Durchholz reflects on 43 years

BLOOMINGTON – The retiring senior market analyst with AgriVisor in Bloomington has some advice for agricultural producers: make sales when opportunities arise.

Dale Durchholz hopes farmers become more sensitive to marketing by at least locking in some profits when they can.

“You have 15 minutes anymore to make a decision to sell something,” Durchholz said. “Markets move fast now.”

After 33 years wandering around the Illinois Farm Bureau building and 43 years in the business, Durchholz is retiring from his full-time position.

“I am going to still continue to do some things with the markets but just on a less hectic basis I guess would be the way to put it.”

Looking back on his career of analyzing the markets, Russia comes to mind. That country was the top world wheat importer in the 1970s and they are the top world wheat exporter today.

“We’ve had so much explosive growth in areas outside of the U.S. especially when we look at South America,” Durchholz explained.

The entire pricing structure of the market has changed during Durchholz’s time. There was also a more diverse crowd speculating the markets in the 1970s and 1980s. Prices didn’t want to race one way or another. Today, both the bull and bear markets run until they burn out since there is so much speculative money aggregated in the big funds.

“From a farmer’s perspective, when those sell opportunities come, it really doesn’t give you as much time to make a decision,” added Durchholz.

Current marketing challenges include trying to figure out the size of this year’s crops. USDA reduced corn acres but not soybeans this week. We likely won’t know much information until the combines roll this fall.

“They don’t have any hard data to back up anything they are saying or doing.”