Cabinet shuffle predictions, keeping research farms open, & mCOOL concerns

As we get into August, we start to see a change. We're getting a little bit closer to fall where we, we see a little bit of a weather change, the leaves start to turn, and all, and harvest happens. It's a very busy time in agriculture. Fall can also bring political change. Could we see a fall cabinet shuffle? It might be a great opportunity for the Prime Minister to shuffle the deck, so to speak. Who does he want in which seats as Parliament returns? The big question for farmers is, could we see a new Minister of Agriculture when Parliament returns in the fall? That's the question we're going to address today on the RealAg Issues panel. Tyler McCann, Lyndsey Smith, myself. Could we see a new Minister of Agriculture this fall. Hey, give us your thoughts. Do, do you think that Minister Macdonald deserves to stay in that seat longer? Do you think there should be a switch out? What is that based on? Want to hear, you can put it in the comments or you can send me an email, [email protected]. We'll discuss it today on RealAg Radio. In crop protection, you pay more for the brand or choose a generic and hope for the best. Life Scientific believes you shouldn't have to choose. Using reverse engineering science, we deliver performance you can trust at a price that makes sense. Visit LifeScientific.com/north-america America for products and retailers near you. It's time for RealAg Radio on Rural Radio Channel 147 on SiriusXM. RealAg Radio and RealAgriculture.com is your home for insight and analysis of the issues that are impacting your farm business. Let's get real and get connected with RealAg Radio. Welcome to RealAg Radio here on Rural Radio 147 at SiriusXM. Shaun Haney, your host here on this Friday edition of the show. Thanks so much for making RealAg Radio and Rural Radio 147 a big part of your workday, and also a huge shout out to relistening out there on the RealAg Radio podcast or watching the show on YouTube. Today we got a beef market update with Anne Wasko, the Gateway Livestock Exchange We're also going to have a RealAg Issues panel, and we're going to have Lyndsey Smith of RealAgriculture.com and Tyler McCann of CAPI. So much happened this week, lots to discuss and how it impacts the industry of agriculture. Now, if you have any feedback on today's show, we would love to hear from you. Maybe there's a topic you want us to cover here in future shows. You can do that by sending me an email, [email protected], or call or text the RealAg Feedback Line. 855-776-6147. Let's get started today with the Beef Market Update with Anne Wasko, the Gateway Livestock Exchange. And how we doing on this Friday? I am good, Shaun, today. It is, it's great to chat with you again. You've been chatting to Lyndsey last couple weeks. Well, I'm back. Here I am. Okay, we'll deal with it. You got it. You got to downgrade again. Okay, let's talk about what's been the prices. Wow, we've been pushing that future price around like crazy, up and down. Down depending on the day. What's been going on in the cash markets? I look at the calendar and thank goodness July's over. It has been a big adjustment month really since the start of the month, especially like you say on futures and fed cattle prices. So finally this week in the US fat cattle market, we saw the fed price catch because it's been in freefall basically, and did trade kind of steady to a buck higher on the spot market. So $231 to $232 in the south, The dress sales did end up clawing a little bit back, 365 delivered compared to earlier in the week, so that's going to end up being called steady with last week. And yeah, as you mentioned, the futures compared to the kind of the lowest they made most months on Monday to where they're at today, they have clawed back $10, but again, especially on the October and the Dec is what I was looking at there, so it's been a little bit of a clawback and finding some ground, but you know, since the end of June when US cash was just about $260. So we're $30 down in less than 30 days, right? So it's been pretty violent, if that's the word you want to use. Yep. But, you know, in recent years when we've got these lots of volatility in the marketplace, it feels like lows and highs are made with some pretty extreme volatility. Um, the— we're also watching that cutout market because it kind of saw a pretty big drop, $3.60 and change with the close last night on the Choice. So that lost another $2 from last week, but it is off, you know, we got to at the end of June, we were up near just under $4, right? So it's off pretty close to $40 a hundred as well on the price that the packers are selling it for. And then just to finish on prices, and we'll talk about lots of different news and reports came out this past week, but in Alberta we haven't found a bottom yet here. Obviously, we saw the dressed market last— this week $535 to $542 delivered. That's $8 to $15 a hundred lower than last week. It's probably going to leave the Canfax average in the mid-$320s, and again, just as a reminder, early July we made our all-time high at $358. So markets are off, you know, over $30 a hundred here in Canada as well. Um, so that's, that's where we sit. Um, but lots, lots, lots to talk about, so maybe we better jump into those storeys. Yeah, and they kind of— the things we need to chat about connect to those, I think, the price movements and, and things. Um, Mexican-US border, it is going to be a slow opening, uh, at a, at a, at the at a border point connecting Mexico and Arizona. This is not wide open. This is the opening that people have been talking about for quite some time. There are cases in the U.S. of screwworm. Those cases are actually going down, and the USDA feels now is the time based on the Mexican efforts and kind of where the caseload is. That's had a big impact on what happened, uh, in the markets that news broke on. Well, it really broke Friday afternoon, but Monday, Monday's trade was just brutal in the futures market. But the fundamentals are still like intact. Kind of an overreaction in your mind? Well, it was the shoe that needed to drop, I guess, right? You know, you need— the markets are always trying to deal with the news, and until they actually have the news in hand— so now they've got the news in hand, the market's made their, their big correction, especially on feeder cattle, as you say. On the futures. And that's the market's job because this, you know, as you said, that's going to be a phased reopening. It's going to take some time, but especially looking forward into 2027, there are going to be— assuming things go well, right? I'm making these comments assuming that, you know, we continue to see more, more border crossings open as we go through the remainder of this year, that we will see more supply come back to kind of more normal levels like we saw, would have seen a year and a half ago when the border was still open to Mexico. That's how markets respond to news like this when you've got a supply change, and that's what this is. This equals more supply, therefore prices have to come down. Because it's not a food safety issue, we've been seeing Mexican boxed beef come into the US and into Canada as well, so it's not like we're bringing a whole bunch of cattle back online because there has been lots of reporting of Mexico increasing its slaughter capabilities capabilities and what it's able to do. I heard, you know, earlier this week an analyst talk about how, you know, we were previously at about just over a million feeder cattle would come out of Mexico into the U.S. That number may not be as high going forward. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I think there's, I think there's probably an argument to that, and again, we'll have to see. Economics and price are going to drive where cattle go, just like between Canada and the U.S. when Canadian prices are stronger than the US, we're not exporting much and vice versa. So that same, you know, economic scenario is going to dominate in terms of Mexico and US. But, but certainly that's why cattle were moving into, you know, a strongly priced market in the US. That's how it's been previous to when the border closure happened, you know, a year and a half ago. So we're going to get back to that. But I don't think at this point in time that it's going, it's just going to take some time, Shaun, and we're going to watch this. And USDA has been very clear that they're going to be on top of, you know, the protocols and all the steps that have to happen for things to move forward. So we'll keep watching the news there. Speaking of slaughter capacity, we're also hearing that Cargill's plant at Fort Morgan, which has been labour shutdown, a lockout or a strike, whatever, that potentially that plant may be coming back online. That would be good news. Yeah. So it's been idle since May 20th, I believe. And I think they're, you know, they've reached— it sounds like they've reached a tentative agreement, which is going to get voted on next week. So we'll hear the outcome. But that slaughter capacity, you know, we dealt without it through the second quarter of this year. But as we move forward, especially through August and into September, and there's more fed cattle supplies coming at the market as we go forward, that capacity is going to be needed. So we don't know what the final outcome is and when the opening date might be if it's a successful vote, but that capacity is going to be well utilised if it comes back on. And last Friday we also had a cattle on feed and an inventory report as well. What were the takeaways on that? Well, first, let's talk about the inventory report. So that's July 1 mid-year inventory report. We'll get ours in Canada in about another month. But bottom line was that the numbers I was looking at, the beef cow herd down still 0.7%, so almost 1%. So really not showing any growth in the cow herd yet. What we're watching is that beef replacement heifer category where we started to see some growth in Canada. That's still pretty slow, 2.7% increase in those beef replacement heifers versus a year ago. So the message that I get from that is very— you can call that some slow retention, but very slow and gradual on the, on the side. And I think, again, as we did in Canada, we have to point towards the drought conditions that are still dominating a lot of the areas where the cow herd lives. Yeah, again, yes. You know, I spoke earlier in the spring in Wyoming, they were talking about just disbursement, not retention. Extremely dry through parts like that, like Colorado, parts of Utah, Montana has been really fighting it. You know, you look in ranching country, at least in the western half of the U.S., they've been dealing with severe drought. How would you ever retain females on your ranch here? Exactly. It's, it's one, one last tidbit from that report. So the calf crop, the 2026 calf crop's projected to be about 500,000 smaller than a year ago. And so when you look at, you know, from the peak in 2018, from a calf crop size perspective to this number, we've seen the calf crop decline by 3.8 million head in the U.S. So that's the decline that's already occurred in this cattle cycle. So, you know, this could be the smallest calf crop for this cycle. I guess that's what we'll, we'll wait to see a year from now. And then just to finish on, on that July 1 cattle on feed report, the monthly report we get every, every month, same trend we've seen, which is more cattle on feed. But how we're getting this number, Shaun, is simply marketings are down much more, the number of cattle leaving the feedlot, than the placement number. And so we continue to see, um, marketings dropping a lot and cattle just simply staying on feed a bit longer. And we— Lyndsey and I talked about this a couple weeks ago. So again, it was clearly identified in this report like it was in the June 1 report. So on-feed numbers are staying elevated, marketings are down, and that's kind of a key part of that whole equation. Well, we're about to enter the really crazy time where so much happens, you know, really across the U.S. and Canada from a cattle perspective. That's the fall run. Yeah. What are we looking for? Obviously, prices are a sign, you know, how aggressive will the cattle feeder be at a time where there's a lot of volatility, especially in the futures market, not being able to pencil, you know, having to have that come in the market in order to, to make it work. What are you looking out for here this fall? There's going to be lots of things at play, as you say, Shaun. So we've got, you know, markets that are showing us that they're going to be a little bit lower in '27 than this year in terms of the futures market. We've got cost of gain, you know, we're watching these grain prices. Is that sneaking up? And then on the other side, but we've still got this small calf crop both in the U.S. and Canada. So is it numbers versus pen space versus, you know, profitability? You know, so there's all these things are at play. And I think as we've seen in other turns of cycles, there's different facets of the industry that are going to be at different places. So, you know, somebody is going to be in a spot where they're going to be aggressive. I'm going to fill these pens, where the others are going to say, no, I've been to this party before. It isn't really fun. I'm going to be patient. So I think it'll be all over the map. Yep, and something we don't talk a lot about here, but access to capital in order to be able to make that investment in the inventory from a cattle feeder perspective, right? That, that is, that's a bigger issue today even with some of the profitability that we have seen. The numbers are so much larger than they were, say, 10 years ago for the, for a same size yard. Exactly. Yeah, no, that's a good, that's a good point, Shaun. Just, and that was kind of the case, we've seen that really since last fall's run, but it's It's, you know, we look at some of these early priced calves on the, on the video sales going for fall delivery. I mean, they're at, they were selling at all-time highs. So we'll see what happens as we get closer to fall round. And great chatting with you here for the Beef Market Update. Have a great weekend. You too. Thanks, Shaun. Hey, we'll be right back on RealAg Radio for the RealAg Issues panel. Tyler McCann of CAPI and Lyndsey Smith standing by right after this. If lentils are in next year's plans, your weed control starts this fall. PrecisionPak PF100-0050 herbicide from FMC delivers systemic burndown of winter annual weeds plus extended residual control to help keep fields cleaner into spring. It's everything you need in a fall herbicide to help reduce early season weed competition during lentil establishment, while PrecisionPak customised packaging makes mixing and handling simple. See your FMC retailer today and start next year's lentils with a cleaner field. Shaun Haney, your host here. Joining us right now, President and CEO of AGCO, is Paul Bourgault. We focus a lot on voice of the customer, and voice of the customer can come from, again, our end users, our assemblers, our dealers. And through that voice of the customer, we typically get a better understanding of what are the needs that each of those groups feel are important, and then we prioritise those needs. Typically it comes to how do we get more capacity? How do we get more reliable equipment? How does maintenance become easier? How do we use less horsepower on our equipment? How does it become safer on the farm? And, you know, our digital business with regards to SureTrac and BinManager are great tools to use for farmers, which we, again, we see a lot of growth, particularly in the US and international markets to manage storage, proper storage of those commodities that, as you know, can become very valuable if you market it correctly. Let's get on here with the RealAg Issues panel here on this Friday. Up first, we got Lyndsey Smith coming out of Ottawa, Ontario. Lyndsey, how we doing? We are doing well, but I got to say, it feels like this week was 3, but also maybe a day. It is this weird sort of like we packed a lot in So it feels like time sort of flew, but also yeesh, it's been intense. So lots going on, excited to talk about it today, and then hit the long weekend. I'm excited. Yeah, it is a long weekend in Canada, not in the US. Sorry about that, everybody. Sorry. Also joining us is Tyler McCann. He is the Managing Director at CAPI. Hey Tyler, how we doing? I'm doing well, Shaun. Just a reminder though, it's a long weekend in parts of Canada. Not all of Canada. Quebec, we had our summer long weekend at the end of June. So just remember, not all Ontario. Yeah, yeah, really. We get St. John Baptist that day off and we don't get the August long weekend. Okay, but wait, does that mean that, that we— so then that last week of June to Canada Day, like, does Quebec just close for that whole week basically? Well, not everybody embraces Canada Day the same way. Wow. Yeah. What? A lot of people. Are you serious? Yep. Okay. St. Jean-Baptiste is the big party. This feels wrong. We're learning a lot. We're learning a lot. Yeah, not in the English part of Western Quebec that I live in. We're very much Canada Day people, but yeah, lots of rest of the province, it's St. Jean-Baptiste a week earlier. That's the big party. Yeah. It's the 24th, right? Or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Huh. See, we're learning things. And also to our American friends, you should adopt the Civic Holiday, as it is named in Canada. I think we should come up with a better name than the Civic Holiday. That is quite lame, isn't it? It is very lame. Yeah, we need to come up with something better. Like, we were really— we just, we just knew we wanted a day off, but we were too lazy to actually come up with a name to describe what we were actually doing. Like, like, you know, like, like, at least when we added February, it was like Family Day, and like, we came up with like a theme. I don't know, we got to work on our August one, everybody. Well, I was in Alberta. Go ahead. I was good. Those in Alberta that are trying to take inspiration from Quebec will have to change their civic holiday to the Alberta Day or something because the Saint-Jean-Baptiste is referred to by many as the fête nationale or national celebration holiday, right? Wow. Okay, could change it to Derek Day or something anyway. Well, with some of the heat that we're seeing in parts of the country, we call it— we could call it like, stay in your air-conditioned house day. That'd be a good start. It is going to be very toasty here in southern Alberta over the weekend and parts of the western Canadian prairies, getting very close to 40 degrees, well over 100 Fahrenheit, and that is hot. I was in Bismarck, North Dakota this week for a Winfield crop plan event for diversified field crops and There's nothing like at noon being in a tent and it's 102 degrees. Thank goodness for a breeze, let me tell you. Uh, very hot and quite dry in parts of that of the Northern Plains. Um, let's, uh, Lyndsey, here's what I'm— I want to talk about crop conditions. Um, what are you hearing? You did the Farmer Rapid Fire this week. What are we hearing from a crop condition standpoint in Ontario and East? Oh, okay, so just for the East, yeah, so we seem to be at least from East Coasters weighing in on the Farm Rapid Fire and some conversations as well. Not bad, like things are alright. A few things are maybe, you know, a little head. The late spring though and like the rough spring, what I find interesting is we're having relatively different seasons between East and West, but spring was challenging, I think, across the board. And so we're seeing some of that fallout now. What is interesting is I think the West is really having an insect year. I feel like here in Ontario anyway, at least, and Tyler, maybe you've got a feel for Quebec, but definitely disease. Like, we are having all that humidity and all that heat and all that early moisture. We are having a pretty significant disease threat year for some, of course, for some. Pete will tell you that where he is it's dry, so gibberella on corn, he's not worried, but we are like, yeah, so the fall-seeded crops are coming off or are off in a lot of areas. They're not bad, quite good in some areas, but I did talk, we did talk a bit about sort of some of these other challenges with that early spring and what it left behind, so definitely some discussion on like those drought spots, cuts and variability, like that will cause issues, of course, as we move towards harvest if there's significant variability in crops as well. So I'd say, I think, I feel like Ontario is probably feeling a little bit more positive about things, generally speaking, than maybe parts of the west, but yeah. Yeah, I'm starting to wonder, you know, coming out of Egg in Motion, I sure heard a lot about, hey, we need one more shot of rain. And as the temperature gets turned up, I'm a little bit worried that this '26 crop is a little bit more like the '24 crop than the '25. If you remember, in '25 it was dry early, got the rains, we really outperformed our production expectations. And in '24, we started out great, there was lots of potential out in the field, then Mother Nature said, not so fast there, sucker. And the heat turned up and so did the tab. And that's kind of where we are. Maybe we're in between, you know, I That might be the better way to look at it, but a lot of concern about just not getting that final push in a good part of this. I've been hearing from a lot of growers. Now, if you look around Edmonton, it just never stops raining. It's like every 2 days there's like this crazy, crazy storm. The eastern part of Saskatchewan, western part of Manitoba, also people talking about how, you know, high levels of moisture and the impact that's had on crop volume. So it's not widespread, but there are pockets that have gotten way too much moisture. But I do want to point out, shout out to Matt Makins. He did sort of call that, like, those trend lines of, like, if you have too much moisture, that's— you'll keep getting too much moisture, and if you're dry, yeah, you'll stay dry. So shout out Matt Makins. Yeah, okay. Hey, there's rumors— well, maybe Tyler started this rumour, we'll find out— but there could be a cabinet shuffle, and we'll talk about that when we come back from a break. But first, hey, FP Genetics, SU Performer Hybrid Fall Rye, known for its stability and harvestability. 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The Pulse School on Real Agriculture has information and advice for all these questions and more to help you navigate this season. Brought to you by BASF. Pulse School episodes are available at pulseschool.com, RealAgriculture.com, or as a podcast on your favourite streaming service. Download the latest episode today. There's a reason we call it the Corn School. Videos on everything from planter setup to weed control, field trial results and the latest yield strategies, The Corn School on RealAgriculture.com has the information and advice you need to help you succeed. Brought to you by Pride Seeds and BASF, Corn School episodes are available at CornSchool.com, from RealAgriculture.com, or as a podcast in your favourite podcast app. Cheque out the latest Corn School episode today. And we are back here on RealAg Radio, Rural Radio 147, SiriusXM. XM. Hey, the way a crop is harvested influences the conditions for next year's seeding. The K-Hart Raptor Stripper Header and Spider Disc Drill are designed to support low disturbance farming practises from harvest through seeding. Learn more at K-HartIndustries.com. Okay, we've got Tyler McCann of CAPI and Lyndsey Smith of RealAgriculture.com. We let Kelvin Heppner have a day off. I don't know who approved that, but yeah, he deserves it. We'll, we'll We'll give him credit for that. It's— hopefully he's having himself a great day out, uh, camping with the family, I believe. Okay, so Tyler, uh, I'm not sure where we are in the part of the cycle of rumours of cabinet shuffles. This happened in Canada a lot where it's like, you know, we may be primed for a little bit of movement. Sometimes those come in very subtle ways where it's really about 1 or 2, 3 people being shifted in or out depending on how the Prime Minister feels about the quality of work or who he has to show some support for. Are we— can we expect a cabinet shuffle this fall? Yeah, it sounds like before Parliament comes back, there will be a cabinet shuffle. Again, I think there's been lots of talk that that's going to come for a long time now. A couple of things that seem to be heading in that direction or making this potentially more likely, I mean, one is that it's kind of due. Prime Minister Trudeau is someone that likes to seem to make decisions, seems like he sees— needs to hit a bit of a reset on some ministers. They've got 3 by-elections coming up at the end of August that will put some new people into the mix. Whether or not any of them will go right into cabinet may be a different storey, but that's on the horizon as well. So it seems like sometime in August or very early September that will happen so that a new cabinet can go into their cabinet retreat in mid-September. So it seems like this is going to heat up and I think it's always just kind of an interesting time anyways. We're in a bit of the dog days of summer and good chance to say how are people are doing and how are not, and by all accounts, this Prime Minister is somebody that likes to do that and has a clear sense as to who's performing and who isn't. Okay, so let's get to it here. Is the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, Keith Macdonald, on the chopping block in your estimation? Doesn't seem like he's done anything to put himself on the chopping block. I think he's delivered a food security strategy that was a PM priority, or helped to deliver that, it was a PM priority, and that probably is a good thing. He's keeping relative peace on the countryside, and so I think it gets to be more of a question for Minister MacDonald around, is there someplace else that he needs to go, or is there someone else that comes along to become an Ag Minister, and how does that play out, what does that look like? Um, and so I don't think it's his performance that will get him out of cabinet. I'm not sure his performance gets him a big promotion. Maybe it gets him a lateral move to some different opportunity somewhere along the way. There are some interesting things that happened to some that could create some space for some of the people that we know that could end up in an Ag portfolio. The Immigration Minister from Nova Scotia is by all accounts a poor performer and one of the first that's likely to get moved out, and that could create some space in Nova Scotia. Which always puts our friend Cody Boyce in the mix and could change things up that way. Now, Lyndsey, I've— one thing I've wondered through the time that Minister Macdonald has been in that seat is, was his job to do the cuts, go through the hardship of that? You know, he was relatively new to the ag industry. You can, you can do that and not have some of those emotional attachments and some of those relationships. And I've always kind of wondered if post those cuts, then would he move to something else and then somebody more accustomed to the industry or, you know, familiar with it would, would move into that seat. Is that a narrative potentially, you think? I mean, it certainly could be. I think what might maybe doesn't play in this as maybe it has in the past is that I don't know, and, and I'm sure we'll talk today about the research stations, etc. I don't know if the pain of the cuts this round has really got the attention, maybe as, or as much fanfare, and as much pushback, and as much attention as maybe past cuts, maybe because it is, you know, public sector-wide as opposed to just a Canada or select departments that got cut. I just don't get the sense that it necessarily has made him profoundly unpopular in any way. And so, I mean, to Tyler's point, there are other things at play that may shift some people around. As he said, there's 3 by-elections to happen. Do the Liberals actually get all 3 of them? Probably not. It sounds like 1 or 2 are pretty much in the bag, but maybe all 3, maybe not. I'm not sure really that there's that much sort of negativity hanging around him because he's, you know, the minister in place when this happened, that that necessarily means he moves on. And to that end, that would also be assuming that he was sort of chosen for this role to sort of see that through, and I also don't know if that's true as far as like really hand-selecting who's going to see this through, again, because it was you know, essentially every department had to do this, so I don't know if it's hanging it on McDonald's per se is necessarily fair. Yeah, I would agree. Go ahead, Tyler, go ahead. I don't think it matters in the grand scheme of things, right? Like of the things that are going to influence the Prime Minister's decisions around cabinet performance or not, I mean, this is such a small, small thing, but I don't think it matters. My year-end prediction was that we would see a new Minister of Agriculture and Secretary of USDA. Now that both are in those seats, so I still have time. That's true. One of the by-elections is in Chicoutimi-Le Fjord. A Conservative MP was appointed to the Senate. Of note from an ag perspective, the Liberal candidate is a dairy producer, former head of the Provincial Milk Producers Federation, who sat on the Dairy Farmers of Canada board, maybe an executive member there. And by all accounts, he's got a seat in that, a shot in that riding to take that for the Liberals. So that would be kind of a new ag face in the government caucus. That would be kind of an interesting person. Again, so you never know, some new faces may come to the front that will make the Ag Caucus a little bit bigger and more interesting. Yeah, a few people have made a huge deal about the fact that he has connections obviously to the Dairy Farmers of Canada and that there's some sort of ties to the Liberal support of supply management, and maybe getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, uh, they're just a little bit. But, um, Lyndsey, uh, the research farm cuts— we were just talking about some of the cuts that Minister Macdonald has had to make, uh, the Indian Head and Scott Research Farms in Saskatchewan. Were a part of that. We talked last couple weeks about the MOU signed, uh, coming out of the FPT meeting in Halifax between Premier Moe and Minister MacDonald on trying to keep those farms open and more of a cost share from the province. You talked to one of the union heads and they're not as bullish on these staying open as maybe some of the headlines are leading us to believe, from their opinion. Well, and I think, you know, for those of us that read the MOU statement, it's pretty general to essentially say that, and again, it's an MOU, it is a, quite literally, they've put on paper their commitment to sort of talk about it and explore options. They did not announce some sort of plan., right? So there's a difference between saying, hey, we're going to sit down and talk about it, and actually saying, you know, Saskatchewan is going to take over these sites and run them, and Canada is going to provide some sort of support, whatever, right? So, and what we heard, so Milton Dick is the national president for the Agriculture Union, so his members are the research technicians, the people, the admin staff, the, so not not necessarily the research scientists, but the people that would actually be running some of these research stations. They're raising a caution here that after that announcement was made, the following week, a memo went out to the staff at these research farms and essentially said, your job is still one of the affected by the cuts. Nothing changes right now. So does that mean in the long term nothing changes? Not necessarily, but The staff that are there are essentially, have been told to essentially, don't assume that your job will be spared or will stay the same. Nothing has actually technically changed on the path right now to their jobs being eliminated, so that is, you know, maybe it is more a technical point or whatever the case may be, but I do think, and we'll see how this all plays out, but I think that if If the discussions were further along and Saskatchewan was sort of swooping in to try and get some of the plots carried out through the year and try and continue some of the long-standing research or those sorts of things, that would move a lot quicker to try and salvage the season. It doesn't sound like that's happening. We know the wheels can move pretty slow in the government at times, and I think that the point there from the Agriculture Union is that from their perspective, they've been told nothing changes yet. Now, Tyler, even if those people lost their jobs, they still can be hired back, just under a different framework. Like, it doesn't— like, both things can be true at the same time. That's right. I think what's clear is that they're not going to continue to be employees of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, but that's— that there, there may be research staff that will be employed by someone else, maybe the province, maybe a third party. We don't really know. I think one of the things that's, that's interesting is the language that the feds and Saskatchewan are both using is that these sites will continue to be productive assets for the agriculture sector, right? And productive assets does not mean these sites are going to continue doing what they're doing today. It means that they will continue to be available for research. I think throughout all of this, what often gets lost is this really shouldn't be about protecting jobs, and it's always unfortunate when people lose jobs, but that does happen because there does need to be strategic realignment and change. But a big part of that is that it should be strategic realignment, and it shouldn't just be about let's keep doing what we've always been doing, but what is the process to say what do these sites actually need to do, how do we make sure they're delivering actual value for the sector, and how do we focus on impact and not about footprint. And I worry throughout all of this is that this continues to get lost, in that we focus too much on let's keep the sites open and not enough on What kind of value are they delivering, and how do we make sure that continues to be relevant and impactful going forward? Yeah. Okay, can I— well— Yeah, go ahead, finish up, finish up. Okay, well, I was just going to say, like, to that point, I think the argument can be made, to Tyler's point, exactly that, that, you know, when all these cuts were announced, and even whether it's the cutting of the research stations or whatever, we didn't see that plan on those cuts either. So I think that that's a very valid point that We really, this goes back even further than just for what happens for these existing sites. It's actually this whole decision was, it seems like very much sort of cutting from the bottom without really a plan. So anyway, okay, carrying on. Well, we're going to take a break and when we come back, we're going to talk about, do we need to be worried about mCOOL? Again, from a Canadian beef perspective, and will we see an amendment in the Senate version of the Farm Bill in the US that includes mCOOL? We'll talk about when we come back. Listen to RealAg Radio, Rural Radio 147, SiriusXM. The crop is in the ground. The sprayer tracks are fading. Now your field is telling a storey. Weather changes, conditions shift. Your crop needs the right nutrients at the right time. That's where Vantage Ag comes in. Our Quantum Matrix technology is engineered at the sub-nanoparticle level to help nutrients stick, stay, and absorb, so more of what you apply is used by your crop. Vantage Ag, a better way to grow. Visit vantage.ag. The Canola School on RealAgriculture.com is your one-stop shop for everything a canola grower needs. Cheque out our free video series on YouTube for all the latest in canola agronomy, research, marketing, and more. Don't have time to watch? Download the podcast version of The Canola School on RealAgriculture.com or anywhere you download your podcasts. Stay on top of all things canola with The Canola School on RealAgriculture.com, brought to you by BASF and InVigor Hybrid Canola. We're back here on RealAg Radio, Rural Radio 147, SiriusXM. 6 AM. Lyndsey Smith from RealAgriculture.com, Tyler McKinnon, the managing director at CAPI, and your host, Shaun Haney. And let's talk about all the different issues that are facing our industry this week, and there seems to be a lot of them. Now, an old topic, it's sort of like softwood lumber tariffs, you know, where it's just like, oh, that again. mCOOL would fit into that same sort of lane. And when I was in Washington, DC, back in April, you know, met with different lawmakers as a member of the National Association of Farm Broadcasters, and there was, you know, different discussions about, hey, should we have MCOOL again? Is that what the U.S. beef industry needs to do in order for consumers to have transparency on where their beef is coming from? And there were different members of Congress on the House and the Senate side that said, yeah, I'm actually for this. It's never really come to fruition again. But there has been discussion this week that there is potentially some senators that could make it an amendment in the skinny version of the farm bill that has been passed in the House but now is trying to get the Senate version of that passed. It's been a slow struggle, that would be putting it lightly. Tyler, I guess from a Canadian perspective, obviously the Canadian beef industry will you know, has traditionally fought hard against M-COOL and some of the ramifications for this, of it, if it was implemented again. We're already facing a very stringent Product of USA label. I do wonder, why not— why is the voluntary Product of USA label not enough? Politics, you know, try to protect market share and demand, trying to disincentivize the imports, discourage imports. I mean, that's, that's why it's not enough. I mean, you know, for all of the concerns about Canadian beef farmers competing against South American imports that we've heard a lot about over the last little while, clearly there are some U.S. producers that are very concerned about competing against Canadian exports, and that's why they want to use things like MCOOL to discourage and disadvantage that. What we saw a decade ago was a very clear finding from the WTO and others that the way that they were doing this before discouraged and worked against Canadian imports. It went out of its way to make Canadian and Mexican animals less competitive. We saw this week even a paper from the Meat Institute in the United States that said, look, this is probably going to bring $1 billion in costs for packers to try and implement mandatory country of origin labelling again. This is not a proposal that's going to make U.S. meat more affordable. This is not a proposal that's going to make the U.S. beef industry more competitive. But what it is, is something that, you know, some producers in the United States think will give them a bit of a hand. And I just don't see it happening at the end of the day. And again, this got to the point where Canada almost put in place retaliatory tariffs a decade ago. Hopefully we don't have to go to that, and hopefully cooler heads will prevail. And it is worth noting, up until today, cooler heads in Congress prevailed, and they've supported the voluntary approach and have avoided going down the mandatory road. That doesn't seem to add much to anybody except take a bunch of things away. Yeah, you know, we had, um, this morning on AgriTalk, we had Kansas Senator Jerry Moran on the show, you know, and he mentioned, hey, the beef industry is really split on this issue. You know, he talks to certain ranchers in Kansas, some are for, some are against he was not very bullish on this actually getting— even if it is produced as an amendment, doesn't mean it's going to become a part of the Senate version of the Farm Bill. But Lyndsey, this week with the announcement of the phased reopening of the US-Mexico border on importation of Mexican cattle into the US at the Douglas, Arizona point, That has kind of renewed this whole talk. Again, it's really— people are using it as leverage to say, hey, wait a minute, we need to know where the beef's coming from. Which, again, there's a voluntary label that is Product of USA, and that means born, raised, slaughtered, processed, the whole nine yards in the US. And if there is an advantage to using that label, if a company or retailer or a rancher wants to extract or thinks that that label extracts extra value or buys the market share, then use it. But the long and the short of it is that a mandatory label creates, as Tyler said, inefficiency. It adds costs. It does not make beef more affordable by any stretch of the imagination for the average consumer. And if, you know, a Product of USA label carries weight and carries a premium, everything is in place to use that, but it would mean you have to have a supply chain that's willing to segregate and separate and track those carcasses and that meat right through. And in my mind, if there's a business case to do it, then take on the voluntary label. I don't understand why you need the mandatory. I understand the political, to Tyler's point, I understand the political side, and I do think from a Canadian and Mexican perspective, That is the potential pressure right now, I think, is the highest it's been in quite some time, right? Like, the sentiment of, you know, the protectionist on the US side, the, you know, the buy American, all those sorts of things, like, that rhetoric is way higher now than it has been in a long time. So I totally get that political pressure and the heat sort of on that side. But realistically, in my mind, it comes down to If there is value in the Product of USA label, the label exists and you can use it. It's just voluntary. And that way, that means that everyone in that value chain can extract that value. They see that value. That means it's the way it should work. Again, that's how a market should work. And if it requires legislation to make it happen, then to me, that's not necessarily what the market is, is asking for. There's a couple things I think we should be aware of here, or thinking about. How we got to the very restrictive Product of USA label was really policy scope creep. There were massive loopholes in what that product— how you got to that Product of USA label previously, like importing box beef from Uruguay, unpacking the box, packing it into a new box, and then putting a Product of USA label on it. That's ridiculous. Okay, but in fixing that loophole, it became a very restrictive label. So I think we should be concerned about policy scope creep in regards to how the US views Brazil currently as a competitor and the huge pushback on Brazilian imports. In trying to address that, it creates a situation where it also impacts then the USMCA partners of Canada and, and Mexico. So that's That is one piece of it. The other piece I think is, I think there's a tremendous opportunity here. If, if for, for a rancher, if you believe that there is value and the consumer wants to know exactly that, hey, born, raised, fed, slaughtered, packaged, the whole whammy, if that's all done in the US, tremendous business opportunity for some of that direct-to-consumer marketing chains that are, are being developed. And some ranchers are having some tremendous success with it. If I was one of those ranchers, I would not want cool because that is forcing the entire industry to compete with my business case. And, and so I don't think that's getting talked about enough, that there's a tremendous opportunity here. If you believe it, then you believe in the, that kind of a label, then there's an opportunity for you to pursue that, provided you can get the whole thing set up. And it's not easy. Direct-to-consumer is not any— we hear about that lots on the show. We've talked to different farmers that are doing that in different meats It's a challenge there. It is not an easy process, or at least not as easy as we kind of sometimes make it out to be, but there is a business opportunity there for sure. Okay, we'll be back here on RealAg Radio, Rural Radio 147, right after this quick break. Built on over 100 years of seed innovation and unwavering commitment to farmers, Pioneer 100 Series Canola hybrids deliver a step change in yield performance and agronomic traits. This isn't just better canola, it's different canola. Pioneer 100 Series. Contact your local Pioneer sales representative or visit pioneer.com/100series to learn more today. 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. We're back on RealAg Radio and we are going to have a bonus here today as well. So if you're listening to the RealAg Radio podcast version of the show or watching on YouTube, hang on with us through the end of the show here on Rural Radio 147. I should mention that next week, unfortunately, the team will be off. Yes, they're— the team is— this is the third year in a row we've done this. First week of August tends to be a little bit of a slow week. And so the team is going to get some rest. So they are fully energised and ready to take on the back end of 2026. I didn't fall into that trap. I'm going to be going down to speaking at a meeting in Indianapolis for with Kowa Fertiliser. So looking forward to that. I don't follow my own rules very well. If you, if you've been paying attention. We got Lyndsey Smith, Kelvin, or sorry, Lyndsey Smith and Tyler McCann. No Kelvin Heppner here. Lyndsey, this week we saw heightened issues around Russia, Ukraine and that war and Ukraine's starting to strike some Russian grain terminal assets, some of the roads going into some of those ports. The market, I think, because whenever we talked about this in the past, we're kind of like, the market's kind of responding where it's sort of desensitised to it. But this week kind of felt a little bit more real. Right. And for good reason. I think that for those following along, First of all, I feel like, remember when everyone was like, this could be a year, and here we are so deep into it. 4 days. Lyndsey, there's people talking about this could be 4 days. I know, yeah. And we are so into it. And it grinds on, but we have seen, as you mentioned, the past 6 months, I think, have really sort of shifted some of the war sort of ending up in Moscow kind of starting to feel it there, but from the infrastructure component, this is where we're really starting to see the fallout. And quite literally, I think that although we are maybe desensitised to this being somewhat normal because it's been so many years now, there is real discussion about the crop not being able to get out of the Black Sea region. And if that's the case, and it sounds like very much this is going to be a pretty significant challenge to actually get past. If that's the case, like, that has a huge impact potentially on trade flows and on volumes. So it did seem like this week at least we're starting to dial in that this is not just, you know, rumour and it's not being blown out of proportion. This is— it feels like a very real sort of infrastructure challenge that is not likely solvable super quickly, and it is going to have a pretty significant impact going into, you know, Q4, Q1 moving ahead. So it definitely does seem to have changed sort of the cadence of the buzz out there for sure. It can be dangerous to be bullish wheat. Yeah, you know, you can be like, wheat should be higher for about 10 years, and then finally it does go higher. But I think wheat definitely has a bullish case. You know, we've got that French wheat crop is going to underperform. As an example, we've obviously got some drought challenges in the US, and then wheat has not— acres are down and production is also not, not very healthy. We'll see where the Canadian wheat crop shakes out. And then of course the Russia-Ukraine factor. The trouble is, is that with Russia-Ukraine, somehow in this 4 years they have planted crops, they have harvested crops, and they've shipped crops all through all this bombing. And so you can see why the market, Tyler, has some geopolitical fatigue, so to speak. And again, you get into this comparison of how things were at the beginning of the war and kind of how long it took things to shuffle out, but logistics have found a way and exports have happened and product has got where it needs to go. But a couple of things, I mean, you do need to continue to salute the work of Ukrainian farmers that have farmed throughout all of this and the tremendous work that's there. It's been great to see the momentum shift in Ukraine's favour and Ukraine doing more to dominate the battlefield and to push the agenda and to see that success happening. But it is, I think, part of that Ukrainian success is why we see both Russia and Ukraine seemingly started to target the export space, right around what are the extra pinch points that they can do. And as we, again, as we saw at the beginning, there are alternatives. There are other ways that the products can move, but they are slower and more costly and make it much harder to get from Russia, Ukraine to Turkey and Egypt, where most of these products are going. So how long this lasts, what this actually looks like, and whether or not you can actually shut down Russian and Ukrainian exports, which seems to be what they're trying to do, is again, I think we learned that there are ways around that. Whether or not, or how quickly they can move to those other ways is another thing, but But man, it has been great to see Ukrainians pushing back on the Russians in more ways than they have been able to in the past. Yeah, Ukraine has changed modern warfare with the use of these drones, you know, really cost-effective drones, and also very effective from a military standpoint. It is completely, you know, to your point about going back to the beginning of the conflict compared to now, Ukraine has really changed the landscape based on, you know, their lack of soldiers in comparison to the Russia Army and things like that and seem to be— well, no, not seem to be, they are doing much better in this because it was supposed to be like 4 days and we're 4 years in this and it is very much now a total war of attrition. Okay, that's all the time we have here on Rural Radio 147. If you have any feedback, send me an email, [email protected], or call the RealAg feedback line, 855-776-6147. Everybody have yourselves a great weekend. Thanks so much for getting real and getting connected with RealAg Radio. And we're in the bonus. Here we are. Don Haney of RealAgriculture.com joined by Lyndsey Smith, also with RealAgriculture.com, your favourite news website. Also Tyler McCann, he's managing director at CAPI. Okay, Tyler, what did we not get to? So we did not get to the differences playing out in how we respond to these potential tariffs coming from the United States, and I think we're seeing that really start to escalate as it looks like this is getting closer and kind of two crowds developing around should we consider export duties and what does that look like and what does that play out in some— I think some interesting voices getting engaged in that. And I mean, man, I think everybody hopes that we avoid this and the U.S. Will back down the way that it has in the past. But if it doesn't, I think that there's some really, again, the pressure for, and I think that the legitimate justification for Canada to do some things is going to continue to ramp up. And just for people that haven't read it, Scotty Greenwood, who was a longtime president of the Canada-US Chamber of Commerce, I probably have that wrong, but someone that has spent her career building closer relations between Canada and the United States, was one of the voices this week adding her name to those saying Canada needs to stand up, needs to have a credible position. And that may need to involve export duties on things like potash. And so again, it's surprising to see someone like her saying, look, this is something that we need to do. That seems like a crazy-ass dumb idea. I just gotta say that. And you know, it's sort of like, I think it was Brad Wall that put on X last week where he's like, okay, the way that we punish Americans is by taking away Canadian jobs. That, that, that, you know, that, that maybe doesn't connect. So I, I guess, Lyndsey, this is a big question for Canadians. It sort of reminds me of the opening line of Hamlet, you know, to be or not to be. Do we retaliate or not retaliate? Pretty sure that's not the opening line, um, but I'm no Shakespearean expert. It is actually. Um, oh, okay, you looked it up because— no, I knew this. I paid attention in English class. What are you talking about? Okay, so Sean's a drama major. Anyway, no, okay, so my favourite, my favourite line in Macbeth: 'Unself me.' Remember that one? This is not where I thought the bonus was going. Okay, go ahead, go ahead. Yeah, okay, so favourite Shakespearean lines— no, just kidding. Okay, so I will say that I hope at least, and I think that I understand why we're having all these conversations about retaliation, whatever, and I think like they're important conversations to have as to like what cards do we have to play, you know, these sorts of things. At the same time, I think that what this last 2 weeks really sort of culminates in is that this is a negotiating tactic. This is how Trump works. And I would hope that behind the scenes on the negotiation side, that these are the conversations that are happening, that it's like, okay, we see that you're doing that. Here's, you know, what we're willing to do. And this is all just part of that negotiation. I think that we've long given up this idea that somehow we're going to end up with zero tariff on everything. That's just, that's not feasible. It's not possible. It's not, that's not going to happen. So it is about trying to settle into some tariff range that Trump says he's won, Canada can live with, and maybe the rest of us will get on with our lives. I actually have no hope of that actually happening. I think that he likes the chaos and the chaos will continue What is it? The beating shall continue until morale improves. That's where I'm going with that one. So I honestly, I think that again, to quote Shaun Haney, we don't need to get emotional about this. I think it would be unwise to not be thinking about, you know, what things do we have in our back pocket that we could do. It doesn't mean that we should be threatening them or doing them. I think it's important to have that sort of list and have smart people in the background figuring out how we would do that if we needed to. I just don't think we're gonna, I don't think we need to, and also exactly that, we have to recognise that some of the things that off the top of our head we're like, oh, this is a great idea, we should do it, actually hurt us maybe more. And I would say, so to, hang on Tyler, I would say that some of the things Canada has been doing that are not like government-sanctioned whatever are working and they have nothing to do with governments. Things like people not going on their trips down south, tourism being way down, those sorts of things. Like there are fundamental things that have changed that I think the American people are like, hey, wait a minute, can you please stop shitting on our northern neighbour because we actually like their dollars coming here? And I think that's really important to remember that there is, and we talked about this just quickly in the break, there's a difference between like the Americans, American industry, and American people, and what the White House is doing. So I think we also have to like recognise that these are two different things, and why that's important I think is to keep the emotional side in cheque, because we have to think about this from a negotiating tactic, not from an emotional one. Okay Tyler, now you may speak. I reject the premise that the only people that are getting emotional on this are those that are saying that we should retaliate. Shaun saying earlier, "Look, doing anything is going to cost all sorts of Canadian jobs, and that we should just roll over," is quite an emotional reaction too. If we're going to throw the word emotion around, let's throw it, but what we should be doing is that level-headed debate. I think that that's what we're seeing now is people getting into, "Okay, what are the things that we can do that don't cost jobs?" Again, I would imagine a 50% export duty on Canadian fertiliser exports to the United States, probably is one of those things that, like, it's not an ideal outcome, but doesn't cost thousands of Canadians jobs. Does escalate. I don't think it's anybody's preferred approach is to get into this space. But if we're going to live in this era of ongoing uncertainty the way the US seems to want to impose on us, we do need to understand what the tools are. And again, I think that that is a very legitimate conversation to have. And people that are saying, look, don't even have the conversation because it's all bad news, you just need to do nothing, the way that I think Shaun alluded to earlier, that's pretty emotional, and I don't think that that's helpful in this context. And I think that all that that's going to continue to do is encourage the administration to continue to do things that cause pain and suffering. And I think, again, one of the things that this audience, that the Americans that are listening to this, should understand is that the reality is, is that they are a key core political constituency of the United States. And that is a way, a signal that Canada can send if it needs to send a signal. And that's where I think that there's a difference between an export duty on energy and an export duty on potash. And the bad news is, is that US farmers could be the ones that lose out on that because it is a very legitimate tool that Canada could use if it needs to. So I'm a little bit in the camp that I I would bet today, and hey, I may be proven wrong, but I would bet today that those Section 338 50% tariffs are not going to be applied on August 19th. And so doing something like an export tax on potash prior to that is getting out ahead of ourselves. And nobody is saying that that should happen. Oh, some are. No, no, no. Yeah, absolutely there is. I think we proactively do that. I don't think anybody's serious. Crazy town. I also think, okay, look, I think we're thinking about this too one-dimensionally when we're having this discussion as well, because we're thinking about it from the standpoint of Canada versus the US and the consequences of that decision in the relationship. But I think there's a far greater context, or there's a far greater consequence, and that is Canadian unity. At a time where Alberta is going to have a vote this fall. The— and I— it's, it's not, it's not strategic that the, the exports we're talking about putting export taxes on are Western Canadian. They're, they're the ones the U.S. relies on. Okay, so it's not like people are just dreaming up, you know, what Western exports can we pick? That, that's not what happened here. They just— that is a coincidence, but it also is a factor in this decision. And putting an export tax on Canadian energy or Canadian potash at this time by a Liberal government is like national security, all like national energy policy all over again. And it absolutely drives a wedge in Canadian unity at a time where it's really trying to be pieced together, but held together by you know, elastic bands and paper clips. That would be an absolute destructive decision at a time where, you know, they're— we're already having a vote in Alberta, and I just think that, that, you know, at a time where I think they've lost momentum on the separation vote— I, that's my perception, we'll see how the results turn out— but I think momentum has kind of been lost there. This would absolutely It's not pouring gas on the fire. It would be like dynamite and fireworks and plutonium and uranium and everything else that would explode on top of it. Epically bad decision in my, uh, from my perspective, not with the US, but with Canadian unity. Period. Yeah. And, and I think Carney has made it abundantly clear that that's not an option, at least on the energy side, right? Like that, that's like from, from like point one, that's It's not at all been on the table and he's said that immediately for exactly those reasons, Shaun. Absolutely not. Also, to that point, I think that most of the analyst intelligent discussion is talking about if the 50% tariffs were put on, not just because they're threatened. I think just about everybody recognises that a threat is a threat. It is not what is seen through. Again, this is a negotiating tactic because we're still in negotiations when it comes to USMCA, and that's what this is. And realistically, we will eventually get to, I think, a deal. Is the deal worth the paper it's printed on? That's yet to be determined. But I think that the Canadian strategy is actually at this point in time to not get to a deal because there's a good understanding that getting to a deal likely means you've made big concessions, and also you've made concessions knowing that those concessions aren't worth anything because they're not going to last because the US is not a serious negotiating partner. Well, so that's actually, I do think it is a good point of that recognising. So I don't think that it's a foregone conclusion that we will get a terrible deal by getting to a deal. I think that the broader point is that up until this point, Canada has made concessions and maybe those were errors on the Carney side that the concessions that were made, we don't get credit for. Like it's, it's sort of like when you tell your kid to clean the room and then they do and then they come out and say, look what I did, pat me on the back, and it's like, no, you were supposed to do that because that was the expectation. That's sort of how Canada gets treated, right, is that like, no, you got rid of these things because you should have, not because you're gonna get any credit for it, and Greer essentially said that. So that's my bigger concern is that, and also this whole idea, and Shaun, I know you have a lot of thoughts about this and we don't have to go into it today, but like This whole idea of that, like, we just have to wait out this presidency. No, this does not end with Trump. Like, this isn't, this isn't like only a Trump thing. This is like, there, there, this is much larger than that and much more long-term. And that is what we have to think about as well, like long-term. But there's a difference between waiting out the reality that a deal today is not going to last. I think by most accounts, a new administration will be a more legitimate negotiating partner, right? That's part of what we have to try and work through. I think it's a pretty grand assumption. I think it's a dangerous assumption from the perspective of exactly that. Yeah. I mean, the Canadian economy will go through significant decline if the US is— if you can no longer trust a single thing the United States says. Yes, and I think that— yeah, yeah, sorry, go ahead, Lyndsey, go ahead, finish your thought. Well, no, well, I just— I think that— so this is where I think where Canada essentially has some serious long-term, potentially structural decisions to make as far as how— what sectors we deem viable in the long term if the U.S. is no longer a dependable market. And that can go all sorts of different ways. But I— and not to end on such a Debbie Downer note, but like, if this is a— exactly that, Tyler. If the US becomes less and less and less of a dependable trading partner, there— we can't replace that. It actually would be a structural change to our economy. That doesn't mean that everything goes in the toilet. I don't think that for a moment, but it would change things significantly. And certain sectors, looking at you autos, may not be viable in the long term. So like, honestly, 100%. Don't just look at autos, look at food processing, right? Like those are agriculture jobs that will go away, right? If we can no longer— and I think it's one thing to say that we're like, the rules-based trading system is changing and protectionism and industrial policy is the name of the game and all. Like, I think that that is clear. We'll never go back to how things were, but before. But if we're going to accept— or if you— if your premise is that the US will no longer be a reliable partner the way they are an unreliable partner today, that's, that, that's quite something. Like, and, and, and I don't understand why Americans would see that as in their long-term interest. They may not. They— yeah, like, it is just like Canadians have different viewpoints on a number of different issues. It reminds me of like this whole discussion, like, where people believe that, uh, President Trump represents all Americans, okay? Uh, he doesn't, just like Justin Trudeau didn't represent all Canadians. Um, it is much more complex than that. Um, again, I, I think what's happening is there is significant— it gets back to this policy scope creep where there, there are problems. And I said this when I was in North Dakota this week, is that one of the failings in the Trump trade policy, in my, in my opinion, is all countries are being treated equally bad. And that, that's created problems with true trading allies like Canada and Mexico. Not to say there isn't some things to be sorted out and fixed. Canada shouldn't be importing Chinese steel and it ended up being ending up in the US. Like, okay, let's close that. We need to close that loophole. But the actions of China or India or Brazil are not the same and to the same significance as some of the challenges between Canada and Mexico. And I think one of the things that we have seen in the negotiation style of President Trump is it's very one-dimensional. It doesn't actually recognise the different styles and relationships of each of those trading partner countries. Okay, so when, you know, at RealAgriculture, I do all the sales. How I talk or what I talk about to different clients changes based on the size of the business that we do together, what they're— what, you know, what's important to them. But you have to adapt, right? If you're in ag retail, you do that all the time. You all Each customer is kind of its own little different entity. That is not how the US has pursued some of these trade renegotiations. Everybody is the same. Everybody is taking advantage of the US, and that's been, I think, the downfall of the one-dimensional negotiation strategy. We've even seen it on Iran. Don't know how to adjust. Don't know how to pivot. It's the one style. Bomb the shit out of you, right? Well, that hasn't worked, and they haven't been able to pivot and find an exit ramp out of that, okay? And so I, I do think, you know, you know, like in North Dakota this week, there's questions about it. Like, for example, Lindsay, I learned this week there's about 700,000 acres of, of, uh, now is it lentils or is it pulse crops? I'm gonna get— I'm gonna screw this up. In, I think it's in the US, if you look, let's just pick on lentils for a second. 30% of the US lentil crop goes to Canada. 50% of exports of lentils out of the US go to Canada, and some of that is for processing, and some of that is actually, it's an exit ramp through the Port of Montreal to get to tidewater faster than going through the US East Coast, right? And so there's all, as you peel back the layers of the trade onion, there are so many examples of the integrated complementary value chains that exist that at the end of the day I think still stand up no matter what the President has said, how much they need Canada or don't need it. I think at the end of the day that kind of wins. At least that's my hope and maybe that's my naïve face. I don't know. But that's kind of how I see it when you talk to corporations and companies and manufacturers, is that that's how they're seeing it. And that to me, and that's business, right? It's not— they don't do that because we're super nice or like, or the lentils want a nice ride through the Canadian Shield. They do it because business-wise it makes sense. It is an efficient trade route, and so it makes sense. And To your point, Shaun, about whether it's the canola market, there's a great column up on RealAgriculture.com, go cheque it out, about canola acre growth in the US. It benefits because there is a booming canola processing industry in Canada and those acres can feed into it and it's a profitable crop in rotation because the Canadian market is just there, just north of the border. To me, those are the business case and that we all hope at some point Those are the things that win out because everybody benefits when there's a positive business case for what we're doing. And I think the business can survive in an American First agenda that continues on, right? Like, I think people can build that into it. Again, I guess what I separate is the difference between America First and chaos, right? And I don't like— can we actually survive if the chaos continues on? Makes it harder. We're going to need to. It does make it harder, and that's kind of the reality of the day, and I know a lot of the audience doesn't agree with this, but I think if you listen to that New York speech from earlier this summer, Prime Minister Carney hits the nail exactly on the head of what the Canadian message needs to be, is that Canada helps America be great again. Okay, that is how Canada has to position itself. That's not how China's positioning itself. That's not how Brazil is. That's how Canada and Mexico can position itself. And I think for the bulk of Americans, they get that. They understand that. Now, it's about convincing the USTR of that, Jameson Greer. Ambassador Greer may feel a little bit differently. That's the job at hand, and Dominic LeBlanc and our lead trade negotiator, they've got their work cut out for them. But John, isn't— and I think Scotty Greenwood's point is that that message only works if it's delivered from a position of credibility and strength. If Canada continues to roll over, that message isn't taken seriously. None of the messages that Canada takes or delivers are taken seriously. And so do you not think that we need to have some credibility and strength behind the Prime Minister when he says that? Yeah, I think that's, you know, that's a really good question, Tyler. Like, if you look at the bridge deal, for example, I can see both sides of it. Like, you could say that he completely gave in, but then I hear other people say, like, what choice did he have? We paid for the stupid bridge, we got to get it open, it's good for commerce, and seeing the bigger picture. Like, and so I don't know what the answer is. Like, I understand both sides of that, Would it be— would have been better for the Canadian economy to leave it closed? Like, no. And so maybe, like, this is one of the questions, like, is long term— is Prime Minister Trudeau too pragmatic for that job? Like, right, like, he seems to think with a little bit of a CEO head and like, okay, like, this is not a mountain to die on, let's get past this, move on. That sometimes does not work in politics. And so one of the things long-term that I've really been thinking about is on all the aeroplane rides across North America is, is his pragmatism going to be his political downfall? Because he is not dying on the political mountain of being, you know, and showing the elbows up like he talked about during the election. It's not really him. That is clearly not— he is not— he's the Lady Bing trophy. He is not elbows up. And that long term, the longer this chaos goes on for, that might be his downfall. Maybe. Left to guess. And I think that's where— Tyler's Googling, what is Ladybug? No, I think I figured it out. I fixed that. First Egypt trophy? Yes. But again, I think that's part of his pragmatism. Part of Carney's pragmatism is, look, we will basically compensate Canadians for the damage that's done. We'll just pay the cost for it. I think we see this today with what they're going to do, it sounds like, with the online streaming bill. The Trudeau approach was, let's make the American, the big digital streamers pay 10% and we'll put that into a fund to pay Canadian artists. I think it was a bad idea. But what the Carney approach is, okay, we won't make the Americans pay, but we'll just, the Canadian government will just put money into a fund to pay Canadian artists. Which is nice. That only gets you so far, right? And yeah, and Paul Ozonacalny, he had a good line about the strategy, right? Like, there is something to be said that that idea of like, come in, trash our house, and we'll pay to clean up the mess, only encourages them to keep coming in and trashing your house. And like, at a certain point in time, that doesn't work anymore. And again, I think that that's, it's not clear to me that The next administration, whoever it is, will be as interested in destroying the house as the current one is today. They clearly will want an agenda that advances their interests. But man, if this is the future, is they want to wreck the Canadian house. And the view just can't always be, we'll keep paying to clean up the mess after. Mm-hmm. I think it's encouraging. Last week when we talked about the Union Pacific CN Rail MOU, for example. That's an example of industry saying like, yeah, this isn't a rupture. Like, we're going to have North American con— uh, business happening back and forth. Uh, the commerce is still going to go on. What it looks like, uh, still yet to be told. Will there be some sort of a flatline tariff? I would argue there's probably going to be some sort of a flatline tariff of some sort, and the quicker we get to that flatline tariff and move past the chaos, probably the better. But there's an example of railway, you know, we got the CPKC that happened, we've got this MOU between the Union Pacific and CN Rail. Those are examples where, yes, stuff's still going to happen, and that is disconnected from what we hear every day when we turn on the news and/or listen to the latest thing that Ambassador Guerrero has said, right? So, yeah, and that's what I heard at Ag in Motion from some of the manufacturers too. Like life is going on and they're trying to figure out how to work within this chaos and it's hard, it's difficult and it's creating teams within your executive group that can be on top of this tariff situation, making sure that you're one compliant but two, are there ways to get around it and make it work and still be able to function, right? So anyway, we better wrap up here. Tyler, thought? So Lyndsey's favourite economist had a good video on dairy quotas this week. Cheque out, what is it, Lyndsey? Platypus Economics or something? Yeah. Platypus Economics, cuz he's, he's an Aussie. Yeah. Justin Wolfers, cheque it out. And, and he said something along the lines of like, everybody needs to cool down or don't be crazy. And, and I think that that is, I guess, where I, I think a good note to end on this around, like, especially on like our dairy stuff, it doesn't need a 50% tariff. It just needs a negotiating room where people can get in there and figure these things out. And again, here's hoping that's what happens and cooler heads prevail and we don't have a Life goes on. And I don't understand Canadians that are like, we— you want to talk about Canadians fighting back. I don't understand the whole thought of, let's get rid of supply management ahead of the US making demands. That's not even what the US is demanding. What are we doing? You want to talk about folding the tent, there's an example of folding the tent. And I have to remind some Canadians that the US would have the exact same argument Well, they do on Brazil. They would have the exact same argument to Canada as we have to them on dairy. If Canada was saying, you know what, we want to expand those sugar TRQs, we want to be able to expand our sugar beet industry, we want to ship more sugar into the US, they would be saying the exact same thing to us. Like, this is— we're just— you want to talk about a defeatist attitude is the people that are saying, hey, let's just fold the tent, like, get rid of supply management, make Americans happy. Like, what? That doesn't make sense either. But in the defence of someone like Jason Kenney, who has come out this week and said that, he's not saying we should get rid of it to make the Americans happy. He's saying we should get rid of it because it's bad policy. Right. I don't think that there's many people are saying, let's do this as a thing to make the Americans happy. I think there has been more voices. Oh no, no, no, no, no. There, there has been people saying that. Let's, let's, but, but Kenney this week was, I think one of the latest kind of big voice mainstream voice to say, the Conservative Party should abandon its support for it. I think he's saying this because it's not a very conservative thing to do. That's a whole different kind of argument, Shaun, than framing it around, we should do this to make the Americans happy. I think people think we should do it because it's a bad thing to do. And eventually, like, that's a conversation to have, but that's not a conversation to have in the context of US negotiations. Yes. I think that conversa— whether that conversation hap— if it is gonna happen, it needs to happen outside of this current environment and framework because it will be way too convoluted and we will cross way too many swords and it will, it'll be a mess. I think that conversation has to happen in much more of a different environment where we can actually focus on that being as the issue. And it's worth— I know you want to wrap up, but, but earlier in the show when we were talking about the Liberal candidates, uh, formerly being a dairy producer with the Dairy Federation, you made some comment about people linking that to the Liberal support for supply management. Worth just highlighting that, I mean, those same people aren't running for the Conservative Party, and yet the Conservative Party's position on supply management is the exact same. So people— yes, yeah, it seems odd to criticise the Liberals for that when the Conservatives kind of view the world the same. Uh, yep, I agree. Lyndsey, any final thoughts? Uh, let's go to the beach, everybody. It's summertime. Go find a beach. It's hot enough for the beach. Chill out. It is hot enough for the beach. And Canada has some amazing lakes and rivers. Go cheque them out. It's good for the old head and headspace, but wear your sunscreen, please. Thanks. Are you trying to say that Tyler should go stick his head in some cold water? Well, so, but no, but also Tyler and I are of the complexion that we desperately need the sunscreen, but also it is really good to get to the beach or the river and enjoy some time in nature. Go touch grass, everybody. Yeah, like, honestly, like, if you want to talk about tans, and I am significantly more tan than either of you. Yes. Yeah, thanks. I'm, I'm a big fan of lots of sunscreen and long sleeve shirts in the summertime. Yeah, and hats. Yeah, I like shade. Yeah, because it just— I sizzle in the sun, Shaun. I just go brown, I just go red. You could just— you can hear it. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, yeah. The orange. Okay. Hey, thanks a lot, Tyler. Thanks a lot, Lyndsey. Have yourselves a great weekend. And again, that feedback line is 855-776-6147, or the email is [email protected]. Again, we have— we'll have no new shows next week. I'm sorry about that. If there is breaking news, maybe stay tuned to that podcast feed because sometimes Shaun has no discipline and maybe I'll just produce something. But you can cheque, go back and cheque out some old episodes and get all caught up. We're giving you that time as you spend some time in that tractor seat as we get into August. Have yourselves a great weekend. Cheers, everybody.