This report quantifies relationships between reserve activities and State grain prices for corn, sorghum, and wheat and discusses the farmer-owned reserve release mechanisms and some alternatives to the current release mechanism. Release of FOR stocks had little or no measurable effect on lowering State-U.S. monthly grain price differentials for most of the States studied. Tne 5-day average adjusted prices based on a production-weighted average and a reserve-weighted average were shown to differ from the price series based on a simple average (the current method) only by a few cents. Setting release Prices in eacn State by adjusting the national release price by the normal State-U.S. grain price differentials would narrow the differential for States where an abnormally wide differential has been the case during release status.
