Sat - 1/2/2016 10:30

"we gain a tremendous amount of market knowledge and experience"
My comment, keep an open mind here,,, they WILL/have made mistakes, you WILL/have made mistake. Their not the Holy Grail

"lack aggressiveness and take sale opportunities for granted."
At times you need to be very aggressive, others dragging your feet,,,, when you figure that out let me know***** With this,,, COP - Cost of production at time in marketing MEANS NOTHING.. IMVSO COP is way over rated with any meetings I go. Point in case, if your COP was 4.69 ZCZ15 with a normal basis and they say to make sale above COP your sitting with NO SALES in a falling market and a high CPI Any pricing I state is FUTURES ONLY unless basis is noted.

"a person can use a marketer to add to there team"
"invest in there own skills and do it themselves"
Here again keep an open mind and learn from them, learn from YOUR mistake and THEIRS.

These are 4 points of your post that stand out to me. Will add learn the letters,

F - Jan
G - Feb
H - March
J - April
K - May
M - June
N - July
Q - Aug
U - Sept
V - Oct
X - Nov
Z - Dec

Old boy 48 did it for me like this, so I'm doing it for NAT. This is the first time I've done from memory after I toss my cheat sheet acouple of week back.
I started learn these in early 2012 (Yaaaa Lars AKA 48 thought it was funny too) when I got my APEX marketing program thru ADMIS. I HAD TO know there letters/symbols to program anything. So I copy/paste/printed them, Norweigin laminated it in scotch tape and had it taped to the edge of my computer screen. Knowing the letter/symbols making it much easier to follow posts and follow a lot of market goodies.

Z - Chicago
MWE- MPL/MGEX wheat
KE - Kansas Wheat
E- Softs /Energy's
ZE - Ethanol- still Chicago
6 - currencies except,,,
EDX is the US Dollar Index
Z is also anything to do with T bonds/T notes all the interest rate goodies, Tommy G has got me looking at these too as I've tended to ignore it, this is and will become more important to you on YOUR farm.
Many know this stuff, many do not.
I've done the SCLT - "Short Crop/Long Tail" enough don't think anyone needs a reminder. THIS WAS AND IS HUGE since the 2012 highs on YOUR farm. The IS part,,, "IS" because of the ramp up in world production of everything off the mega high prices we had.

I guess I just have a passion/HO for markets/ing and enjoy it. Helping others to learn and WILL STAY in with the teaching and educator part and NOT a service or a broker deal. Service part would be a cluster mess and even if you set up a LLC or a S-corp there still risk to me and to my Grampa's home quarter. Brokers are a dollar a dozen anyways, good ones are the key***** that are not trying to make major bucks off YOUR hedge's or options trading to manage the risk on YOUR farm.