Grain marketing and spaghetti sauce…WAIT, what?

It’s difficult to string these two things together with any commonality, but the duo has more in common than you might think. Before your mind wanders too far, no I’m not just talking about the fact that both are often present at the dinner table. What I’m referring to is that a grain marketing plan and spaghetti sauce are similar in the fact that there is not one specific version that appeals to everyone. Before you say, well that’s true with many things like cars, homes, and cellphones, let me explain.

In the 1970’s a marketing PhD named Howard Moskowitz began working with the several major food brands to conduct consumer studies. During his work he found himself conducting market research for Prego spaghetti sauce. His task; Prego wanted him to find out which attributes of sauce consumers preferred the most so they could make their sauce recipe appealing to the most people and ultimately sell more volume. A simple task? Not quite. The study used dozens of different parameters to evaluate the sauce such as; spiciness, chunkiness, amount of garlic, amount of vegetables, etc.

What was found through the study was not the answer that Prego was looking for, but was far more comprehensive. You see, Prego was looking for the best way to alter their sauce recipe to appeal to the most people. What Moskowitz found was essentially that there is no perfect sauce, only perfect sauces. This of course meaning that people view different sauces in different ways. Some will say the perfect sauce is a chunky one while others say the perfect sauce has to be smooth and spicy. It seems rather obvious now 50 years later but his solution for the company was to expand their product line beyond just 1 sauce. In came the addition of a new chunky variety and $600M of sales later the study certainly paid for itself several times over.

If you’ve been connecting the dots this theory applies perfectly to how we develop grain marketing plans on the farm. Yes things like templates and guidelines can be pretty standard, but other than that there is certainly no such thing as a perfect market plan, but rather perfect markets plans. Each individual farming operation has totally different reasons for selling grain when they do. Some operations need to free up cash in the fall while others can sustain holding the crop in the bin. Some operations only have storage capacity for a portion (or none) of their crop and need to move it for logistical reasons while others have a facility that can hold all of their production. Others are mid-expansion and have a high level of debt to service and can’t afford to take big risk’s while others operate debt-free.

The point is two fold; firstly prices are relative, not absolute, meaning that grain prices should be viewed in relation to your farm goals, not what the neighbor got. Secondly, there should theoretically be no two grain marketing plans that are the same because there are no two farms that are the same. Just like the spaghetti sauces, what seems “perfect” to one person may not be for everyone else.

Garret Munro
Grain Merchandiser
Wanna Make It Farm
613-551-5588

https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2011/03/content-marketing-diversification/