In February, wheat growers had the opportunity to learn some basic information about using options as part of their portfolio of risk management tools. The seminar was presented by Allison Thompson, a commodity broker and owner of The Money Farm, a commodity advisory service based in Minnesota. Thompson’s family owns…
Financial presentations are usually popular with growers, but adding fried chicken and jojos from Sonny’s Tavern in Washtucna made February’s Agricultural Marketing and Management Organization’s (AMMO) seminar a slam dunk. Before getting to the victuals, growers heard about estate planning from Corey Brock, financial advice from Tara Wiswall, and an…
This article continues our marketing plan discussion from the February 2026 issue of Wheat Life. The next step in making a marketing plan is to form a market outlook. It is hard to do this objectively because our natural inclination is one of hope — for higher prices — but…
It can be hard to find stability in today’s topsy-turvy ag economy, but an accurate balance sheet could make all the difference. That was the message growers heard in January at a workshop focused on “The Business of Farming,” presented by Jon Paul Driver. Driver is an ag economist with…
Aaron Esser’s message to growers at a workshop in January was fairly simple — the key to controlling weeds is starting clean and staying clean. Unfortunately, the way to accomplish that is anything but. “I’ve been doing this for 28 years now. Everyone remembers Maverick Herbicide, right? When that first…
Cereal rye might not be the answer to Eastern Washington growers’ Italian ryegrass problem, but Morgan Menaker is hoping there might be a few lessons to be gleaned from his work in North Carolina with it. Menaker is the new Washington State University Regional Extension agronomist covering Asotin, Columbia, Garfield,…
Beginning Jan. 1, 2026, almost everyone in Washington state holding a pesticide applicators license will be required to take at least one extra step before recertifying their license in order to meet updated Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards. A notice from the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) was sent…
The articles that I’ve been writing this past year have all been leading up to this one — making a marketing plan (broken into two parts). I’ve covered the basic principles and some of the marketing tools that you need to understand and know how to use. The first thing…
The Washington Association of Wheat Growers (WAWG) staff are putting the finishing touches on the 2026 Agricultural Management and Marketing Organization’s (AMMO) schedule, which will kick off at the end of this month with sessions on herbicide resistance and financial matters in down times. AMMO has been a mainstay of…
This article is my last one covering marketing basics before we put everything together to develop a marketing plan. Unfortunately, it covers a difficult subject that is hard to cover in a short article. First, what is a minimum pricing contract (MPC)? It is a marketing tool that combines a…
