Organic milling oats and feed barley

[hobbyfrmr]

Are both at $8.00/bushel FOB Farm. Grain Millers.

[farmaholic]

That's fanatastic but maybe I wouldn't be shouting it from the rooftops. ....so it stays that price. You might attract alot of attention from fence sitters.

[hobbyfrmr]

Agreed, but it is a marketing forum, so every now and then I try to relay marketing information!

[farmaholic]

Like yellow mustard... sold for $.60/lb delivered. This is a niche crop and basically inelastic demand that can be easily overproduced. It has had to go up in price(not all the way to sixty cents though, its just S/U is very low right now) to buy acres away from other crops. With canola having been grown in most of Western Canada, finding ground to seed it into is a bit of a problem. Then there's cleavers...

Great crop to speculate with.

[Hopalong]

A couple of years back a major British supermarket chain said it would no longer sell eggs produced with organic feed, citing lack of supply.
Wonder why they could not just raise the price to attract supply?
Maybe the sky is not the limit.

[farmaholic]

The other day I made my quote:

"You can feed a market and grow it or starve it and kill it"

I made this quote from a seller's perspective and I think colevilleh2s took it from a buyer's perspective. In reality, I guess it works both ways...

[hobbyfrmr]

There is a fine line between skilled marketing for profit and holding organic grain/products at ransom. I have seen it where organic flax gets short and the last holdout producers are asking for extraordinary prices above the existing premiums. End user begins the outsourcing procedure from a different country.
As described , you can feed it or starve it.
Organic prices are higher because they reflect lower average yields. Half a crop, twice the price. Very often the net result is similar to conventional farms. Sometimes better, usually it is not enough to go on a new iron spending spree to minimize income taxes.

[Hopalong]

Except for those who are fanatic about things, most consumers will back off demand when prices get too high.
Humane treatment, envirionment friendly, organic, GMO free, gluten free, natural, locally produced, the list goes on and hard to predict what is coming next.
Eggs are an example where some consumers would pay a dollar a dozen more for these things but doubt more than a few would pay a hundred or even or even ten dollars more.
The sky is not the limit.

[ado089]

Sold my oats at $8 in Jan. Soft white is going in March for $17, would have been $20 but it had low falling numbers. It yielded the same as dad's hard red across the road, but a drought year isn't a good comparison. I made money he didn't. I'm thinking of throwing in a 1/3 rate of chickpeas in with the wheat next year. Feed chickpea are likely going to trade for $0.85/lb.

[farmaholic]

Ado089, Are you going to transition some of your conventional acres to organic?

[ado089]

Farma, authority will take care of Cleavers. What your average and top yields for yellow mustard. I have some going in this year and I'm wondering if it's worth pushing the inputs on it. I'm in decent canola country but I don't like growing canola when the breakeven yield is in the mid to high 30's.

[hobbyfrmr]

Ado, who buys feed chickpeas?
I started growing faba beans this may fit with them as well.

[farmaholic]

Best I've ever done was about 1250 lbs/ac(25 bushels), expect less, had 750 lbs too. It can and should be straight cut(we use a flex head with an auger that is locked up) because if you let it get too ripe before swathing it would be like swathing tumble weeds--impossible. It can shell in real bad winds but has real good resistance. I would still give it sulfur(ratio like canola) and if conditions are right for disease spray it for sclerotinia(might keep it green longer-delayed maturity but we have seen sclerotinia in mustard in low spots around here). Treat it like canola with less fertilizer, but don't starve it. I would use a canola nutrient uptake and removal chart and reduce it by what you think you can grow with average rainfall. We seed 10-12 lbs/ac.

Check the authority claim(it might be Minor Use Registration). I think they want it applied at a reduced(light) rate and therefore only claim "suppression" of cleavers. There was a good presentation from FMC of Canada at the Mustard Meeting at Crop Production Show. There could be some mustard losses with it as well, if that is the case go to 12 pounds per acre(seed can be quite large). Exercise caution.

I think there could be one more year of good prices because the pipeline will be basically empty by the time new crop comes along. If there is a wreck, then there may be another good year of prices. Have you decided to try to contract some or go it alone? I don't think there is a huge downside risk unless tonnes of it get grown, but wtf do I know...(just ask me about wheat and canola sales to date).

Color sorters can turn sows ears into silk purses, but that benefit is to the companies who own them. It is surprising how poorer quality mustard can fetch a good price when supplies are low. Mine was downgraded because of cleavers but still managed to get a real good price.
Crop left standing after maturity that gets rained on can get rime seeds--white from the inside of the seed pod sticking to the seed. I can't imagine this is too big of a problem unless it is being used in the whole seed market but then again, I bought a small bag of whole mustard seed to make sausage that had some seeds white with rime. If its crushed or ground into flour...

We did quite well with our carry-over $96000 on about 155 acres, almost $620/ acre gross. Never paid that for the land in 1997.

Good luck, hope you hit a home run with it!!

[ado089]

Chickpea are going to sunrise. Doesn't sound like there is much hope for peas or fabas, there's not much of a premium if any over conventional. I did contract 600lb/ac at 45 cents on the mustard through viterra. Hopefully there is more and the price goes up a bit. I'm planning on giving it a 90-30-0-24 blend. If it doesn't get used this year it will make for a cheap fert bill next year. I'm only doing a half section but it should be neat.

[farmaholic]

That will be "WELL" fed. Probably more than it can use. Aren't you the VR guy? Is it getting it all at once?