The effectiveness of alternative marketing strategies for Ontario corn and soybean producers.

摘要

Marketing decisions can be some of the most difficult decisions facing grain and oilseed producers. There is a lack of information about the marketing strategies that are most effective, and there is also a lack of consensus in the literature about whether some types of marketing strategies can consistently perform better than others. This paper uses a simulation model based on daily cash and futures prices to compare returns and risk over time from specific marketing strategies for corn and soybean producers in Ontario. This paper also examines whether there are differences in the relative effectiveness of strategies between higher-price years and lower-price years. The results indicate that preharvest marketing strategies for both corn and soybeans tend to generate prices that are much higher than selling everything at harvest (the baseline strategy), particularly for the higher-price years; however, these differences are not always statistically significant. Preharvest strategies are also found to reduce downside rise to the baseline. copyright 2012 Canadian Agricultural Economics Society.