My soybean planting continues. It's been a pretty good week here in southwestern Ontario with dry weather making it good for planting. We could still use some warm weather, but of course with June staring us down next week, it's just a matter of time. Hopefully some of those June days will make these soybeans pop out of the ground.

The road is long and of course there's lots of risk along the way. On Thursday I was in one of my heavier clay fields that had winter wheat planted into it last year. Typically, some of these fields are very fluffy come spring and you can even make the adage they are spongy? Wheat might be the cockroach of grains, but here in southwestern Ontario it is a heavy soil conditioner. Most crops after wheat in southwestern Ontario do very well. It remains for me an important part of the rotation.

While I was spraying that field this evening, I drew comparisons to the current geopolitical environment we find ourselves in and my spongy fields. It was announced Thursday that the Americans and the Iranians had an agreement on continuing the ceasefire for 30 days. I won't go into it here because we don't do foreign policy and we certainly don't do military policy, but at the end of the day it just seems spongy. I don't know what it will mean for the military strategy of each respective nation, but I know our grain markets continually have it dialed in. For farmers trying to make good grain selling decisions, this geopolitical environment is just unstable enough to make sure that we don't rest on our grain marketing laurels.

Geopolitics gives and geopolitics takes it away. I have often thought that recently, because our grain prices are much higher than they were a year ago, and we owe much of this to the uncertainty over the war in Iran. At the same time, our grain algorithms have become much more accustomed to the softness in the sponginess of the environment with regards to ending the war. What's it going to be -- a continual ceasefire? It's hard to say and with that our markets have drifted somewhat lower, especially in corn and wheat.

July corn gained about $0.03 Thursday but before that had been falling for five of the last six days more than $0.30 below the season high. At about the same time, we have had Kansas City July wheat price plunge about $0.90 per bushel since the last USDA reports on May 12. Soybeans have been holding their own. However, the drift into weakness seems very real, especially when crops in the fields are looking good across the greater North American Corn Belt.

We know that May is not October or November, and we know that seasonality tells us that some of our best new crop prices might be coming up in June. Let's ignore the fact that some analysts think corn seasonality for those high new crop corn prices continually is getting earlier. I used to count on June 18 as the day new crop corn should reach its zenith. Give me two weeks and I will tell you what is right. Regardless of what you feel, about new crop prices and our geopolitical environment, keep in mind this is the season for seasonality. I don't want it downhill after that, but we all must admit sometimes that does happen.

The Canadian dollar continues to help Ontario and Quebec farmers capture marketing opportunities. It is still fluttering in the 72 cent US level, which with our higher futures prices have given us better grain marketing opportunities. I must say that having this Canadian dollar flutter around 72 and 73 cents for an extended period is a surprise to me. I have spent large parts of my career writing when the Canadian dollar is between 80 and 90 cents US. That almost seems like the stratosphere these days.

While the Canadian dollar continues to flutter at this level, our Prime Minister said today that we needed a new partnership with the United States. It was interesting to hear that, because when Mark Carney speaks, usually people listen. In this case, he's beating an old drum because every Canadian knows that. The problem is getting the U.S. government to listen and agree when it has bigger fish to fry in the Middle East. The Canadian dollar is likely to continue at this level until that time where are economy starts to pick up steam. With the Canadian-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) on the docket to be renewed, that might be a tall order.

The challenge for Eastern Canadian farmers will be to gauge all these factors with regards to their own grain marketing plans. We've got a big summer ahead of us, and USDA predicting continual bigger crops. Add in cheap Brazilian soybeans and cheaper Argentinian corn into the mix and the price puzzle just seems more complex. Have those standing marketing orders ready. It's that time of year when real marketing opportunities can be made.

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Philip Shaw can be reached at philip@philipshaw.ca

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