Issue 23
Marketing Guide
1999

Prairie Grains is the official publication of the Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers, North Dakota Grain Growers Association, South Dakota Wheat, Inc. and the Minnesota Barley Growers Assocation.

Copyright Prairie
Grains Marketing Guide
Summer 1999

Pro Farmer President to speak
on farm strategies at free producer
meetings during Big Iron

By Tracy Sayler

Dan Manternach, president of Professional Farmers of America, will speak on "Defensive Farm Strategies For Today, Offensive Strategies For 2001 and Beyond," at informational meetings for producers to be held in conjunction with the Big Iron Farm Show.

The meetings will be held at the Double-wood Inn, 3333 13th Ave. in Fargo, ND.  Registration for the first meeting on Wed-nesday, September 15 will begin at 5 p.m.  The meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. and conclude by 8 p.m.  The second meeting will take place the next morning, with registration at 8:30 a.m.  The meeting on September 16 will begin at 9 a.m. and last until about 11:30 a.m.

The meetings are intended to help educate producers about strategies and trends to help improve farm profit opportunities.  The meetings are free, and sponsored by the Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers, North Dakota Grain Growers Association, Minnesota Corn Growers Association, Minnesota Soybean Growers Association, and the Risk Management Education program, administered by the Risk Management Agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Manternach will detail all the ways you can play "defense" through the current crisis in prices: the smart use of LDPs, storage, the basis, and other key hedging strategies.  He'll explain how to maximize help available from various government programs.  He'll also discuss what he calls a "vastly underutilized advantage" producers have over speculators in selling call options to raise extra revenue per bushel at low risk.

He will also detail why the current crisis is really a "metamorphosis" that is going to radically change the whole structure of farming and how farmers see themselves: an evolution from "producers of commodities" to "highly skilled service providers" as the global paradigm for agriculture changes from production-driven markets to market-driven production.

Professional Farmers of America is the largest farm marketing and risk management advisory service in North America, in operation since 1973.  Manternach, an Iowa State University graduate with a degree in journalism and ag economics, and a former manager of a large farrow-to-finish hog operation, joined Pro Farmer in 1977.   He became editor of the Pro Farmer Newsletter in 1980,  chief operating officer in 1992, and president of Pro Farmer in 1996. 

Manternach has conducted hundreds of seminars over the past 22 years and has addressed audiences in Canada, Mexico, China and Australia.  In 1997 he was named Agricultural Communicator of the Year by the Natl. Agricultural Marketing Assn. for his work promoting professionalism in farming.