Reading Time: < 1 minute A call, a put, a naked writer. At-the-money, in-the-money, out-of-the-money. It’s enough to make you think you’re locked inside a jigsaw puzzle where none of the pieces fit. In fact, though, if you go to some online dictionaries of grain marketing terms, you’ll find these are a mere handful of the sub-categories listed for just […] Read more
The Marketing Puzzle
Field Team
Reading Time: 6 minutes As if marketing isn’t complex enough already, Ryan and Lauren Maurer have injected two extra complications. Their farm is above average in size, with 11,000 acres based at Grenfell, an hour and a half east of Regina. Plus, they grow and have to market a wide variety of commodities, including grains, pulses, oilseeds and niche […] Read more
Talk It Up
Reading Time: 3 minutes Gilbert Ferré grows 2,500 acres of wheat, barley, oats, canola and peas in the Zenon Park area of northeastern Saskatchewan. His son Nicolas farms with him, much as Gilbert farmed with his own father when he started out in 1974. Now, with years of experience behind him, Ferré doesn’t hesitate when asked what marketing advice […] Read more
Trading Places
Reading Time: 7 minutes A handful of companies still dominate the global grain trade. Chances are, you’re still selling to them too, either directly through a local elevator they own, or indirectly through the maze of marketing agreements that local buyers negotiate with them. But scratch that surface and you’ll find a sector that’s undergoing an enormous transformation — […] Read more
Crop Adviser’s Solution – for Oct. 11, 2010
Reading Time: 2 minutes One hard-working producer called me last June about his field of canola. His outside round looked great — a thick stand of healthy plants at the three to four leaf stage. The inside of his field was another story. It was sparsely populated with sickly, yellow, mottled, dying plants. Up close, a sharp and clearly […] Read more
R.O.A. – for Aug. 30, 2010
Reading Time: 3 minutes Farmers live poor and die rich. That’s what the old adage says, and as the average age of Canadian farmers continues to creep up, it certainly seems true. According to Statistics Canada, the average Canadian farm in 2008 had assets valued at about $1.5 million and a net worth of $1.28 million. More important, though, […] Read more
Grain And Oilseed Farms – for Aug. 30, 2010
Reading Time: 4 minutes On Feb. 25, 2008, Hard Red Spring wheat peaked at an incredible $24 a bushel on the Minneapolis exchange. “That affected the psyche of the entire grain market,” says Derek Brewin, professor at the University of Manitoba’s department of agribusiness and agricultural economics. The 2007 to 2008 price rallies set off a wave of farm […] Read more
PIGS – for Aug. 30, 2010
Reading Time: 3 minutes Nowhere is it more true than in the hog sector. Abnormal is the new normal in Canadian agriculture overall, but the swine industry in particular experienced repeated, devastating blows during the five-year sample period. It used to be that revenue per pig produced was cyclical. Typically the price cycle was two years up, two down. […] Read more
CATTLE* – for Aug. 30, 2010
Reading Time: 2 minutes “There are more and more farmers who are proactively making choices based on business principals,” says Dale Kaliel. Kaliel works on the AgriProfit$ program, a farm business analysis service focusing on unit production costs, overall farm financial roll-up and financial benchmarks. “The key to ROA is to improve production and economic efficiency within your capital […] Read more
Kernels of Wisdom – for Aug. 30, 2010
Reading Time: 4 minutes Does it really take seven years for gum to pass through your digestive tract? Do you really lose 40 per cent of your body heat through your head? Does a red sky at night really predict good weather? All of us can recite lists of folk wisdom as long as your arm. But is any […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
