It is being quite a week harvesting soybeans. Wide open weather across Ontario has led to a substantial percentage of the Ontario crop in the bin.  Your loyal scribe has been doing his part, driving that big green monster through the field. If I am lucky, I will be done soybeans next week.  Of course, until you are there, it seems so far away.

Soon, people will be turning their attention to Ontario corn, which at least in my area is looking pretty ratty.  Tar spot, that fungal disease we imported from the United States is certainly impacting every acre here in southwestern Ontario.  For those of you that are unfamiliar with that disease it forms on the corn plants leaved like black “tar spots”, effectively killing off the corn early. As we are headed into the middle of October much of the corn which was not sprayed with fungicide it is losing its structural integrity.  That’s just what we need, another problem.

I find this all quite concerning for the Ontario corn market moving ahead.  We all know the corn prices have decreased over the last several months and revenues are going to be down this year for corn.  Tar spot is a new problem that has only arrived here in the last couple of years and represents another cost to producers.  We all know that growing an acre of corn is substantially more than growing an acre of soybeans.  It now just seems logical to me that with tar spot here, for many of us it reduces the incentive to grow corn in 2025 and beyond.

At least that’s my view at current price levels.   I suppose if the price of corn miraculously increased a couple dollars a bushel tar spot would just be an inconvenient additional cost. As it is, it just looks like it is default management to spray Ontario corn with fungicide every year. Or, maybe for some producers it’s just time to reduce the number of corn acres in Ontario and grow more soybeans.

It used to be that Ontario had to import corn for its needs but now a days it is just the opposite as we export about 30% of the corn that we produce here.   The rest of it is used in ethanol production in Ontario, livestock feed and different food products.  It would be a lot nicer if we could increase this percentage in food production as the export market is not always preferred.  In many ways it is an exhaust pipe for grain that cannot be utilized in Ontario.  “Cheap” is the biggest factor to compete on world export markets for grain and that’s exactly how it will turn out unless there’s some specialty tag prescribed to it

In other words, think about value added for Ontario grain.   For instance, a fairly large percentage of the Ontario soybean crop is non-GMO and processed for human consumption in Asia. There are also opportunities for non-GMO corn exports to Europe.  This represents opportunity within an export market. Provisions in the CETA agreement between the EU and Canada has long proved to be valuable in opening European markets for Ontario grain.

The problem is we need more of it.  In my mind that will never change.  The Ontario ethanol industry is great example of an idea to utilize corn through industrial use in turn helping build an industry.  Of course, it was helped by $517 million worth of government cash that was used to develop the infrastructure.  At the end of the day, Ontario farmers got that market because one Ontario premier (Dalton McGuinty) was interested in making it happen.  If he was not interested, it wouldn’t have happened. Needless to say, in 2024 we need more of these ideas to increase the value of our agricultural commodities produced here in Ontario

It is not like it is not taking place as there are many individual farmers who are adding value to their production, some even growing huge followings on social media.  Needless to say, we need much more of a macro view of this, a bigger vision to garner greater revenues in a segmented Ontario grain market.

Our American friends have the ethanol model, and they also have the soybean biodiesel model.  There are many more.  As I said earlier, the challenge is to get some more of these value-added opportunities on this side of the border.  Sure, we can export soybeans to Iran, but wouldn’t it be so much better if we could utilize them here in an even more profitable way.  Ditto for Ontario corn, ditto for other Ontario agricultural commodities.