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The question we ask is, “Have you thought enough about the protection plan for your crops both sitting in the bins and to be harvested next year?”

That was then, this is now

While current prices aren’t nearly as high as they were in the fall/winter of 2012, it still does make sense to follow the process again this year to analyze next year’s futures prices for your grains:

Current soybean futures are about $13/bu. while next November is sitting near $11.50/bu., not a bad level given farm break-even and margin levels. November 2014 canola is at $520/tonne, close to today’s prices of $490-$500.

Minneapolis wheat futures are showing some decent levels at about $7.40/bu. all throughout 2014.

While a lot of things can and will happen between now and next year, there are many ways to put protection in place in case grain prices fall further. Consider the following strategies to help diversify your decisions across time, strategy and price:

• Time: Put on protection for a portion, initially 25 per cent, of your production without having to be too concerned about the final acres and bushels produced. As time goes on, increase this to 33 per cent, 50 per cent or 75 per cent.
• Price: Be a little more proactive adding protection if prices do go lower over time. However, maybe you get a really big rally and prices move back to the highs of the past year, be more aggressive up at those higher levels. Lock in your basis when you want knowing you at least have some part of the outright price risk taken care of.
• Strategy: Greater storage capability gives you some flexibility to sell your grain when you want. This is a big advantage, but along with this opportunity comes greater risk. If you store your grain without putting some protection in place, you are actually taking on more risk.

Diversification

All these ideas are about diversifying your grain marketing so you are not setting your prices all at the same time or at the same level.

While there are many futures and options strategies available, consider a straightforward put option purchase strategy to protect your downside and give you some peace of mind:

• Soybeans: With November 2014 at $11.60/bu., a new-crop option to protect an $11.20/bu. level costs about $0.50/bu. If you assume a basis of about $1, this still gives you a floor price of almost C$10/bu.
• Wheat: Establish a six-month floor price on wheat at today’s price level using options for approximately $0.40/bu.

In both these option scenarios, you have downside protection, but still have the opportunity to benefit if prices move higher.

Bottom line

Despite many ideas and strategies available, there is still hesitancy on the part of farmers towards hedging so I ask you this question:

“You buy insurance on equipment, buildings and tractors. Why not get a bit of protection on one of your biggest assets: your crops sitting in the fields and in the bins?”

There are many ways to protect against falling prices by managing your risk across time and many tools you can use. Don’t be afraid of all the hedging tools available — understand how to use them. This will let you focus on next year’s crop, not the next month’s prices.

Using all the tools in your tool box means using a combination of futures and options to determine how and when to put those strategies into play. This marketing approach gives you the flexibility to determine where, to whom and how much of your crop you will ultimately deliver, or store in your bins.

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Eastern regions saw some of this precipitation last week when a Colorado low brought upwards of 10-20 centimetres of snow. Farther west, an Alberta clipper-type system brought some much-needed snow over the weekend. By Wednesday this week, a strong Colorado low looks to bring a very heavy dump of snow to our southern neighbours, so it doesn’t look like winter is over yet!

This active weather pattern looks to continue as the models show another area of low pressure moving through southern Manitoba on Friday, which will likely bring a few centimetres of snow with it. This will be followed by some cooler conditions over the weekend as our winds become northerly behind the departing low.

The weather models then show another strong storm system moving in from Alberta early next week. Currently they show this system moving through central regions, which would mean most of the snow will fall in the northern parts of agricultural Manitoba. Southern regions will still see some snow, but amounts will not be that great. While temperatures will moderate a little bit ahead of this low, cooler air will move in behind it.

Yet another area of low pressure is forecast to move through around the middle of next week. This low does not look to be that strong, so not much in the way of snow is expected. A fifth area of low pressure is expected to develop later next week, but this one is forecasted to take a much more northerly route. This would result in a return to milder conditions by next weekend.

Usual temperature range for this period: Highs, -13 to +1 C; lows, -26 to -9 C.

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Weather for the first part of this forecast period will be dominated by a large area of low pressure in the upper atmosphere over northeastern Canada and surface-level high pressure over central North America.

The counter-clockwise rotation around the upper low to our northeast will allow areas of high pressure to move southeast, bringing shots of cold air. The first area of high pressure is expected to dive in during the middle of the week, with a second area of high pressure expected during the latter part of the week. This second high will likely bring the coldest temperatures we’ve seen since the middle of January. Highs by Thursday or Friday will likely be around -15 to -20 C, with overnight lows in the mid -20s. The coldest air is still expected to stay to our east, which means southwestern areas will be the warmest, with northeast regions being the coldest.

Over the weekend the northeast high will weaken as the main region of high pressure slides to our southeast. This will result in our flow becoming more westerly to southwesterly, bringing in warmer temperatures, with highs by Monday approaching the 0 C mark.

Looking further ahead, the models show mild temperature and little in the way of precipitation all the way through to the last week of the month.

Usual temperature range for this period: Highs, -18 to -3 C. Lows, -30 to -13 C.

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Marcel Debreuil loved working with budding artists.photo: Susan Crawford-Young

He built tunnels to house his angel sculptures and tried new fun techniques to make canvases for his paintings. He is known for his round canvases and he set some of them on fire to give unique background textures for his exquisite drawings. His main summer sport was raku pottery. He liked the natural and surprise colours raku covered his pottery with. He is best known for his painting style called Dreamlike Realism usually made on odd-shaped canvases.

This gives you a glimpse of his art. But his teaching was second to none. Marcel taught in Manitoba s North in his early days and eventually settled in southern Manitoba near where he grew up.

He taught in Winkler s Garden Valley Collegiate for many years, starting a top-rated art program. In retirement, he returned to teaching workshops in the North as well as the South. Some of the communities were Winkler/Morden, Portage la Prairie, Flin Flon and Cranberry Portage.

He helped people with both their art and with their lives.

Creating something well gives us all self-esteem and a place in the universe. This is what Marcel helped us all to do. He leaves his family and the entire art community of Manitoba to mourn, particularly rural and northern artists.

The following are some quotes from artists about Marcel and there are over 100 other tributes on Facebook at the Marcel Debreuil Tribute Page.

Artist, mentor, beautiful soul whose love radiated out from his family to all he met. He truly nurtured talent and through that helped broken spirits find meaning and wholeness through the expression of beauty, said fellow artist Louise Hbert-Saindon.

Natalie (Rothstad) Desjarlais is an example of the effect Marcel had on a great many of us. Marcel made me go out and sell my artwork. I was no one without a high school diploma and he believed in what he saw in my artwork, she said.

Natalie has exhibited internationally with her unique native artwork painted on found rocks and now earns her living doing this.

Marcel s Quote: It doesn t matter where you started it matters where you end up.

As one writer to the Marcel Debreuil Tribute Page on Facebook put it, thank you for being my art mentor and thank you to the family for sharing Marcel with us.

An example of his teaching style is in the following quote from his pastel portraits group on Facebook.

Just to simplify: There are six main parts to a lit object: 1. Lit area. 2. Shaded area. 3. Cast shadow. In the lit area, there is a highlight. 4. In the shaded area, there is a reflected light. 5. In the cast shadow, there is an accent. 6 … Very important to recognize these and to determine their shape … If you have trouble seeing these, squint as if looking into the sunlight (or need to pee real bad …). Also, a good idea is to use only one light source to simplify things … Also, keep in mind that you don t have to tell all every time out. Very possible to have a great drawing using only the lit area, or the shaded area, or both, etc. … or none of the above for that matter … Remember, you re the artist and you make the final calls. This tells you how to look at an object, which is an essential skill for an artist, and then it tells you what to do with the information. This one particular statement has improved my art enormously and helped me teach visual art.

Marcel once said to me, There are many ugly things in the world, paint what is beautiful to you. These are words to create by through visual art, writing or any other media.

Susan Crawford-Young is a Manitou artist

———

Marcel Debreuil was an artist and teacher. He did both with

an energy and passion that

were as much a part of him as breathing.

He created many paintings, pottery and sculptures in

his lifetime including a large

Stonehenge on his Morden property which he often shared with the community.

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Contact him with your questions and comments at daniel@bezte.ca.

BY DANIEL BEZTE

Besides drought, frost probably has the greatest impact on agriculture, with untimely occurrences resulting in substantial losses of crops in some years. Also, it is the length of the frost-free season that restricts agricultural opportunities in any given region. The dates of the last spring and first fall frosts vary from year to year, but overall, they are seen to be relatively constant. If this were the case, then we wouldn’t have to worry about losing a crop, or our flowers, to a late-spring frost.

There has been a considerable amount of study relating to frost and its effects on plant life and as I mentioned last week, now would be a good time for us to revisit the relationship between frost, topography and crops.

So how do you define frost? Using a climatic definition, frost occurs when the temperature of the land surface drops below 0 C, but with respect to agriculture, frost is substantially more difficult to define. Looking at cereal crops for example, a temperature of 0 C will not result in the death of the crop; in fact, the crop will rarely even be damaged at this temperature. So when it comes to agriculture, the terms killing frost or freeze become more useful. A killing frost usually refers to conditions where more than 50 per cent of the vegetation in a region has been killed off by frost, and a freeze is when ice crystals form in plant tissue resulting in permanent injury to the plant.

SUSCEPTIBILITY

At what temperatures are different crops affected? There are three development stages in which crops have varying degrees of resistance to frost: germination, flowering and fruiting. The germination stage has the greatest resistance to frost, whereas flowering has the least resistance. In the germination stage, crops such as spring wheat and oats can resist temperatures as low as -8 to -10 C. Compare this to crops such as corn, cucumbers, and tomatoes, which will suffer damage when temperatures drop only slightly below zero. In the sensitive flowering stage, every crop is susceptible to frost, with critical temperatures ranging in the 0 C to -3 C range. It’s for this reason that this period of growth is what concerns growers the most when dealing with frost.

Topography, or the lay of the land, can have a significant impact on which areas receive frost. Since cold air is denser than warm air it will flow downward and accumulate in areas of lower elevation. This phenomenon has been referred to as frost hollows, cold islands, cold air pooling and cold air lakes. The important point is, no matter how you describe it, there does not have to be a huge change in elevation to have a significant impact on temperature. In one study, a change of less than one metre in elevation over 100 metres resulted in overnight temperature differences of 3 to 5 C. This is why you can experience frost even though your thermometer tells you it’s above freezing.

Now, how can you protect yourself from frost? If you have 500 acres of wheat there is not much you can do, but if you are worried about flowers, a vegetable garden or a commercial garden such as strawberries, there are a few things that may save your crops.

PREVENTIVE MEASURES

The first thing you need to understand is that there are two types of frost, radiative and advective.

Radiative frost is the typical frost you would experience on a clear, calm night. During this type of frost, the clear, calm conditions allow heat to escape into the atmosphere cooling down the very lowest layers. You can prevent such a frost from affecting your garden simply by covering the crop to help reduce the heat loss. Another method is to spray water onto the crop. This works because water has a high specific heat and therefore has a large amount of heat energy to release. This heat will help keep temperatures warmer. Also, water releases a large amount of heat energy when it freezes. This is why you can have ice on a plant but not have any frost damage. The third preventive measure you can take is to try and stir up the lower levels of the atmosphere. Since the coldest temperatures are at ground level and warmer air can be as close as only a few feet above the ground, pulling this air downward can prevent freezing temperatures. This can be done using fans or fires to help create convection currents.

The second type of frost, advective frost, is much more difficult to prevent. This type of frost occurs when a cold or subzero air mass moves into a region. It is usually accompanied by winds and lasts for a much longer period of time than a radiative frost. Since all levels of the atmosphere are cold, we cannot pull in warmer air, and since it lasts much longer, using water will probably not work. The only method left is to cover the crop as good as possible and hope that the sun comes out to help warm things up.

Next week we will take a look a what the final weather numbers were for March. Just how much above average will it end up being?

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