Indiana corn, Indiana risk
Indiana is one of the top corn-producing states, and most of its crop prices off the Chicago market minus a local basis set by elevator competition, river and rail logistics, and processor demand. A Hoosier grower's revenue risk has two parts: the futures price, which moves on national and global supply and demand, and the basis, which moves on local conditions. Both matter, and they do not move together.
The exposure window is long. Inputs are committed by spring; the crop is priced whenever you sell it - for many farms, in the harvest glut when basis is weakest and every bin in the county is emptying at once. That timing mismatch between committed costs and unpriced revenue is the problem hedging exists to solve.
Pricing ahead without margin calls
The standard futures hedge - selling corn futures against expected bushels - protects the price but drags a margin account along with it: daily settlement, and margin calls when the market rallies after you sell. Those cash calls arrive mid-growing-season, exactly when farm liquidity is committed to the crop, and they have ended many sound hedges prematurely.
CCS's approach prices bushels forward with no margin calls and no daily settlement, structured around your delivery window and a conservative share of expected production. The Scale-In program builds that coverage in stages across the season rather than betting the year on one pricing day - which suits how Indiana corn actually gets grown and sold. Being headquartered in Indianapolis, CCS's brokers work in the same basis country their farm clients do.
A working Indiana marketing habit
The growers who do this well over decades share a pattern: know the cost of production per bushel, price a first slice when the market pays a margin over it, add coverage as the crop's condition firms through pollination, and store some bushels deliberately rather than by default. They also accept the years when priced grain would have done better unpriced - because they have seen the other years too.
Forward pricing locks a price, not a profit, and it does nothing for yield. Paired with crop insurance and honest yield assumptions, it turns the price side of the year from a gamble into a decision.