Procurement, inventory, and stockholding strategies are important functions for agricultural commodity processing and trading. This paper's purpose is to develop an optimal inventory strategy for wheat in flour milling by considering the risks in margins and demand. We develop a model that views buffer stocks as real options for future sales. The model was applied to a representative wheat flour mill in the Upper Midwest and used prices for inputs, outputs, margins, and associated distributions and correlations. The base case results indicated that the optimal buffer stocks should be 20% more than expected demand in the base case, and vary in a logical way with changes in demand, market carry, and stockout penalties. Implications from these results illustrate that stockholding is an important element of agricultural processing. This approach indicates that managers should strategically manage inventory positions and purchases that result in buffer stocks. [EconLit citations: C6, L1, L7, L9, Q12, Q14]

中文翻译：

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临时性声明：商品采购：捕捉面粉制粉过程中的风险和实际选择

采购，库存和库存策略是农产品加工和贸易的重要功能。本文的目的是通过考虑利润和需求风险来制定面粉制粉小麦的最佳库存策略。我们开发了一个模型，该模型将缓冲库存视为未来销售的真实选择。该模型被应用于中西部上层的一家代表性面粉厂，并使用了价格作为投入，产出，利润以及相关的分布和相关性。基本情况的结果表明，最佳缓冲库存应比基本情况下的预期需求多20％，并且随着需求，市场套利和缺货罚款的变化而按逻辑方式变化。这些结果的含义表明，库存是农业加工的重要组成部分。这种方法表明，经理应从战略上管理库存头寸和采购，以产生缓冲库存。[EconLit引文：C6，L1，L7，L9，Q12，Q14]