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adding a third crop to your rotation uh and getting a good sense of what that marketplace looks like and kind of new developments on the horizon as well um so we've got lydia english from practical farmers of iowa that's going to give us a really um excellent thousand foot view of kind of what their efforts in um uh creating markets for small grains has looked like and kind of giving a survey there and then we've got beth stebbins from grain millers to give us some kind of practical nuts and bolts about how one accesses their uh milling market uh for for oats specifically but i think she may mention a couple other cranes as well so just as a reminder we um definitely encourage questions there's been a lot of great conversation already please as they come up type your questions into the chat bar below and make sure you assign your question to everyone so we can all see the conversation and in certain cases where we don't have enough time we'll try to get your questions answered offline if at all possible so with that i'll hand things over to lydia thanks matt get my screen set up okay does that look okay yeah looks good thank you great well thank you again uh matt and the whole team at albert lee seed i have enjoyed um listening to all the talks this morning so i'm really appreciative to be able to speak as part of the small grains conference again i'm lydia english i'm the strategic initiatives coordinator with practical farmers of iowa and i'm not sure i should admit this or not but i'm not an expert on small grains markets by any means but i'm hoping today to share some of the things that i do know and to also talk about what pfi is doing in this space and then i encourage everyone who's who's participating to sort of share their experiences perhaps with marketing um in the chat box to sort of foster some discussion there um but before i delve into it i do just want to give a little spiel about pfi in case um there's a those of you who aren't familiar with us as an organization organization mac mentioned some kind words about us earlier this morning but i just wanted to orient everyone to the work that we do um so practical farmers of iowa was started in the 1980s really born out of the farm crisis there and a group of farmers came together to share information with each other and to conduct on-farm research trials to test whether they could do things like lower their inputs or tweak their production practices and maintain profitability and we have certainly grown over the years since 1985 but really that farmers being at the center of that knowledge exchange and that i'm from research continues to be our bread and butter as an organization um but i will say that you know as we've grown and continued to build communities of practice around things like cover crops or small grain production for instance you know we've continued to realize that in order to have those sorts of practices be like built in to our farming operations be sort of intrinsic to everyone's farms across the midwest we really need to work on developing markets um for more farmers to both adopt but then also successfully produce things like oats in iowa for instance and so that's where my team comes in i work on the strategic initiatives team at iowa and we are constantly drumming up ways um that we can create a more favorable environment so to speak to have farmers adopt practices like diversified cropping systems with a small grain and so that brings us back to markets i'm going to state the obvious here but we lack robust markets and infrastructure for small grain production and it's hard to get people to grow something if they have no place or not a lot of options for selling it it's also hard i would say to get sort of some of the larger companies that might have a pretty good market signal to buy things if there aren't a lot of people already growing them so when we're in this space of trying to develop new markets for things like small grains it often feels like a chicken in the egg situation where we don't really know exactly who's gonna move first but we need movement on both sides i think for the purpose of today though and talking to you all and going through markets again at sort of a thousand foot um space it's simplest um to walk through sort of the three main options which you know have already been stated somewhat today for for grain itself and that's going to be food and milling livestock feed and cover crop seed a couple things that i won't be covering today and that's going to be first you know milling and direct marketing small grains so these are sort of those cottage milling industries where farmers are growing and and processing and milling things like flour and then selling those directly to consumers and those operations are wonderful and we need more of those for sure but i'm just not going to be talking about that sort of marketing today and i'm hoping maybe the last presentation today steve and john might be able to touch on that a little bit um i'm also not really going to be talking about marketing hay or haylage i know earliest in the day max said that this doesn't really get enough love and so unfortunately i'm not going to be giving it more love in this presentation either it's certainly an important component of some of growing small grains but i'm sort of focusing on getting the crop to the grain and then and then what to do after that and again this has been brought up earlier today but i think it it bears repeating it's it's good to know what market you can target before the growing season begins and it's for a couple reasons as as mac already mentioned like it what market you're growing for is going to impact things like your variety selection it could impact some things like management um but it's also good to sort of have an idea any good now if you want to talk oops it would also um it's good to sort of have that security and maybe even contract in advance of the growing season so so that you're in a good place i think that will set you up and then i will unmute you again my bad it's no problem at all this is always the joys of virtual conferences so no problem um but okay so i'm gonna i'm not gonna say much about the food and milling markets because beth is really gonna go into that and delve into that a lot more um in her presentation but just again sort of um a list of of some of the major options that we at least work with this is not an exhaustive list but um you know grain millers we love working with grain millers and i'll let beth talk more about about what they do and what they buy um further east for a wheat milling option adm opened a processing facility i think in 2019 so fairly recently and they take soft red winter wheat by truck that's the easiest way for them to take logistically and that is a conventional market so they'll buy organic suffered winter wheat but um not an organic price again just want to touch on brewing and distilling markets because these often generate a lot of excitement and and i definitely don't want to like burst anyone's bubble with them because local breweries and distilleries should absolutely buy local small grains but as um was sort of hinted at this morning oftentimes the craft breweries or craft distilleries that might be popping up in your neck of the woods don't need a large volume of small grains per year so an estimate from some of the places that we've talked to in the past is that you know typically a smaller scale craft brewery or distillery might only need like 20 to 25 acres of grain um a year which is something absolutely and is part of the the general market landscape um but you know is that enough to move the needle maybe not unless we get a ton more craft breweries and distilleries which maybe would be a good thing anyway and then lastly we don't work a lot with some of the more larger wheat markets further south in kansas city than where i am in ames or further north in minneapolis but they do exist and there's also you know both food and feed wheat markets sort of along the rivers on either side of iowa and then lastly it's a sort of a dig i guess but um you know there are other processors in iowa for oats especially but right now unlike grain millers they aren't taking domestic products so that's just one more thing that we are trying to do as an organization is sort of try and maybe pressure those processors to start buying oats domestically and create that market pool okay but that's all i want to say about food and milling moving on to growing small grains as livestock feed again you know some of the key specs that you might want to think about if you want to target this market is is definitely yield as as mac mentioned this morning and and i did put test weight here again that threshold of what's acceptable for test weight is often lower than it would be in a million market but but having a high test weight is still going to be desirable for a lot of these feed markets and then again making sure that you're cognizant especially if you're growing something like wheat for feed that you have low vom or dawn levels again this is a byproduct of scab or fucerium head blight and it can be addressed by blending grains but you know loads can also be rejected if they have too high a level of this um in our experience as an organization you know bids for feed markets aren't always you know widely shared or advertised um we have found that if elevators are mixing and selling cattle feed they they may be buying some oats so in general it is sort of more leg work on the farmer you might have to just be calling around and seeing if many any of your local elevators could buy something like oats or small grains but it might not be widely advertised in terms of you know which grains should i grow if i'm targeting a feed market any of them all of them can be fed to livestock i would say again in our experience working with some of these larger companies things like wheat and barley and rye are more attractive to them because those small grains just intrinsically are heavier they have a higher test weight and so when those companies are thinking about like pounds in a feed and then pounds out of feed they want something like a weed or a barley or a rye um but oats should get love in livestock feed as well you know they are lighter and so they you know need more volume for the same um poundage but you know oats are really great and are high in fiber and good for gut health and just overall good for for animal health so we are pushing companies to also um feed oats to hogs and cattle as well this is an infographic that pfi put together just a couple years ago based on existing literature and this is showing um how much corn in a livestock ration can be replaced with a small grain while maintaining performance and so for cattle on the top there that's going to be the non-forage portion of their ration and then for pigs and poultry those are the maximum percentage of their diet that can be composed of small grains and i don't want you to get distracted by all the percentages because those can certainly change as we do more feeding trials and you know this doesn't incorporate the great work that molly and becker are doing feeding hybrid rye but i put this up there again to exemplify that we can feed small grains to livestock and we can feed all of them to livestock and so there really should be markets for all of the small grains as livestock feed and i really think as as matt said this is where we can um move the needle a lot once again you know finding a feed market might just take calling around to some of your local elevators one that we're working with at pfi is smithfield grain and specifically their location down in davis city iowa which is way southern iowa near missouri so they are buying both oats and wheat and i've just listed a couple of their specs here so you can see that that test weight does matter to them they have you know the threshold of what they'll accept is going to be lower than perhaps million but they do want oats that are you know hopefully at least 33 pounds per bushel in wheat that's at least 50 pounds per bushel but i just wanted to throw that up there and then they do have discounts if you don't have your oats or weeds at sort of that gold standard for test weight but those discounts aren't actually very steep so they're pretty reasonable and then the last thing i want to mention um generally in terms of growing and marketing small grains for for feed is is straw um which we have already touched upon today but you know for some farmers having straw is more important than having the grain so it's certainly a component of marketing um your small grain and i would say that straw profits um can be really great but it is sort of depend on on who you're selling to and if you're doing that work yourself or if you're hiring someone to do your custom failing um in in general i would say that it seems like you're going to get a higher price if you're selling um your straw directly to someone else if you're selling it off farm than if you're selling it um to an aggregator but again when you're doing those direct sales that might involve some more logistics and time so it's sort of up to you to figure out what's going to work and then i also want to make sure that i mention because it is really important that if some people don't like to remove straw from their small grain because you are removing nutrients and organic matter and so you cost money to replace those and so when you're sort of penciling out whether the straw market is right for you it's good to think about you know how much is it going to cost for me to apply p and k for instance um to replace the value of that in the straw so again something to just consider as you're thinking about markets for straw okay and the last sort of general market i want to talk about is this cover crop seed market which is really exciting and definitely growing here in iowa um i put the the key specification here as germ germination um and certainly there are lots of things that can factor into that but really when you're growing cover crop seed people don't want to buy seed that you know isn't going to germinate or grow on their own farm so that's really sort of the thing that's going to going to matter um i would say that if you're interested in in getting into this a good place to start is to just start growing your own cover crop seed for your farm if you're already using things like oats or rye for for cover crop seed you know why not set aside 10 20 acres and try growing it yourself as max said most of the varieties that you're using can be planted on your own farm replanted on your own farm um so i think that's a really nice place especially for someone who might not have a market for small grains or is you know just starting to grow them for the first time to begin if you want to sell your seed off farm again you can either directly market that maybe to your neighbors or you could sell that seed to like a seed house or a distributor and i've listed some of them here you know talking with other folks that are sort of starting smaller scale cover crop seed businesses a lot of times if they're selling the seed to their neighbors they're also coupling that with like custom drilling and so then they become sort of that one stop shop for their neighbors in terms of fall cover crop applications so just something to consider when you're thinking about starting to to grow cover crop seed and maybe selling that locally in your neighborhood and i've put in italics down there again to make sure that you are paying attention to rules and regulations when you are going to be selling seed off the farm and i will come back to that in just a second but first i just wanted to show that we often hear from folks that iowa grown rye has pretty um poor germination and so when they're sourcing cover crop seed um they find that it's best if they just source something from the dakotas for instance and while i don't want to discount anyone's experience with that this past year in pfi's rye variety trials which we coordinate in conjunction with iowa state university we had iowa state send samples of all of the non-hybrid varieties to their seed lab to do germ testing and so that's what i'm showing you here so we had six varieties that we tested for germ across three sites kanawha charles city and nashua and those are sort of in the northern northeastern part of the state and you can see that our rye germ ranged from 87 to 97 um which is fairly good i would say um and some of these lower sampled are or the ones that had sort of a lower germ also were the samples that had some fungal fungal abnormalities present so again you know having disease isn't going to be great for german it's something to think about when you're managing a crop for cover crop seed we will be continuing to do these variety trials and we've expanded them in 2021 to four iowa state research farms and so hopefully we'll continue to get some germination data and can share that out with with everyone in our network hey lydia um mac just wanted to give a quick spiel on ride germination if that's okay please hey lydia thanks for the great uh presentation um we also get questions from people on you know the germination of rye and how their experiences that rye grown in such and such an area it doesn't have as good a germ and i would heartily agree with you i don't know that the area matters as much as people think it does i think the main factor is that people underestimate how long it takes for rye to get dry so since rye heads out so early and starts to turn brown people think oh i can take this rye for seed right now because it looks dead ripe and then when they combine it they find that oh wait it's 16 and a half percent moisture and then now they've got a problem and all of a sudden their rye has a 72 percent germ or an 83 percent germ or something so um if you're not i would strongly recommend wind rowing rye if you're going to take it for for seed and i know you're going to talk about intellectual property in a minute so i won't go into that but just just again the moisture of the grain at which you harvest your rye is going to be a huge determinant on the final germination great thanks mac i appreciate um that interjection that's that's really great so yeah grow grow iowa grown rye is really the main i think take away i think um but yes i do want to get back to to intellectual property laws and mag talked about this a little bit this morning so i don't want to um you know reiterate exactly what he said and i also don't have time to go into all of the seed laws but i do just want to touch upon this so that um you know everyone's aware of the landscape um i had a presenter at our conference a couple weeks ago who owns a cover crop business say that he felt like iowa was the wild west in terms of cover cup um seed sales and that's i think what he meant when he said that was just that you know sometimes clear-cut information is is lacking or things aren't always like super transparent and available for folks they don't exactly know what they're supposed to be doing and depending on what variety they're trying to sell off farm and so while i can't get into everything i do just want to show this flow chart which should hopefully help a little bit in clarifying sort of the basic things that you need to be aware of if you're trying to sell cover crop seed off your farm and it and really a lot of it depends on the variety that you have and how much um restrictions there is depending on sort of the um proprietary nature of that variety so if we look all the way on the left here if you want to sell a variety that is licensed licensed or patented off farm really that what you're able to do is going to be dictated by the individual or the company that holds the rights to that variety and i know that klaus just put in the chat box that um hybrid ryes are not allowed to remember that is not allowed to use hybrids to produce cover crop seeds so just just be aware that if you're growing a variety that's licensed or patented to to know you know what the documentation says when you sort of sign that most of the varieties of the small grain varieties that are coming out of public breeding programs and universities are going to have this plant variety protection that mac mentioned before and so that again is is intended to protect the intellectual property of of the breeder in that variety and then also fund future research so that we can get you know even more great small grain varieties um released on the landscape um and i think i think most um pvp varieties also have what's called title v and so what that means is that if you want to grow and sell a a variety off farm you need to be certified to do that so you need to be certified to do that and then the variety itself needs to be certified that it is the variety that you say it is and so that basically just means you have to plan ahead and so you're going to have to source foundation seed and you're probably going to have to have someone come out and inspect your fields um it's it is doable and i know people that do it so don't be scared away if you really want to grow and sell dion oates for instance like you can do it it just is going to take some planning ahead and maybe talking to some of your local government agencies um varieties can also have pvp and then not have title five and my understanding is that again like it's more what you can do is more in line with what the owner of that variety says and then lastly sort of the simplest route is this if a variety is it doesn't have any sort of protection and that's going to be most common with our older varieties since pvp expires after 20 most times expires after 20 years so most varieties that were released um before 2001 are not going to have pvp protection anymore and so you don't need to go through any sort of certification to sell that seed off farm you might notice though that no matter what route you take in terms of the restrictions are on that variety you always must meet your state's labeling and permitting laws and so this is going to vary state by state but generally states are going to require that your seed is going to be tested and labeled for content like foreign matter and noxious weeds by a licensed lab so in iowa i would say the easiest one is isu seed lab although they might not be the only option and then depending on where you're selling that seed you might need a permit or a license um as well and i'm sorry i haven't listed every state's contact i've just listed the iowa contact and so if you have more questions about those sort of permit and labeling requirements you can certainly um reach out to robin and i do want to mention because i i don't think this has been mentioned yet that oftentimes um a question that we get is like can i sell um a pvp variety as vns as a loophole sort of to this whole thing and the answer is no so vns is intended to be a mixture of non-pvp related varieties and so um i think maybe mac did mention this but anyway you can't sell dianotes again under a vns label okay the last thing i want to mention is is actually just a plug for pfi small grain cost share um so we have been providing cost share to farmers to grow a small grain with a legume cover crop since 2017 this applies to farmers both in iowa but also in the surrounding states minnesota wisconsin illinois this year is last year for indiana and ohio farmers and we are offering 15 an acre up to 200 acres for again for a small grain with a legume cover crop a couple of the other specks of the kosher are listed there and so if you're interested in applying and getting funding for that we still have some funds available you can go to that link listed and then the last thing i want to put on everyone's radar is in addition to doing continuing this small grain cost share through at least i believe 2023 um next year we're also piling and piloting a cost share for farmers to sort of take credit from their legume cover crops so we're piling in a cost share at 10 an acre to have farmers decrease the amount of fertilizer that they're using on corn that's following a legume cover crop so more details of that to come but i just want to put it on people's radar sort of trying to help caution the the whole diversified rotation in addition to our general cost share pool most of that again coming from public funding we also have some cost share that's that's directly tied to market opportunities so most of these companies i've already mentioned today but for instance we work with grain millers and and growers some of them i think on this call to grow oats for oatly or for seven sundays um and then we also work with pepsi through adm to have growers grow wheat mostly in the illinois area so we're trying to increase this list hopefully we have even more companies on board buying oats and and small grains domestically and then also helping with with our cover crop posture in the future but this is the list of of places that are sort of pioneering in this space i would say and so that's that's all i want to say before i hand it over to beth i just um do want to thank the rest of the present and former strategic initiatives team at pfi i um all of most of the work that i've talked about you know it's really their work and i'm just sort of standing on on their shoulders here so kudos to them and i also want to give credit to the sustainable food lab who's really helps with us in terms of um engaging with these supply chain companies to help create more markets and infrastructure for small grains across the landscape and if um anyone has questions they want to ask me offline i'll try and keep up with the chat box here but um please email me at that address and um we can keep in touch thank you awesome thanks so much lydia i really appreciate uh your presentation and your contributions today there was one question i think uh that would probably be best for you to answer here over well we still got you um does a farm need to be located in iowa to qualify for the cost-share program or can they be from other states too yeah they can be from other states this year folks who qualify can be from minnesota iowa nebraska illinois wisconsin indiana and ohio so i'm sorry for any missouri farmers or anything there's no no hate that's just how the funding works cool and are you still taking sign ups right now or how does that yeah i'll put the link in the chat box awesome that's great well yeah thank you again really appreciate you being a part of this and for your presentation and uh we're just gonna plow right ahead here and get beth um online here it looks like she is already on which is great um so beth you can um share your screen whenever you are ready to go all right we look good there maybe i need to uh screen this probably yeah it's not for a moment there but there you go got a few monitors going on here so that always complicates things all right good to go now yeah you might just have to start the show i think okay um hold on i think it's sharing the wrong monitor let me try this again there you go okay i might just need to look in a different monitor but that's okay all right well we can get going here um but yeah thanks matt for having us today and also thank you to lydia for the couple plugs there i'm glad you guys enjoy working with us but i'm beth stebbins from grain millers and i'm here to talk about well you grew these small grains now what do you do with them so um as i mentioned with grand millers i'm based out of the twin cities formerly worked in wheat quality at art mills out in denver colorado and then most recently in grad school for cereal science at north dakota state but i've been at grain millers for about three years now and i do conventional small grain procurement and run our sustainability program there and now i can't oh there we go sorry guys technical difficulties a little background on grain millers we're primarily in oat miller we have three oatmeals in saint anser iowa just south of the minnesota iowa border and then out in eugene oregon and then in the heart of oat country up in yorkton saskatchewan then we also have a corn mill out in marion indiana that does conventional non-gmo and organic corn a flax mill out in newton wisconsin and then a couple of cleaning plants in st peter minnesota and um saskatoon saskatchewan so a little bit more about grain millers we are private label food and ingredient company so you may not recognize our name but you've probably eaten some of our products so we do we have a can line to can your regular rolled oats that you maybe buy store brand rolled oats from say walmart target trader joe's that kind of thing ingredients for your clif bars different granola bars flaked bread topping for dave's reds say or what's really growing for us right now is oat milk so we provide oats for oatly to um make an oat milk so might not have heard of us but we're our ingredients are pretty much everywhere and most people have probably had them our closest mill to this area is in st asgar iowa it's only 43 miles away from albert lee so it's just a great opportunity to get into the food grade market we mill six different small grains there so as i mentioned mostly oats but also hard red and soft white wheat barley rye and a little bit of triticale we do both organic and conventional grains there so between the organic and conventional and the different types of grains we bring in a lot of different commodities down there we have two million bushels of storage capacity so it's actually really neat our setup down there allows for a lot of different binning to do special runs of products for our customers identity preserve projects that sorts of things so it it gives a lot of unique opportunities to our farmers which i can delve into a little bit later and then we employ about 160 people down there so a big employer in the area so um from this slide i'm going to address maybe what's a little bit different about selling to asset grain millers a lot of farmers who work with us they're maybe just getting into these food grade markets they're used to selling corn or beans or maybe even wheat to their elevator but selling to us is a little bit differently so what you do first is set up a contract with us so that could be this time of year for a harvest delivery or throughout the crop year whenever first thing to do is give myself or one of my colleagues a call to set your pricing or delivery period then after that what we need to do is submit a sample this becomes extremely important come harvest time especially since we are a food grade facility we are pretty stringent on our specs so we like to see a sample from growers before we take delivery and that will minimize chance of rejections which will save you time and money and then also saves time at the mill and then also what we can do then if we see you're a couple pounds off on test weight or a percent or two i'm not sure we can kind of give you some pointers on what you can do to bring your sample up to grade so that you're not bringing it to the sample to get rejected bring your grain to the mill just to get rejected and get sent home so once your sample is approved by our quality manager uh you either will deliver it or we can arrange for pickup if you would rather us handle the freight we can offer on-farm pricing and at that um it's probably important to note at that that um if you're going to grow for us it is important to have a storage plan after harvest we don't allow anybody to bring in their oats or other grains straight from the field and that's because we do need to do that sample approval and that can take a couple weeks so even if it's just throwing it in your corn bin for a couple weeks that's something you need to think about before you write a contract with us and then also um oats will sweat and gain a couple of pounds over those two weeks so it's also in your best interest to let it sweat so you can get the best test weight you can so we hear a lot that you can't grow oats in in iowa what are we doing growing oats in iowa that it's kind of a weird thing but a lot of our customers do like that we purchase domestic oats and will request that we um identity preserve domestic oats for them and that's for a lot of reasons as we i'm sure a lot of us know consumers are starting to care more about where their food comes from so consumers do like to hear that their oa s are locally grown or grown in america so that's important to a lot of people um there's benefits for soil health not only for which which benefits you as a farmer but a lot of our customers like to tell that story to their consumers that their product their product is part of the solution to some of these problems we're seeing in agriculture and then obviously shorter transit time growing out closer to the mill it's a quicker trip to the mill and that's provides a few benefits such as reduced emissions which we're seeing in our cust with our customers is something that's becoming a big priority that they want to touch that their their products are low emission low greenhouse gas emission um that's definitely something that's up and coming and we're going to see a lot more of that so a couple notes on growing oats obviously if you want any more information on this we have a whole pamphlet we can send you and have an agronomic team who can talk further about this but just a few pointers to get started on growing oats variety selection is key i have our recommended varieties map screen but we want to grow something that's going to be resistant to diseases and also is shown to provide good test weight for your region and also obviously our friends at albert lee seed will be able to tell you what's best for your region but make sure you're kind of looking for varieties that will work well in your region and not just look at yield we need to look at test weight as well you want to plant as early as you can hopefully by the end of march but obviously that's depending on how the weather which you can't control oats definitely like to have their feet cool because we can see why they thrive in canada so the earlier you get them in the earlier the grain filled period will be and won't hopefully be in the heat of the summer and that'll definitely help your your test weight so you can have the best test way you can and we also suggest not to plant back to back with other cereals this isn't a make or break but it can lead to issues in the disease cycle so that can cause rust or other issues which can affect your test weight another question i get a lot is if i plant oats do i have to swath them because a lot of people don't have the equipment to do that you don't have to swap your oats we have a lot of producers who have success straight cutting but to straight cut we we recommend you target 14 to 15 percent moisture before you start doing that and then put it on air afterwards so you make sure you have the proper moisture levels something we we often tell our growers is that when you think you're ready to to combine your oats go fishing for the weekend and then come back and start combining just to give them a little more time to dry down and then if you are interested in swapping we recommend targeting targeting 20 to 25 moisture and then make sure they get down to 14 percent in the wind drill before combining and then last point ensure proper moisture before storage if you put it in the bin and it's too high moisture you might end up with some toxin issues or some some off smells which are very sensitive to being a food grade facility so some of those things can cause quality issues at the mill and could lead to rejection just a quick overview of our specs our test weight spec is 38 pounds we will take down to 36 with a 20 cent discount which if you've grown for us in the past we have increased that discount a little bit this year just because as we get below that 38 pounds it does really negatively negatively affect mill yield so we've kind of increased those discounts as a way to encourage growers to think of oat as a cash crop and put in their best effort to make that 38 pound test weight 13.5 is our spec on moisture and we'll take up to 14 with five cent discount and then 20 max thins and one part per million on vomitoxin um but that is on the grout not the whole kernel so that that usually isn't an issue for us to accept depending on the year i would say 90 of the time if we reject an oat sample or truck it's because of test weight so that's definitely the the most challenging expect to hit so a couple of notes on the oat market um the projected canadian end stocks are down 17 for 2021 and then on top of that the canadian oat um industry is seeing increased interest to in exports to south america down there chile is a major export of exporter of oats and they're having a poor crop year this year so they are going into canada into their old crop stocks to try to replace some of the oats they aren't getting out of chile so because of that they're strong demand for old crop and new crop oats so we're seeing some strong bids for new crop 2021. so currently we for old crop we have no bid nearby for old crop oats it's because we're pretty full but if you do have some oats in the bin our bid for april through june is 398 bushel i will say though if that is of interest to you i would get in touch sooner rather than later as we probably will fill up on what we need so i won't wait around till april through june if you are interested and have some old crop to move for new crop we're at 350 a bushel for harvest through december and then even more exciting jan through march we're at four dollars a bushel um so i haven't been doing this for too long only three years or so but that's the first time i've seen a four in front of a new crop outbid so it may not be as good as corn and bean prices right now but the oat prices are definitely running a little bit so it might be a good year to try a few acres of oats and see see how they do for you hey beth a couple things there's a question on the chat about what's the highest test weight on average for iowa oats in a year and year out scenario probably a hard question to answer in general terms but um yeah i know we have seen we have some growers who are very practiced at growing out for us and they can consistently see over 40 pound oats so it's doable yeah obviously kind of speaks back to some of those management considerations we were mentioning earlier about you know uh planting date um managing for fertility and fungicides as well as you know some of that impact definitely is weather related as well but yeah for sure um there was another question on organic outbids i don't know if that's something you're gonna touch on a little bit but um i do not have the organic opens i can drop richie's contact info in the chat or i'm not sure if he's here but i i know some of those periods are filled up but i'll drop richie's contact info in the chat when we're done and he's who to contact for organic biz great thank you and what what factors do you see leading to the higher price of oats is that kind of following other crop prices or is that mainly due to poor crops and kind of the non-us areas yeah i definitely say it's the second thing it's the um the factors mainly in the canadian markets just that their oats are getting gobbled up by the southern hemisphere and actually up in canada they're kind of fighting the canola prices for acres it's uh to what we have with corn and beans happening down here running up there they have the canola markets and i think flax too which are kind of um good alternatives so we're just fighting for um oat acres are fighting with those up there leading to a little bit fewer plantings gotcha thank you yep and then so speaking on interesting markets um after oats on the conventional side we probably bring in the most barley so the barley markets have kind of been going crazy in the last few months for again some kind of global reasons china is starting to rebuild its pig herd which was recently decimated by african swine fever so they're feeding a lot more barley than usual and i i learned today that they typically import their barley from australia but australia has slapped an 80 something percent tariff on australian barley due to diplomatic issues so because of that canada has or sorry because of that china has gotten into the canadian barley market so they have really been running up the price and bidding up or sorry taking over the um old and new crop barley bushels coming out of canada so it's it's definitely raising the price of barley so if that's something you've been interested in it might be a good year to get into that and again it's something that i've heard a lot that we don't grow barley in iowa it's kind of weird thing to do but every once in a while we do have some producers who have some luck doing it so i definitely recommend do your homework but um it could be a good year to give it a shot right now for new crop we're probably about five dollars bushel delivered on barley if that's something you wanted to get in on but our specs for that the um 46 pound test weight down to 44 with discount 13.5 moisture 3 ppm on vomitoxin but again if you're interested get in touch and i can send you full specs on that and then some of the other small grains uh we do take in barley as i just mentioned soft white wheat which we don't buy a lot from this area just because we don't necessarily see good quality around here but if you grow it definitely send a sample get in touch and we'll take a look at it we do a hard red wheat and rye as well our usages on those are kind of decreasing in recent months due to changes because of covid so what we'll likely do on those is look at samples come harvest time so if you are um growing those get in touch this summer and we can discuss where markets are at then and then we take in a couple truckloads a month of triticale so if you just have some triticale looking for a home we're a good place to at least check in with and then just a few things to plug about why it's great to grow for us we do have on-farm pricing available so if you're a little bit far away from st asgar or don't want to deal with trucking what have you we will offer you a picked up bid where we'll just take off our estimated freight costs from the bid and give you your final bid and that's exactly exactly what you'll get and you don't have to worry about trucking and we also have agronomic assistance available we know that to a lot of people growing outs may be new and we want you to be successful so we have agronomists on staff who will come and help you pick out a variety we can send an intern to you in the summer if you need to help scouting to determine if you need to apply a fungicide that sort of thing we'll do everything our power to help you be successful and then again we have forward contracts available now so you can lock in your price help out with some planning know exactly what you're going to get and our contracts do come with the full active data clauses so if you don't make grade get hailed out don't get the amount of bushels you expect the contract will just be canceled we'll never make you go out and find oats in the market or anything so super flexible like that and two if you don't make grade for say test weight we can oftentimes offer you a feed bid delivered to saint ansgar and a lot of times won't be any better than what you might be able to do locally but if you don't have a local market it's definitely a good option if you don't have anywhere else to send your oats and then one last thing we like to tout is our sustainable grower program which i run so i'd like to give it a quick shout out it's no cost to the grower and it leaves you with no obligation to sell to us but it's entirely grower focused we don't want to tell you how to farm we want you to focus on improving your sustainability in a way that matters to you so what it consists of is a yearly survey that you fill out this time of year and just it only takes a couple hours and involves answering questions in 20 different areas of sustainability across your operation and then once you finish that your buyer will get in touch with your scores on it and you can kind of pick a couple different areas that are important to you to maybe focus on improving with some resources we can provide on how you can improve in those areas and then kind of as a benefit we give to our growers in those programs our preferred contracting so maybe some of those grains like hard red wheat and rye that we don't take a lot in and there's a lot of interest we try to give those contracts to our sustainable growers as a way of appreciating them being the program and then also as i mentioned st ansgar is really set up to do special projects and ip runs of grain so when we do those with our customers we tend to source those growers from our sustainable grower program so for example we have a really small pilot going on right now with a customer trying to source carbon negative oats so what we did is we looked at our growers in our sustainable grower program and found growers with practices who were most likely to be carbon negative and then we were able to offer those growers a contract with a premium attached to it so it can be beneficial to growers as well just because we can identify growers for these programs that can often pay a little extra but that's just an overview of at least one food grade market that's available to you um my contact info is there and i will drop that in the chat as well and kind of stick around in case there's any other questions that i can address in the chat thanks so much beth appreciate your your presentation uh there was one question um as kind of an overall uh portion of green miller's business do you do you know what percent of what you're handling is organic versus conventional i couldn't say to be honest i will say organic was a big area of growth for a long time and i think that's probably about evened out now i know for a while we were struggling to source the organic bushels we've needed but i think that's that market is kind of balanced out now that we can find everything we need out there gotcha um yeah and i think uh there was a little bit of conversation and richie chimed in on the um organic outbid for those who are not watching the chat it's 550 a bushel delivered to st ansker made in july and 2022. so it's so information on organic outputs there thanks richie um great so um we're gonna uh take a quick uh five minute break until we get started with our final presenters of the day