Storing grain only pays if the expected price gain clears your true cost to carry — storage, interest and shrink. Run your numbers below to see the net per bushel and whether storing beats selling at harvest.
If the net per bushel is positive, the market is paying you to store — but only lock that gain in by hedging (forward contract, futures or HTA), because an unpriced bin still carries price risk. If it's near zero, storing is a gamble that rarely beats taking the cash. If it's negative, the expected gain doesn't cover your carry and you should sell at harvest.
Your 'expected later price' should reflect both the futures move and your local basis. A weak harvest basis that strengthens into spring is often the real reason storage pays — the futures may barely move. Track your local basis against its history before you decide.
AssortIQ's Basis & Storage Advisor does this calculation automatically for every commodity you grow — using live futures, your modeled basis and carry cost — and returns a clear Sell / Store / Hedge call with per-facility weather risk. Preview the live agriculture demo, free.
AssortIQ computes this for every product and store automatically — and tells you what to do about it. Free for 7 days.