News

Wintery weather bringing basis opportunities

Challenging winter weather is bringing marketing opportunities to some farmers. 

Doug Crop, grain merchandiser with Premier Cooperative in east central Illinois, says the recent stretch of winter storms and bitter cold has caused transportation challenges.

“With the river system, with this cold weather and barges being locked in with the ice, even on the rail with some of the icing and ice storms and winter storms we’ve seen that we haven’t really seen the last couple of winters, it has caused a little bit of slowness in some of the grain movement here just in the last 30 days or so,” he says.

He tells Brownfield the slowdown has brought basis opportunities in some areas.

“We’ve seen basis on the very front end improve because if you can get it to market, they’ll pay it for it because those processors need corn and soybeans every day.”  He says, “And so if you have the ability to take advantage of those basis opportunities, that’s another reason to maybe sell some grain here in the short term.”

Brownfield spoke with Crop at the 2026 Illinois Agricultural Summit in Champaign.

AUDIO: Doug Crop – Premier Cooperative