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Employers have an opportunity to use the additional time created by the one-year delay in the employer shared responsibility (also referred to as the play or pay) mandate to gauge ACA compliance readiness.
Merchandising soybeans has been a tough challenge everywhere for the last three years. Futures have seldom showed more than a token carry — and often had steep inverses. Yet elevators can’t ship as much at harvest (or soon after) as they buy.
The last of seven major proposed rules mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), the sanitary transportation rule is a real straggler in more ways than one.
Edison had numerous techniques which he employed to enhance, improve and boost his productivity. We have selected and paraphrased several on the following pages. (Thoughts on Edison’s creative techniques were gathered from Wily Walnut, a website whose motto is “Meet the Genius in Your Brain”; see http://wilywalnut.com.
The last few weeks of November saw great promise on Farm Bill passage fade into familiar skepticism, as issues related to both policy and politics continued to impede progress of the conference committee. House Republican leadership had set a deadline of Dec. 13 for Farm Bill conferees to bring a conference- negotiated bill to the House floor, a deadline that seemed all but out of reach when conference committee leaders halted their negotiations before the Thanksgiving break without...
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What kid hasn’t played “King of the Hill” at some point — battling to the top, and then having to defend their hard-won turf? U.S. grain exporters have faced that same battle in recent years even as global consumption, production and imports around the world have climbed sharply. Let’s face it: The U.S. has lost our position at the top of the hill in most exports. Chart 1 shows that exports of corn, soybeans and wheat have been nearly flat overall for 20 years, while foreign exports have...
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Today’s business environment is more competitive than ever. As a successful manager in the feed and grain industry, you are actively responding to the many demands of this ever challenging business environment, which likely includes a multifaceted marketing program. It is easy to become focused on all of the immediate decisions that need to be made (such as approving the latest update to your website; finalizing the price quote that is due within the hour, etc.). In this column we invite...
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Frank Sinatra crooned that love is lovelier the second time around. But any repeat of the Drought of 2012 was less than welcome this year and it continues to impact grain flows and basis even as combines roll on the 2013 crop. The good news is all signs indicate elevators will end up with around 3 billion more bushels this season: Beginning US carryover stocks of are lower this year but total production is forecast to be around 3.4 billion bushels higher. (Corn, soybeans, sorghum, wheat,...
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Multiple consumer and industry groups have sought to intervene in the suit in favor of the revised rules. The Plaintiffs have filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, seeking to halt the implementation of the rule before it causes further damage to the industry. The motion was denied on Sept. 11, 2013. In denying the Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, the Court held that the Plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits or irreparable harm. The...
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One weekend, three brothers were building a new deck at one of the brother’s home. (One of the three brothers is co-author of this column.) Running out of weekend to finish the project, tensions started to build as reality began to set in. Then, it started to rain (we are not making this up!)—slowing progress even more. The brother with the least construction experience was working as fast as he could placing joists to support the deck. Unfortunately, he was not performing the task in the...
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On July 30, a very significant event occurred for Feed & Grain magazine and the American Farm Bureau Federation. While technically an acquisition of the former by the American Farm Bureau, I rather like to think of it as a marriage of two very strong brands that are deeply-rooted in the agriculture industry. While each in its own right is important to the agriculture community, both Feed & Grain and the American Farm Bureau Federation are strengthened because of the combination.
So, who...
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Futures Trading 101 tell us a futures spread is the price difference between two futures contracts. A futures carry is when the deferred contract price is higher than the more nearby month. A futures inverse, or an inverted market, is when the nearby price is higher than a deferred price. Futures spreads can be bought or sold, and have a daily price limit equal to double the daily limit move of the underlying futures.
An important principle of futures spreads is that with storable...
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Colin Powell said, “Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.” In his book, It Worked for me in Life and Leadership, Powell shares with us rules that he developed, concepts that he found effective, and stories of his life that impacted him and his leadership style.
Good leaders...
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“We can’t buy corn for anything these days,” Mark said to his scale operator, Larry. “If it’s tough in June, what will it be like by August? Is there any corn left out there?”
Merchandisers and managers across large parts of the country are struggling to buy old-crop corn and soybeans, despite record high basis values. Accumulating a train-load quantity seems a distant memory for many managers, and a few soybean crush plants are already shutting down until harvest due to tight soybean...
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A grain dust explosion at a facility may be the most traumatic event a grain company will ever face. In the first hours after the explosion occurs, there needs to be a team in place to address all of the issues that literally will be coming at the company in rapid fire succession.
All of the following recommendations should be ready to be implemented even when the fires may still be burning. Some of these are common sense observations. Others may be issues a grain company has never...
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