Keep Price Ego in Check | Don't Get Greedy When Marketing Corn, Soybeans

 

It was mid-July and corn jumped $2/bu. over early June. That $7.40 would yield a sweet profit. But drought-driven $9 was “guaranteed” around the co-op coffee pot. Your co-op buddies just knew it. So did some pro analysts. When it pegged at $8.40+ about Aug. 10, you weren’t going to be the one who sold too soon. And in late September,when corn was back down to $7.40, you were still unsold. And you still weren't when it rebounded after the mid-October crop report and closed at $7.65 on Oct. 19.

Score another one for ego eroding common sense. Greed of wanting the top andfear of not getting it has left too many growers with corn or beans unpriced in a volatileenvironment.

Fear of coffee-shop ridicule “rears its ugly head every time prices are at this level,” grimacesChad Hart, Iowa State University Extension grain marketing specialist. “Some didn’t move when it was the highest. They want tosay they hit those high prices and not face criticism. They let good profit opportunitiesslip by. Remember that $7.40 and $15-16 are great prices. Just because you don’t get thehigh, don’t cry over spilled milk. It’s gone.”

Jim Hilker, Michigan State University Extension economist, says egos canstill get in their way. “I think guys are doing a better job of handling it,” he says. “Guys started pricing beans at $13 back in April because it was a good price then. Whether those decisions were good or bad “depends on the individual farm. If youpriced all of your beans at $13, I’m not sure if that was a good price. But it was a goodplace to start.”

Hilker reminds growers that if not for the drought, a normal crop year would havelikely made $13 “a good-looking price.”