The July 12th USDA ending stocks reveal a constant truth in agriculture.  Give farmers a whiff of profit, with higher prices and eventually end users will start to retreat.  Even in the ethanol gold rush of 2007 it was bound to happen.  Corn stocks increased to 1.137 billion bushels up from the June estimate of 987 million bushels but still shy of last year’s number of 1.967 billion.  The soybean number increased to 600 million bushels down from the June number of 610 but much higher than last year, which came in at 449 million bushels of beans.  Oh Nellie!  What is going to happen now?

As my crops continue to burn up I’d sure like an answer to that question.  Maybe my rainstorm is just around the corner.  Hopefully genetics will bail me out as we head toward the end of July.

The end user is a different animal than he used to be.  With ethanol use (albeit not in Ontario until at least 2009) continuing to grow at least there is hope for the future.  The problem is anytime the market place sees stocks growing instead of going the other way it grows more comfortable.  Prices tend to go lower and go nowhere.  In Canada with a 94/95-cent dollar the immediate future for anybody in the grain market has been tempered.

That story however has yet to be told.  We still have too much volatility out there with summer weather to throw the towel in now.  Last year at this time all the big time grain analysts had us in the dumps, there was just too much of everything.  Sell, sell, sell, we all know what happened next.

Hopefully, that will happen again.  In the meantime our federal government has been releasing bits and pieces of their new vision for a future agricultural safety net.  It’ll be key for our future especially if our Canadian loonie continues to stabilize at these lofty levels.  If you read my column over the last few weeks, you’ll know I don’t like what I see.  In a way it’s “back to the future.”  However, as things develop this summer I’ll leave that for another day.  There is something else in our agricultural future, which I’m finding much more troubling.

It has to do with big multi-national corporations and their affect on Canadian agriculture.  Through the years I’ve always been somewhat of a critic of the new agricultural biotechnology that has come our way.  In its early incubation agricultural biotechnology was all about corporations making scads of money and selling technology, which wasn’t up to snuff.  In fact much of it was garbage.  That’s changed quite a bit as bt corn has improved greatly over the years effectively taking over the market place.  Farmers have voted with their pocket books.

I can vouch for that.  On my farm corn yields have improved significantly over time.  I’d like to think it is just me but it isn’t.  Bt corn has much to do with it.  It’s another key in that vicious agricultural production cycle we find ourselves in.  We get more efficient by using technology and the marketplace wants cheaper and cheaper food.  The beat goes on.

The problem I see with some of this new agricultural biotechnology is its not all good.  In fact some of the more famous agricultural biotech giants have attacked and pillared farmers in the Ontario media over disagreements over the use of certain glyphosate herbicides.  Most media outlets don’t question the big agricultural biotech companies.  However, they have their problems too in Ontario fields.  There have been several “false/positive” readings in non-gmo soybean fields.  The big agricultural biotech giants should admit that.  Trespassing into fields where they have no right to go is illegal.  Their record is not beyond reproach.

At the same time our Argentinean and Brazilian competitors in the soybean market are laughing at us.  Their governments have created a legal environment where big comprehensive over bearing production requirements cannot be enforced on their farmers.  They compete in the global market against Canadian farmers who don’t have the same freedom.  At the end of the day Canadian producers lose in the marketplace as well as their individual freedom within their own fields.

That’s not to say we should break the law.  No.  However, at the present time its too one sided.  At times its seems everybody is making scads of money in Canadian agriculture except the Canadian farmer.  Big corporations who at the end of the day are only interested in selling more spray need to be accountable too.  Brutish, bullying behaviour on the rural concessions needs to be curtailed.

At the end of the day there is lots of agricultural risk to spread around among farmers, suppliers and big corporations.  The July 12th USDA grain stocks report helps point that out.  Key in this debate is finding the balance and have everybody act respectfully.  As even newer technologies emerge that balance will only become increasingly important.