Agricultural Commodities Desk Academy
Twenty courses. Beginner to advanced. No course assumes what it has not taught.
The learner must be able to take the same parcel of an agricultural commodity and compare storing it, processing it and exporting it, defending the choice with grade, basis, freight, financing cost and delivery obligation all priced into one comparison.
20 courses · 100 to 130 chapters each · every chapter one 8 to 10 minute explainer · self-paced
Twenty courses in dependency order
A course may only assume capability taught by a lower-numbered course, and the level column never falls as you move down the table.
| # | Course | Level | Builds on | What this course owns |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Crop, grade and price fundamentals | |||
| 01 | Agricultural Commodity Business | 1/10 | none | The map of the chain: how a crop moves from farmer to country elevator, merchant, processor and import buyer, and which actor earns which margin at each handover. |
| 02 | Grades, Moisture, Weights & Quantities | 1/10 | 01 | The physical measurement and grading system: official grade factors, moisture and shrink, test weight, foreign material, and conversion between weight, volume and bushel units. |
| 03 | Crop Calendars, Balances & Weather | 2/10 | 01, 02 | The supply and demand balance sheet: planting to harvest calendars by hemisphere, stocks to use ratios, and how weather and crop condition data revise a balance. |
| 04 | Cash Prices, Futures & Basis | 2/10 | 01, 02, 03 | The definitions and quotation mechanics only: what a cash price, a futures contract and a basis number are, how each is quoted, and how the three are read together on a bid sheet. |
| B | Execution, storage and funding | |||
| 05 | Purchase Contracts & Origination | 3/10 | 01, 02, 04 | The origination relationship and the farmgate purchase contract forms that commit quantity, delivery period and pricing method, plus the credit and performance assessment of a producer counterparty. |
| 06 | Elevator, Warehouse & Storage Economics | 3/10 | 02, 03, 05 | The cost and capacity of holding grain: throughput, drying and aeration, shrink loss, storage and handling tariffs, warehouse receipts, and space scheduling across a harvest. |
| 07 | Working Capital, Inventory Financing & the Borrowing Base | 4/10 | 01, 05, 06 | The funding of the inventory and receivable cycle: borrowing base construction, advance rates and ineligibles, hedge margin as a cash demand, cost of carry as an interest charge, and covenant headroom. |
| 08 | Export Contracts, Documentary Execution & FX Exposure | 4/10 | 02, 05, 07 | The export sale: trade association contract terms, the documentary set that transfers title and triggers payment, and the currency exposure the sale creates together with the instruments that hedge it. |
| 09 | Quality, Weight & Shortfall Claims | 4/10 | 02, 06, 08 | Post-delivery dispute resolution: sampling and analysis certificates, independent surveyors, allowances and rejections, arbitration routes, and quantifying and recovering a weight or quality shortfall. |
| C | Merchandising and grain risk | |||
| 10 | Basis, Carry & Storage Merchandising | 5/10 | 04, 06, 07 | The merchandising decision: trading the basis and the carry by valuing calendar spreads against storage and financing cost to decide whether to hold, roll or ship. |
| 11 | Grain Futures & Physical Hedging | 5/10 | 04, 07, 10 | Hedge execution and maintenance against a physical book: contract and month selection, hedge ratio, roll mechanics, margin management, and measurement of hedge effectiveness and residual basis risk. |
| 12 | Corn & Wheat Specialisation | 6/10 | 03, 10, 11 | The corn and wheat complexes: wheat class and protein differentials, milling and feed demand, exchange delivery points and load out, and inter-market and inter-class wheat spreads. |
| 13 | Soybeans, Meal, Oil & Crush Economics | 6/10 | 10, 11, 12 | The crush: board and cash crush calculation, meal and oil yield, processing margin hedging, and the decision to run, slow or idle a plant against that margin. |
| D | Complex specialisation and optionality | |||
| 14 | Vegetable Oils & Substitution | 7/10 | 03, 08, 13 | The vegetable oil complex and cross-oil substitution: palm, rapeseed, sunflower and soy oil spreads, refining and degumming grades, origin logistics, and switching between food and fuel demand. |
| 15 | Sugar & Cocoa Specialisation | 7/10 | 03, 08, 11 | The soft commodity complexes: raw and white sugar with the whites premium, ethanol parity in cane, and cocoa origin differentials, grinding and quality arbitration. |
| 16 | Livestock & Feed Procurement | 7/10 | 11, 12, 13 | The feed buyer and livestock producer position: least cost ration formulation and ingredient substitution, feeding and placement margins, and hedging live cattle, feeder and hog exposure. |
| 17 | Options & Producer Pricing Structures | 8/10 | 05, 10, 11 | Optionality: option pricing, volatility and sensitivities on agricultural futures, and assembling producer pricing programmes such as minimum price, averaging and accumulator structures from those options. |
| E | Integrated merchant practice | |||
| 18 | Freight & Destination Netbacks | 8/10 | 07, 08, 10 | The movement and destination choice: truck, rail, barge and ocean freight cost, laytime and demurrage, port and discharge constraints, and netback comparison across competing destinations. |
| 19 | Crop Failure, Export Restrictions & Default | 9/10 | 07, 08, 09 | The book under stress: force majeure and washout settlement, export bans, quotas and duty changes, counterparty default and insolvency, and the credit, margin and funding consequences of each. |
| 20 | Integrated Agricultural Merchant Simulation | 10/10 | 07, 13, 18, 19 | The end-to-end exercise: running one merchant book under a single set of accounts where storing, processing and exporting are compared with grade, basis, freight, financing and delivery obligation all priced together and defended. |
Every course states the capability it owns. The brochure carries the same table plus the chapter list behind each course, which is the quickest way to find the course that teaches the thing you cannot currently do.
The whole desk end to end, in one programme
The twenty courses take one capability at a time, in dependency order, for someone building from the ground up. The Agricultural Hedging and CTRM Programme does the opposite: it runs the whole agricultural commodities desk front to back in a single sequence, for someone who already works on a desk and wants the shape of the job quickly rather than the long route.
Take whichever matches your starting point. They cover the same ground and several of the numbered courses draw on the same material.
Take one course, or the whole pathway
Each course stands alone. Taken in order, the twenty build one desk capability from no prior knowledge.