The Canadian Association of Farm Advisors are looking to re-establish a chapter in the parkland area, holding a meeting toward that goal last week in Yorkton.
CAFA is a nationwide network of professionals in agriculture, ranging from accountants, lawyers, bankers, financial advisors, realtors, insurance agents, agrologists, family coaches, marketers, and risk managers. The overall goal of CAFA is to provide the highest level of professional advisory skills to farm clients.
The meeting held this past Wednesday was the first of a planned monthly series, which will include speakers on topics of interest to CAFA members, including Chris Corbett, Senior Marketing Advisor with FarmLink Marketing Solutions.
Corbett said in general farm advisors are becoming more and more important to farm clients, because with the diversity of jobs on the farm they cannot be experts in everything.
In general farmers are production oriented, said Corbett, going as far as to suggest they are 鈥渨ired for production. They are good at it. They want to be in the field.鈥�
But that can mean less interest, or skills in other areas, including critical ones such as marketing, said Corbett, adding that production alone is not enough to make a farm profitable.
鈥淚f they grow twice as many bushels, but sell it at half the price, what have they accomplished,鈥� he said, adding advisor help producers to make decisions which balance various elements toward 小蓝视频 profitable.
In the case of selling product, Corbett said the first thing for producers to understand is that not every bushel will sell at the best prices of the year.
鈥淵ou鈥檙e not always hitting a home run. You don鈥檛 sell it all at the top,鈥� he said.
Corbett also touched briefly on what 2017 might bring in terms of opportunity for producers.
鈥淲e think canola will be a pretty valuable crop,鈥� he said, adding that outlook is based on current stocks and world demand.
Corbett, who hails from Melfort, SK., said there is a lot of crop, including canola still in the field, with some producers in his area with a third of 2016 crop acres still not harvested. That situation is shorting canola supplies for both export and domestic crushers.
鈥淲e鈥檙e starting to understand there鈥檚 not a lot of canola out there (in the bin),鈥� he said.
Certainly there are other vegetable oil sources, such as soybeans, but even with a big crop in that sector in 2016, prices have held up.
鈥淲e鈥檙e clearing through just about every bean we can grow,鈥� he said.
Corbett said there are some early expectations there could be a record crop of canola planned in terms of planting this spring, but added with crop not harvested, and potential issues if canola is grown on canola stubble, those predictions may be over-estimated.
