Josh Grunnet discusses ALCIVIA’s approach of marketing the cooperative’s grain and doing our part to help our members manage their grain marketing opportunities.
If you can figure out these markets, you’re a better man than I, and that’s why on our ALCIVIA co-op talk today we are visiting with Josh Grunett. Josh is the senior grain merchandiser with ALCIVIA down at the main office in Cottage Grove. Josh will tell you the last year or so with everything going on in the world, from supply chain, to Covid, to wars, to weather, you got a tough job.
Yeah, that seems to be almost an understatement some days you hit on all the high points that’s for sure well high points or low points I don’t know what they are.
But Josh, you must look at these through the eye of a merchandiser working for a cooperative like ALCIVIA where farmers best interests have to come into play. How do you do that? What is your business model and your marketing model that you have at ALCIVIA?
Exactly that’s what we look at every day, I try to get the grain through the supply chain to where our destination customers want it and when they want it. To try to provide bids and markets for farmers so they can deliver to our elevators or to whatever market they see fit and deliver when they want it. They often also don’t want to sell it at the current price, and we try to smooth the waters out because as you alluded to with wars, and supply chain issues, and every year we have weather events, which last year was no different, it creates just a lot of choppiness in the marketplace. So, we’re trying to use the co-ops assets, rail, truck, and different supply chain lanes and matching up commodities back and forth to get the farmer the best price and get their grain to where it needs to go trying to think about that first and foremost every day and then navigate all the headwinds that you alluded to.
The challenge isn’t only to identify market trends but get that information down to the farmers so they can make marketing decisions. A good a system is how comfortable are you with a system, at ALCIVIA that you have that contact with the farmers on almost a daily basis with many of them that are active marketers.
You got it, and that’s one thing we pride ourselves on is trying to get that information to the producers through our grain origination team we have here at ALCIVIA.
We’re trying to do that every day with our other divisions, energy, agronomy, to try to understand the big picture for the farmer and try to come to them with answers for all the things they have. You’re spot on with kind of the changes that’s happened in the last couple years starting with some of the pig flu in China, supply chain issues, and then the war. We’re definitely in a high-priced environment and certainly understand these growers which were operating a business three years ago with a certain dollar amount they haven’t changed their acres or their production and all of a sudden, the business that they’re running is as three times the risk or three times the amount of dollars tied up into it just because the price of their commodities that they sell and their inputs have almost tripled.
So, these farmers are trying to manage a little bit riskier business today and we’re trying to help them through that certainly a new time for that but as markets go you look at a historical chart and we have high-price times and low-price times.
That’s one of the things on the horizon is how are we going to manage through a correction in price and how do we not get over our skis there. How do we help our farmers try to navigate that and just keep them up with marketing opportunities, continue to keep them sticking with, their marketing plan, and selling grain out in front, not get caught up in the day-to-day commentary of what’s happening on the news.
Just stick with a good profitable marketing plan and I think the key word there Josh is one of the key words “opportunity.” That’s what ALCIVIA’s grain merchandizing team will give you led by Josh Grunett. Again, Josh is a senior grain merchandiser, stay in contact to make the most of your marketing opportunities Josh granted with us on our ALCIVIA co-op talk program.