Cash bids near you

Cash bids are the prices grain elevators will pay you today for corn, soybeans, or wheat delivered to their facility. They’re set by adding or subtracting a basis from the nearby CME futures contract. The elevator adjusts basis based on local supply, storage availability, and demand from nearby ethanol plants, processors, or export terminals.

Use the Worth the Drive calculator on this page. Enter your load size in bushels and your cost per mile driven. AGSIST works out what each elevator nets you on that load after the drive and ranks them. The top one pays you the most.

It depends on where you are and the time of year, so judge it against your own area. The basis page shows the middle basis at the elevators we read in your state, and USDA’s regions against their own 5-year normal for this week. Basis usually runs weakest at harvest when elevators fill. Check more than one elevator before you sell.

Basis is the gap between your local cash price and the CME futures price. A basis of −30¢ means the elevator pays 30 cents below futures. A stronger basis (closer to zero, or above it) means buyers near you want the grain more.

A 5-cent swing in basis on a 10,000 bu corn load is $500. Check a few elevators before every delivery rather than going to the same one out of habit.

Enter your load in bushels and your cost per mile driven. AGSIST calculates gross revenue at every elevator, subtracts round-trip fuel (2× one-way miles × your rate), and ranks by net revenue. Miles are estimated road miles (straight line x 1.25): the elevator distances are straight line from your ZIP, and roads run about a quarter farther.

Cash bids come from the AGSIST elevator network, which reads each elevator’s own posted bid board: independents, cooperatives and grain company locations, most of them in the Corn Belt and Great Plains. An elevator is covered only if it posts its bids online, so some areas have few or none; enter your ZIP to see what posts near you.

Maybe. AGSIST reads the bids elevators post online, so an elevator that does not post them is not here. On its latest full pass the AGSIST network read 1,856 bid boards, out of 8,436 elevators it keeps track of. 1,987 elevators in 1,583 towns have a current bid on these pages. 131 companies with 3 or more locations have their own page, every location on one page. Type your ZIP at the top of this page to see which ones post near you. If you run an elevator, List your elevator puts your bids on AGSIST free. If you farm and your elevator posts bids online but is missing, send its bid page to sig@farmers1st.com.

There is no single right answer. It depends on your cost of production, your storage costs, and the market. Spring (March–May) often sees stronger basis as demand picks up before the new crop. Selling at harvest when every elevator is full typically means the weakest basis.

Bids are pulled each time you search, from the boards the AGSIST elevator network reads directly from the elevators themselves. The network reads each board on a short repeating cycle, day and night, so a bid is the last price that elevator posted, with the time it was posted. Where AGSIST could not reach a board on the latest run, the card is marked and shows the last price that elevator posted. Tap Search again before you make a delivery decision to get the freshest prices.

Yes, cash bids are free, and you don't need an account.