Marketing peanuts can be challenging for producers due to the lack of a futures market and relatively concentrated first buyers. This makes it even more important for producers to evaluate their cost of production to help control input costs and make strategic risk management decisions.
According to the USDA Commodity Cost and Returns for peanuts, the cost of production increased in 2022 and has stayed at this new higher level, much like other commodities. Figure 1 shows the 2024 forecasted operating cost of production at $336/ton. This covers such items as seed, chemicals, fuel, repairs, and interest. Meanwhile, allocated overhead includes general farm expenses that are allocated to the peanut operation, such as labor, the cost of machinery, and the opportunity cost of land. When including allocated overhead, the total cost of production is forecasted for 2024 at $598/ton, a 28% increase from 2014. These costs are slightly lower than the $648/ton total cost peak forecasted for 2023, but nowhere near the levels seen in earlier years.
Source: Calculated using annual yields and costs of production from USDA Economic Research Service Commodity Costs and Returns, November 2023. 2023 yields are based on November USDA estimates. 2024 yields are an average of the previous five years.
In a Southern Ag Today article on December 4, 2023, it was shown that peanut prices are continuing to rise since the low in 2015. It was noted that the USDA expects prices to be about $550/ton for the 2023-2024 marketing year. This is still below the cost of production shown above.
The farm bill provides for a safety net for peanut producers with base acres through the ARC/PLC and Marketing Loan programs. These programs have statutory price levels that have not changed since the 2014 Farm Bill. For the PLC program, the statutory reference price is $535/ton. While the 2018 Farm Bill allowed for an escalation through the Effective Reference Price, that has not triggered for peanuts. Meanwhile, the Marketing Loan has been set at a rate of $355/ton. This does not provide a safety net at these higher cost levels.
While Congress continues to debate the next farm bill, producers need to look at alternative marketing strategies and other ways to help mitigate the rising costs of growing peanuts. Cross hedging is a popular marketing strategy used to mitigate risk, but there is little empirical evidence that it is effective for peanuts. That leaves contracting, cost control, and crop insurance as the most viable risk management tools for peanut producers.
Marketing plans are typically made up of two parts: pre-harvest marketing, in which producers market the crop prior to harvest, and post-harvest marketing, in which producers sell bushels during harvest or unmarketed bushels in storage after harvest. In this article, we discuss how historical pre-harvest price movements can be used as a guide for producers when creating their pre-harvest marketing plans. Figures 1 and 2 contain boxplots that show the distribution of historical percent changes in the harvest-time futures prices for soybeans (November contract) and corn (December contract) from December to each subsequent month using data which spans from 2009-2023. Boxplots are helpful as they allow us to analyze the seasonality of prices and the associated price volatility across the year. In the boxplots, the X represents the average November soybean contract price percent change from December to the corresponding month. The bottom whisker represents the lowest 25% of price changes, the box represents the next 50% of price changes, and the top whisker represents the highest 25% of price changes. The line separating the box represents the median; 50% of observations lie below, and 50% lie above. The black dots represent outliers, values at the extreme end of the data.
Figure 1 indicates that the highest average soybean price occurs in July, where the price is approximately 5% higher than in December; however, the median is approximately 0%, indicating that the price is only higher 50% of the time. On the contrary, the month of June has a slightly lower average price increase at 4%, but less downside risk. An interesting result for soybeans is the outliers in February and March, corresponding to the Brazilian soybean harvest window. We hypothesize that Brazilian crop or harvest issues can provide U.S. soybean producers with opportunities to market grain crops at abnormally high prices with respect to the December price.
Figure 2 indicates the summer months again provide the highest average corn price change, with June being the highest on average. We again find that with higher price potential comes more price variability. The May and June median price changes are near 0%, indicating equal upside and downside price risk. After June, the median becomes more negative, indicating that prices are likely to drop with expected new crop production. In May, the upside price potential ranges from 0% to 35%, while the downside ranges from 0% to -15%.
Figures 1 and 2 put price risk in perspective as it pertains to pre-harvest marketing plans. On average, prices are higher in the summer than in December; however, these higher prices carry a significant amount of downside risk. For example, if a producer is trying to decide if they should market corn in May. The boxplots would indicate that if the price is 15% greater than the December price, price movements have been greater than at least 75% of price movements historically. Creating a solid signal to lock in the higher price. These charts may also indicate the usefulness of option contracts, such as establishing a futures market price floor through purchasing a put option or building an option spread strategy. The summer months have wide trading ranges, by using an option producers can lock in a price floor but leave themselves open to upside potential.
Sugarcane and sugarbeet production are highly specialized processes with a unique set of production costs. These crops are grown in limited geographical regions of the country with sugarcane being grown in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas and with sugarbeets being mainly cultivated in the Red River Valley, upper Midwest, Great Plains, Northwest, and in California. Sugarcane is a perennial crop often grown in cycles of between four to six years. Conversely, sugarbeets are often grown in rotation with grain, oilseed, and pulse crops, which typically limits the planting of sugarbeets to once every four years for a particular piece of land.
Given that the commodity program safety net for sugarcane and sugarbeet growers is mainly provided through the marketing loan program, this article evaluates sugarcane and sugarbeet production costs relative to loan rates established in the 2018 Farm Bill. Specifically, production costs of Louisiana sugarcane and that of sugarbeets grown in Minnesota and North Dakota are compared for the last several years, subject to available data.
In this analysis, Louisiana sugarcane production costs represent the weighted costs per acre for a five-year crop rotation with harvest through stubble, as defined by the LSU AgCenter. Cost data for sugarbeets was obtained from the University of Minnesota FINBIN database which encompasses production and cost data for many sugarbeet-producing farms in Minnesota and North Dakota (the Red River Valley).
Since 2018, production costs for sugarcane in Louisiana have risen substantially. The main drivers behind these increases have been mainly due to a 130% increase in the cost of fertilizer and an 82% increase in the cost of diesel fuel since 2018 (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Selected direct production expenses for Louisiana sugarcane per acre, 2018 to 2023.
For Louisiana sugarcane producers, the total cost of production has risen from $551 to $858 per acre over the period of 2018-2023. That is an increase of over $307 per acre since 2018. A unique feature of sugarcane’s cost structure is the acquisition and maintenance of highly specialized farm equipment (e.g., combine billet harvester, planting wagons). Increases in machinery costs coupled with higher interest rates have resulted in overall machinery ownership costs increasing by 55% over the past five years (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Comparison of Louisiana sugarcane production costs, 2018 versus 2023.
Note: FC is defined as fixed cost of machinery ownership and OH is defined as general farm overhead expense.
As a result of the increase in production costs, the average breakeven selling price for raw sugar has increased from 17.2 cents per pound in 2018 to 28.2 cents per pound in 2023, an increase of 64% (or 11 cents) as noted in Table 1.
Table 1. Cost of production for raw sugar in Louisiana, 2018 to 2023.
Referencing the uniqueness of the crop, sugarcane must first be processed into raw sugar and then transferred to another facility where it is converted to refined sugar. Sugarbeets omits this intermediate step because after it undergoes initial processing, the finished product is refined sugar. Because of this difference in processing techniques, the production costs for sugarcane are calculated per pound of raw sugar while the cost of sugarbeets are calculated on a per-ton basis.
While produced on a slightly larger area than sugarcane, the cost structure for sugarbeets can differ from that of sugarcane based on geographical differences. In the Red River Valley region, the average total cost of production per acre for sugarbeets has increased from $1,099 in 2018 to $1,350 in 2022, an increase of $250 per acre. Large drivers of the increase in production costs were chiefly attributable to a 66% increase in the price of fertilizer and a 37% increase in the price of diesel fuel (Figures 3 and 4). Like sugarcane, sugarbeets have their own set of unique costs (e.g., specialized equipment costs for carts, defoliators, and harvesters), which is reflected in the cost increase over the observed period.
Figure 3. Selected direct production expenses for sugarbeets Minnesota and North Dakota, 2018 to 2022.
Figure 4. Comparison of sugarbeet production costs in Minnesota and North Dakota , 2018 versus 2022.
Note: FC is defined as fixed cost of machinery ownership and OH is defined as general farm overhead expense.
Sugarbeet producers have seen their cost-per-ton estimates increase substantially from the 2018 crop year. The average direct cost per ton of sugarbeets produced has increased from $31.73 in 2018 to $42.19 per ton in 2022. However, the highest cost occurred in 2019, when the average cost of production per ton was $48.21. When comparing the lowest cost of production per ton ($31.73) to the highest ($48.21), this represents an increase of over $16 per ton (52%). Likewise, the total cost plus overhead per ton has increased from $40.07 to $60.25, an increase of greater than $20 per ton (Table 2). The increase in production cost per ton in the 2019 crop year was caused by flooding that disrupted planting followed by a freeze during the harvesting of sugarbeets. This disruption reduced3.50.1- sugarbeet yields causing production costs-per-ton to sharply increase. Since that time, sugarbeet costs have displayed precipitous peaks and valleys.
Table 2. Cost of production per ton for sugarbeets in all States, 2018 to 2022.
The 2018 Farm Bill sets the raw cane sugar loan rate at 19.75 cents per pound and the refined beet sugar loan rate at 25.38 cents per pound (USDA, 2023). This article provides information that could be useful in Farm Bill discussions regarding sugarbeet and sugarcane loan rates. Since the enactment of the 2018 Farm Bill, costs of production for sugar have drastically increased—by about 30% for sugarbeets (2018-2022) and by about 38% for sugarcane (2019-2023).
References
Deliberto, M. and B. Hilbun (2023). Projected Costs and Returns for Sugarcane in Louisiana. Louisiana State University AgCenter, Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, A.E.I.S. Report No. 362, January 2023.
FINBIN (2023). Center for Farm Financial Management, University of Minnesota. http://finbin.umn.edu . Date Accessed: November 10, 2023.
As we proceed through the 2023/2024 marketing year, crop prices are expected to decrease generally compared to the previous marketing year. While prices of corn, cotton, soybeans, wheat, sorghum, and rice are expected to drop this marketing year, peanut prices are expected to increase to a marketing-year average of $550 per ton, reaching their highest level in over a decade according to the USDA (Figure 1). This would be the fourth straight year of increased peanut prices and a $14 per ton increase from 2022/2023. While the other crops are seeing increases in their ending stocks, peanut stocks look to remain stable.
Figure 1: Peanut Prices by Marketing Year
Data Source: USDA Economic Research Service. Oil Crops Outlook: November 2023.
On the production side, yields are projected at 3,740 lb. per acre, which would mark the lowest level since 2016. This would fall well below the 10-year average of 3,942 lb. per acre. Severe drought in 2023 across the predominant peanut-producing regions of Alabama and Florida — two of the top-four peanut-producing states— has led to forecasted 24% and 26% yield decreases compared to 2023 for those two states, respectively. This comes in a year that was expected to achieve a significant boost in peanut production, due to a 16% increase in planted acres. Now, peanut production is only projected to increase by 8% over last year and reach 2.99 million tons.
Accompanying the bullish production estimates, peanut demand is also looking strong. This is driven by a 4.5% projected increase in peanut exports and a 3.7% increase in domestic food use. If production and disappearance projections are realized, this would mean carryover at the end of the 2023/24 marketing year would remain almost unchanged at 1.02 million tons, providing support for continued strong peanut prices.
Figure 2: Peanut Production, Disappearance, and Ending Stocks by Year
Data Source: USDA Economic Research Service. Oil Crops Outlook: November 2023.
At the end of the calendar year, many producers prepay for inputs to reduce taxes and potentially avoid higher prices in the spring. To prevent the risk of profit margin reductions (from a decline in commodity prices), producers may want to consider obtaining downside price protection for a portion of their anticipated 2024 production at the same time as inputs are purchased. One strategy is purchasing put options on the yield required to pay for the input purchased, and carrying the put option position until the projected crop insurance price is determined.
Table 1 shows a simple budget for Tennessee corn production (target yield of 180 bu/acre), and the number of bushels of production required to cover the specified expense at different corn prices. This is computed as the cost of the production input per acre divided by the harvest price. For example, a fertilizer expense of $181.80/acre would require 40.4 bu/acre to cover the fertilizer expense at a corn price of $4.50/bu, 38.3 bu/acre at a corn price of $4.75/bu, or 36.4 bu/acre at a corn price of $5.00/bu. A producer can mitigate financial risk by using put options to cover the amount of production needed to cover that input cost, thus bridging the price risk gap until crop insurance prices and revenue protection are determined.
A producer with 260 acres of corn, seeking to set a futures price floor at $4.75/bu and provide sufficient price protection on the bushels needed to pay the fertilizer expense, could purchase two put options (5,000 bushels each covering 260 acres x 38.3 bu/acre = 9,958 bushels). On November 21st a $5.20 December 2024 corn put option could be purchased for 45 cents, setting a $4.75 futures floor. The put option could be carried until March 1, at which time projected crop insurance prices are established and revenue protection for the upcoming crop are determined. At that time, the option purchaser can evaluate the price protection their crop insurance provides and decide to maintain the put option position or exit. If the December corn futures contract is below $4.75, the purchaser can maintain the put option position for additional price protection or exercise the option for a financial gain. If the December corn contract is above $4.75, the purchaser can maintain the position or exit the put option position and recoup a portion of the premium based on the time value remaining.
Producers should examine times during the year when they are exposed to price and financial risk and seek strategies to mitigate those risks. Using put options can be an effective tool to remove some price risk when prepaying for fertilizer, and other inputs, until crop insurance prices and revenue protection are determined.
Table 1. Tennessee Corn Budget for 2024 and Number of Bushels to Cover a Specified Expense at Three Corn Prices
