Grain Marketing

May 05, 2016

A grain producer called here early the other morning and asked me how high I thought corn would go. I almost choked on my bagel. If you know me at all you recognize I couldn’t care less about forecasting future prices. What I care about is what you are doing when it comes to price risk management. For many price levels offer at least a small amount of profit, today.

This time of year can be stressful for those of us working to be effective grain marketers. Not only are we possibly holding more physical grain than we’d like to, we have suffered through the usual low prices following harvest, are being excited by the usual run up in prices pre-planting, wondering what to do with pricing the next crop,and are now faced with getting into currently wet fields. No wonder such a small number of people seek careers as professional food producers!

For those of us holding crops in storage at this time let’s remember the quality (shrink) challenges faced as stored grains are exposed to ever warmer temperatures. Remember the risks you took to get that grain grown, harvested and stored? One source of great research and information on keeping stored grain in condition can be found at Purdue Extension.

Reviewing previous articles I recall one expert telling us 80% of the time prices peak in the April, May, June time frame. Another article talks about everybody having a marketing plan. The question for me is “Do you have adequate price protection in place, now?” And finally, yield has more to do with future prices than acres as we expect all the acres to eventually be planted. Your guess on the average 2016 crops yield is as good as anyone else’s.

My point for today is fairly basic. With current prices rallied to levels we could only dream of a few short weeks past – Are You Pricing Any Bushels?
When I see you at the Twilight Pig Roast you can bet I will be harassing you with three items; 1) what’s your cost per bushel? 2) how many bushel are not yet priced? and my favorite, 3) what price are you waiting for?

Source:psu.edu

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.