The speaker that afternoon showed a myriad of graphs that tracked the prices of various grains through the years, often comparing local prices in Saskatchewan to those of its neighbouring provinces and across the line in the United States.
As graphs often do, the amount of comparative information that could be mined was impressive. But in the end, there was one constant across all the commodities, prices go up to a point, then dive lower, reaching a bottom from which they bounce back higher.
The spikes are not always smooth as markets determine what price is too high to be sustained, or too low to be reasonable, but the overall trend is always there. It is not something unique to grain commodities, but all commodities from oil to copper.
With access to piles of information now available at their fingertips, whether at their desk, the combine seat, on holidays in a warmer climate, does it help farmers determine what they see as the right time to add or subtract acres of a particular crop.
While farmers have more immediate data to influence decisions, in the end it often will come down to the simplest of signals, the price the marketplace offers.
Farmers do all the modern technology that is out there to aid marketing, In the end become price takers. They cannot set prices for what they sell, ultimately taking what is seen as the best price they can achieve. Naturally, when a price jumps, farmers take notice and start to scribble some numbers to see if they might opt for that crop in the spring.
When prices hit the skids, farmers consider paring back acres.
It is often the decisions producers make to alter acres being planted that sends the message to the marketplace, which can topple high prices or bolster low. That is particularly true in niche crops, which realistically, on the Canadian Prairies, is all crops beyond hard spring wheat, barley and canola.
The jumps in and out of a crop may be more limited today because of farmer's adherence to long term cropping rotations. Still, the need to find a crop that can generate a positive margin over the cost of production does influence even the most stringent rotation plans, especially at times when farm incomes are pinched.
Charts and information are, of course, an asset, but ultimately the price often is the critical signal for farmers.