Commodity Marketing
-
Are You Ready For The Whipsaw?
With the turmoil in the world commodity markets and the concern about the flooding and weather conditions in the US, farmers can expect that their commodity prices are going to whipsaw up and down very rapidly over the next several months. A key to not getting personally whipsawed is to have a written plan in […]
-
Diary Producer Continues Expansion into China
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, there was an interview with Andrew Ferrier, the Chief Executive of Fonterra Co-Operative Group of New Zealand. This company is the third largest dairy exporter in the world with sales of about $13 billion, profits of $500 million and almost 16,000 employees. It is interesting that a small country like New […]
-
TEPAP – Final Conclusions
I spent all of last week attending the TEPAP conference in Austin, Texas. This intensive 7 day conference is put on by Professor Danny Klinefelter of Texas A & M University. Each day’s session would normally have two different topics covered by some of the best presenters in the farm business. I would highly recommend […]
-
TEPAP – Final Day
After six great days of presentation, we have finally come to the last day of the TEPAP conference. This is only a morning session and our presentation on public relations plans was giving by Moe Russell of the Russell Consulting Group. Moe shared that we had 3 sets of good time in the last 100 […]
-
TEPAP – Day 6 Afternoon Session
Michael Mazzocco, Director at Verdant AgriBusiness Consultants, presented the afternoon session of day 6 of the TEPAP conference. This session was on Market Growth Strategies for farmers. To grow your farm revenues, you have seven degrees of freedom: Increase sales – same customers; same product mix Existing products; new customers New products – same or […]
-
What’s Your ACRE Payment?
I got a call from one of my clients yesterday saying that he got a surprise in the bank account. His ACRE payment had shown up and it was a substantial amount. We wrote many posts on this about a year ago before the final sign up for the 2009 crop indicating that ACRE might […]
-
Sugar Drops 20% in Two Days
Prices for sugar hit a 30-year high on Thursday at 33.39 cents per pound, however, by the end of the day, prices had dropped about 9.6% closing at 29.66 cents a pound and dropped another 11.6% on Friday to close the week at 26.21 cents per pound. The drop in prices was sparked by the […]
-
What is Your 20 Year Plan?
I was skimming the Corn and Soybean Digest website the other day and came across this very good article on planning ahead for the next 20 years on your farm operation. It is very important for farmers to set goals and plans. I believe that these goals should be in writing and quantifiable. Also, on […]
-
Watch Out For Morocco’s Phosphate Monopoly
In the November 14, 2010 issue of Bloomberg Business Week, one of their key articles was on Morocco’s potential monopoly in phosphate. As most farmers remember, phosphate prices in the 2007-2008 time period rose, in some cases, by tenfold or more. For many decades, phosphate sold for about $40 per ton. However, currently, phosphate trades near […]
-
North Dakota Tops Kansas (In Wheat Production)
According to an article in Agweek.com based upon the North Dakota Wheat Commission data, the 2010 North Dakota wheat crop produced 375 million bushels of wheat, beating Kansas by about 15 million bushels. These high production amounts (last year was about 2 millions bushels higher) is due to record yields of about 45 bushels over these […]