Grain Elevators: How Productive Is Your Labor Force?
The New Year brings a flurry of preparing financial statements and crunching financial ratios in an effort to get under the tax man’s bar or jump...
Solutions to problems have a way of gaining clarity through discussions with trusted outside counsel. Clearly originating low basis bushels is the driving force behind profitable financial statements for grain companies, and this year many regions of the US have struggled to get profitable bushels bought. Lower commodities prices also have put financial stress on our production community. So when the lenders call, the conversations revolve around these six topics.
There’s no magic here, and it’s important to remember Vince Lombardi’s famous quote: “It’s more important to do a few things well than a bunch of clever things poorly.” This can be specifically applied to grain marketing. Marketing strategies can quickly get very complicated. They start with priced contracts and target contracts, and then move to splitting one decision into two by either leaving the basis or the futures open. Then we have straight forward option strategies that allow you to stay in the market which then get more complicated by the idea that we need to sell options to make it cheaper to stay in the market. Finally we have the crazy contracts where we don’t know what we sold or what the price will be upon delivery. Vince Lombardi’s Packer teams won the first two Super Bowls by running the same well executed plays over and over. This spring let’s stick with our consistent well run play and help producers stay financially strong with profit based marketing.
The New Year brings a flurry of preparing financial statements and crunching financial ratios in an effort to get under the tax man’s bar or jump...
The first step is to eliminate break even from the discussion, no grain company is in business to break-even. Decide on a profit target and this...
I want to initiate a Public Relations Campaign within the farming community to get BASIS the respect and understanding it deserves.