MARKETING PLAN

Grain pricing can be unpredictable, making it important to start early, make a plan, and stick to it. Here’s an overview of how you can create a plan that’s right for you.

1. Review future market outlooks and determine a price range for your grain.
2. Calculate your cost of production.
3. Determine your breakeven price.
4. Set your target price based on your cash flow needs and storage and movement costs.

Why Contract

By reserving space at your local elevator for your grain, you’re ensuring movement when the price is acceptable. Worldwide grain supply and demand determines the price of grain throughout the year and grain contracts separate price from supply and demand by setting prices in advance of delivery.

If you sign a GPO contract, you can sit back and wait until it’s triggered. No daily monitoring or calling around to local elevators. The benefit of our Fixed, Basis, and GPO contracts are that they allow you to take advantage of different market cycles to help you optimize your pricing and minimize your risk.

Helpful Tip

When markets rise, it may be tempting to hold onto your grain and wait for higher prices. By scaling your targets (i.e. 25% of your crop towards target 1, 20% of your crop towards target 2, etc.), you’ll be able to take advantage of market fluctuations while still profiting when certain benchmarks are hit.

Grain Market Decision Tree

Needs Timely Movement
(Cash flow, storage risk, seeding, etc.)