Grain Inventory Management: Program Overview Purpose: This program is designed to help producers manage and keep track of inventories of grain by land owner, production location, storage site and field. Transactions that can be recorded include: production, forward pricing, sales, purchases, feeding livestock, transfers, LDP, and CCC loan transactions. The user can decide at the level of detail they would like to record the transactions. Reports can be produced by owner of the grain and by storage location. This program is useful for large operators who would like to keep track of grain for a number of land owners and/or by numerous storage locations. Information Needed to Run this Program: The Grain Inventory Management program requires land owner descriptions; storage location descriptions; production, or field, locations (if so desired); amounts of acres planted (per field, per crop); and type of commodities planted. Organization of the Grain Inventory Program: The following diagram illustrates the various linkages among the different sections of the program. When the user’s information is entered, the user automatically becomes a land owner. You can then enter additional land owners (In this chart, 2 are entered). Under each land owner, at least 1 production location (Farm) must be entered. If you would like to allocate production further, you can enter optional field names. Storage locations can be elevators or storage bins located on a production location. Storage locations are not allocated to a specific land owner, meaning you can put a crop produced on land owner 2’s location in any storage location. A storage location must be defined by type of commodity.

Storage Location C (Elevator)

User (Primary Operator/ Land Owner)

Land Owner 1

Production Location 1

(Corn)

Production Location 1 (Soybeans)

Production Location 2

(Corn)

Land Owner 2

Production Location 3

(Corn)

Storage Location A

(Corn)

Storage Location B (Soybeans)

Field 1 (Corn)

Field 2 (Corn)

Navigating the Program: When the program is opened, the Main Menu will appear. Use the Main Menu to Maintain Lists, Enter Transactions, and View Reports. There is a “Main Menu” button on each page that automatically returns you to the Main Menu. Each button on this menu will be explained as to where it takes you and how the collected information is used.

As a means of explaining this program, an example of Phil Farmer’s operation is used. Phil’s entries are explained in each section. User Information: The information entered here is for the main user of the program. Once entered here, this user information is automatically entered as a land owner. In the screen below, Phil Farmer is the user of this program. His mailing address has been filled in.

Land Owners: The information entered here represents the land owners involved with the user’s farming operation. If a farm operator was entered in the user information section, the user’s information will already be here. Even if the operator owns no land, leave the information. Land owner information will be necessary in generating reports and when entering transactions. Acres of land for each land owner will be identified in the “production location” section.

To enter new information: First click on the empty option button. Enter the information in the blanks and then click on “Enter/Change Value”.

To change information: First click on the option button of the landowner to display the information you would like to change. Next, change the appropriate information in the blanks. Once corrections are made, click on “Enter/Change Value”. To delete information: Click on the option button for the landowner you would like to delete and click the “Delete” button.

In the example on the left, Phil Farmer has entered information for the land owner in his current farming operation: Jim Jones. Phil’s information was automatically listed as a landowner when he completed the “user information” section. To view a land owner’s information, click/highlight the land owner’s name. For example, “Jim Jones” is highlighted in the “existing land owners” box and his landowner information appears above it.

Storage Locations: Enter the locations where grain is stored. To enter a grain bin, name the storage location by the location. For example, if grain is stored at the home farm, name the location “home farm”. You may check “Off farm” if the location is an elevator. When this button is checked, there is no maximum capacity associated with this location. Next, chose the type of commodity for this storage location. The location name will be stored as a combination of its name and commodity. For example, “Home Farm: Corn”. You may also enter a beginning inventory and a capacity (when needed) for the location. Also, a shrink calculation may be chosen. The shrink calculation is used to calculate dry bushels on the storage reports. You may choose to use the default formula or enter a specific factor.

Production Locations: Enter each location where grain is produced. There must be at least one production location for each land owner. A production location can be thought of as a farm and it can have more than one commodity assigned to it. If the production location is not 100% owned by the user, it must be assigned to a land owner. Production locations can be divided into individual fields in the “planted acres” section. Since reports will be available by production location, the number of production locations will determine the amount of detail.

Phil stores his grain at two locations: Cornland Coop and the Home Farm. This program requires that a storage location entry includes a description of the commodity stored there. Since Phil stores corn and soybeans at similar locations, he recorded four storage location entries. For example, he stores both corn and soybeans at the Home Farm. This represents two storage locations: Home Farm-Corn and Home Farm-Soybean.

Phil produces grain at two locations: Home Farm and Jones Farm. For each farm, he specified the total number of acres rented/owned, his operator share, and the land owner’s name. In the example to the left, the Jones Farm is highlighted. Phil farms 400 acres at this location and has an operator share of 50%. Jim Jones’ name is highlighted as the land owner.

Planted Acres: The commodity and acreage designations for each production location are entered here. Each production location can have more than one commodity associated with it. First, select the production location then select the commodity followed by number of acres. Click the “Enter/Change Value” button. To add another commodity, repeat the same steps. To allocate the production of grain in more detail, select the field checkbox. This allows you to specifically name sections of a field.

Commodities: This section collects information about the commodities produced by the farming operation. For each commodity, enter the name, density, and moisture at harvest. Be sure to specify all varieties of crops grown. For example, No. 2 yellow corn, high oil corn, STS soybeans, and Roundup Ready soybeans.

For each production location, Phil must enter the commodity grown and total tillable acres. For example, at the Jones Farm, Phil plants 200 tillable acres of corn.

For each commodity, Phil must enter the density and harvest moisture content. For example, Phil entered a corn density of 56 lbs/bushel and 15.5% moisture.

Entering Transactions: By clicking on the “Enter New” button on the main menu, the user may enter a transaction. There are ten available types of transactions: shrink/overage, transfer, production, sales, purchase, fed, LDP, forward priced, other price contracts, and CCC (under loan). Each transaction requires different information. The information available to include for transaction records are: date, commodity, storage location, production location, transaction type, field/tract, price per bushel, owner/operator share information, number of bushels, ticket #/description, and moisture content.

The October 10, 2002, transaction on the left is recording production of corn. The corn was produced at the Jones Farm and stored at the Cornland Coop. Phil Farmer and Jim Jones share the crop 50/50. There were 30,000 bushels produced and stored in this transaction.

When the “Transaction” box is exited, a table similar to the one below appears. It records all of the transactions entered. This table below shows the production transactions for Phil Farmer’s operation.

Queries: The “Queries” button on the main menu allows the user to query or search for various transactions. For example, you can search for all grain that has been LDP’d or all grain that has been LDP’d at a certain storage location or for a certain production location. To run a query, you may choose from the following criteria: storage location, commodity, production location, date, field name, bushels, price, transactions to query, description, and moisture. In the screen below, Phil Farmer would like to know how much corn was produced at the Jones Farm and stored at the Cornland Coop. He selected Cornland Coop as the storage location, corn as the commodity, Jones Farm as the production location, and Production as the transaction to query.

Phil Farmer’s query produced the following report. It shows that both he and Jim Jones have 15,000 bushels of corn stored at the Cornland Coop.

Reports: The program generates three reports. The reports can be sorted and printed by owner of the grain (and by commodity), by storage location (and by commodity), as well as with a production summary. To view a report, select the appropriate button on the main menu. Inventory: Select Owner: This report displays the inventory of a crop for a specific owner or all owners. In the screen below, Phil Farmer’s corn inventory is displayed. In this example, only production data have been entered. The report shows that Phil Farmer owns 33,000 bushels of corn that were initially produced and are still in inventory.

Inventory: Select Location: This report displays a summary of transactions that occur at a specific storage location. In the screen below, the Cornland Coop’s corn transactions are shown. Again, in this example, only production data have been entered. The report shows that Phil Farmer and Jim Jones both have corn stored at the coop.

Production Records: This report displays a summary of the production records for the user’s farming operation. The report includes each production location, commodity grown, description of field (if entered), and the user’s share of the acres. The report also displays the production totals for each location as well as yield per acre. The report lists both wet and dry bushels, using the moisture content entered and displayed in the upper right hand corner. In the report below, Phil Farmer’s production records are shown. It is important to note that only his share of the acreage is shown. For example, he planted 200 acres of corn at the Jones Farm; however, he has a 50/50 contract with Jim Jones. Thus, this production report shows that Phil only has 100 acres of corn.