Marketing Recomedations for 2007-08

[just_wondering]

Mustrdman
Using your real world #'s on the durum example are costs of storage included. Accepance levals have been brutal in the last few years.
There are ways around that but not if you are honest with the CWB.

[almoy]

In an open market situation with NO CWB do you believe everyone will be able to sell all the grain they grow at the time that they want to? Will elevator space and railroad sevice not limit what you can deliver? Will larger farmers get priority when it comes to room to deliver?

[silverback]

1) We can't deliver or even price all we may want to right now, so how could it be any worse?

2) I don't know where you live, but the big guys around here have always, I repeat always, gotten preferential treatment. I don't think that will ever change. It happens in every business in the entire world.

[almoy]

Silverback, where I live the big guys DO have prefered treatment and even they are saying that the end of the CWB means the end of smaller farmers as they will not be able to even market the grain they want. The space will be taken by the large farmers. This is already a problem with small farmers with special crops such as lentils when there is a large supply.

[silverback]

The cwb has never been able to slow the rate of consolidation on the prairies and never will.

If they can't even manage to get close to the world price in a year like this, then I have the feeling that they are speeding it up if anything.

[TOM4CWB]

ALmoy,

I think you really missed the point on marketing in a diversified innovation based system.

Container lots of wheat can be shipped by the same folks who ship special crops.

Specialty wheat and barley as in organics can fill markets the big shippers can't be bothered with! India used to be this way with pulse crops... now this is a major market.

There is much that could be done IF freedom were allowed to innovate markets. Our infrastructure is just waiting to fill the gap.

[melvill]

I'm going to hammer away at one of my favorite marketing tools - cost of production - COP.

I run into away too many producers who don't know what their COP is for each of their farm products. By COP I mean a price per bushel or per tonne or per pound based on average yields, that covers all the variable or cash costs, all the fixed costs and some or all of the family living costs, depending on how much off-farm income there is.

How can anyone make good marketing decisions - and the first marketing decision is deciding what to put in the drill box - without a carefully calculated COP based on the point I made above?

I know pencil farming isn't nearly as much fun as debating marketing policy bit I dare say it's more productive!! Tom or parsley, I'll duck if I see a missle coming from your directions. Grin.

[mustardman]

Melville, I totally agree on doing cop figures, actually great tool is Agexpert fieldmaster; great for what ifs and great aid in decision making; gives lots of good info;
It still surprises me that some producers are still looking at keeping their costs per acre down; when they should be looking at their costs per unit of production ( bus or lbs ) If not aware of cop you could end up with low costs per acre BUT a high cost per each bushel grown.

[wedino]

Wilagro>The "new" entity would be an entirely new concept, untried, and unwanted actually. <<

Why don't you & other single desk supporters take it & run with it? If it's as good as you think, you shouldn't have any problems. Offer me a fair price & I'll deal with you, but remember you can't seize my produce any longer.

[wedino]

MustardMan, you'll have to explain to me just exactly what you mean, cost/acre vs cost/bus??

[mustardman]

Snappy, we're in the business of selling bushels not acres so you have to know what it cost you to produce that bushel of grain so you know what your break even price is.
Cutting back on fert. will give you a lower cost/acre but in the end you could have a lot less bushels to spread your costs over and the end result could be a higher break-even price even though cost/acre might be less.

[mustardman]

I guess I get what your saying. But that is pretty much common sense what your saying. What I mean is that i know by not spraying for wild oats or weeds, my cost of production will go down but so will my revenue.

I do a cost/acre for years, and I've down well with it.