I’m forgetful. There, I said it. I’ll own up to it… And now the Farm Guy Next Door just heard (read) me admit it. I have to write things down or else it’s like they disappear into thin air and are never found again. (i.e. some things the Farm Guy Next Door tells me and…
Category: Grain Marketing 101
A happy hour coming to a couch near you!
I’m not sure I can properly articulate to you how much I love happy hours. First off, I love deals. Happy hours were made for my deal loving heart. Second, happy hours are the perfect pick-me-up when you just need to chat through things with your people. If you like happy hour as much as…
What does it mean to make Incremental Sales?
I’m trying to put together a gallery wall of wedding pictures in our living room. Have any of you tackled a gallery wall? If you have, you know how overwhelming it is. If you haven’t, let me explain it to you. When I see these beautiful gallery walls with unique pictures of different sizes, shapes,…
Using Futures Pricing Orders During Harvest
Hope harvest is going well for you all! If you’re reading this in the tractor, it should provide you between 2-5 minutes of educational “entertainment.” 🙂 Over here, we just finished up beans and moved on to corn. Considering we’re in the thick of harvest, let’s talk harvest marketing and a strategy that may be…
Moisture Discounts – How to Calculate & Compare
I can still remember the day Dan asked me to compare discount schedules during harvest a few years back to see which grain buyer we should deliver to. I’d just started working for a large grain company, but I still had very little experience with discount schedules and still wasn’t comfortable reading them. So, you…
Gall Midge | Things that can attack your soybeans
I posted on my Instagram stories a few weeks ago about gall midge after walking into a few of our soybean fields, scraping back the damaged stem, and finding little orange larvae. Now, keep in mind, I’m not an agronomist and I won’t claim to be. But, I am a farmer who likes to learn….
What is the WASDE Report?
Numbers. When people start talking numbers with little description, do you simply start tuning it out and then realize you didn’t hear a bit of what was said? No? Just me then… 😉 Crop reports contain a LOT of numbers and not a lot of explanation of how they relate to one another and how…
What is ‘Old Crop’ anyways?
Sometimes, terminology in grain marketing just makes me laugh…like ‘old crop.’ I mean, if my corn’s been in the bin for 4 years, that’s getting up there in age, but selling in March after I just harvested it in October is considered ‘OLD?’ So that begs the question, “what do people mean when they refer…
New Crop, Old Crop, Front Month Futures…What??
Do you ever feel overwhelmed by all the jargon in grain marketing? You walk into the local co-op, hear the coffee group talking about ‘new crop’ corn being down around $.04, and think to yourself…what does that mean? Every industry has jargon, but not every industry uses it outside the four walls of their company…
What is Grain Marketing?
“So you do marketing for grain! That’s great, where do you advertise and promote it?” It might surprise you how much I received this response when I would tell people I helped farmers market their grain. It makes sense though. When the term ‘marketing’ is used outside of the Ag industry, it is almost always…