By Jonathan LaPorte
The most important goal of any farm business is to be profitable. For farms that raise grain, maximizing profits starts by establishing what good prices are and creating market strategies to secure them. To help farm managers in identifying and securing good prices and market strategies, MSU Extension has launched a new online course on grain marketing.
Grain Gains: An Introduction to Grain Marketing is a self-paced virtual course that will aid you in understanding the fundamental principles involved in grain marketing. It includes a review of the commodity markets, the use of pricing decision tools, and how to develop a marketing plan to fit your specific farm needs. Whether you’re new to marketing or looking for a refresher on key concepts, this course will help build your comfort and confidence in marketing grain for your farm business.
The course includes a mixture of short video presentations, informational articles and hands-on activities to enhance educational learning. Course content is separated into four units with several sub-unit modules:
- Unit 1: Grain Marketing Environment
- Unit 2: Pricing Decision Tools
- Unit 3: Pricing Decision Chart and Market Scenarios
- Unit 4: Creating a Grain Marketing Plan
At the conclusion of the course, participants who visit all content modules and fill out an evaluation for each unit will have access to a Certificate of Completion. Note: Participants are not required to fill out unit evaluations to access course content.
A one-time registration fee of $50 provides lifetime access to the course and its content. Registration instructions can be found on the Grain Gains course homepage.
Source : msu.edu