Testing the Marketing Performance of German Wheat Farmers

This paper analyses the marketing performance of wheat farmers in Germany. Wheat sales data from 465 individual farms over a 12‐year period are used to test against different market benchmarks. Market benchmarks are constructed by simulating passive trading agents using regional wheat prices. The results show that farmers' average prices received are lower than for most market benchmarks, suggesting that farmers may have some potential to improve marketing outcomes or may have alternative marketing objectives such as risk reduction or constraints such as financial liquidity and so forth. We also find significant differences in marketing performance between farms, which may also be due to different marketing strategies and/or objectives or constraints.