Stephen / Minnesota / United States
It is often said that a large percentage of producers market the majority of their grain in the bottom thirty percent of the years price range. Producers often see major advisory services publish outstanding results each year and wonder why they arent getting similar results by reading the same advice. This is why we adopted the idea of having producers pledge their bushels to be marketed following the advice of top advisors. We saw several advantages of having ProMark Grain responsible for implementing the advice instead of the producers. First, many times the producers hesitate or disagree with the advisors advice, so no action is taken. Second, producers tend to have a hard time differentiating between hedging and speculating, and therefore have a difficult time making wise business decisions without letting emotions take over. Last, because of economies of scale, many producers have a hard time hedging small percentages of production ( For example: 10% of 10, 000 bushels ), since the smallest contract most of us trade is a 5, 000-bushel contract. By combining multiple producers bushels together, we can easily hedge very small percentages of production at any given time. The concept of ProMark Grain was started in 1999. It started as a partnership called Central Minnesota Marketing Partnership ( CMM ). This partnership consisted of ten producers who each pledged 20% to 30% of their production ( approximately 500, 000 bushels ) to the partnership to be marketed following the advice of outside advisory services. The producers left the cash, futures, and options marketing to Bruce Yaggie and Scott Field, who implemented the advice of the advisory services. ProMark Grain is an all-inclusive ( futures, options, and cash ) marketing service for producers of all sizes. ProMark Grains goal is to market the producers grain in the top one-half of the years price range through the use of the best advisory services available.
