Fewer, but larger grain firms in Illinois

Professor Rick Whitacre and other researchers from ISU collected information from 160 managers of country grain elevators across the state.

Whitacre says the number of firms in the industry fell from 425 in 1994 to 250 in 2006. But, he says the storage capacity of elevators has more than doubled over the last 12 years. Whitacre says another finding was that a majority of Illinois elevators offer customers a wide range of marketing tools, like forward cash or delayed pricing, but Whitacre says if farmers have to pay higher prices for grain, they might develop more interest in the marketing tools.

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Illinois State University

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