Businesses take control of protecting their margin with grain marketing course
Independent grain market advisors CRM AgriCommodities have completed their first one day grain marketing courses of 2019, with farmers and farm contracting enterprises learning how to successfully use a variety of grain marketing tools and strategies to create bespoke plans that suit each individual business and manages risk and volatility.
CRM AgriCommodities co-founder, Ben Bodart, says: “Arable enterprises face a number of risks, from external forces including politics and yield, but what we say to businesses frequently is that ultimately the greatest risk and opportunities come from selling their crops, not only through the decisions that are made to control seed, fertiliser, chemical and overhead spend.”
Ben continues: “So many farming and farm contracting enterprises don’t think about harvest sales until they are sat on the combine harvester; however that’s when prices are traditionally at their lowest due to the market being flooded. We are telling our customers that now is the time to implement selling targets, before helping them to plan a strategy based on factors including cash flow and storage capacity, and then equip them with the correct tools to sell or buy their commodities effectively.”
With this in mind, existing CRM AgriCommodities customers as well as new contacts have attended their one day courses in Cirencester and Cambridge in the first quarter of the year. “Market volatility has increased in the last 10 years, with huge differences between the bottom and top of the market within each campaign – this is a risk to businesses, but also an opportunity if you make best use of the tools available, as well as gaining a better understanding of what is driving prices’’ says Ben.
Anna Leadbetter, partner at Eastern Farms Ltd, a 3,600 acre farming and farm contracting enterprise in Cambridgeshire, is one of several contracting enterprises that have taken advantage of the opportunity to protect their profit margin against the downside of market volatility, whilst ensuring she is marketing the crops of their contracting clients to the best possible effect. Anna said: “I am looking to gain an in-depth understanding of the various grain marketing tools that I am already using, giving me peace of mind that I am realising the best prices for our business and that of our customers.”
As markets become increasingly transparent, both domestically and globally, independent grain market advisors, CRM AgriCommodities, are able to support the grain marketing decisions of their clients with independently scrutinised market advice and intelligence.
Performance and risk management are at the core of CRM AgriCommodities’ strategies. Ben says: “Over the past three years CRM Agri has beaten the AHDB wheat market average consistently and in our experience a lot of farmers find this a big challenge to achieve on a year to year basis. Our aim is to provide a level of consistency and certainty to a farms bottom line and ultimately smooth out the huge variations in year to year financial performance of businesses involved in buying and selling grains.”
CRM AgriCommodities have further grain marketing courses planned for May and June in Cirencester, Lincolnshire and Oxfordshire, and farm businesses are encouraged to get in touch if they would like more information or plan their own course.