Grain marketing can feel like guesswork, but it doesn’t have to.
Historical price patterns offer growers a measurable way to improve returns without relying on long-range forecasts.
That was the message from grain analyst Chuck Penner in a recent Roots to Results webinar hosted by Manitoba Crop Alliance. After nearly three decades in the business, his advice is simple: stop trying to predict the future and start working with the odds.
He calls it “planning without prediction.”
Penner compares grain marketing to gambling. In blackjack, professional players win not because they can see the future, but because they know the odds and make disciplined decisions. Grain markets have their own version of that playbook.
Supply and demand constantly push prices above and below their long-term balance. Strong prices usually bring more production; weak prices often lead to acres shifting elsewhere, and over time, markets tend to settle back toward the middle. It’s what economists call “reversion to the mean.”
Layered on top is a pattern farmers see every year: seasonality. Bids behave differently at harvest than in late spring. Rail freight and cash bids follow their own seasonal rhythm. These patterns aren’t perfect, but they repeat often enough to matter.
“The goal isn’t to be right 100 per cent of the time,” Penner said.
“People are terrible at predicting things. Sometimes we guess right, but it’s not a great marketing strategy.”
To demonstrate, Penner dug into Prairie hard red spring wheat bids back to 2012, the first year after the end of the Canadian Wheat Board’s single desk. Averaging those years shows a consistent pattern: wheat tends to bottom at harvest, rally into a smaller November peak and then reach a stronger seasonal high around mid-May.
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