A call, a put, a naked writer. At-the-money, in-the-money, out-of-the-money. It’s enough to make you think you’re locked inside a jigsaw puzzle where none of the pieces fit.
In fact, though, if you go to some online dictionaries of grain marketing terms, you’ll find these are a mere handful of the sub-categories listed for just one term, “options.” Then you’ll find there are at least 30 other terms in the lists, many with 10 to 15 sub-definitions of their own.
So how is a farmer to know it all? How are you supposed to understand all the tools and techniques, and on top of that, wade through the overwhelming abundance of information and advice found online, at the elevator and in the coffee shop to find the marketing plan that’s right for your farm?
This month, COUNTRY GUIDE asked three very different farms how they solved the marketing puzzle. Each solution is different, but the pieces are similar. Do they fit your farm?
