Grain marketing questions and answers took the stage Thursday for the final seminar at the Indiana/Illinois Farm Equipment Show with experts Jim Riley and Tom Fritz (pictured) offering the insights. One of those insights was the strong suggestion to get a commodity broker to help you navigate the increasingly rough waters of grain marketing.
Fritz is with EFG Group, founded in 1991 to help brokers work with their customers. Fritz says using a good broker is a no-lose situation, “because all he’s going to do is help you protect yourself, and that’s what it’s all about. How many years have we seen really good prices and the producer thought it was going to go even higher. So I’m not going to do anything and the next thing prices start rolling over and he says well I’m going to sell the next rally or get some protection on the next rally and that next rally never comes. So I think that it’s real important that you work with a man who can take some of the emotion out of it.”
The most successful people he has observed in his many years in the business have the greatest amount of discipline, and emotions tend to upset discipline.
“So if you’ve got a broker working for you, number one he’s not going to have the emotion that you have, and number two, because he doesn’t have the emotion he’ll be able to employ better discipline. Here you’ve got a guy who’s literally working for you.”
He added more and more is happening all the time in the grain markets, “and for the individual to try and stay on top of it all in addition to your fulltime job of farming, it’s very difficult to do.”
Fritz says life is much easier when you have help, and the newest generation of farmers understands that about marketing.
“They’re much more in tune to the idea of just how complex grain marketing can be because of all of the outside influences that we have, and I think he realizes he can’t do it alone. I see more and more people going to people like Jim Riley for that help.”[audio:https://www.hoosieragtoday.com//wp-content/uploads//2012/12/importance-of-a-commodity-broker.mp3|titles=importance of a commodity broker]