I absolutely love this time of year – especially when it’s 70 degrees in Wisconsin, my travel season has slowed down significantly and I can watch more basketball! To make it even better I get to watch arguably the greatest basketball player of all time right here in the middle of the Corn Belt (possibly the best yield Iowa has ever had).

This basketball season was a lot different for me. Instead of sitting on the bench coaching, I watched my youngest daughter play in March Madness. She’s a freshman at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater and they finished up their season Saturday night in the Elite Eight of the Division III NCAA Tournament.

As expected, being a parent you find yourself extremely involved in the team. I was literally emotionally exhausted after their last game, during which I went from nervous to excited to nervous again, to angry and eventually disappointed. I was consumed with their tourney run over the last few weeks. So when I sat down to write about the grain markets, I found myself looking at the correlations between a basketball player and a producer who is selling grain.

I address this correlation from the point of view of the fan since that’s what I get to be now. I look at superstition fan, like the mother of the point guard who had to sit in the same spot and wear the same socks to every game. How many of you producers market grain the same way or same time because it worked last time or that’s the way you’ve always done it?

I am not discounting the use of consistent or successful marketing practices in your marketing plan. I’m talking about the producer that stores his grain because he has a bin or the producer that never uses options because they “didn’t work.” I like to be superstitious at times myself because I don’t want the superstitious person to blame me for the loss. However, we have to have substance behind our decisions. Your decisions on the farm should not be left to chance.

It’s been said many times that basketball is a ‘game of runs.’ A good, fast-pace basketball game always has its moments when the team you are cheering for has repetitive success and in turn it often witnesses the same from the opposition.

Saturday, I went through some of the emotions you producers go through as we were leading by one at half and watched our team get behind by 13 in the third quarter. We went on a 10-0 run in the fourth quarter but couldn’t hold on and the last ‘run’ belonged to the Pioneers (not the Warhawks).

The markets have some memorable runs like the grains in 2012 and more recently the 2020/21 $9 soybean run and $4 corn run. In the middle of some of these runs, you have incredible streaks like we saw in the December ‘23 corn contract in March 2022. Unlike watching the previously mentioned GOAT break the NCAA scoring record, this move didn’t get as much fanfare because it was a slow and steady climb higher for 22 consecutive trading sessions.

Like all good times, we are sure to endure some rough times as well. How do you react when your team cuts the lead to 3 with four minutes left, then makes three season-ending, consecutive turnovers?

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a tool you could use during those good times of the game or even the season to make sure the bad times don’t get too far out of control? Take yourself back to last June when the corn and soybean market took a run back up to the prices we were trading at the first of the year. Did you think about calling a timeout and implementing a strategy that would protect your lead?

I stretched in my comparison between basketball and grain marketing, but we all know how emotional both can be. We have spent a lot of time discussing how emotions can make you indecisive.

As the grains are in the middle of a small run currently, I urge you to take a ‘timeout’ and put a plan together that creates some calls to action.

Each team is a little different, make sure you are putting in the right strategy that fits the strength of your team.

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