Every calendar year for me begins a trip down to St. Jean-Baptiste, a charming if frozen French village south of Morris and north of Emerson. Each year at this time the community holds St. Jean Farm Days, and it’s always my favourite farmer’s show.
Before I get into that, allow me to comment on a prairie phenomenon I find most confounding. (I whine about this every year at this time.) When I look at the name St. Jean-Baptiste on the map, visions come into my mind of John the Baptist, who baptized Jesus in the waters of the Jordan 2000 years ago.
However, everyone calls the place St. Jean, pronouncing it “Saint Gene,” rather than with the pronunciation we used with our former prime minister, Jean Chretien.
This brings to my mind the image of Eugene Levy, which is considerably less sublime.
Well, there’s no point fighting lost battles. In Winnipeg, a burg containing thousands of people of French descent, the street Des Meurons is pronounced “Dez Myuronz” – even by the French folk. And in Saskatchewan Bienfait is pronounced “Bean-fate” – by the folks who live there. Why should I care anyway? I’m an anglo. So, back to the point:
St. Jean Farm Days is always the best farm show to me because it’s relaxed, informative, low-key. The huge shows like Manitoba Ag Days, the Farm Progress Show and Crop Production Week have a lot more on the program and in the trade shows, but St. Jean Farm Days, with its lack of agricultural glamour, is – to me, at least – a better gauge of what’s going on in farm country.
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What I sensed yesterday, and may get more of today, was farmer optimism about crop prices in 2011 – and grave concerns about seeding. Soils in much of the Red River valley and across the prairies are saturated, and any rain at seeding time could cause the same havoc that devastated thousands of farmers last spring.
So that leaves farmers with a lot of challenges when it comes to pricing and hedging this year, and I imagine it must be frustrating at shows like this to hear from experts about good prices in the market now – that they don’t dare begin locking-in because of production worries.
I wrote a column about that problem in this week’s paper, and my blog entry Monday was about the same subject, but there’s no easy answer as to what to do with good prices now, probably better prices later, possibly price slumps that could wipe away contemporary prices we’re taking for granted, and huge production questions hanging in front of most producers. Without a crop to back a price hedging strategy using futures contracts or cash contracts, farmers are open to a lot of risk.
Using options contracts is the obvious answer for those who have money to pay for the premiums, but for those who don’t have the money – a common situation for producers who could produce much of a crop last year – or to those who just aren’t comfortable using options, there isn’t much they can do.
Except go to meeting like this, hear the outlook sessions, hope they get a crop this year, and hope the high prices stay with us.
