door. We are still seeing our better oat bids ($5.00 picked up – location dependent) being for further out. Many of the buyers are covered until March. Just food for thought.

A bit of a heads up for producers in Western MB and Eastern SK. We are hosting a meeting with Western Ag Labs (nitrogen soil testing) and ADM Fertilizer (future price outlook) in Virden at 1:30 PM on Dec 12th at the Legion Hall. I hope many of you can make it as I think it will be interesting. And it would be a chance for us to put faces on many of your voices. Please put it on your calendar.

On a final note we have buyers in Manitoba on the lookout for conventional Gluten Free Oats so if you have some and are in MB/Eastern SK let us know what you have and we will price it for you.


Till next month.



Richard Chambers
Marketer - Brandon, MB
204-729-1354 - Office
204-761-8320 - Cell
richard@qualitygrain.ca