THE PRIVATE SECTOR APPROACH TO GRAIN MARKETING: THE CASE OF AGRICULTURAL MARKET ADVISORY SERVICES

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pricing performance and behavior of market advisory services in corn and soybeans. Data on corn and soybean net price received for advisory services, as reported by the AgMAS Project, are available for the 1995, 1996 and 1997 marketing years. Performance test results suggest that, on average, market advisory services exhibit a small ability to "beat the market". This conclusion is somewhat sensitive to the type of performance test and market benchmark considered. The predictability results provide little evidence that future advisory service pricing performance can be predicted from past performance. Marketing profiles identify three marketing "styles": i) "scale-up" sales, ii) selective hedging and iii) "speculative" hedging. Advisory services tend to follow the same approach across crop years.Agribusiness,