anybody lock in fall prices in April?

[AdamSmith]

Hi Ron,

The anxiety you feel about your earlier marketing decision is as common as weeds in a field.

Here's a joke I heard this spring. What are the three things common to all farmers? Sex, Rain and Subsidies(you could insert grain prices here as well), their neighbours always seem to get more.

It's a good joke because there is a ring of truth to it.

Decisions made for the wrong reasons are bad decisions, decisions made for the right reasons are good decisions. Sometimes though good decisions cause what appear to be bad out comes and it is those decisions that can be the most disasterous to a farm operation. They most likely are not disasterous financially but they can reek havoc with the decision makers thought process and cause him or her to question their own ability to make sound decisions. You begin second guessing yourself, you may search for scapegoats, it can lead to true disaster.

We would all like to be right all of the time but that is totally unrealistic.

What is right for you may not be right for your neighbour and visa-versa.

For example a friend and neighbour of mine and I each grew winter wheat last year. I sold about a third of my production last Nov. for $3.70 bu. fob bin SW Manitoba. When I told him I sold a that level he said he wouldn't sell for less than $4.00. We had a long philosophical discussion about $3.70 bu vs $4.00 and after discussing the many many factors that come into play in the decision making process the one thing that was agreed to was the fact that one price does not fit all and that we were both quite comfortable with the marketing decions being made. His yield was less than mine, my variable costs were higher, his fixed costs were higher. My $3.70 would net my farm much greater returns per acre than $4.00 would for him.

I know this isn't the same thing as locking in for $7.5 and then watching the market go to $9.00 but the mindset needed to mentally deal with it is the same.I could have turned myself inside out all winter long because I could have sold wheat for fifty cents a bushel more later on, but I didn't. I believed then and even after selling the last of this stuff for $4.25 that I made good decisions all the way trough. They were good because they were made for the right reasons and I can easily live with them.

Be comfortable with your decisions and accept the fact that poor ones will be made from time to time. Just don't dwell on them, learn from them and realize new ones will need to be made tommorow.

[nakodo]

Aren't the price of stones the same in each province? I know glass house prices must be different, seems there are a lot more in Que, Ont, BC and Ab than elsewhere???

[nakodo]

And yet I seem to hear you saying we are different, well at least those Quebecers are different, and those Ontario people are different, and those lower mainlanders while they are different, and those foreigners are different, and those immigrants from the East coast while they are different?? or all we all the same??

[cowman]

Well people are people. Some good and some bad. I've met and worked with people from every province and just about every race and some were good and some were real SOBs!
The prairies share a common heritage and a common economy. So here we are in a drought and the govenor of the bank of Canada says our economy is booming. And I guess it is in central Canada. So up go the interest rates. Just what we don't need out here right now. The same thing happened back in the early eighties when the oil industry was in shambles after the central government destroyed it with the NEP. Our federal govt. is not the govt. of the west but a colonial dictator who cares nothing for the hinterland. Can we ever change that? No, we've tried. We vote in people and they can't do anything. On election night it's all over before they even count our votes.
Why is it that the lowest common denominator seems always to be what we should aim for? If the Americans or Europeans get a certain level of support why not the rest of us? Why do our provincial governments have to step in and do the bailing when it is so apparent that the federal government should be the ones saving the ship.
In Alberta we are in for a major, major wreck! Not just the old farmer but every last one of us. If the farmer goes down one hell of a lot of people are going down with him! I think we have about the highest per farmer debt in the country and no crops, livestock etc. means no one gets paid. Go talk to the feed dealers, auction marts, machinery dealers, fertilizer dealers. They know the wreck is heading their way and they are scared! And when they go broke who pays the wages of all the little government workers? It becomes a spiral because the fact of the matter is the only real wealth comes out of the ground (oil,agriculture,steel,lumber etc.)and all the rest of our economy fails without this.
So if Quebec, or Alberta, or America, or Europe try to save this industry that is a good thing. Lets try to get the common denominator at the high mark instead of seeing how low we can go.

[dalek]

Glass houses attract hail

[melvill]

Here, here, AdamSmith! Want to come and work with me doing marketing courses with producers? I've been saying what you said for years but if it came from a farmer (which I'm assuming you are) it would carry much more weight. (Is my assumption correct?)

[TOM4CWB]

Lee,

Much can be said about risk management, and obviously this winter farmers will be more interested than ever.

Call options on hedged Canola,

Put weather options for lack of rainfall,

Put options to lock in profitable prices on our grain.

Those who practiced a good risk management plan this year are being rewarded beyond belief, and those who did not have the self dicipline to manage risk... are paying a huge price.

Anyone who read Agriville over the past 5 months had exceptionally good information, information that if heeded would have kept any farm in Alberta, or anywhere else, viable...

We cannot afford to take all the risk ourselves anymore on modern farms that practice high performance agriculture...

Just as we cannot afford to have marketers like the CWB taking on risk that we don't know about.
We must have complete information on what our marketers are doing, if we are not responsible for the decisions ourselves. Otherwise the FED/PROV. governments need to cough up the money to make us profitable, when the system fails us.