TJADEN LEPP ON GRAIN CO GRAIN CONTRACTS
“Shop it around.”
That was the main message of FarmLink Marketing Solutions’ Brenda Tjaden Lepp in her presentation just now. She said the range of grain contract prices for new crop wheat, durum and barley varies wildly between buyer in local areas, so farmers generally don’t need to be looking out of the province or in the U.S. for the best price, but instead to call all the local buyers. If ICE futures work, the spreads between buyers will narrow, but for now each buyer has a different price.
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MIELKE ON LONG TERM BEARISH THREAT TO CROP PRICES
Mielke of Oil World told the audience that he sees a potential threat to crop prices if world political stability worsens. Governments worried about Arab Spring-like unrest might move quickly to buy up food to keep their populations happy, which would lead to higher world crop prices, which could then lead to biofuel subsidies being reduced or dropped. That would eliminate a huge part of vegetable oil and overall crop demand, perhaps permanently. Government overreaction to high food prices is a danger he worries about for 2013 or 2014.
MIELKE ON CANOLA
Thomas Mielke of Oil World is giving an outlook talk that is bullish canola and very bearish flax. Mielke says the world market needs Canadian farmers to produce 14.5 to 15 million tonnes of canola this year. To get that, prices will need to be relatively attractive going into seeding.
Flax doesn’t look good because FSU farmers are planting so darned much.
CWB MAKES ITS PITCH
Gord Flaten and quite a few CWB farm business reps were at a breakfast session laying out how CWB 2.0 will work. Flaten said the new board will play an important marketing role for many farmers and has a pile of experience and skills at marketing grain. It will also have the ability to market other crops, such as canola. Options for early pooling, longer pooling, futures-based pricing, and cash contracting will be rolled out as grain company handling agreements are signed.
