Optimal Grain Marketing Revisited

Increasing grain price volatility over the last year has revived the discussion on optimal marketing strategies. Various models of optimal grain marketing have been proposed and simulated in the literature. In this study, an overview of these models is presented and critical aspects are discussed. Optimal strategies are then applied to the wheat market in Germany and Poland. The results show that gains from optimal marketing are rather small and uncertain in the real world, indicating that scientific assistance may be of limited importance when using only publicly available information. However, an understanding of optimization and price-generating processes is likely to improve farmers' decisions – in particular when additional (private) information to improve price forecasts is available.