| Scope and method of study. Despite the existence of agricultural grain cooperatives in America for nearly 140 years, little has been done in the way of studying their market areas. Major advances have occurred in the area of geotechniques, yet none of the literature is concerned with understanding the economic considerations related to the interaction of grain marketing cooperatives and their farmer/customer base. The purpose of this study is to conceptualize the movement of grain outputs and farm inputs and the resulting drawshed or market area fluctuations for farm cooperatives using data from a seventeen county region of southwestern Kansas.;Findings and conclusions. Drawsheds for the three grain outputs of corn, wheat and grain sorghum were constructed under ceteris paribus assumptions using Thiessen polygons and then relaxed to determine the extent to which the knowledge of economic distance (reflected in grain price and transportation cost) affects the movement of grain out of the drawsheds to the respective cooperative. ArcView's Network Analyst was utilized to demonstrate the effect that distance to a regional grain terminal, located in Hutchinson, KS, has on the bid price for grain, while the Spatial Analyst depicts the resulting growth or decline of each location's drawsheds. Fertilizer sales were used to illustrate the capability of a spatial database to identify customers within a given distance of a cooperative location or whose total sales exceeded a given threshold and locate them spatially. |
