01/07/09 Workshops on grain marketing skills

Washington Ag January 7, 2009 Several grain marketing skills workshops are scheduled for around eastern Washington next week. Dianna Roberts with Washington State University/Spokane County Extension says these workshops will feature Raleigh Curtis, CEO of Mid-Columbia Producers. Roberts: "And his emphasis is to try and help growers separate the emotion of marketing from their bottom line. So what he teaches growers to do is to develop a marketing plan so they market against that rather than marketing against the emotion of what they think they need or what their neighbors have got for their crop. So if they have that goal of their marketing plan, then they are measuring their sales against that and that helps take the emotion out of it." Roberts says Curtis also does very good explanations of forward contracting and tools like puts and calls. The market workshops will be Monday January 12th in Waterville at nine a.m. at the fairgrounds; Tuesday January 13th in Davenport at 8:30 a.m. at the Memorial Hall; Wednesday January 14th in Spangle at 8 a.m. at the Harvester Restaurant and Friday January 16th in Walla Walla at 8:30 a.m. at the Airport. The workshops are free and no registration is required. I'm Bob Hoff.