Minding Ag's Business

Andrew Mages said half of his job as a commodities broker with Progressive Ag is being a psychiatrist, helping farmers navigate the emotions of grain marketing and the fear of missing out.

"Farmers actually have very good instincts," he said. "Sometimes, they just need an extra push."

As far as grain marketing goes, 2025 was a weird year. Corn and soybean prices hit their highs in February, bucking seasonal trends for late-spring or early-summer rallies, leaving many farmers with more unpriced grain than they'd like as they headed into a new calendar year.

Compounding the problem is that post-COVID price spikes rewarded laissez-faire marketers, and farmers have struggled to get back into a disciplined grain sales strategy as the market shifted.

"Those tops last for seconds, but the bottoms last for years," said Mages, who also runs the family farm in Minnesota.

As we turned the calendar to a new year and tallied the bushels in inventory, it's a great time to reevaluate your grain marketing strategy.

HAVE A PLAN

"There's no one-size-fits-all marketing plan," said AgMarket.Net CFO Tyler Schau, who taught grain marketing for 12 years.

The first step is to determine your price and time action points based on your operation's cost of production and cash-flow needs. Then, you need to have an idea of what tools -- cash contracts, futures or options -- you'll use to secure your price.

"You can make a marketing plan really complicated, or you can keep it pretty simple," Schau explained.

STICK TO IT

Sticking to the plan is the hard part. By the time a price target rolls around, market sentiment has usually changed, and farmers wonder if they set their sights too low. "Second-guessing is where farmers struggle the most," he said.

The first sale is always the toughest, because most farmers are hoping for something better, Mages said. "Take a small win on your first sale, and it'll make your marketing plan a lot easier for the rest of the year," he suggested. "You want to hit a lot of singles and doubles when you're marketing."

ASK FOR HELP

Both Mages and Schau agreed having a trusted adviser can be a very helpful resource to guide you in both sticking to your plan and adapting it as the market changes.

"Everybody's got an agronomist," Mages said. "So, why don't most farmers do that with a marketing plan? Farmers love growing a crop, but they hate marketing. So, get some help."

DON'T FEAR FUTURES AND OPTIONS

Schau and Mages said they're valuable tools in an oversupplied grain market like this one. Even if you need to sell physical grain below your target price to meet your cash-flow needs, re-owning those bushels through futures or options can create an opportunity to improve that price in the future.

Mages said farmers may have been burned by margin calls or options expiring worthless in the past, but these tools give them more control than marketing alternatives from their local elevator, such as free delayed-price contracts. Those allow farmers to deliver the bushels but set the price at some point in the future.

"When you have a futures and options account, it opens up a lot more strategies to help you remove risk," Schau said.

Katie Dehlinger can be reached at katie.dehlinger@dtn.com

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