Government Shutdown Highlights Need for Barchart Grain Prices and Assessments

While the government shutdown is preventing key USDA agricultural reports from being released, Barchart continues to provide price transparency to farmers and agribusinesses. Through the cmdtyIndexes product, Barchart is empowering American farmers and grain processing firms with the data they need to help make the most informed decisions possible during this time of limited government information.

 

“Using our unique workflow solutions for agribusinesses, Barchart never stops collecting and distributing cash prices from over 4,000 grain origination locations across the country,” says Barchart CEO Mark Haraburda.  “Grain buyers, agricultural lenders, crop insurers, and farmers still need accurate and objective third-party prices to keep their businesses running; and our patent pending Grain Price Indexes are proving to be more important that ever.”

 

Calculated for every significant crop producing county in the United States, Barchart’s patent pending indexes help bridge the gaps for grain market participants who need essential market information while the government is shutdown.  Users can access twelve months of cash price fair values going out twelve months via forward curves that are calculated at the County, Crop Reporting District, State, Regional, and National level.

 

“Ag participants heavily rely on USDA reports to access information such as crop production numbers, supply and demand drivers and future stocks to use ratios to operate their business and make critical decisions,” added Haraburda. “While the government shutdown prevents access to these reports and data, farmers and traders can leverage cmdtyIndexes to bring transparency to the commodity markets for corn, soybeans, and wheat through grain bids and price assessments which allows them to operate their business effectively and drive decisions.”