Hursh Consulting & Communications Inc.

Ask a room filled with grain farmers if their costs are rising and most will reply in the affirmative. Some producers who track their financials very carefully will tell you that despite historically strong grain prices, margins are tight in their 2013 crop budgets. There’s a cost – price squeeze.

But most of the traditional inputs have not actually seen a price increase. Nitrogen and phosphate prices usually rise between the fall and spring, but that hasn’t been evident this time. Buying last fall hasn’t produced the normal saving.

And the major nutrients are somewhat less expensive than last spring.

According to the Farm Input Survey conducted by Alberta Agriculture, phosphate was $50 a tonne less expensive in February than it was a year previous. And the average price in February was $100 a tonne lower than the price recorded for April of 2012.

The survey pegged urea (46-0-0) at $625 per tonne in February. It was $640 a tonne in March of last year and skipped to $825 in May. Producers who waited until seeding time to buy their nitrogen paid a lot more last spring.

Nitrogen fertilizer is certainly more expensive than it should be based on the cost of natural gas, but the cost of this major input is down, not up.

The Alberta Farm Input Survey does show that the price of Liberty Link canola seed is up by $50 a bag, but the herbicides in the survey are trending downward.

Interest rates remain amazing low. That isn’t a cost showing any increase. Fuel hasn’t changed a lot and it’s a cost that has become relatively minor compared to other inputs.

So why do producers say that costs are increasing? One of the reasons is that most of us are using higher rates than ever.

Strong grain prices encourage more fertilizer use, particularly nitrogen. With the increasing threat of herbicide resistance in weeds, multiple modes of action are being employed. Rather than just a glyphosate burn-off before seeding, another product is often being added to the mix.

Fungicide use has increased dramatically in recent years. Whether it’s for fusarium in wheat or sclerotinia in canola, fungicide application is a new cost of doing business. The sprayer never sits very long during the growing season.

It’s probably fair to assume that farm equipment costs have also been rising. Producers have used these relatively buoyant economic times to upgrade tractors, combines, sprayers, seeders and trucks. Those are big ticket items.

However, for many producers, the biggest increase is in land costs. Rental rates that may have been $40 or $50 a few years ago may now be $70 or $80. There are even deals at $100 an acre and above.

On land that’s owned free and clear, the budget should include an opportunity cost – what you could get if the land was sold and you had the money invested. With higher land prices, this opportunity cost is also rising. If you’ve borrowed money to buy land recently, you’re payments are up.

The economics are all very rational. Producers are using more inputs and upgrading their equipment while competing harder to increase their land base.

Investors may be playing a role in farmland price increases, but you can’t really blame them for the increase in cash rents.

Costs are up, but there’s no convenient boogeyman to blame. The biggest villain is staring back at us when we look in the mirror.

“Land prices are way too high, far beyond productive value.” How many times have you heard people say this or something like it?

As Earl Smith of groPartners Farm and Land Management pointed out in a session at Crop Production Week in Saskatoon, this has always been true. Even when land prices were much lower, the cropping return from a particular piece of land would seldom make the land payment.

Smith used a central Alberta example with a land price of $3,000 an acre. (Top quality land in Saskatchewan is more typically around $2,000 an acre.)

With an interest rate of 5 per cent and a 20-year payment term, the annual payment on $3,000 an acre land comes to $240. With a big crop at the prices available last fall, you might actually be able to pay all your cropping expenses and the land payment. However, you certainly couldn’t do it with an average crop.

And as we all know, grain prices might not stay so high and interest rates might not stay so low into the future. So how can you justify paying so much?

Smith listed the cash rent for the land at $80 an acre, but cash rents for good land are now often reaching $100 an acre or above.

Cash rent is a good proxy for what farmers think they can pay and still make a dollar. There’s a big gap between a $100 per acre cash rent and a $240 loan payment.

But what if you had the money and paid cash for the land. If you have money in an interest bearing investment these days, chances are that it will be earning less than 3 per cent. You could buy land at $3,000 an acre, rent it out for $100 an acre and make just as much.

The difference is that land might continue to increase in value. Like gold, land is an investment. Unlike gold, land also pays an annual dividend.

To take the emotion out of land purchase decisions, Smith advises producers to consider land ownership and the farm business as two separate enterprises. Call land ownership your Land Company and call the farm business your Operating Company.

By itself, is farmland a good investment? Smith actually believes that farmland prices will soon see a downside correction, but he remains bullish about agriculture and land prices over the long term.

No one can see the future, but owning land is much more tangible for many of us than owning stocks, mutual funds or gold. Land hasn’t always increased in value, but over the long term it compares favourably with many other investments. So your Land Company may want to buy more land.

Can your Operating Company pay your Land Company a fair market rent so that it can afford to make payments on additional new acres?

For the Land Company, it may require market rent on two or three quarters so that it can afford to purchase one new quarter.

Alternatively, your Operating Company could rent land from someone else. Returns over and above the rental payment could be invested in something other than additional land.

Viewed this way, land purchase and rental decisions can be more rational.

If buying, Smith cautions producers to keep debt manageable. Make sure you have a good margin of safety in your debt repayment ability and make sure your debt to equity ratio is strong.

Earl Smith’s presentation is posted at www.cropweek.com.

The number jumps off the page. Saskatchewan’s realized net farm income for 2011 is estimated by Statistics Canada at a record-shattering $2.8 billion. The previous record was in 2010 at nearly $1.8 billion.

While Saskatchewan’s farm income has never been better, Alberta is struggling. The difference – Saskatchewan’s farm economy is dominated by grain, while Alberta relies heavily on livestock.

Alberta’s realized net farm income for 2010 was a negative number, minus $178 million. For 2011, there’s an improvement, but realized net income was still only $367 million.

Even Manitoba, with a much smaller land base, is doing better than Alberta. Manitoba recorded a net farm income of $603 million in 2010 and $499 million in 2011.

Many numbers can be used to measure the health of the farm economy, but realized net income is probably the most common. It’s the difference between farm cash receipts and operating expenses, minus depreciation.

Putting Saskatchewan’s $2.8 billion into perspective, the realized net farm income for all of Canada was just under $5.7 billion, so Saskatchewan accounted for half of the nation’s net farm income. The next highest after Saskatchewan was Quebec at just under $1.2 billion. Ontario was at $730 million.

Total cash receipts went up dramatically in Saskatchewan between 2010 and 2011. In 2010, money from the sale of grain and livestock including any program payments totaled a little over $9 billion. For 2011, cash receipts were just over $11 billion.

The expense side the equation also increased, but not nearly as fast as the rise in income. Total operating expenses increased about $800 million for Saskatchewan farmers between 2010 and 2011, while depreciation went up by more than $100 million.

Alberta had comparable cash receipts, about $9 billion in 2010 and over $10 billion in 2011. However, expenses were much higher. Of course, the biggest expense for cattle feedlots and hog operations is the cost of feed. Strong grain prices benefit Alberta grain producers, just as they do grain producers in Saskatchewan, but high grain prices are limiting returns in the livestock sector.

There has long been a push to get a more balanced farm economy in Saskatchewan, one that’s more evenly split between grain and livestock. Saskatchewan has the second largest beef breeding herd in the country with 30 per cent of the cows as compare to 40 per cent in Alberta, but Alberta absolutely dominates the feedlot industry.

As well, both Alberta and Manitoba have much larger hog industries.

Saskatchewan’s reliance on grain has typically been viewed as a weakness. Alberta’s farm income numbers used to regularly eclipse those of Saskatchewan. There were many years when Saskatchewan would have had negative net farm income had it not been for government payments.

These days, it’s clear that the big money is in grain. And on the beef side, cow-calf operators have been doing better than the feedlot sector, so Saskatchewan has actually benefited from shipping calves to Alberta for feeding.

Preliminary farm cash receipt statistics for 2012 suggest the trend to very strong farm income in Saskatchewan is continuing. Little wonder that land prices are sizzling hot and farm machinery sales are brisk.

Maybe it will someday reverse once again. Maybe in three or five or seven years it will be livestock making the profit and grain that’s struggling.

But for now, grain is golden and that makes Saskatchewan king of the provinces when it comes to realized net farm income.

As a consultant / journalist / farmer, I’ve offered lots of opinions over the years. Looking back, some have been spectacularly wrong.

Farmers naturally want analysis of the current trends in the industry. But they also want to hear extrapolations in an attempt to understand how the future might unfold.

In the late 90’s, before PowerPoint presentations were reliable, I trucked an overhead projector to scores of farm meetings. One of my favorite pages listed the top ten uses for abandoned grain terminals.

You could use the side of a terminal for a drive-in theatre screen. You could use them for bungee jumping. You could grind them up into aggregate for use on gravel roads.

Those were the years of Saskatchewan Wheat Pool’s Project Horizon. New concrete elevators were going up everywhere. Other companies were also in the game and there were also lots of farmer-owned terminals being built.

I bought shares in a farmer-owned terminal, but when competitors built six new concrete terminals in the area, I didn’t think there would be enough export grain to see them all thrive.

As the big concrete and steel terminals went up, the old wooden elevators came down, but it appeared that the grain handling system was being dramatically overbuilt. After all, the big terminals need a lot of throughput to make them viable.

At the time, it seemed plausible that Western Canada was going to see reduced grain exports. Being land-locked, our freight bill to port position puts us at a disadvantage compared to most competitors. Farmland was being converted to hay and pasture because cattle were profitable and grain was not.

Besides, I reasoned, our crop mix was going to be more heavily weighted to specialty grains that wouldn’t go through large concrete terminals. And more of our grain would be fed to livestock or receive secondary processing on the prairies. That seemed logical given the end of the Crow Rate grain transportation subsidy.

The trouble with predictions is that you don’t know what you don’t know. Who could have predicted BSE in 2003 and the years of resulting turmoil in the beef industry? Even though profitability has finally returned to the cow-calf industry, the beef breeding herd has continued to decline.

Who could have predicted so many tough years for the hog industry? Rather than a top ten list for abandoned grain terminals, it should have been a list of uses for abandoned hog barns.

Western Canada’s largest success in adding value has been canola crushing. About half of the canola crop goes to domestic crushers. Still, there’s ample grain volume through the big terminals. Field peas used to be reserved for specialty crop operations, but many terminals now handle peas. Some even export red lentils.

Crop yields continue to trend upwards and we’re using more crop inputs than ever. The grain industry is enjoying its greatest profitability since the 70s.

There aren’t any abandoned concrete terminals. Anyone wanting to sell a terminal would have lots of suitors.

These days, farm audiences want to know the future of land prices. Are the increases sustainable? What will happen with interest rates? Will the growing world population and the increased purchasing power of emerging economies propel grain prices to new heights?

Definitely older and possibly more humble, my opinions are more subdued these days. There are lots of factors to analyze and pontificate over, but the future is often fraught with surprises that you can’t anticipate.

When you run the numbers, there are some surprises in the profitability of this year’s crops. Flax is more profitable than canola. And lentil returns are in the basement along with barley and oats.

Every farm has different numbers – different yields, different costs and often a different selling price. But if you use aggregate numbers, it’s possible to rank crops according to profitability.

The Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture publishes a Crop Planning Guide each January. It has well-reasoned costing estimates for a wide variety of cropping choices. Everything from fertilizer to land investment is included. To perform this profitability comparison, costs from the dark brown soil zone were used.

Statistics Canada recently released new crop production estimates. While yields vary from one province to another, let’s use average Saskatchewan yields since we’re using Saskatchewan expense numbers.

Crop prices vary can vary dramatically from one day to the next, but I tried to use reasonable assumptions based on information from a number of buyers and brokers.

According to Stats Can, the average yield of canola in Saskatchewan was only 25 bushels per acre this year. Assuming a price of $13.50 a bushel picked up on the farm and subtracting total rotational expenses of $268 an acre, you’re left with a return of roughly $70 an acre.

The average yield of flax in the province is estimated at 21.6 bushels per acre. Assuming a price of $14.25 a bushel and total expenses of $199 an acre, the return is $109 an acre. Although the gross return from flax is lower than canola, expenses are lower as well leading to a larger net return.

There are producers who have long claimed that they can make more money with flax than canola. This year, the numbers for Saskatchewan indicate that is indeed the case.

The big equalizer is the disappointing yield of canola. If canola yields were three or four bushels better, canola profitability would pull ahead of flax.

While canola is still one of the top crops for profitability, lentils have gone from one of the most profitable to one of the least lucrative.

Stats Can pegs average lentil yields at 1296 pounds per acre. Assuming a price of 20 cents a pound and subtracting production costs of $230 an acre leaves a return of just $29 an acre. That’s in the same bottom tier as barley and oats.

Barley yielded an average of 49.2 bushels per acre and feed barley picked up on the farm in Saskatchewan is worth about $5.20 a bushel. Some areas are higher and some lower depending upon freight costs. Meanwhile, oats averaged 76.2 bushels per acre in the province and the price assumption is $3.25 a bushel.

With costs at $231 an acre for barley and $221 an acre for oats, these crops come out with net returns of $25 to $27 an acre.

It’s interesting to note that field peas are more profitable than lentils this year. With an average yield of 28.7 bushels per acre and assuming a price of $8.25, the net return comes out at $56 an acre.

If you look at spring wheat (35.1 bushels per acre) and durum (33.9 bushels per acre) and assume a price for both of around $8.00 a bushel, the net return for durum is $41 an acre, while spring wheat is $55. That’s respectable compared to the other options.

All the crops are money makers, but net returns haven’t turned out the way most expected back in the spring.

Throughout the massive beef recall, the largest in Canadian history, XL Foods has had no face and therefore no soul. There has been no company official to face the media and answer questions, no one for the general public to identify with.

It’s in sharp contrast to the strategy employed by Michael McCain during Maple Leaf’s listeriosis outbreak a few years ago. It’s surprising that the Nilsson Brothers, the owners of XL didn’t employ a similar strategy when it worked so well for Maple Leaf.

To its credit, XL Foods did issue an extensive news release on October 4 taking full responsibility for the E coli problem and listing all the process improvements being made to make sure it never happens again.

The news release struck the correct contrite tone promising to work with the CFIA and claiming “the safety and wellbeing of our consumers is our number one priority.” But somehow it’s always more reassuring to hear and see someone saying the words. And being available to answer media questions is a big part of public accountability.

Sure the media will ask a lot of stupid questions, but these are the same sort of questions people in the general public would ask. If XL is truly taking responsibility, it shouldn’t leave the CFIA and the federal agriculture minister to carry the ball. Face the microphones and cameras and calmly explain what went wrong and what you’re doing to fix it.

If your strategy is to avoid the media, it adds fuel to the claims that you have something to hide.

Most people, beef producers included, are far removed from the safety protocols inside a major meat packing plant. It’s time to open the veil of secrecy that seems to cover parts of the food chain.

Primary producers through their associations spend a considerable amount of time and effort to educate and inform consumers on how animals are raised. The open door policy ends once animals reach the processing plant.

The CFIA inspection process is largely a mystery as well. How do our food safety protocols compare to other industrialized nations? Do we have more food recalls than the U.S.? More or less food-related illness?

Is food safety being compromised due to the size and scale of processing facilities like the XL plant at Brooks? If you asked consumers this question, a large majority would probably say yes. However, it may be that the large plants are as safe as or even safer than a local abattoir.

On the other hand, when a large plant has a food safety issue, many more consumers are at risk and there can be ramifications for all primary producers. If such concentration in food processing is undesirable, how do we turn back the clock?

Fortunately for XL, the number of people who actually became ill appears to be relatively small. In fact, the link between the XL E coli and reported illnesses doesn’t even seem conclusive in many cases.

Consumers want ironclad assurance that their food is absolutely safe. On the other hand, some consumers lobby for the ability to buy unpasteurized milk. We fret about food safety at home, but belly-up to the buffet line at all-inclusive resorts in Mexico and Cuba and other warm destinations.

Consumers have a range of opinions and attitudes, but people relate to other people. XL Foods is a corporate entity. Corporations don’t have feelings. XL needed a human face, preferably an owner’s face, speaking to consumers.

It’s an exciting time for grain farmers on the Canadian Prairies. Most areas up here have a good crop coming along, while drought conditions across much of the U.S. are causing a dramatic increase in prices.

We like to be cautious noting that the crop is a long way from the bin and that high prices might not last, but it’s shaping up to be a heck of a year, fingers crossed. It’s rare to have both good production prospects and buoyant prices.

Watching grain prices spike is captivating and it’s easy to get caught up in the speculation over how much the American corn crop is going to decline and how high prices are going to climb.

The analysts look for historical comparisons. It’s the worst American drought since X. It’s the biggest decline in corn ratings since Y. Of course, historical price comparisons are easy to make. For corn, soybeans and wheat, we’re heading into record high territory, while canola still has a ways to go to reach the values seen in 2008.

So how high might prices go? When you adjust price levels for inflation, they’re not really very high. This line of reasoning is dangerous though, because it assumes the sky is the limit and that there won’t be ramifications.

For sake of argument, let’s imagine wheat prices for Canadian growers going to $15 a bushel with canola at $25. Those able to harvest a decent crop this fall would have their best year ever. While appealing on the surface, that scenario leads to all sorts of unfortunate consequences.

The price spike back in 2008 caused food riots and was a contributing factor to political upheaval in many countries. Watch for more unrest if prices continue to rise.

Closer to home, high feed prices hurt the bottom line for cattle and hog producers. Some media commentators assume that high corn prices mean higher prices for pork and beef, but it doesn’t really work that way, at least not in the short run. There’s no way for the red meat industry to pass along price increases. Instead, the extra cost comes out of their bottom line.

It’s in the best long term interest of grain producers to have a healthy and profitable livestock sector.

About 40 per cent of the American corn crop goes into ethanol production. The rapidly rising price of corn is creating great political pressure on the U.S. renewable fuel mandate. If that policy were to be altered, it could have a damaging effect on demand in the years ahead.

What happens to farm input costs when grain prices spike? Remember what happened with fertilizer prices back in ’08. And what do you think land prices and cash rents will do if the grain market becomes unhinged?

With the mainstream media now doing stories about the drought in the American corn crop and all the Twitter about it, you have to wonder how much of the price increase will be fueled by speculation rather than supply and demand fundamentals.

As a grain producer, it’s natural to dream about $15 wheat and $25 canola. If you’re planning to sell or rent the farm and cash in on the bonanza, high grain prices are naturally on your wish list. The higher the better.

Those who plan to remain in the industry might want to take a different view. It would be better if prices moved to higher plateaus gradually to minimize the marketplace disruption.

It’s a volatile and unpredictable world. For agriculture, that means there’s big money to be made or lost.

In recent years, grain prices have shown the ability to rise rapidly and fall back even faster, but the input side of the business is volatile as well.

Just look at fertilizer prices. Urea, 46-0-0, has increased by roughly $300 a tonne in the past couple months. If you waited until just before seeding to buy, you’re faced with a price tag in the $900 a tonne range.

Failing to buy early has been a costly mistake this year. On some large operations, the price difference adds up to $100,000 plus. The cost of extra on-farm fertilizer storage could have been paid almost entirely by this one-time price rise.

Fertilizer has long been prone to price gyrations, but a 50 per cent increase just before seeding is amazing. Of course, hindsight always has perfect vision. Buying early isn’t always the best choice.

In the late summer and fall of 2008, many analysts were predicting a continued rise in fertilizer prices that were already record high. If you didn’t buy now, the price was going to be even higher in a few months, if you could get any at all.

Some producers bought high-priced fertilizer, but didn’t lock in the correspondingly high new crop prices that were also available, particularly on canola. When grain and oilseed prices dropped, fertilizer eventually followed. Trying to be proactive and ahead of the curve proved costly if you didn’t have both sides of the equation covered.

We used to think that nitrogen was closely correlated to the price of natural gas, its main feedstock. In recent times, we’ve learned that fertilizer supply and demand governs the price irrespective of manufacturing costs. To a lesser extent, this is also true for gasoline and diesel.

And we should no longer take the supply of anything for granted. As a major oil producing and exporting nation, it’s logical to assume that we’ll never have a domestic petroleum shortage. However, in the past six months, diesel has sometimes been rationed at card lock stations.

A diesel shortage has never been widespread at seeding or harvest, but a problem at a refinery or some other hiccup in the supply chain could leave farmers scrambling during the growing season.

Despite modern communication and world-wide trade, there seems to be more shortages of the common items needed to run a farm. For instance, it can be difficult and time-consuming to get certain sizes of farm implement tires.

And it’s dangerous to assume that a particular herbicide, fungicide or innoculant is going to be readily available just when you want it. Recent years have seen product shortages of everything from Reglone to glyphosate.

It’s a global economy with every event having far-reaching ramifications. Major international companies crash and burn, nations teeter of the brink of bankruptcy, and political unrest disrupts trading patterns. On top of this, superimpose natural disasters like earthquakes and floods.

Traditionally, we’ve worried about grain prices too low to cover our costs of production. In the future, we may have to decipher the ramifications of crop prices that occasionally spike to dizzying heights. While that may sound like farmer utopia, sky-high grain prices cause all sorts of ripple effects that create winner and losers.

The only safe prediction about the future is that volatility will continue and probably increase. Planning ahead and keeping an ear to the ground has never been more important.

AgriInvest could be a casualty as the federal government looks for places to cut spending. This caution isn’t based on any inside knowledge of government decision making. It’s more a recognition that the program has bad optics and is difficult to defend.

With decent grain prices, it doesn’t take a large farm to generate allowable net sales of $500,000. You deposit 1.5 per cent, $7,500, in an AgriInvest account and government matches the $7,500. As a farmer, what’s not to like?

Some people call the program NISA Lite. It’s modeled after the former Net Income Stabilization Account, but NISA allowed matching contributions of up to three per cent of allowable net sales, whereas AgriInvest is only at 1.5 per cent.

The other big difference is that producers can remove the money at any time. There’s no trigger. An income drop was required to access NISA money and there was interest rate bonus of three per cent to encourage producers to let the account build.

Even during tough times, many producers didn’t touch their NISA money and that led to the program’s downfall. How could you justify additional government assistance to farmers when they weren’t even accessing their NISA money?

AgriInvest has a different problem. It’s billed as protection for producers against small declines in income, but producers have unlimited access to the funds.

A lot of AgriInvest accounts at financial institutions earn only one per cent interest, so if you’re actually saving it for an income downturn, you might as well put it into some other safe investment where you can double the interest rate.

The program would accomplish the same result and require a lot less administration if the government just sent the 1.5 per cent directly to producers as a cheque. Perhaps requiring the matching producer contribution is meant to sanitize the subsidy, deflecting criticism from taxpayers.

The truth, however, is inescapable. Governments are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to producers each year whether they need it or not. In good income years, the money probably contributes to increased farmland values.

There may be 10 or 20 per cent of eligible producers who aren’t utilizing AgriInvest, but this is due to ignorance and neglect rather than any morals about taking government money. I feel a bit guilty getting AgriInvest money, but I’ll take mine as long as others are getting theirs.

How should non-farmers view AgriInvest? An unmarried wage earner making about $45,000 a year will pay about $7,500 a year in income tax, the same amount flowing to a farmer with allowable net sales of $500,000.

Government contributions to a producer are capped at $22,500 a year (allowable net sales of $1.5 million). You might be able to sell that to taxpayers and governments when farm income levels are ugly. How do you defend it when many of the recipients are having their best years ever?

With the other major farm safety nets, crop insurance and AgriStability, there’s a key difference. Payments only flow when a producer has a shortfall. AgriInvest is similar to some of the American farm programs we like to complain about – programs that pay out in good years and in bad.

There are producers with an entitlement attitude who believe that governments owe them a living. There will be some howls of protest if AgriInvest is slashed. Producer complaints over the loss of NISA led to the establishment of NISA Lite. Unfortunately, the current incarnation has again become difficult to justify.

(published in The Western Producer – Ap 19, 2012)

For what it’s worth, here is my seeding / marketing plan for the upcoming growing season.

Kabuli chickpeas are a given for me after excellent returns in 2011. I’ve locked in a price of 35 cents a pound for some new crop production. That’s far less than the prices received for last year’s crop, but it’s not bad historically.

On canola, I’ve decided to go with Nexera in the hope that the health premium, favourable basis and on-farm pickup will more than offset any yield drag.

I’m going with a new variety of large green lentils, CDC Impower, a Clearfield variety that should retain its colour better than CDC Improve, which I grew in 2011.

I’m growing a brand new crop this year – Brassica carinata, also known as Ethiopian mustard. A company called Agrisoma is contracting with a limited number of producers to grow some product for testing. Carinata is well suited to biojet fuel production because of the carbon chain length of its oil. The Saskatchewan Mustard Development Commission has invested research money into carinata as an industrial oilseed crop.

The hardest choice for spring seeding was what cereal crop to go with. Should it be durum, malting barley or canaryseed? In the end, I’ve opted for canaryseed and have some locked into a new crop contract at 25 cents a pound.

I am a little sorry not to be growing wheat, durum or barley in the new marketing environment, but I’ll watch from the sidelines this year.

I’m Kevin Hursh.