Word: benediction
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...extended vertical integration to wheat. He was miffed because the operators of a country elevator refused to buy part of his crop when he judged the price to be right, but told him to wait several weeks while they worked out storage and transport snarls. Benedict got nine other growers together to put up $1.5 million, buy an elevator and incorporate it as Northern Grain...
While these investments have made him a genuine corporate executive, Benedict looks on them merely as extensions of his farm. Says he: "I just wanted to sell grain and beets exactly when it best suited my own operation. The market is so crazy these days that if you can't get access to the price you want the moment it is offered, you might as well give up. Eliminate uncertainties, that's the golden rule. You eliminate uncertainties in production through technology and very careful management. You eliminate uncertainties in price by controlling the marketing as much...
...does not get pains, but Benedict admits to some anxiety about taking over failed farms: "Any farm closing is traumatic. You worry that the fellow who sells out knows something you don't because he's shutting down and you're taking on debts to expand." But in his view expansion is the only way to make money: "Each acre produces so little profit that all you can do is go for bigger acres and make sure that each acre produces more crop." So, besides buying land, he has purchased so much machinery that it requires a football-field-sized...
...Benedict estimates that it costs $300 an acre to raise sugar beets. At an average yield of 15 tons an acre, and a depressed price this year of around $21 a ton, the typical beet grower will receive $315 an acre, producing a thin profit in view of the heavy investment required. But Benedict's mechanization and tight management enable him to grow 20 tons an acre, worth $420, enough to promise a worthwhile return...
...mechanization make him independent of the Government Had he chosen to "set aside" (not plant) 20% of his 2,000 wheat acres this year, he would have qualified to receive a Government-guaranteed "target price" of $3.40 a bushel. Benedict elected instead to plant all his acres, gambling that eventually he will get a high enough price to make a larger profit on a bigger crop. Whether he wins he will not know for many months. He has signed a contract to sell 40% of his wheat crop, for a price that he says "will cover costs and a little...