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Abstract
The basic services offered by country elevators are very similar (purchasing, conditioning and storing grain), country elevators attempt to differentiate themselves from their competition by offering customers a variety of cash grain marketing tools. These tools range from the basic cash forward contracts to minimum price contracts to the so called “new generation grain marketing contracts”. The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a 2010 survey of Illinois country grain elevator managers. The primary objective of the survey was to determine the marketing contracts grain elevator firms operating in Illinois offer their customers and the extent to which these contracts are used by the elevator’s customers.