May 2008 Archives
I want to boost the machinery and shop content in Grainews, and one area where we can improve our coverage is on precision tools. I'm talking about variable rate controllers, GPS guidance, autosteer, etc. This is the sort of thing that all farms will eventually be using, if they aren't right now. To continue with the tradition of farmers talking to farmers, I would like to get your suggestions on topics for a new feature I have in the works. It will be called "Precision troubleshooting" or something like that.
I'd like readers to send in their own problems and solutions that I can use in Grainews as articles. Or readers can send in questions that I'll try to find answers for. It could be about losing GPS signals and how to get them back. (Do you have to back up, do a figure eight, or somehow reset the monitor?) Or it could be about products that did or didn't work for you, and why.
I want this feature to provide good useful information. I don't want it to be just another "new product" feature. Please e-mail me if you have any article ideas or suggestions. My e-mail is jay@fbcpublishing.com.
I met with Susan and Jeff Groeneveld at the Calgary airport yesterday morning just before boarding a flight back to Winnipeg. They were flying to Toronto, so it worked out well. Susan and Jeff, who are married with three kids, run the Canadian office for Woodruff Sweitzer, an ad agency and public relations firm. They represent Arysta, the company that sells Everest herbicide and other crop protection products. Susan and Jeff have some goods ideas on how to reach farmers with their message, and are fans of Grainews. They also shared some tips on how to give and gather information through the Internet. A website isn’t enough, says Susan, because we — Grainews.ca — are just one of thousands of sites offering information to farmers. Instead she says I need to get out there to where the farmers are. Grainews can’t just build a site with a live chat room, for example, and hope visitors will come and hang out. “They won’t,” says Jeff. Susan and Jeff believe the Internet is already working as a communications tool to reach farmers, just not in the way I thought.
This topic came up often on my two-day trip to Saskatoon and Calgary. Cory Bourdeaud’hui, ad sales manager for Grainews, organized the trip to meet with communications and PR people he (and I) deal with on a regular basis. As a writer and editor, I look all over the place for ideas and topics and new things to write about. Many of those ideas come from the ad agencies representing specific companies. As editor, I maintain freedom to pick and choose the topics and decide what goes in and what doesn’t. Everyone I deal with on the other side — the advertisers and sales people — understand and appreciate this. That’s the way it has to work for Grainews to maintain credibly among its readers — and among its advertisers actually.
We flew from Winnipeg to Saskatoon Monday morning to meet with Rod Delahey, who is the PR specialist for Novozymes Canada (formerly Philom Bios), Seed Hawk, UAP and Agrotain. He helps these companies create advertising campaigns and decides which publications — such as Grainews — get the ads. He is also often the first point of contact for editors like me who want to follow up on new product announcements that a company makes. Rod has just merged his company, Heyday Communications, with The Marketing Den, another ad agency in Saskatoon. Cory and I also met with Carmel Lysak, media buyer for the Marketing Den. As a media buyer, she crunches the numbers on how many people get a publication, do these readers represent the target audience for a product, and how much do the ads cost in that publication. She uses that information to decide where to place ads.
At each meeting, Cory explained some our ideas to improve the look and design of Grainews. I had a chance to go over some of the special themes I’m working on for the rest of 2008 and the first half of 2009. I also had my ears open for article ideas.
After lunch with The Marketing Den people, Cory and I flew to Calgary to meet with Derrick Rozdeba for supper. Derrick is the communications manager for Bayer CropScience in Calgary. He has a strong advertising background and he’s very passionate about new media — Internet, websites, blogs, podcasts — and how they can work to enhance traditional print media, like Grainews.
We went to a recently renovated restaurant called Blink on Calgary’s trendy Stephen Ave. It was a Monday night. Calgarians don’t come downtown on weekday nights, so it was the three of us and the resident down-and-outs on the street. For the last hour of our meal, we were the only table in the restaurant. I ordered an old-cheddar soufflé, at Derrick’s recommendation, for an appetizer. My mum used to make soufflés when I was a kid, and I don’t remember liking them that much. This is the first time in 25 years I’ve had a soufflé, and it was so light and sharp and delicious. I will order that again the next time I’m at Blink. For an entrée, I had yellowfin tuna. (To make amends to Alberta’s beef producers, I had a steak the next night.) Chef Andrew Richardson, originally from Newcastle, England, did a great job just searing the outside and keeping the inside totally raw. His partner Leslie Echino, the "restaurant director" as it says on her business card, helped us pick a wine. She picked a bottle worth $150. Derrick thought that was too much, which was nice of him since Grainews was paying the bill. Leslie then recommended another “cheaper” bottle that was $105. Cory then says, “We’re from Winnipeg. Do you have anything for $25.” We settled for the second cheapest bottle on the list. It was from Italy and I don’t recall the grape or the winery.
The next day we had a breakfast meeting with Wayne Karlowsky, ad agent for Nufarm. Then we went to AdFarm to meet the public relations team representing Bayer CropScience, one of AdFarm’s major clients. After that we crossed the AdFarm floor — through the virtual glass wall — to visit the folks working on the Dow AgroSciences account. Because the two sides cannot share any details on specific campaigns, AdFarm insists that the two groups stay separate within the same building. Ben Graham, the Dow lead, took us across the street for a beer and nachos. Ben's family farms at Vulcan and he takes a few weeks off per year to help out. They had a lot of rain the past week, so Ben was saying they might hire a neighbour to help seed the couple thousand acres they've still got to put in.
Finally, we had supper than night with Stan Audette, communications manager with Dow AgroSciences. Stan is my first point of contact when I’m looking for information about Dow pesticides or Nexera canola. Stan grew up in Niverville, Man., on a 1,000-acre farm with laying hens. His dad, who was originally from Melfort, Sask., was a pharmacy prof at the University of Manitoba. Because of his father’s experience, Stan says he always buys brand name drugs. “Unless we support the brand name companies, these companies will have no money to develop new drugs,” Stan said. He could have used that point in the conversation to remind us that it’s the same for farm chemicals, but he didn’t. He didn’t have to.
Stan joined Elanco in 1981 right out of university and he has been with Dow ever since. He started in research, then did 12 years of sales, and has been communications manager for eight years. The job is not always glamourous, but Stan is always thinking about farmers. “Today I ordered 800 Simplicity hats, and worked to get the price lowered by $2 a hat,” he told us. “I negotiated knowing that the savings will eventually get back to farmers in some small way.” That's Stan.
This gives you some idea of the people I come in contact with on the advertising and PR side of the publishing business. Many of them are farmers or grew up on farms, and all of them are passionate about agriculture.
Cory Bourdeaud’hui, ad sales manager for Grainews, organized a farm tour May 22 and 23 for Kyleen Labreche and Emily Ouellette from Toronto. Kyleen and Emily work for Bos, the ad agency for Syngenta. Cory thought they might enjoy a visit to a few Western Canadian farms. I tagged along.
Our first stop was Sturgeon Creek Hutterite colony a few miles northwest of Winnipeg. David, the farm boss, and his friend Raymond were our tour guides. They showed us the shop where they build huge coal-fired boilers. They heat every building, barn and shop on the colony with two of these. A greenhouse near Carman, Man., recently purchased three of them to run on flax straw.
The colony has about 10,000 acres of cropland, along with hogs and a dairy. The population is up to 130 and so they’re preparing for a split sometime in the next few years. However that isn’t stopping them from building a massive new kitchen and dining hall. A crew was pouring concrete pads for the foundation the day we were there. After stopping by the construction site, we went into the old kitchen to see where the wonderful smells were coming from. Lunch was about half an hour away, and the women had just taken sugar pie out of the oven. They offered us some.
Their sugar pie has a thin crust made from cinnamon bun dough. They put the bun dough into a cookie sheet with raised sides, spreading the dough across the bottom and up the sides. Into the middle they pour a mix of two-thirds of a cup of flour, three cups of cream (whipping cream mixed with evapourated milk), two cups of white sugar, one egg and one teaspoon of cinnamon. To make the filling, mix the dry ingredients first then add the liquids. Blend by hand with a whisk. Bake at 325 F until it bubbles. Thank you to Marie and Phoebe in the kitchen for sharing this recipe.
We left the colony before the lunch rush and drove to Bruxelles, stopping by the Treherne drive-in for cheeseburgers and milkshakes. At Bruxelles, we visited the Jonk family seed potato operation. Steve Jonk toured us through their elaborate potato sizing, cutting and treating system. Then Emily and Kyleen rode with Tim Jonk in the potato planter.
Before heading back to Winnipeg for the day, Cory took us to visit his parents’ farm a few miles away. After Cory's mom, Ele, got them dressed in warm jackets and hats, we took the Bourdeaud'huis' quads out to the pasture and shot the .22 rifle at some old stove pipe. We really showed those Toronto girls a good time. (See the photo. Kyleen is on the left.) Emily took a couple of shots, with her head turned away in fear. Kyleen tried hard but couldn’t bring herself to pull the trigger.
The next day we stopped at two grain farms in the Rosser-St. Francois Xavier area. Scott Corbett took Emily and Kyleen on his tractor while he was planting soybeans for a neighbour. Then Gunter and Crystal Jochum, along with Gunter’s father Karl, gave us their thoughts on advertising and farm press. (They like Grainews, but some of the ads really bug them.) Then Gunter and Karl gave us a short tour of their 30-acre u-pick strawberry patch. Their new planter puts a small irrigation hose under every row of strawberries. This cuts down on water use because it limits evaporation, and it allows u-pickers to get out onto the patch right away because it doesn’t muddy the surface soil. Smart.
I’d like to thank Cory for inviting me along. I hope Kyleen and Emily had fun and learned something useful.
I was a farm kid. My boys are not. Oddly, they seem to have the farming bug -- perhaps more than I do. On a recent trip to my parents' house, my older son Liam spent an hour with my mum grinding wheat in a coffee grinder to make flour. Later that day he said to me, "Dad, I want to grow wheat so I can make flour for people."
This past week, my family and I took a drive to Minneapolis-St. Paul for a short holiday. One day while my wife was shopping at the Albertville Outlet Mall, the boys and I went to Kelley Farm, a working 1860s farm near Elk River northwest of the Twin Cities. I couldn't get them to leave. They were thrilled with fetching eggs and pumping water. I used to help my grandma get the eggs out of our old coop. The Kelley Farm coop looked and smelled exactly the same. A woman dressed in a long dress, apron and bonnet helped them lift the flap, look in the nests and reach under hens for eggs. The boys went to the hen house twice and got four eggs in total. If you asked them, they might say it was the most memorable event of the trip. After that they pumped water from the well to take into the house. Fun!
While we were there, another visitor volunteered to fill the ox-drawn wagon with sheep manure to take to the fields. The farm also had four pigs -- three sows and one boar -- outside in the mud. You know the expression, "Happier than a pig in sh**" Well the only thing that seemed to make these pigs happy was when we scratched their dandruffy skin with a stick. Modern pig raising techniques are far cleaner and much more appetizing.
Pigs kept outside also stink just as much as pigs in barns. When we first arrived a man was chopping wood to take into the house. He held a piece of oak for us to smell. "Maybe I'm weird, but I love that smell," he said. "All I smell is pigs," I thought. He then piled the wood on my boys' arms and guided them to the wood bin inside the house. Work. Work. Work.
I've been thinking about that old fashioned farm ever since I got back. Do we really yearn for that life? Just because two little boys had a great three hours among animals and pumps and wood stoves, does that mean they'd really like to live that way? Of course my first thought was, "Not a chance." But then again, there might be something satisfying in knowing that everything you need is right there around you. In those days, you also had another 20 people living within a one-mile radius of your farm. Pioneering was hell, but you were also building a life and a community from scratch. Was that more satisfying than farming today?
I have no interest in going back to those days. I don't want to live like that. But just say my boys and I did choose to live like that. Could we be happy? Perhaps. We'd also be lonely because we'd never see their mother again.
Gary Pike will start a new column in the June edition of Grainews, which will arrive in mailboxes in two or three weeks. The column is called The Big Picture. Gary Pike is the CEO of Pike Management Group (PMG) in Calgary. PMG provides management, marketing, business planning advice and coaching to PMG members who influence 2.5 million acres in Western Canada.
In column No.1, Gary recommends that you negotiate your 2009 credit needs now. The premise behind this advice is the simple fact that lending companies in the U.S. and Canada are in a credit crunch and many have put limits on access to mortgage capital.
Gary's insight into the world of agriculture and beyond will be a great asset to Grainews readers. To read ahead about Gary and PMG, visit www.agcoach.ca or call us toll free 1-877-410-7595.
But how do you book ahead for disease and insect control when you don’t know how bad it’s going to be or when they’ll strike. You can’t. The question then becomes whether to look at buying your own high clearance sprayer so you can do these jobs yourself when the time comes. A self-propelled sprayer does not make economic sense for many farms, but what about a pull-type high-clearance? You’ll find quite a few on the market.
I talked to Don Henry, general manager of Brandt in Regina, about prices. They have a pull-type with a 100-foot suspended boom and 1,600 U.S. gallon tank. For around $60,000, you can get that sprayer along with a boom suspension package that lets you spray at higher speeds. For another $6,000 to $9,000, you can get automatic boom height control to keep your boom at a consistent height over the crop. This gives you a top end sprayer for much less than a self propelled. (Also see our article on Top Air sprayers in the May Grainews. These pull-type suspended-boom sprayers come with a boom up to 132 feet and a tank up to 2,400 U.S. gallons.)
The next big economic question is how much crop are you losing by driving over the crop with a low-clearance tractor? Don Henry and I did a quick calculation. You can adjust Brandt sprayer tires to follow in line with the tractor tires, so you’re trampling 18.4 inches times two per pass (based on the standard tractor tire width.) That works out to about three per cent of the crop for each pass. You might lose a little more in the headland turns. Don figures that you’re probably not losing much under the tractor itself. Even though these disease and insect applications are done later in the season, the crop is still green and will bend. “It bends over in the wind and bounces back,” he notes. “It should do the same under the body of the tractor.”
For a third party view, I raised the same issue with Brian Storozynsky who specializes in sprayer research with AgTech Centre in Lethbridge. The centre has not studied crop losses for a self-propelled high clearance sprayer versus a tractor pulled high-clearance sprayer, so he didn’t have specifics on that issue. But the centre has studied crop response to trampling. Brian says crops can usually bounce back from trampling under tires earlier in the season — before the plants reach seven to nine inches tall. But any crop driven over later in the season is lost, he says.
When it comes to losses under the wheel, Brian says a self-propelled sprayer with the same boom width would trample almost as much crop as a pull-type sprayer and tractor. He notes that many custom operators will switch to narrow profile tires once the ground dries out, but even those tires are 12 to 14 inches.
Brian could not estimate the losses caused by crop bent over under the tractor. As we’ve established, the crop gets bent over but not trampled. Does this translate into crop losses? Brian doesn’t know. By the end of our conversation, he was wondering whether it was time for the AgTech Centre to look into some of these questions.
In the end, we might have prompted you to think about your sprayer situation for this year but we don’t have good data on losses under the tractor. Are you confident that you can get a custom high-clearance sprayer or plane when you need it to control fusarium or worms or midge? Or if you want your own high-clearance unit, will a pull-type suspended boom sprayer with low-clearance tractor be enough for your purposes? This option certainly has a lower ticket price than buying a self-propelled sprayer. You can get the same boom widths and in most cases a larger tank with a pull-type. You might not be able to cover a quarter section as quickly, but the boom suspension option that Brandt and others offer does narrow the groundspeed gap between pull type and self propelled.
Your input….
Do you have experience with high-clearance pull type sprayers? Do you use it late in the season for insect and disease control? If yes, do you modify your tractor to improve ground clearance and reduce crop losses? I’d like to hear from you. Please call me at 807-468-4006 or e-mail jay@fbcpublishing.com.
Ag Canada reminds you to respond to your AgriInvest “Kickstart” letter, which was mailed out many months ago. Jason Campbell, communications advisor for the farm income support programs, told me on April 30 that only 88,000 of 155,000 eligible farmers had applied for their free money. The deadline to respond is June 30. Your payment is automatically calculated based on 2.63 per cent of your average allowable net sales.
Here is a reminder Ag Canada sent out today:
Farmers are reminded to respond to their AgriInvest Kickstart letters by the June 30, 2008 deadline. Reminder letters are being mailed to farmers who have not yet responded. Those who don’t respond by the deadline will not be eligible for benefits.
In spring 2007, the Government of Canada announced $600 million to kickstart producer accounts under AgriInvest. Most farmers received a letter explaining their benefits.
To receive Kickstart funds, farmers must respond to their letter by returning the tear-off section indicating whether they want to withdraw the funds or leave them in a government-held account. The response letter must be postmarked no later than June 30, 2008. If a farmer misses this deadline, they will not be eligible for Kickstart funds.
For more information about AgriInvest Kickstart, farmers can visit the AgriInvest website at www.agr.gc.ca/agriinvest or contact the federal administration toll free at 1-866-367-8506.
For more information about the program in Quebec, farmers can visit the La Financière agricole website at www.fadq.qc.ca or call toll free at 1-800-749-3646.
Prince Edward Island is the first province to “announce” a province-wide Alternative Land Use Services (ALUS) program. So I assumed that Islander farmers now have a program in place that pays them for doing things — like investing in fences to keep cattle out of rivers or building berms to stop field run-off — that benefit the “greater good.” But they don’t. This morning I talked to Mike Nabuurs, policy manager for the PEI Federation of Agriculture (the equivalent of KAP, APAS or Wild Rose in the Prairie provinces). Mike says there is no policy yet to describe what actions qualify for ALUS and how much farmers will be paid for doing those actions. The province has budgeted $750,000 for the program in 2008, but how they will pay out that money is “uncertain,” Mike says.
The province has two two-year pilot projects on the go, with 50 farmers participating, but each project has a full year left before it will be ready to make recommendations.
ALUS is the brainchild of Manitoba farmer Ian Wishart, who is now president of Keystone Agricultural Producers (KAP). The idea is that farmers should be compensated for steps they take to improve the environment for the benefit of all citizens. A KAP news release sums it up like this: “ALUS will provide incentives to farmers who maintain and enhance the environmental goods and services that exist on their land — things like riparian areas, waterfowl and wildlife habitat, clean water, flood control, and carbon sequestration. Farmers will be paid for these services through financial payments, tax credits, and other incentives.”
ALUS pilot programs are also ongoing in Manitoba and Ontario, and Alberta and Saskatchewan might start some soon. While PEI’s announcement is another step forward for ALUS, we still don’t have a defined program anywhere that will put money into farmers’ hands.
John Clark started Grainews for United Grain Growers in the mid-1970s. Its farmer to farmer style was an instant hit. “We thought we could do a better job than the other farm publications, and we did,” John says. Grainews didn’t take any ads for the first 10 years, and John had a stable of 40 or 50 farmers who kept the paper full. “If someone wrote a great letter, I’d hire him to be a columnist,” John says. Most of them were farmers writing about how to build something or do something. Some writers got political, and usually with a right wing slant. Humour was also “very important,” John says. “Farmers have enough worries.”
John retired from UGG in 1993. He still lives in Winnipeg and keeps up with many of his past columnists. He spends about four months of the year at his house in Texas. Houses in his part of Texas are cheaper than in Manitoba. “I’m 10 miles north of the Mexican border in the second poorest county in the U.S.A.,” he says. “There is just lower demand for houses.” I asked if he would ever move to Texas permanently. “No. I like Canada,” he says.
John is in two writers groups in Texas. He mostly writes memoirs of times when he was a kid growing up in the Kamsack-Pelly area of Saskatchewan. He’s says they’re mostly for himself and that they’re not ready for publication.
Here is the article:
In a perfect world, there would be a straight line between seeding a malt variety in the spring and harvesting malt barley in the fall. But that, as many growers know, is not always the case.
It takes a barley grader less than a minute to check a sample for plumpness, off-types discolouration and damage, among many other visual grading criteria. Then it’s checked for germ, protein, moisture content and disease levels in a stringent process that ensures only the highest quality grain enters the malting process.
And while barley growers have no control over some damage-inducing factors, say an early frost before harvest, they do have a high level of control over many other factors, such as seed selection, fertility and weed control, that can mean making the grade or not.
Stephen Vandervalk knows that. With his brother and father, he farms 10,000 acres split roughly 60:40 between Claresholm and Fort Macleod, Alberta. For him, making the grade has everything to do with the agronomic choices he makes throughout the year – choices that almost guarantee malt in a good year, and at least help to mitigate potential damage in a bad one.
Making the grade
Vandervalk is just getting back into malt barley production after a five-year hiatus when prices were low. “We grew malt prior to 2002,” he says. “And we started growing again in 2007.” The 1,000 acres seeded to malt last year will be bumped up to 1,500 acres this year, while the rest of the farm will go to canola, spring wheat, durum, feed barley, mustard and timothy hay.
Part of the decision to expand malt acres is market driven and about minimizing risk. “I can’t forward contract wheat,” he says. “So, if you figure $7 barley and $9 wheat, the barley is a lot less risky when you have contracts that have an ‘Act of God’ clause in them. If things go wrong, I’m covered.”
But with a couple of April snowstorms providing some early season moisture and a potentially good summer ahead, Vandervalk is already planning for success.
Field selection. Malt barley should be sown on clean fields with good drainage. There’s about 20 kilometres between the Vandervalks’ two farm sites in Fort Macleod and Claresholm and, while the soil type between the two is similar, that distance makes all the difference. “We have heavier soils in Claresholm,” says Vandervalk. “It doubles our chances of malt so that’s where we put it.” More rain and much less wind in this location also help.
Watching rotations is key to breaking disease cycles and reducing off-types. “We usually try to seed malt onto oilseed stubble,” he says. But this year, with his malt acreage expanding, Vandervalk is taking a bit of a risk by seeding some of it onto malt stubble. “It might be higher protein, but I think we can manage it.”
Seed selection. “We use Metcalf because it’s the most sought after malt variety,” says Vandervalk. It’s also one of the highest yielding two-row varieties available to growers.
Varietal purity is major concern for barley selectors, which is why Vandervalk includes certified seed in his production plans. “We used certified seed last year when we were getting started again,” he says. This year, he’s using some of last year’s production as his seed source, “but we won’t do it a third year,” he says, explaining that he’ll go back to certified seed in 2009 to protect purity, reduce weeds and off-types and ensure performance.
Seeding date. Staining, shriveling and cracking caused by poor late season weather are all reasons to reject a malt sample.
Early seeding is a major contributor to higher yields and plump kernels, which is why Vandervalk seeds all the farm’s barley acres first, malt and feed, even before the canola.
“We plant all the barley first and, of that, the malt goes in first” he says. “We get going as early as we can – we’re usually going by the middle of April. After May 10, our yields start going down.”
Seeding rate. With most crops, higher seeding rates are recommended to improve yield potential and cut weed competition. With malt barley, lower rates can contribute to one of the main quality criteria selectors are looking for: kernel plumpness.
Vandervalk seeds at one bushel per acre and has actually gone as low as three quarters of a bushel per acre on occasion. “With one bushel per acre, we get more tillering and more opportunity for plump kernels,” he says. “Weed competition isn’t an issue for us just now with all the new chemicals coming out.”
Fertilizer. There’s a line between getting the yields you want and the protein levels you need to make the grade (between 10.5 and 13 per cent).
A good fertility program will aim for high yields without boosting protein, so care needs to be taken, particularly with nitrogen. Experts recommend soil testing to help ensure the accuracy of a fertilizer program.
For Vandervalk, fertility is a major component of his malt plans, and he doesn’t cut back on fertilizer in an effort to get the yields he’s after. “We’ll put on 60 to 70 pounds N, depending on the year – if it’s too dry, we’ll go with less,” he says. “Basically we have a 60-15-00 blend, and no potash since the land already has quite a bit of potash already.”
Weed control. Weeds rob the crop of moisture and nutrients, not to mention the hassle of having to clean out off-types. But the big concern for most malt growers is the crop safety of herbicides – barley submitted for malt selection will be rejected if there is any chemical damage or residue. For Vandervalk, the big watch-out is having a herbicide cause any kind of crop damage.
“We exclusively use Liquid Achieve on all our barley acres,” he says. “A lot of guys won’t spray wild oats in barley because of the potential for damage. But we always spray Achieve because it’s really easy on the crop, it won’t stunt it and you can spray it at an early leaf stage.”
Harvest. It’s when Mother Nature has the most potential to do her worst. Wet conditions as the crop matures can lead to early germination and rejection. Weathering damage in the swath, or an early frost can lead to damage that will result in a rejected sample.
Vandervalk straight cuts, avoiding the swath altogether, and also makes sure that the malt barley is the first crop to come off. “We combine it before the feed,” he says. “It’s the shortest day crop, so when we seed it first, it’s usually the first off.”
With commodity prices what they are, it makes sense to Vandervalk to be back in malt, but only if he takes the time and attention it needs to meet the selection standards. “Feed barley is around $5 to $5.50 a bushel, and malt is at $7 just now,” he says. “That’s a $1.50 to $2 spread.” It’ll make a big difference to him to make the grade.
