[Scene opens with a shot of young soybean rows with the Soy Masters badge and "Field Notes" overlaid on it. Drum and guitar music plays in the background. The text "Weather Check: Why Plant Soybeans in 2019" shows. Scene switches to Bryce standing in a hotel lobby, speaking to the camera.]
BRYCE: I'm Bryce Rampton, soybean product development agronomist for Western Canada. So I'm just going to talk a little bit about one of our favorite topics in agriculture - it's whether. You know, the past couple years (2017 and 2018) have been a little bit dry.
[Scene shows Bryce in a field touching the ground, then switches to a wide pan of a soybean field.]
BRYCE: And that kind of corresponded with one of the biggest increases we've seen in soybean acres in Western Canada. And I think there's a lot of growers out there who've been trying soybeans for the first time.
[Scene switches back to Bryce in the hotel lobby, speaking to the camera.]
BRYCE: And they're kind of saying, "You know what? Maybe they haven't quite performed exactly how I expected they would. Still didn't do too bad, but you know I had a little bit higher expectations for them." I think it really helps to look back at the long term and say, "What does the Western Canada really get on average? What can what can we expect? And how does that translate into soybeans?" Just to see, are they really worth keeping in the rotation going forward? And what can we expect? So I think it helps to look at the past few years and just what would have happened in regard to soybeans.
[Scene switches to an image titled "2016 Sask Rainfall April 1 - Sept 5". It shows a heatmap of rainfall across the province as well as a chart of average rainfall in various areas for each month.]
BRYCE: So 2016 was the first year where we started to see a few more soybeans out there. And that corresponded with a little bit above average rainfall. Some areas had a lot more, especially in western Saskatchewan. But typically we were a little bit above average and that corresponded to some pretty good soybean yields, especially for guys trying them for the first time. We had a few growers that were above 50 bushel per acre beans in 2016.
[Scene switches back to Bryce in the hotel lobby, speaking to the camera.]
BRYCE: And then we kind of got into 2017. We all know what happened if we were farming in Western Canada. We were well below average in some areas. 
[Scene switches to an image titled "2017 Rainfall April 1 - Sept 4". It shows a heatmap of rainfall across the province as well as a chart of average rainfall in various areas for each month.]
BRYCE: We had less than 50% of our normal rainfall and yeilds were dramatically affected. In our own internal plots we had, on average, about 20 bushels per acre less on those plots that we had.
[Scene switches back to Bryce in the hotel lobby, speaking to the camera.]
BRYCE: And 2018 was kind of a "hit the repeat" button in a lot of different cases.
[Scene switches to an image titled "2018 Rainfall April 1 - Sept 3". It shows a heatmap of rainfall across the province as well as a chart of average rainfall in various areas for each month.]
BRYCE: A lot of areas were still around that 50 percent. Areas that had more rainfall throughout the season, had it a lot earlier when soybeans don't necessarily benefit from that rainfall.
[Scene switches back to Bryce in the hotel lobby, speaking to the camera.]
BRYCE: It's unfortunate we did have these rainfall events, but for planning our rotation and using it going forward, I think it really helps to think about how often this does happen. If we can anticipate it, we can plan for it. And when you actually look at the data, it turns out that it's not that often.
[Scene shows a graph of rainfall amounts in Regina from 1904 to 2018. There is an average line around 250mm and 2017 and 2018 are pointed out around the 100mm mark.]
BRYCE: If you look at a year like 2017, there's only been one other year in the past 115 years that has been as dry or drier than then 2017. When you put '17 and '18 together, there's actually never been two years in a row that have been this dry in the past 115.
[Scene switches back to Bryce in the hotel lobby, speaking to the camera.]
BRYCE: So when you look at soybeans as a crop and is it viable? Well this isn't something that's gonna happen very often. I think, on average, we can expect conditions to be better and likely more beneficial rainfall for soybeans as a crop. So before we write off soybeans and say, "It doesn't work," I think that we should wait for a year where we're close to normal and see how we do as far as performance, and then use that to gauge what we can plan for going forward. So one final thing is, while it's been dry on the prairies, we see really dramatic weather extremes from year to year. And when it can be dry it can also be really wet. I think we've got to remember, especially in those heavy clay soils that can experience long periods of saturation, when we do get those 12+ inches of rain, even 16+ inches of rain that we can get in a lot of different areas, soybeans are going to handle those long periods of saturations better than any other crop that we have in the rotation. So it's really hedging our bets for when we do get those conditions and they're gonna perform better and kind of stabilize our overall portfolio of crops that we have out there.
[Scene changes to a shot of young soybean rows with the Soy Masters badge overlaid on it with the text "Field Notes". Guitar music plays in the background.]