One Easy Way to Find Your Most Profitable Crop in 2014

Before we know it the harsh winter cold will be gone, and we will be making the transition into spring.  The coming of spring brings a multitude of decisions such as which crop to plant, how many acres to plant, and which crops will be most profitable.  Fortunately, you can feel more confident about your decisions by using the Profit Manger feature in Growers Edge. 

With Profit Manager you can enter a crop, your input costs and calculate your breakeven price before your planter even touches the fields.  Profit Manager also allows you to establish profit goals for your crops.  Once you are ready to sell your bushels, Profit Manager can help you identify where to get the best price for your bushels depending on your location, trucking and storage costs, and daily market changes. 

Today, we will focus on adding a crop for 2014 and identifying your breakeven price so that you can make more educated planting decisions, and get the most profit out of your crops in 2014. 

Now sit back, relax, and let Profit Manager do the work for you based on actual data instead of a “best guess.”

Adding A Crop

The first step towards a more profitable 2014 would be to determine your profit potential for the crops that you intend to plant.  This allows you to see which crop brings you the most bang for your buck before ever putting a seed in the ground.  To get started click on the Profit Manger tab on your home screen. 

You will need to add the crop that you are considering planting this year so click on Add New Crop.  You will now see the Add New Crop menu.  This is where you choose which crop you intend to plant, when it will be harvested, and the amount of acres you intend to plant along with your expected yield per acre.  In this example we will be taking a look at corn to be harvested in October 2014.

Near the bottom of the Add New Crop menu you can enter your expected cost per acre and your desired profit goal per acre.   If you would like to itemize your input costs you can click on the Cost Calculator to get more specific.  The cost calculator will automatically calculate your total cost per acre.  You will notice that Profit Manager will also automatically calculate your profit goal per bushel for you based on the data you entered. 

After all of your data is entered, click Create in the bottom right corner.

Viewing Your Production Summary

You should now be looking at the production summary table.  This table gives you a nice overview of where you can deliver to get the best price for your bushels based on your input, trucking, and storage costs.  The table compares your best price to your local price.

On the top row of the table you will see your best price, its location, and how it compares to your local price, and breakeven price.   In the example, the best price is at Flint Hills Resources in Menlo, Iowa.  You will see that the current basis for Flint Hills is -$.25, the cash price is $4.22, and my delivery cost is $.17.  This provides a net price of $4.05, which is $.07 better than the local price and $2.91 better than the breakeven price. 

On the bottom row of the table you will see local price information.  This row shows all of the same items as the row above it.  At the end of this row you will see a written summary about your best course of action based on your data. 

This crop will now be saved in your password protected Growers Edge account for you to look at and edit throughout the year.  You can add and save your other crops as well.  All of the data within Profit Manager is securely protected and is for your use only.

That’s all it takes.  This is an easy data-driven way to determine the most profitable crop for you in 2014.  Play around with it in the winter months before planting season.  Give us any thoughts or questions via Twitter@Growers_Edge.  Stay tuned in the coming weeks as we profile other helpful ways to utilize Profit Manager.