Recent Survey Looks At Marketing Strategies: January 1998 Soybeans Today

Soybeans Today January 1998

Recent Survey Looks at Marketing Strategies

By Mary Freeman

Soybean producers and elevator operators will be able to see what marketing strategies their colleagues are using thanks to a project funded by the Soybean Promotion Board.

Co-investigators on the project are Extension Marketing Specialist Nathan Smith and Dr. David Neff, an associate professor for agricultural economics and agribusiness at the University of Arkansas.

Smith says results of a two-part survey should be available in January. One was heading to hundreds of soybean producers, the other to some 200 elevators.

"The goals are to find out what marketing strategies farmers are using for soybeans and what is the most predominant or most popular strategy in the state," he says. "We’d like to know how and where they’re getting their information on marketing."

The survey will focus on 1996 and 1997 soybean production.

Smith and Neff hope the survey will help give better focus to marketing trends.

"I think there’s an increased use of cash marketing contracts over the last few years and also increased use of storage," Neff says. "The reason for increased use of contracts is there are more of them available. The storage issue--there’s been some good

money available to build storage in the past few years."

"Another purpose of the project is to come up with basis information for the producers," Neff says. "We’ve got basis tables and charts for six different eastern Arkansas regions that will be available on the Internet as well as in Extension publications."

Basis is the difference between the cash and futures market price.

With a table of basis figures, "a producer will be able to point to his region of the state and look up the historical basis for the past three to five years. It’ll get them started on their own basis history," Smith says.

"Tracking basis will give you a signal on when it’s a good time to sell or hold on," Smith says.

That’s no small decision in a state that was the nation’s eighth largest grower of soybeans in 1996. In 1997, based on acres planted, Arkansas moved to seventh place. Iowa was No. 1, Illinois was second, followed by Minnesota, Indiana and Missouri.

Information on agricultural statistics is available at www.uaex.edu/agecon/agecon.asp or www.uark.edu/depts/agriecon.

Soybeans Today January 1998
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For additional information about any board-related activity contact:

Arkansas Soybean Promotion Board
ATTN: Brandy Carroll
P.O. Box 31
Little Rock, AR 72203-0031
Phone: 501-228-1268

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