Beginning January 18 in Lumberton, North Carolina Department of Agriculture is offering a workshop on risk management. Nick Lassiter, NC Department of Agriculture Marketing Division, Grain Marketing and Risk Management Specialist:
“These classes are on hedging and using futures and options to manage away price risks in these markets: corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton; teaching farmers, producers, bankers, grain dealers on a very legitimate way to hedge and again use options to enhance their selling price.”
Lassiter explains that the volatility in the commodity markets is due in part to factors in the larger economic picture around the world:
“The markets now trade on a lot of macro events: currency, European problems Chinese demand for commodities. So there’re so many issues here affecting the markets that you’ve really got to know how to manage away risk and particularly if you are a producer.”
And even with that volatility, Lassiter says that markets can still be managed profitably:
“There’s a lot of opportunity out here, beans are up beans are down and right now the market’s taking a lot out of the new crop corn and the new crop beans and new crop cotton isn’t as high as it was. So, there’s just a great need to track these markets because no more are markets stable, they are up one day and down the next.”
Lassiter explains that information in these workshops could be helpful for a producer to determine distribution of acres for the coming growing season:
“He could more evenly decide if he’s going to do cotton, beans, corn, wheat, and just sit down and do a cost analysis whether it’s going to cost more, or cost less to do cotton, cotton, corn beans, so, yes, it’s all about figuring out a budget and his gross revenue and working out those net profit numbers.”
There are eight locations from the western Piedmont to the coast from January 18th through March 8th to attend one of these workshops:
“I always start down in Lumberton, and I move up to Goldsboro, Greenville, then up to Elizabeth City, and then I go out west for a couple in Stanly County, and the Farm Credit office in Statesville. So, they’re spread fairly evenly across the state.”
For more information or a schedule log onto our website sfntoday.com or ncagr.gov.
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