ALTOONA — With unpredictable crop prices and tight margins, marketing can make the difference between profit and loss in corn and soybean production. How well farmers get paid for a year’s worth of work can be wrapped up in just a few marketing decisions.
In the Women Marketing Grain course, women will learn how to manage price risk using tools such as forward contracts, futures and options contracts, alternative-marketing contracts and crop insurance.
Participants will work in a computer lab to access online decision tools and develop a marketing plan. Women will learn market strategies and how to stay on track for long-term marketing success.
In this course, women will learn how to:
- Recognize crop marketing terms and sources of obtaining current futures and cash market prices
- Understand basis, futures carry, cost of grain ownership, supply/demand fundamentals, and technical chart signals
- Recognize seasonal price trends
- Use crop marketing tools including spot cash sales, forward contracts, hedge-to-arrive contracts, futures hedging and the use of put and call options
- Develop a crop marketing plan
The four-session Women Marketing Grain Series begins Monday, Feb. 5 at 5 p.m. and meets over four consecutive Monday evenings at the DMACC West Campus, 5959 Grand Ave. in West Des Moines. Registration is due Jan. 29.
Classes run from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., with a meal served at 5 p.m. Registration for this series is $75. To register, contact Brooke Blessington at 515-462-1001 or bbless@iastate.edu.
