PB1736-The Importance of Basis in Marketing Soybeans - A 10-Year Soybean Basis Study for Six Tennessee

In March 2001, the Tennessee Department of Agriculture Division of Market Development and the University of Tennessee Agricultural Development Center, renamed the Center for Profitable Agriculture (CPA) in 2002, submitted a proposal to the United States Department of Agriculture’s Federal-State Marketing Improvement Program (FSMIP) to create five market development resource tools that would allow users to evaluate market opportunities for valueadded products and enterprises. One of these five goals was to compare Tennessee’s retail business statistics with county populations as a guide for assessing the number of certain types of businesses that specified population ranges can support.

This publication is the result of that goal and presents information for value-added agrientrepreneurs who are in the process of evaluating value-added markets or specific small-business start-up opportunities. The information contained here should be used as one of several business planning tools in the overall assessment of a new business idea. The publication has been assembled with a description and discussion of the data used in the study, followed by a description of the findings and application of the findings. The publication is arranged in a sequence that ultimately leads to the presentation of a single table containing a summary of the data, our findings and numerous possible applications.