Grainworld, Canada’s longest-running and often biggest grain market conference, won’t happen next year and may never occur again.
“I am not going to run it anymore,” said John Duvenaud, publisher of the Wild Oats markets newsletter and Grainworld operator.
Duvenaud never lost money on the two-day conference, but its daunting size became a drag on his modest Winnipeg market analysis business.
The conference was run for decades by the Canadian Wheat Board. When the CWB decided it couldn’t commit to running the major conference after it lost its export monopoly, Duvenaud stepped in to keep it running.
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However, the information revolution has undermined the need for a Canada-specific late winter markets outlook conference.
“It’s old technology,” Duvenaud said of the meeting.
“These (types of) conferences are 150 years old, from a time when it took weeks to get information across the country. Now guys can read all they want to read on the internet.”
The loss of the CWB’s marketing monopoly also lost Grainworld a crucial news hook: the first new crop Pool Return Outlook for the coming crop year.
The estimates of new crop prices carried a lot of market weight for farmers and the global grain industry.
Duvenaud replaced the PRO release with crop production forecast announcements, but they had less impact.
Attendance fell, and the conference did not make news headlines in the way it once did.
Randy Strychar, a leading oat market and industry analyst spoke at a recent Grainworld, said he isn’t surprised that these types of conferences struggle to maintain relevance.
He said most farmers and industry people want price information to be online and current.
“Farmers are demanding the Expedia experience. They want to go online and they want to be able to do what we do with hotels and airlines,” said Strychar, who publishes a daily oat markets report.
“It’s what the consumer is demanding. This is a young, educated, tech-savvy group of farmers we have out there now.”
Duvenaud offered Grainworld to a number of other potential operators, but “I didn’t find anyone.”
This is not to say that grain industry conferences can’t flourish.
Conferences focused on practical production information are more popular than ever.
Meetings that allow farmerx and industry to network are also popular, as are those that bring together all the links in a marketing chain.
