Commodity Marketing

  • What’s my Maximum Yield?

    We try to calculate the maximum yield for any county to start receiving a 2019 ARC payment.

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  • ARC or PLC – Which to Choose?

    ARC under the 2014 Farm Bill paid for farmers. It will likely be much lower in the 2018 Farm Bill.

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  • The Farm Financial Standards Council Annual Meeting

    The annual Farm Financial Standards Council meeting started on Wednesday with committee reports. Today is full of topics related to Ag Data and the interplay with accounting. I will recap the day for you.

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  • Rain Makes Grain

    This is a wet spring for planting corn. Similar years provide good profit opportunities in June. Will this year repeat. If so, be ready.

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  • Wow!

    I have been doing the Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour for six years now.  The first two in the West, the next three in the East (including last years bumper crop) and this year in the West.  Until today, the most samples I ever saw on one route over 200 bushels was last year through […]

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  • The ProFarmer Midwest Crop Tour

    This will be my sixth year in a row of doing the Pro Farmer Midwest Crop tour.  My first two years I did the western leg, the last three were on the eastern leg and this year I go back and tour the western leg.  Here is a map from Pro Farmer showing the locations […]

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  • Who Was Closer – CBO or Paul?

    The USDA yesterday released data on the sign up for ARC and PLC by all of the covered crops.  As expected from our posts before on the subject, most of the corn and soybean acres signed up for ARC-CO versus PLC.  Summarizing some of the major crops as follows: Of the crops on the table, […]

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  • Where’s Waldo (Paul)?

    My children used to like to take a look at the books featuring “Where’s Waldo?”.  My four boys would race to see who could find him first (they usually beat mom and dad to it too).  Once I started doing more traveling, many of my staff will now ask “Where’s Waldo/Paul?”.  So this post will […]

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  • Ethanol Industry Approaches 1 Million Barrels a Day Production

    The Barrel is a blog done by Platts (a division of McGraw Hill) and their recent post indicated that Ethanol production is approaching 1 million barrels a day.  This equates to about 42 million gallons a day.  Ethanol margins have nearly doubled from 2013 and are approaching $1 per gallon. However, with the continued decrease […]

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  • The Effect of Premium Subsidies on Crop Insurance Demand

    The Economic Research Service of the USDA periodically releases reports on various items related to agriculture.  This month, they released a report on the “The Effects of Premium Subsidies on Demand for Crop Insurance“.  The actual report is about 30 pages long and has a very detailed regression analysis for about 10 pages of the […]

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