The Manitoba Canola Growers Association is trying to entice canola growers into being smarter.
It’s doing that with a game that producers can play on-line, with no money down and a prize for the winners.
“We’re trying to encourage farmers to do some marketing,” said MCGA executive director Bill Ross about the Canadian Canola Commodity Challenge.
“Farmers have many options out there, but we find there probably aren’t a lot of guys using them. A lot of guys are scared of them. A lot of guys just don’t know how to use them.”
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The canola commodity challenge game is on the MCGA website. To find it, go to www.producer.com and type “challenge game” in the go box. It allows producers to experiment with various ways of marketing a canola crop. It’s a computer simulation, so there is no real risk.
Farmers can experiment with futures, options, fixed basis, deferred delivery and other marketing approaches to see what kind of results they can achieve.
Ross said the simulation program allows producers to try out the various marketing methods they may have read about but not wanted to risk money on.
“Once they get comfortable doing it in a game-like atmosphere, it will be easy to take that back to the farm,” said Ross.
Often growers who have no marketing plan end up selling their crops in the bottom third of the price range, because everyone is trying to sell at the same time.
So far more than 120 farmers have used the program. It is designed for dial-up users, so slow
rural phone lines shouldn’t be a problem.
