Welcome to this week’s edition of RealAg on the Weekend with your host Shaun Haney! Today on the show, Haney is joined by Craig Johnston of FCC to discuss the Canadian and U.S. dollars, Kenny Piecharka of KWS Canada on hybrid rye versatility, and geopolitical analyst Jacob Shapiro on the Canada/U.S. trade war.
Thoughts on something we talked about on the show? Connect with host Shaun Haney at shaney@realagriculture.com, on X/Twitter by using the hashtag #RealAgRadio, or give us a shout on the response line, 1-855-776-6147.
I'm Shaun Haney and this is RealAg on the Weekend. Let's get real and get connected with the week that was in Canadian agriculture. RealAg on the Weekend starts now. Welcome to RealAg on the Weekend. I'm your host Shaun Haney of RealAgriculture.com. Hope you had yourselves a great week. I know it has not been a great harvest week for a big part of the Western Canadian prairies, without question, and fall weather has kind of settled in. On Friday, I was talking to a couple different agronomists saying, ooh, 3 above, chilly, cool mornings. This is kind of lose your jacket weather or lose your hoodie kind of weather or bunny hug kind of weather when we look at the fall where the morning can be kind of chilly, we go out and then it warms up in the afternoon and then, yeah, you wake up the next morning, you're like, where the heck did I put that jacket? That is the kind of weather we get in, in the fall for sure. Well, like I said, I hope you had yourself a great week no matter what you were up against and trying to deal with. We're going to try to deal with some issues here today on RealAg on the Weekend. I'm looking forward to it. We're going to hear today from Craig Johnston. He is with Farm Credit Canada. He's their chief economist, and I had a conversation with him earlier this week talking about the Canada-US dollar. We're also going to hear from Kenny Pacharka. He's the head of of KWS, a German seed company. He's the head of their North American operation. They're very excited about what's going on in the hybrid rye market and the versatility that hybrid rye provides. We're also going to hear some audio today from Jacob Shapiro. He's a geopolitical analyst out of New Orleans. We're going to talk a little bit about the Canada-US trade war. We've got all that and a little bit more as well. Now, if you have any feedback on today's show, we'd love to hear from you. Send me an email, shaney@realagriculture.com, or you can also call or text the RealAg feedback line, 855-643-4645. Let's start off with Jacob Shapiro, geopolitical analyst out of New Orleans, Louisiana, and him and I talked about what's going on here between Canada and the US when it comes to this trade battle.
This is because it's not a negotiation. This is why when I use the word empire or imperialism, I'm not using it lightly. They don't expect this to be a negotiation. They expect to say, this is what we want, it shall be so. And if you don't do what we say, then we will give you tariffs and anything else that we can push off against you. Mexico has acquiesced itself to that. And Canada, to your point, has not. The ironic thing in all of this is that—
They're no further ahead though.
The United States already had everything it wanted from Canada by being nice and by poking it in the eye and treating it like it's some kind of vassal state, which by the way, Canada basically is. Why does all that infrastructure point to the United States? Why is everything about free trade with the United States? Why is NORAD? Why are all these things interconnected? Basically, Canada traded the UK for the United States in 1940 when the UK was having trouble in World War II, and it's been that way ever since. But now, when Carney says he's taking the sign out of the window, it's because the United States has stopped pretending that this is about values and democracy and family of nations. They want something, they want you to acquiesce. If you don't acquiesce, they're going to punish you. And so this is where I think Carney— my sense is that he'd already made up his mind and that he was looking for the pretext to end the negotiations. And I'm sure he was just waiting. He knew Lutnick was going to come in at some point.
Yeah.
wouldn't make a fool of himself. But that was the moment that he was going to do it. He probably would have taken the deal, though, if it was a good deal. But what the deal really collapsed on, to your point, was it sounded like he wanted some guarantees that, okay, we'll make the deal, but no more changes.
Yeah.
Okay, let's make a deal. And this is what it's going to— we're not doing this annual review process. Let's renew this thing. Let's get our differences done. And then let's put this to bed. No more of the insults and everything else. And the United States said no, We get to do whatever we want. You have to do what we say. And at that point, Carney said, okay, well, I can't do that because that means like now I don't even have the narrative of Canadian sovereignty. You're basically saying I have none. And he's betting that Canadians will go along with building the necessary tools that you need to have a sovereign state. It's not gonna be easy. It's gonna be very costly. And the entire question comes down to how long are folks in Michigan and Wisconsin and Maine and Alaska gonna bear the pain that they're gonna feel as a result of this versus how long are Carney's approval numbers gonna be this high as Canadian growth starts to get depressed and as all of the economic issues that Canada is going to face if this really continues are going to become apparent.
Yep, it's a gamble. And I, you know, Carney was specifically elected for this purpose, and how long the honeymoon phase of, you know, the bulk of Canadians believing in his capabilities to get to the other side of it I think it is a big question. And you mentioned Mexico and like, how high do you want us to jump? It's not like they're further ahead though, right? Like, is Mexico really further ahead than Canada is at this point? Obviously, they're not into a retaliatory tariff.
They're not into a retaliatory tariff thing. Mexico is not facing the same. Now, growth on the border is still depressed. I was just down on the border doing a research project in Laredo a couple of weeks ago, and people built a bunch of warehouses down there expecting that nearshoring was going to boom and USMCA was going to go with flying colours. And there's a lot of empty warehouse space down there right now, because even the level of uncertainty that the US has injected into the US-Mexico relationship has people reconsidering whether that has legs. But it's not— yes, Mexico is further ahead in the sense that they're not getting these retaliatory tariffs in this trade spat. But to your point, the uncertainty that's been injected by this administration has depressed growth. It's basically brought things to a relative standstill, because folks don't understand where this is going. And you're not going to make major decisions about CapEx If this administration can tweet something one day and completely reverse itself and change its mind, because these are major investment decisions that they're having to talk about.
What you're talking about is those Section 338 tariffs that were being negotiated, the snapback, as it was called, where if at any point in time, if the US didn't like what they saw, they could just reapply those tariffs. And so yes, I think that was one of the big Big things that kind of blew up the talks amongst other things. And hey, there are some justifiable issues from the US perspective. Hey, we should fix these, we should rectify these. But because we can't just do that in a calm nature, we got to blow it up. Now we get this sort of impact where now we're in this real standoff. And it doesn't really appear like there's really much motivation to have any sort of talks right now. If you listen to Carney's address, like there's going to be any sort of negotiation before those midterms. So now Now we're looking at, will there be some sort of talks before January 1st? I guess that's where we're at. Is that a fair summation?
The path of least resistance is still a deal. And it's still a deal for both sides, because it's gonna be bad for both sides no matter what. So I would not be surprised at all if we woke up next week. And they were like, oh, we figured it out. Because we stared at the economic data and saw the pain that was coming. And we decided it wasn't worth it.
The ideal.
But to your point, if this goes on for a couple months, if Canada starts making the moves that it needs to make to prepare for this future, if Trump doubles down on all these things, at that point, you're not going to be able to just snap your fingers and go back to the way that it used to be. So I think there is still a window to— or I'm going to mix metaphors. We're at the precipice. There is still time to walk back from the precipice. But if we do this for another 2, 3 months, and if Canadian pension funds really start repatriating assets, and if Carney really starts making moves on, we're going to start building infrastructure here, and I'm going to flirt with the EU, and maybe I can get a special trading relationship and all these other things. Yeah, at that point, the— well, I guess the right way to say it is the price is going to keep going higher and higher. And at a certain point, the price of going back to the way things were before will actually outweigh the price of doing things differently.
Yeah.
Right now, the price of going back to the way things were before is easy. Just say both sides say, I'm sorry, we've got a deal in place, let's do it. That doesn't cost any money. You could do it tomorrow, you can have growth and everything else. Markets would probably rejoice. at that news. But the further along you get down this path, the harder it is to reverse.
If you'd like to hear the entire conversation with Jacob Shapiro, go to RealAgriculture.com. Hey, we've got a lot more coming up here on RealAg on the Weekend. Up next, it's Craig Johnston. He is FCC's chief economist. Back right after this.
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Hi, I'm Bernard Tobin, host of the Soybean School on RealAgriculture.com. Throughout the year on the Soybean School, we'll bring you timely agronomic video content from planting to harvest, from the latest agronomic research to the latest in production technology. Cheque out our massive video library on YouTube, RealAgriculture.com, or download the audio podcast versions wherever you get your podcasts. The Soybean School is brought to you by Maizex Seeds and Lallemand Plant Care. If you're involved in the agriculture industry, it's important to stay informed on all the latest issues affecting your business. At RealAgriculture.com, we offer fast, reliable news, information, and insights To help you keep on top of all of the latest in Canadian agriculture, visit RealAgriculture.com and sign up for our free daily newsletter covering everything from news, agronomy, animal agriculture, and much more. Visit RealAgriculture.com/subscribe today. With all the economic decisions and discussion that is happening around the Canadian economy relative to the bond market, and where interest rates are going and just where GDP will be in the next 12 months ahead with the Canada-US trade battle that is happening. There's a lot of questions. One of the parts of that is the Canadian dollar. Of course, Canada is an exporting nation, so where the Canadian dollar sits relative to the US currency is a big factor. And also, it plays a big role in the cost of imports into the country as well. I had a conversation this week with Craig Johnston. He is the Chief Economist with Farm Credit Canada, and we talked Canadian-US dollar.
Yeah, definitely. So, I mean, we continue to expect the dollar to trade somewhere— there's going to be volatility for sure with this, but somewhere in the range of 70 to 74 over the foreseeable future. I think today I was looking, it's, you know, around 70.73 to the US dollar. Look, this could have an impact. It's going to impact inflation expectations in the United States. I think we're already seeing inflation in the US continue to remain above their 2% target, around 3.4% is the latest print on on US inflation. So it's certainly at a point which is what would be referred to as an elevated level for most folks looking at that. This is just going to continue to put that increased pressure on the inflation rate in the United States. And as that happens, this can create pressures for the Federal Reserve to adjust interest rates. And so what we're seeing right now is market pricing for the Federal Reserve expecting a rate hike in its next move with greater probability of each day, it seems. These latest announcements will certainly increase that probability. Now, the greater the spread between the federal funds rate and the Bank of Canada overnight rate, the greater downward pressure there can be on the Canadian dollar. So we could see, if there is a movement by the Fed in their next meeting, we could see slight downward pressure, but we still would expect it to be in that kind of 70 to 74 range.
I've heard a number of economists talk about the weakness going forward of the US dollar index and concern about that. Now, for US exporters, that potentially is something that, you know, that would make US exports a lot cheaper. So that from an agriculture standpoint, there's a lot of farmers and ranchers that actually are on side with that. If we do see weakness in the US dollar, that doesn't necessarily mean the Canadian dollar is inversely related, right? The Canadian— the US could weaken as a currency versus other currencies around the world, but the Canadian dollar dollar could stay pegged at that 70 to 74, right? It doesn't necessarily mean US dollar down, Canadian dollar up.
Sure.
No, absolutely. So I mean, these currencies do move relatively independently, especially the United States dollar and the Canadian dollar. I mean, there are independent factors that drive those. And again, when we talk about exchange rates, we have to keep in mind it's one currency relative to the other. So any move in individual currencies can change that ratio. And so the Canadian dollar, all of the support behind the Canadian dollar can remain there, but if there are changes in the US dollar, we can see movements in the exchange rate. If we think about a move higher, when we think about what is the exchange rate, how does it affect the Canadian ag sector? And really, if we think about the range that it's in right now, this is in a range that does provide some support for competitiveness of Canadian exports by lowering the US dollar prices for you know, grains, oilseeds, livestock, everything that we're kind of sending abroad, specifically to the United States. But at the same time, this could raise the cost for imported inputs, especially if we see, you know, changes in the CAD. So it's something to keep in mind. So the sale price can be affected, the competitiveness can be affected, but also some of your input costs as well could be affected.
Yeah, you know, and I think a lot of times when we think about the Canadian dollar, we think about exports. Canada is an exporting nation, right? So we're very— our economy is very export reliant. But we're also purchasing a lot of goods in agriculture, farm machinery, fertilisers like phosphorus, for example, out of the US. That makes those inputs more expensive as well.
Absolutely. So, you know, if we think about a CAD moving higher, if we're starting to push into that 74 or even break through that 74 to 75 or 76 range, which is not our expectation, but if that's the case, that's exactly what happens. So while on the one hand, it does affect our competitiveness in the United States, for example, example, it does make the cost of inputs relatively more cheaper. You can think about the offset this could have on rising fertiliser prices, machinery parts, fuel to some extent as well will be exposed to this, as obviously we do a lot of trade with the United States for not just our primary products, the oil products, but also our refined products like diesel, other feed ingredients. I mean, you really got to keep in mind, it really is going to be a business-by-business case to think about where you are situated in the supply chain, how dependent you are on the US for imports of some inputs, for example. This could certainly have an impact on the bottom line.
Across the economist community, is there a level for the Canadian dollar relative to the US dollar that is like a sweet spot? Is there where it's like, okay, this is kind of a neutral position? It can't be par. Is there a number that people talk about?
Yeah, exactly. I mean, we saw par probably a decade ago or so, and that created its own challenges. Right now, I think the consensus is that the level that we're in, kind of that just north of 70, that 70 to 75 range, is a comfortable range for most sectors. Again, it kind of creates that competitiveness advantage in other countries, including the United States, for example, where, you know, again, it lowers the US dollar prices for a lot of the products that we're shipping to the United States. At the same time, that does affect again the cost of inputs, but it does seem to be at this point there's kind of that equilibrium made right now with with the interest rates around that 70 to 75 range. Again, today's probably a really nice sweet spot where we are in terms of 73 cents. But again, we're going to see we're going to see what happens with the conflict in the Middle East, the impact this has on oil prices, inflation expectations, and ultimately the next decisions by the the Federal Reserve. If they if the move as is priced in in markets, if they move ahead of the Canadian dollar, that could create an additional spread between the rates in the 2 countries, and that could put a little bit of downward pressure on the CAD.
Okay. Now, from a US dollar index perspective, what are you— are you bearish like others? Do you expect that the US dollar is going to depreciate in value?
There has been—
you do see some of those headwinds, and this is actually something you've been seeing for some time. You know, if we look back all the way to post-COVID in 2022, when the Ukraine-Russia war began and the United States and many other advanced economies targeted US dollar-held assets by foreign banks, specifically some of its, you know, competitors or adversaries in the world, like China, for example, then that initiated a movement away from the USD as a reserve demand, demand for reserves from those countries. And that really initiated what a lot of folks have talked about, like this de-dollarization concept. But in general, what you're seeing is the continued de-dollarization effort from China, from India, from some of these other countries, in fear many believe in fear from continued pressure on some of these assets by the United States administration or others from a geopolitical perspective. So it's really this diversification strategy. But what this means is that the demand for the US dollar is falling over time as China tries to ramp up its holdings of gold, among other holdings. And this is going to continue to put downward pressure on the US dollar, not only as a global reserve asset, but also just in terms of its its value.
That was Craig Johnston. He is Chief Economist with Farm Credit Canada. Appreciate Craig joining us here this week to talk about, you know, a really important issue and where that Canadian dollar relative to the US dollar floats in the next 12 months is going to have some sort of an impact on farm profitability. And I think a lot of times we always focus on the export portion of this, like, you know, the lower that dollar goes, the more Canadian exports are worth, but we sometimes forget about some of the costs and agriculture, the, like, impact on farm machinery if that dollar goes down. It's, it's really kind of an interesting, fascinating discussion we get into some of those currency topics. We're back with more of RealAg of the Weekend right after this. Don't miss out on any of the content that RealAgriculture.com publishes. Whether you're looking for agronomy current events or industry news, our daily newsletters bring you the most current information every morning. Visit RealAgriculture.com/subscribe. RealAg Radio is Canada's only daily radio show focused on agriculture. Get expert advice on Agronomic Monday. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, we'll cover a broad range of issues. Thursday, we'll hear from farmers across the country on the Farmer Rapid Fire, and we'll wrap things up Fridays with the RealAg Issues panel with Kelvin Heppner and Lyndsey Smith. Join us Monday through Friday at 4:30 Eastern, and don't forget about the replay at 7 in the morning on Rural Radio 147 SiriusXM. Get all the information you need to keep your pulse crop healthy and profitable with the Pulse School on RealAgriculture.com. The Pulse School is a free YouTube video series covering agronomy, research, and more across a host of different pulse crops. It's also available as an audio podcast wherever you download or stream your favourite podcasts. Cheque us out on YouTube or visit RealAgriculture.com/pulse-school. The Pulse School, brought to you by BASF Canada. As growers look for more and more different cropping options, one of the ones that keeps on coming up is hybrid fall rye, and here to chat with us about that is Kenny Pacharka, who is the head of North America with KWS. How are we doing today, Kenny?
Hey, I'm excited to be here with you, Shaun. Lots to talk about, and thanks for having me on.
Yeah, absolutely. It's great to chat with you as well. Hey, congratulations! This Head of North America is a relatively new role for you. That's pretty awesome.
Yeah, it's an exciting time. Started the role July 1st. It's a pretty big opportunity, and I feel honoured that the company looked to me to take on this role. It's a role that's traditionally been done out of Germany, Now, to have it right here in market just shows the trust and shows the opportunity KWS is really seeing in cereals in North America.
When we say North America, do we mean Canada and the US, or is there hybrid fall rye also in Mexico?
It's not in Mexico at this time, so we are saying Canada and the US. Canada has a team of 10 staff primarily focused on hybrid rye. USA has the same thing, so 20 commercial staff. Meanwhile, we are doing breeding activities in the US as well in wheat. and we do commercialise barley varieties bred out of Europe. So it's the 2 countries.
One of the things I like to always ask people who are in new roles like this is, what are some of the priorities that you have going forward for the company and Hybrid Fall Rye?
Big priorities are to expand on the footprint we've created. Hybrid Rye has been commercialised since 2014, and then in 2022, we started with direct investments in staff in Canada, a couple years earlier in the US, and since then we've went from a handful of staff up to 20. Boots on the ground have been a really big factor to expanding the value this crop brings because you need to be close. Anytime there's a niche crop, something new, if you don't have the service, the best management practises, the end-use market support, then it's hard to get producers to have a good first experience and for it to become a profitable part of the farm. The priorities are expanding the team, expanding the information, and finding out honestly what questions we don't know how to answer yet because there's always more to dig into.
That's what comes when you have a crop that has some flexibility in use, is it just creates more questions, and then making sure you have the answers is key. You've already mentioned some of the investment that KWS is making in North America. Like any crop, it has ups and downs that you kind of go through in terms of from a life cycle perspective. What gives you confidence that this market has a strong future?
Well, it's turned out to be quite a profitable option. We do our crop budgets each year just as farmers do, and hybrid rye has been there whether it's a drought or a high yield year. It's been highly profitable, but I think we're only scratching the surface. There are advantages that have come in breeding. When we look at yield, yields continue to go up, 15% increase in 10 years since the products have hit the market. We've got some quality solutions in breeding like our Pollen Plus trait, which increases pollen and blocks ergot, so you end up with better quality. So when you look at that, then the big holy grail and the question we always get is, what do I do with the product at the end of the day? So now we're hiring people on the end-use market side, and we're actually just bringing our second nutritionist on board because there's some really nice growth in the feed sector. So Just, there's so much more out there for local demand that this product is now suitable all across Canada, and so we're staffing across Canada.
It's pretty exciting. You mentioned some of the market uses. How is the market use evolving over time?
Well, let's go back 5 years ago. Distilling and milling were the primaries. Rye grain would find itself into the grain market when it made sense, but it wasn't perceived as being advantageous. Whereas now we know distilling and milling are going to be what they are. There'll be steady ups and downs, but there's big growth coming in feed because it does meet the price point. It does have quality benefits in certain species, like in hogs, better carcass quality, better satiety, less infant mortality of the piglets. But there's also a cover crop market in the United States. that a lot of Canadian rye and American rye goes into, and of course that has more fluctuations, but it's again a big market that's growing with the sustainability movement. So you look at those and then you look at some markets that you don't necessarily think of first for rye, and there's a lot of rye going into ethanol right now in Canada because of its price point versus wheat and barley. So I think we're learning a lot and opening these doors is important because if we want to convince a producer and a retailer that hybrid rye is good for their area, there needs to be somewhere to sell it.
Livestock producers, you mentioned that, they're very excited. We see a lot of hybrid fall rye in Feedlot Alley in southern Alberta. If it works there, I would have to think in similar sort of situations around feedyards, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, same kind of fit.
Yeah, it is doing phenomenal, and that's really a North American creation. It wasn't used as livestock forage in Europe. It was going into biogas to a degree, but that really started here with the ingenuity of livestock producers. They saw this option, which was a winter cereal, it was hardy, and I'd say southern Alberta and then a few of the pockets in the Midwest and Utah were some of the first to come online using this as an early forage source. They get it in the bunk and they can go into the second crop In the western prairies, it's going to be cereals, barley, oats. In those other geographies, like say Ontario or the I-states, you're going to follow with corn and soybeans. It's just ended up being more production per acre, more animals per acre, and when land value is what it is, you really got to squeeze everything out of that acre, and hybrid rice found a fit there.
I think with some of the profitability challenges we've seen in the cropping sector, And the severity of that kind of depends on where you currently farm in your geography, but the timing kind of feels a little bit right in the fact that, like I said at the beginning of this, people are looking for some different cropping options to maybe diversify a little bit some of the things they've currently been doing, whether that's from a silage perspective or it could be on the grain side. And I think that hybrid Because of the versatility of hybrid fall rye, it kind of fits into that discussion in all regions.
Yeah, it does, and we like to say hybrid rye isn't the solution, but we do think it has a fit in a farm rotation. This year we had some really hard winter in places, take Eastern Canada for example, parts of the Prairies, and rye is the most winter hardy. So if you get a hard winter, some of the other winter cereals like triticale and winter wheat might have some challenges, At the same time, rye matures a little bit earlier, so many operators are actually growing hybrid rye, triticale, then spring cereals, then corn, and they actually can use their silage harvester for about 2 months straight instead of if they're just growing corn, it's at the end, or spring cereals in the middle. So you have that, but then you can take the same varieties and harvest them for grain, and I think there's a lot of cattle producers now who are taking advantage of that, where if they have enough forage put up, then they can keep their rye of the same variety and take it for grain. Those are some of the flexibilities, but the other one is the workload. 80% of farmers aren't spraying any pesticides in crop, so when you look at the June workload after a late seeding like this year, if you don't have to spray your rye, that gives you a lot of advantage. It's a hybrid seed, there's an upfront investment, and there are some really specific practises that we recommend for how to get it off to a great start. but there's some advantages in crop that you could take advantage of it. And at the same time, you're not only not spraying, but it has shown to be the most competitive crop with herbicide-resistant weeds. And that's probably the biggest piece of feedback we're getting right now from our farm users is that they're using it if they have resistant wild oats or resistant Kochia, and it's working well there.
That was Kenny Picharka. He is head of North America for KWS. We'll be back with more of RealAg on the Weekend right after this quick break. Don't miss out on any of the content that RealAgriculture.com publishes. Whether you're looking for agronomy current events or industry news, our daily newsletters bring you the most current information every morning. Visit RealAgriculture.com/subscribe.
Since 2009, the Canola School on RealAgriculture.com has been providing relevant and timely agronomic advice to anyone involved in canola production. With over 15 years of video content on YouTube, The Canola School has been producers' go-to source for canola agronomy, research, marketing, and more. The Canola School is brought to you by BASF and InVigor Hybrid Canola. Cheque us out on YouTube or at canolaschool.com. I'm Lyndsey Smith, host of The Agronomist, and I want to thank you for tuning in for over 200 episodes. of our beloved little programme. Join me Monday nights, 8 PM Eastern on YouTube for our live and interactive agronomy Q&A. Each week, our guest panel will handle some of your toughest agronomic questions live streaming on YouTube, Facebook, X, and RealAgriculture.com. Tune in Monday nights or go to RealAgriculture.com/agronomist and sign up for our email notifications and don't miss an episode.
Welcome back to RealAg on the Weekend. I'm your host, Shaun Haney of RealAgriculture.com. And again, if you have any feedback on some of the conversations we have had today, you can send me an email, shaney@realagriculture.com. You can also call or text the RealAg feedback line, 855-776-6147. It is going to be interesting if we do see some sort of a, I guess, a further escalation in the Canada-US trade discussions. And we definitely have differing opinions in the US. It's not just some sort of like one entity of opinion. There is a lot of concern. I heard from a lot of different audience members this week in the US about where exactly is this going? What— and a phrase that is often used is, what are we doing? Just like in Canada, there is a I think a growing, widening path of opinion. We're out of the— moving out of the sort of the honeymoon of like, yes, they should have walked away, they had no choice to walk away. And I think at the core, a lot of people still believe that. But the what do we do next question, I think, has a far wider range of opinion. And there are still some people that believe that Canada should pursue the idea of some sort of like an export tax on things like potash coming out of Saskatchewan or oil and gas coming out of Alberta. I think that is really not a very good idea at all. This is one of the challenges here. I was appearing on a radio show in North Dakota earlier this week and We were talking about this. One of the challenges when you get into a trade war between 2 countries that have a high level of integration in the supply chain, right? Like, you know, we talk about, we hear about cars that cross the border 7 times in the manufacturing process. We heard about Bombardier, you know, the fact that even some of the planes are made in Canada, all the engines come from the US. Like, there's so many examples. One of the challenges that happens when you have that is when you do get into some sort of a trade war tit-for-tat, it's really difficult to, to put pressure on the other side with, you know, things like tariffs or export taxes, with there not being some sort of very easy rebuttal to do the same thing to that other country. And this is the case when we talk about, okay, so Canada, you know, so I had somebody say that, you know, Saskatchewan should cut off potash exports to the United States. Well, that would present a lot of challenges for Canadian farmers if the US retaliated and said, hey, you know what, phosphorus, yeah, you're not getting it, right? And so this is the point. I think the issue around Bombardier was very telling. And we're yet to see if the US would actually ban Bombardier jets. That seems— well, I shouldn't— in today's kind of nutty and topsy-turvy world, who knows what'll happen. But Bombardier is a good example. And I think it was actually helpful for the president to bring up this topic because it really exposes That, as Jacob Shapiro says in my interview with him, a little bit more tactic than strategy. What do I mean by that? Bombardier is actually obviously a large employer in Canada, especially in Quebec, and the president has also a fascination with aeroplanes. So there's, I think, easy target there. There was issues about some of the jets, like would the Gulfstream be allowed, a competitive jet, would it be allowed in Canada? And that was all rectified. But it was it was a sore subject. Bombardier is actually one of the companies that is doing what the administration is trying to achieve with a lot of companies, to bring some manufacturing to the United States. Okay, now Bombardier, clearly, clearly a Canadian company, but there are 3,000 Bombardier employees in the United States. The US headquarters is in Wichita, Kansas. There's 500 people at that head office. So my point here is, is that, you know, you, you could sit in a corporate boardroom in Canada and say, you know what, I think we need to stay out of the, the attack lane here, and maybe we should consider moving some of our manufacturing to the US. And the bringing up Bombardier is a good example of, yeah, it doesn't really matter, right? They're doing that. And so the interesting piece was even the jets that are made in Canada, manufactured in Canada. They use jet engines that come out of Arizona and Indiana. Again, more US jobs. I think they said they had over 2,000 US-based suppliers to Bombardier's manufacturing programme. Again, a company that is doing it right, but it really doesn't matter. And this is sort of the— this is kind of the exposing of how thin of a concept in some ways some of the changing US policy or trade demands, how it's kind of just, it is a little bit thrown together. Now at 100,000 feet it does make sense, but then if you're going to pursue that strategy, a company like Bombardier should be right out of the crosshairs and they haven't been. As there are threats of an outright ban of Bombardier jets to the United States. Well, let's see if that actually happens or not. When I talked to farmers this week for our Farmer Rapid Fire segment that we do on RealAg Radio podcast, there is a lot of questions. And I think the one thing that comes— there's 2 points I think is that I keep on hearing the word uncertainty. I don't like all this uncertainty. Why are we creating all this uncertainty? But the other identification that John Kowalczyk, a farmer from Choshu, Alberta, what he said to me is, you know, I am concerned, but I also have to remember that it's out of my control. So I can't change it, but I need to be aware of some of the— how some of this impacts, you know, maybe works its way back to farm income, what I pay for fertiliser, what I pay for machinery. There is a, you know, one of the retaliatory tariffs that Canada put on was on combine parts, for example. That impacts farmers, you know, 50% tariff, that makes a difference, right? You're going to notice that. How do suppliers handle that? It puts maybe suppliers in a situation where, well, hey, are you not eating the tariff? No, that negotiation that does go on. So I think John takes a real balanced approach to it, and, you know, John's— the other part of it is that that John had put on social media that he really thought that, hey, we should get back to the negotiating table, which is something that I have said as well, and some people really getting upset about that. Unfortunately, although I think this trade war has done a lot to increase pride in Canada and Canadian nationalism and, hey, you know what, we are a sovereign nation, which absolutely true, We also have to have the economic reality of Europe is like 1/10 of the potential trade that we do in some of these industries, and, and, and probably in some it's, it's a 20th. And, and so the reality is, is that at some point Canada is going to need this trade deal with the US completed and put behind us. The question is the when and what does that actually look like? High. You want to talk about uncertainty? High levels of uncertainty for sure on that one. Send me your email, shaney@realagriculture.com. We'd like your feedback on this topic. Do you think the Bombardier— do you agree with me on the Bombardier example? Or just what are your thoughts in general? Would love to hear it and get your perspectives indeed. Thanks everybody for tuning in to RealAg on the Weekend, and we'll chat again next week. Cheers, everybody.