Noland - 9/2/2014 23:23

Sure. I market 20% of next year's crop before I harvest this one. Be up to 40% before I put it in the ground. Take two nation wide trips and market according to gut on the rest. I am young and don't have the pleasure of holding grain and waiting it out. The wisest and most successful farmers I visit across the nation have very little storage or have it out of the bins by march. I also market out a couple years. For example. I have 150% of 2015 sold and 100% sold for 2016. For 2014 it was all sold by the time we combined the last field last year. I am not bragging. I am only oversold because I was not willing to pay prices for land that didn't make sense with current cash flows. One of the largest land owners I have ever met told me you need to know when to hold them and know when to throw them. He also told me pennies equal nickles, nickles equal dimes, and dimes equal dollars. Unless you have endless piles of money or cahoots bigger than watermelon I would advise not to sell more than insurance or at most 80% of anticipated crop before September. With livestock we do not use our own crops. All livestock is marketed and inputs are bought by the time the calves are 300-400 lbs. We do use some options but forward contracting is an absolute must. I have seen and heard of way too many operations going belly up because of it. Ok. That's all I got.