Reading Time: 5 minutes The characters in the play “Waiting for Godot” and Prairie grain market transparency apparently have something in common — waiting for something that never arrives. It’s been five years since the end of the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly, when one of the goals was to expose Prairie wheat and barley growers to the mechanisms of […] Read more
Open market, but not-so-open information
Five years post-CWB, farmers are still waiting for information that puts them on a more even position with the companies buying their grain
Going big
FarmLead takes aim at the U.S., with leaders who learned their lessons on the farm
Reading Time: 7 minutes Five years ago Brennan Turner and Alain Goubau were slogging it out alone. They were ahead of the curve, trying to sell western Canadian farmers on their vision of an online grain marketplace to connect grain producers and buyers, giving them the power to list, negotiate and finalize grain deals with no upfront cost. Today, […] Read more
Viterra results offset Glencore’s improved year-end
Reading Time: 2 minutes Commodity giant Glencore’s efforts to ratchet down its debts paid off in fiscal 2016 — though “challenges” weighed on the ledger for its Viterra grain handling arm. Swiss-based Glencore on Thursday released preliminary results for 2016, booking net income attributable to equity holders of $1.379 billion on $152.948 billion in revenues, up from an $8.114 […] Read more
Durum marketing 101
Durum is grown in a few distinct regions of the world, and problems in just one can mean a sharp change in prices
Reading Time: 4 minutes If you’re selling bread wheat — Triticum aestivum — there’s a new price signal literally every second as it’s traded on futures markets. If you’re selling its cousin T. durum, finding a fair value is another matter. There’s no viable futures market for durum wheat, and there can be days or even weeks between trades […] Read more
Selling your grain at an optional price
Don’t know how (or when) to sell your grain using options? You aren’t the only one, so this advice may help
Reading Time: 3 minutes Maybe your primary marketing plan has always been to consider forward-pricing and delivery contracts that are offered by local elevators, even though you know it doesn’t always work out as well as you’d like. Tyler Welygan-Reiling of Agra Risk Solutions suggests the following basic strategy that uses some of the marketing tools available in the […] Read more
Looking for more price security when selling grain?
Basic marketing tools can generate some of the quickest paybacks on the farm. Here’s how one advisory company gets its farmers started
Reading Time: 6 minutes Pulling out of the farm gate with a loaded grain truck, a producer can turn right and go to a local elevator that is posting a price that’s $20 a tonne more for your crop, or you could turn left and go to another elevator that’s paying $20 less. Which is the best choice? Reality […] Read more
You grew the crop… now make them pay
So you think you do a passable job of marketing. Not great, but not bad. These six steps let you shoot for more
Commodity marketing can be like dancing a two-step with work boots on. Your timing is often off, you’re dragging your feet, and you trip way too often. With volatility making our commodity markets more erratic, and with more information spewing out of our smartphones night and day, marketing is getting ever more complicated. Dancing with[...]
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It’s buyer’s choice when it comes to your grain
Getting and keeping your farm on your elevator's 'first-call' list is harder than ever
Reading Time: 6 minutes With the competition heating up among farmers trying to sell their grain, and also among the elevators trying to buy it, relationship building between buyers and sellers has never been more important to business success for grain and oilseed producers. It’s why dropping in to say a friendly hello every few months is no longer[...]
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Active marketing on the farm
On these farms, marketing is no longer a matter of waiting for the right price
Reading Time: 7 minutes No matter how closely they watch the skies, farmers can’t control the weather. Nor do they have any influence over the amount of volatility in their markets. But pricing? Well that, says Irmi Critcher, is one aspect of farming that producers can exercise some control over, and that she works hard at. “You can put[...]
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A marketing strategy for stored grain
Is it worthwhile to store your grain on the farm while you wait for commodity prices to rise?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Storing grain on the farm can be a good marketing strategy because, if managed carefully, it can increase a producer’s profits, but it’s important to have a handle on your storage and opportunity costs to assess if it’s actually going to put money in the bank. The capital costs of storage vary depending on whether[...]
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A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
