Moneyball for Farmers: Using Technology to Maximize Agricultural Profitability

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Hi everyone. I'm Paul Yeager. This is the MToM podcast, a production of Iowa PBS and the Market to Market TV show. We're in-studio again today and we are going to have a conversation that I just did not expect to go the way it went. In fact, I could have kept going. We try to be respectful somewhere in that 30 to 40 minute range for this discussion. As you can see, because the internet tells you that's about where we're at or at the end of that. And we could have kept going, but we stopped because we want you coming back for more. we're really getting into think Amazon, Google, and your local salesperson all rolled up into one when it comes to agriculture. We're going to marry technology in all the forms that it is, from AI to understanding how to find the best price. That's the Amazon part. And Google, what information can help you in ChatGPT on how to maybe fix something, grow something, be better at what it is that you're doing, and save money. When we talk about sense and how important it is in any time, political or not, and what can impact you on your operation if you're not a farmer directly? 

This is still interesting. I think for many, many aspects, just to kind of understand what's out there and what is happening, I could have kept going with Charles Baron. He's the co-founder of FBN. That's the Farmer Business Network. He used to work at Google, and he started talking, and I almost called him Google boy. And that's from a movie I like about baseball. Sorry. Sports. Just a tiny little bit here, we're going to talk about Moneyball and how it impacted this company and how it impacted Charles and the way he thought about some things as well as the others in FBN. So that is our discussion today in the Market to Market podcast. It's called the MToM and comes out every Tuesday. If you have feedback for me, send me an email at Paul.Yeager@IowaPBS.org. Now let's get to technology. We will talk a little bit about economics, but really it's about, all sorts of aspects when it comes to the farm. 

[Yeager] When I saw FBN Farmers Business Network come in first, Charles, I kind of thought, oh, is this a competitor? it sounded like you're putting together a news network of some kind.

[Charles Baron] Well, we're an information network, and we're a farmer, a farmer network, and we're a commercial network. But, fundamentally is a platform that a farmer can use to run their farm. and we got started about ten years ago as a farmer, a farmer network that allowed farmers to share farm data together so they could uncover insights about their farm, compare their farm's performance, their yields, the prices they were paying. What, agronomic trends were taking place in their region. And then that turned into farmers asking us to help them go procure products, go get the lowest prices that we were finding by analyzing thousands of farms in the network. And that turned into FBN becoming the largest e-commerce provider to farms in the country. And, and then we've also become, you know, a number of other things. We've, become a sustainability platform so farmers can capture premiums through FBN. We paid out over $30 million last year and work with over 20,000 farms on sustainability. We're a financing platform for farmers, so farmers can use us to get access to credit for land, operating loans, input loans and equipment loans. and we're a community where farmers can come online. They can buy and sell products. They can share data with each other. But fundamentally, it's a new way to help farmers run their business be more profitable. 

[Yeager] Sounds a lot like information. You have a lot of information. I mean, that sounds like the core of some of the things that you do.

[Baron] It's at the heart of what we do is as we're a network, and we help farmers get the power of that information, their farmers generate it. So let's take, your, your, your, your yield data, for example. So if you're running a combined with the yield monitor and you're capturing planting information, you can now upload that to FBN anonymous. You can see how your farm's now comparing to all of their farms in your region in Iowa, all of their farms planting the same seeds that you're planting or running, the same rotation of your planting so you can see where you're, dragging or where you could be improving. then there's analytics that actually look at each of your fields and say, based on all the other farms, in Iowa or on your soil types, these are the best performing seeds for each of your fields. So this is how you can then improve. You can then look at every one of those seeds, and you can see a complete performance profile, kind of like Kelley Blue Book would do. for a car. You can see how much farmers are paying for those seeds. You can see what their average yield is. You can see their rotation, how their population, how they're going to perform the best. So it creates this wealth of information for a farmer to take advantage of. And then we do the same thing on chemical pricing, seed pricing as well, where farmers can compare their prices to other growers. But that's the information side of FBN. And then we give them the purchasing power, the marketing power to then take action based on what they're learning about.

[Yeager] It sounds cool. I like the description of the Kelley Blue Book. I get that, but it also sounds like purchasing power. Power with larger numbers. Power in mass helps, get a big deal. So I guess help me out. Understand? you know, like, where you came from. Is this from a larger company or a spinoff? Or someone had an idea that we think all this information. I mean, you can't just let me just start from that small seed. Or were you up? Break off from something else?

[Baron] No, we started from an idea of three farms. There were three farms who wanted to share their information together. One was the other seed dealer. and they wanted to understand seed performance at the soil level. So not just the plots that the seed company was giving them. I said, "Show me what's going on your farm.” I want to know, and those three farms we started then invited, you know, the next five, ten, 20 farms. And that turned into thousands of farms participating in the FBN network when we started in about 2014. so it's really from that genesis, that we got going, and the company, we now have, over 100,000 farmer members in the United States and Canada. We sell crop inputs like farm chemicals, biological fertilizers, livestock supplies, animal feed to nearly all 50 states and most of Canada. We have warehouses all across the US, including a large wood, Iowa, one of our largest facilities. and we can ship direct, to farms in a very, very reliable and fast, timeframe to become an extremely reliable supplier to the farm as well. So, yeah, it started from very, very small beginnings, of the kind of dream of a handful of farms. My background is, you know, I came from the world of technology. I married, into a farming family in Nebraska. I learned about it through my brother in law. I'm from California. I had previously been a program manager at Google. And, we just was fascinated by the world of farming and the life of the farmer, how hard the job is on a day to day basis. And when you looked at the what a farm has to deal with from purchasing to running equipment to making agronomic decisions or, marketing decisions and realizing how alone farmers are, this is a perfect, role of technology to connect people and connect people with information to give them more power because fundamentally, there's no industry like farming, where you have the primary value creator, the family who is independent takes all the risk, does all the work, and makes the least amount of money compared to the partner, the suppliers on one side and the marketers on the other side. And, that's how FBN got going. It's to help farmers level that playing field and become.

[Yeager] One of my favorite movies is Moneyball. Are you familiar with the analytics of changing baseball? Okay. So in that, one of the big scenes that I enjoy, why I like it is the, the old scout having a conversation with the the the general manager, Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt and and they're talking about Paul de Paul Depodesta, that is, you know, a real life character. Yeah. But he says you and Google Boy are going to sink this operation, but the reason I bring it up is that is a little bit of a comparison. Farmers know when a field looks good, but data is telling them so much more and understanding prices of, well, I'm selling to the co-op or the crush facility or the ethanol plant. One of those three is going to give me a good price. You're telling me through FBN that I can find other ways to get better seed, price or a better price for this or a more efficient way to do this? That's what it sounds like to me. Am I characterizing it at all? That comparison correctly?

[Baron] You're exactly. No, no, you're exactly right. And Moneyball was a huge inspiration for FBN. In fact, our very first meeting of farmers that we had, we had Paul Depodesta come, and talk to our growers, and then we had Billy Beane come another year, and talk to our growers. And it was all about how do you use informed fashion to farm smarter? So when corn is $3.50 or $4 and your profit margins are razor thin to negative, you need to know how do you sharpen the pencil? And you go and you chase yield with the $330 a bag triple stack genetics and planting that 40,000, you know, seeds per acre or do you you know, we could reconsider the traits that you're planting. Look at the optimal planting population, maybe, say, 5 or 10% on your seed cost. Look from switching to branded to generic crop protection, potentially look at, sustainability premiums and how just by using data, you can now capture those and make yourself more profitable. Refinance the farm, by considering alternative lending. how do you use those tools to play farming like Moneyball and understand that at the end of the day, you know, you're not chasing yield, you're chasing profit on the farm. And that profit is the difference between your cost and your revenue. And there's a lot of ways to look at the cost equation differently. And then on the revenue side, market smarter capture premiums, differentiate the business. and and, you know, and look at it that way as well. So Moneyball is a huge inspiration here. And it's, it's exactly the way.

[Yeager] The way the movie ends. It describes that things aren't working for the long term, like in the playoffs. It works great for the regular season. And, there's criticism of the book because it is in the movie for sure. It's because it leaves out certain factors that were in play. So I guess I'll continue with this. Since you said you had that strong connection to Moneyball, we're going to keep going.

[Baron] Oh, yeah.

[Yeager] Oh, even Bill James. My gosh, you might as well. We're, you know, the full mode.

[Baron]  Model.

[Yeager] Changes I love it.

[Baron] We we love Michael.

[Yeager] So Charles, though the question is okay, so you're good for a good year or a bad year to get me through. I mean, how do I utilize all of this information that all cost money? I know this isn't free, but I mean, is that the expense that a farmer needs to put out to live, to play another day? I guess if we use another sporting term.

[Baron] Yeah, well, well, it actually now is free. So when you can start of your membership, you paid money to participate in FBN. And then we started selling products because farmers said, okay, great. You identified the lowest price in the market. Can you go buy it for us? That turned into a business for us, you know, of selling product. And so we now made the analytics side of being free. It's open for farmers to participate in. They just share information if they want to participate. You don't have to be part of that again. But you're right. You're right in, in what we found was that when yours are tough, when you're in tight years, people are really buckling down. They really pay attention. When corn got to $5, $7, you know, 750 soybeans were 12 bucks, right. and it's sort of like, I'll put anything on the field, right. I'll. I'll pay any expense, because I want to get every marginal dollar I can. And the discipline kind of goes out the window in that, in that era. Now we're back in a, in a correction, where prices have come back down, commodity prices are down. We went through a huge correction in input pricing, where input prices skyrocketed for farmers in 2022. They collapsed in 2023. And we just done a big market outlook price analysis. They've tended to stabilize this year. But we still see a 470% difference in chemical prices around the country for individual products, meaning one farms being four and a half times what another farm is paying. Okay, so there are still huge opportunities to buckle down, reconsider your purchasing behavior, reconsider your seed selection and the seed partners we created a platform called the African Seed Finder where you can compare genetics. You can see if one seeds are being sold by other companies. So you can see the genetic identity and you can see if it's available for less from another seed company as well. So we give you all those tools, to really dial in, and really optimize, your farm's performance. It's ultimately up to the farmer to take action on that information. But we also try to make that as easy as possible. So one of the biggest things FBN does is sells crop protection products, sells biologicals. We've sold seed in the past. Will probably come back here this year as well. and, we sell livestock supplies. We make it extremely easy for farmers to understand. If I'm switching from a branded product to a generic product, how much savings are available to me, which we found averaged about 30%. And then we allow farmers to share their invoices so they can see what a fair market price is at any time for any chemical product, and then what the savings are. If they bought from FBN at that moment, and that average is typically about 15%. So there's tens of thousands of dollars on the table here for growers if they just dial in these analytics, we make it extremely easy to the point where all you have to do is upload an invoice of the input products that you've bought. You upload that to FBN, automatically compares your prices, it benchmarks you, and it shows you exactly how much you can save. And it's click Add to cart and boom, you could save ten, 15, 20. We've had farms save well over $100,000 in a year, using the platform. So it's all there for you.

[Yeager] You just opened up a whole bunch of boxes right there. Let's go first, I'm going to pull the curtain back. You're getting the information from a grower that says, what they're paying, which would probably scare the bejesus out of the individual salesperson, because I charge different farmers different prices because based on volume or whatever, we'll just be generous and say it's volume, not price relationships or something like that. So you're cut out. You leveling the field in a way.

[Baron] Pulled the curtain back.

[Yeager] For that. Yeah.

[Baron] But, 

[Yeager] During the last couple of years when we've been dealing with all the supply chain, we hear that it's corporations that are the issue, not necessarily the middle. You are helping the middle level out on from sales. But we might not make any leeway on the large company that's doing the actual where the product is coming from. Are you there? 

[Baron] Well, there's a number of different components there. So you have the whole you have to take the whole supply chain in consideration all the way from the raw technical gradients that may be coming from abroad to logistics to the processing and manufacturing to then the sales, you know, compounds, but ultimately, at the end of the day, customers are farmers, are the people we really, you know, make sure that, we provide our service and value to our growers. Now we work with dozens of manufacturers. We have major brands, work with FBN as well, to access farmers. We're a channel for those companies, especially companies who can't access the market, innovative companies, who want to, reach, you know, leading farmers. but so what FBN does is it creates it pulls back the curtain. It says here's actually sort of fair market pricing. We create very clear pricing. And then there's a one price around the country. We have volume discounts as well that people can get everyone can see exactly what those are going to be and how they can qualify for them. The issue isn't so much the volume discount, but the common sales practice in agriculture is call me for the price and I will give you a special price, and you won't find out what your price is until you call, and you have no idea if that's a good price. We're not, truly no idea. I have had so many farmers come to us and say, and I said, hey, have you, have you ever done the price comparison, price analysis? Now, you know what? It's just not even worth the time. Dad gets the deal. He's working with the. He'd been working with the guy forever. We know we get taken care of. I can't, I don't really want to bother with it. I said, well, look, just entertain me to see what. See what happens when you drop, when you drop an invoice in, for example. And lo and behold, we found a one on one product. This is a big farm, 4000 acre, Iowa, very leading, very advanced, producer, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on inputs on a single product. We found a $60,000 check and they were paying twice the market price for that product. It's one of 30 items they're buying. They're not paying attention to every single line on the sheet. And I said, look, the price on that product and FBN, they will net you literally nearly a $60,000 savings if you, you know, cut that one in half. It's one of your biggest products. and they immediately turned around. Cancel, came to FBN. That's real money. That's real money that you can't afford.

[Yeager] But I want to go. So to that Iowa farmer though, that just saved $60,000. They are they sacrificing though? I mean, a service because they might go to that person that's in their community or in their county and they can have it today. And whereas maybe this, the savings is three states away and it might come in three days. Is that an apple / oranges comparison there, I don't know?

[Baron] Well, I, it's, coming from Larchwood, Iowa. Right. So we're worshiping from larch wood or one of our other. We have some other facilities that we ship out of in Iowa. They can pick up. They can have it that they typically if they go pick up or you come on the website, it'll show you exactly if it can be there in a day, two days, three days. It shows you exactly when it can get there. Just like when you go on Amazon and you, it tells you that, you know, that item can get to your house by, you know, tomorrow or 2 or 3 days. We do the exact same thing. So certainly we don't do all the things that some types of retailers do. So it depends how much service or support, you know, farm thinks they need. But many, many farms are independent algorithmically. Or they're working with an independent agronomic advisor, or they have their own application equipment, or they can work with a custom applicator and they can find, you know, huge, huge savings, in ways to do that. So if you need everything and you want full service, it's, you know, we don't do all those things. But you know, for many thousands of farms, you know, it's.

[Yeager] Like you mentioned Amazon and that was one thing. It kind of sounds a lot like what an Amazon does. Comparisons find the best deal. You have a warehouse here. And it can ship from larch wood to wherever. And is that a fair comparison to what you're doing?

[Baron] Chirp. Yeah. For the purchasing side of FBN. Absolutely. you know, which I think what's, what's happened, especially with, our younger generations and really with, you know, with everyone on the farm now, it's people are so used to what they can do on the consumer side of their life that I can buy something I my food, I can buy, you know, guess anything on Amazon, it can be at my house in 2 or 3 days. And that's become such a practical utility. Well, you can do the same thing with truckloads of crop protection or, you know, totes of fertilizer or, you know, I need, pharmaceuticals or feed. you know, we can get liquid cattle feed, which we price dynamically all over the country. They can come on, at any, any moment, 24/7, see the price to their farm, click.The truck is going to roll within, you know, a day or two, depending on when they need it. And boom, you have a level of transparency, a level of confidence and pricing and a level of access.

[Yeager] Like the stores where I can go buy baling wire and a nice, plaid shirt at the same time, though I need that. Do you sell plaid shirts, too?

[Baron] We do. I'm not actually wearing my favorite plaid shirt. It's an f men plaid shirt, but, we, we do sell plaid shirts, and we sell boots. We sell a lot. I get to sell food. So, you know, if you if you need it for the if you need it for the barn, well, let's go to it.

[Yeager] Because all of this to me sounds very AI-ish, but is it really AI that I mean, utilizing find? I'm using the computer well, using technology to find good prices or efficiencies sounds like a good use of AI. Is it?

[Baron] It's it, it absolutely is. I mean, you know, AI is a little different. You know, what's what's now commonly, you know, when people talk about AI now, it's different from what FBN started as, which was sort of the information, you know, a database or almost an encyclopedia that a farmer could reference. but, we've created an AI ag advisor. And AI really allows you to talk, you know, to, the system and the system talks back to you in plain English. And that's really the biggest difference of what AI enables now, is it does all the work of interpreting and the intelligence of figuring out what the answer is, and it talks back to you. So as opposed to going to Google and searching ten things and going to websites and trying to figure it out, you just talk to the AI and, you know, have a conversation with you and help you figure it out. And so we created an AI advisor called Norm, named after Norman Bullock, and his, family was very generous and letting us do that. And, that that was, the first ai ag advisor built on ChatGPT. And it can pass an agronomy exam. It can provide chemical recommendations, take mixing instructions. It can help you with equipment, diagnostics, livestock questions, farm marketing questions. You can put any type of question into Norm, and it will help you solve that problem. We specifically trained it on crop protection, pests, disease mixing, and complicated aspects of crop protection to help growers because what they're, you know, often telling us is, hey, I need I have an agronomist where I need an agronomist, but it's midnight or it's, you know, I want to have that first level of answer, where I don't have to call it human or someone's not available to me. And so we put it right there on FBN. You can go on any product page on FBN and it'll say, need help and you can talk to Norm right then and there. It will, it will, work with you. And, and we've had, I think well over 20, 2000, interactions on Norm already.

[Yeager] My understanding of how ChatGPT or Claude or whatever you want to use gets better is when more people use it to provide and then you start getting trends. I'm guessing you can sit there and look at the data of what people are asking, and then maybe you can head off some issues at the pass. When a customer provides stuff.

[Baron] Well, yeah, we really we you know, you can say, I want to talk to a human or I can, you know, I can chat with and chat with, Norm and but, you know, ideally what it does, is it, it's a, it is your farm, a superpower. Right. So I'm sitting there in the cab, and I can literally describe what's happening or an equipment issue that you're, you're experiencing. You say the model of your, your tractor or your combine and it will help you diagnose it does it can go out and read the equipment manuals and, you know, help you actually diagnose that problem. It's remarkable what it's capable of. And so it's like having an agronomist or an equipment advisor or just an expert who's there to actually help you, which is really just, phenomenal, phenomenal. Well, the ability.

[Yeager] For that issue, though, of sometimes you're not allowed to work on that piece of equipment. We've had legislation that addresses that issue, even if you can diagnose it. So. Right. and you also mentioned early on in our conversation, very AI ish to me in understanding what my yield data is or what has worked on and what has become more efficient, because to me that also is intelligence of just better understanding and trying to match things up that work better. So I mean, it does seem like a lot of this technology kind of weaves in and out of a lot of your product offerings.

[Baron] Yeah, we mean, we're fundamentally a technology, you know, a platform for a farm. And they can use it for straight for purchasing. I need Jackson for cattle or I need some drench report on where I need, you know, a, a syringe. Come on and purchase like that. Very complicated agronomic questions that I can use. I have an assistant or, or I can say, you know, hey, it's pre-season, like, we're about to go into our preseason and kind of like Amazon. We have our a big cyber, sale every year. It'll start here in a week. And, it's the best preseason buying moment for growers. They can come in. We have these planning tools called Acre Plan. They can plan their whole year of inputs, see exactly what the costs are going to be down to the dollar, acre by acre for each crop boom. They can purchase and know exactly what their costs are going to be. So we try to use technology to make farming easier and to make farming more profitable, save farmers time. You know, on this, you know, painful task.

[Yeager] Time is one thing, money is another. That's what you're really trying to say, let's get real. you mentioned you said a couple of company names, and that makes me go back to something else. You said earlier, that some companies don't always have access to, to be sold in larger. So talk to me about this whole like, so if I'm a small seed company or, chemical company provider, supplier, whatever it is, I have this new product. How is it that I'm getting in the door to you to be exposed to other people? And why is it that that's even attractive to you?

[Baron] Yeah. So, I mean, this is something any new company in agriculture faces, which is just distribution. How do I get distribution in agriculture? There's a retail system, there's a co-op system. And those are typically the two major ways that products that sold then seed companies and have independent dealers. but many factors have a lot of influence in that system as well. And so it can be very hard for new technologies or generic products to get on the shelf and get access, and get promoted through those channels. So for many farms, either they're not exposed to the products that are available, they're not exposed to generic products, for example, or they don't have a lot of competition. There's not a lot of retailers in their area where they don't have, you know, good access to price. Now, in a lot of parts of Iowa, there's a fairly competitive, retail infrastructure. But we work all over the country and there's many parts of the country. but where there's not, so, so even for, for a company like FBN, it was enormously difficult for us to even be in the market and sell in the market. We dealt with all types of antitrust issues and, and other things that were, you know, barriers to been, you know, even being able to work in the market. We had a big issue in Canada, for example. but we've gotten we've been able to power through that and, you know, provide these, products to growers and, so a for a new company, let's say you're a biological, bio stimulant or, your seed or your, you know, a novel type of crop protection. You can use the FBN platform as a distribution system. You can put it on that skin, you can put it on the store. thousands of farmers, tens of 100,000 farmer members, you know, can access that and see it. and, click purchase and it can, you know, you can set it up to, to, to work through the system that way. So there's a lot of benefits to just having an alternate channel of ways farmers can buy products that aren't the conventional retail system, which has a lot of control as to what products are even brought to growers, in that.

[Yeager] We were supposed to talk about finances, too, and, and outlooks. And I'm sorry I went down these rabbit hole, but this is just fascinating to me because to me, it ties to the outlook in 25, regardless of what the election was, we were setting up for farm incomes to be lower. and, and it does tie into what we said. Every dollar, every penny is going to matter when you look at 20, 25 economically, what do you see? And is it going to be sense or way more important, we're going to see talking cents carry bigger weight than dollars.

[Baron] I think this is probably another year of really focusing on cost, as well. you know, we've come through a huge correction on farm incomes have obviously been punished, in a, in a big way. we are getting some relief on, on interest rates, you know, so that's that's been you know, we're now in the second, second round of rate cutting here. So this is a good moment for farmers to be refinancing. If they did get it, you know, had to use either operated products or, real estate. this is a good moment for refinancing, for sure. but when you look at it, you look at other things that are, you know, potential, you know, influences on the horizon. We don't know what's going to happen now with trade. there's a variety of different ways, that that could go. We could be dealing with more tariffs on inputs coming into the country. You could be dealing with marketing issues. so I think that there's a lot of uncertainty there right now. So, I think right now probably makes a fair amount of sense for producers to buckle down on their programs, hedge, make sure they've they lined up their input supplies early, make sure they're, you know, thinking about their grain marketing plan now, through the rest of the year, and, and probably not have as much exposure, as they might have had in years past to that. You know, overall, part.

[Yeager] AI is algorithms. And part of what traders look at is algorithms. How are you plugging in political changes and to make sense of recommendations and analysis of what we see the landscape looking like?

[Baron] It's a really interesting question. It's actually one we haven't spent a lot of time with, with AI. and actually, because some of the foundational models in AI are specific, trained to not get into politics. and you can go on, ChatGPT. Or you can go on our system and you can try and ask that political questions. And it just won't respond. Sure. Basically, because there is so much fear from those that's, you know, that the companies that were building those models, like ChatGPT about political influence one way or the other, with the system. but when we look at, you know, trade and issues on the horizon there, I mean, I think, you know, there's just a lot of uncertainty, AI that the election, results there's, there's multiple different, you know, competing kind of policy dynamics that could start taking shape from, you know, positive new regulations that farmers might be interested in to concerns around, you know, key programs like the Renewable Fuel Standard, and other key supports, that are foundational now, for the markets, for it and certainly trade, which impacts us on a number of dimensions because of the cost of the inputs. And then it's also our access to markets abroad, major markets, for corn and for, you know, for livestock products as well. so, it's, you know, right now, you know, my head spinning a little bit after the election as to exactly what the policy proposals are going to be and that we're going to see with the new administration. But, I don't know, off right now if I, I'm looking at that amount of variance that's, that could be taking place this year. for growers, I think it makes a lot of sense to be on the side of caution and lock things in if.

[Yeager] You have help to find, deals and lock things in low or. Yeah, I mean that's, that's been common fundamental survival on the farm the last 5 to 20 years or ever really if you want to go back in history, we're always trying to find where we can make efficient happen to our benefit.

[Baron] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, we try to try to make those tools, you know, super easy.

[Yeager] And, when you say based, you sit in Omaha, your company, is it based in Omaha, then?

[Baron] we're I moved to Nebraska during, during Covid. I was from California, but, you know, now in the Midwest. Yeah, I was tired of flying all that. that's a big mess. Yeah. So we have offices and operations all over the country. Sioux Falls, South Dakota is a big epicenter for us. Our technology headquarters in California. We got a facility in Chicago, and we've got, two dozen, warehouse locations around North America as well, but, large teams, in rural America, as well in our, in our farm communities, our sales folks, our crop marketing folks, our finance advisors, they're all, you know, farm kids for the most part. And, you know, they're living out there, day to day.

[Yeager] And that geographic diversity helps better understand local things that are happening that can then impact the greater situation of the company and focus and direction of where you're headed. Is that accurate too?

[Baron] Yeah, absolutely. And allows you to do things that no other, you know, provider can do. So one of the more popular things in business polling, we do polls typically like every week during harvest, we'll do harvest progress. We'll do market outlook polling, will do sentiment polling, crop progress for planting progress polls. And, you know, we'll have, you know, anywhere up to 5 or 6000 farms participate in real time in those polling. And so one of the farms, you know, a farmer told me this. I love it because I can answer the poll. And it's like stepping outside my door and I can see what's going on the whole country, as opposed to just looking at my farm. So it really helps farmers kind of broaden their view, know information almost faster than the USDA information that comes out, because you know what's on the mind of the thousands of FBI members as that's, you know, coming out and things that are taking place. And so being a broad national, network of growers and virtually every crop, and livestock species in all 50 states, gives you a lot of advantages, you know, you know, in, in your county, because you're getting market insights, you're getting so you can see what's going on in Ohio or if Illinois is having a big year or if Nebraska, you know, so we just get hit by weather and how that's impacting.

[Yeager] Is the major provider of information that everybody kind of bases some things off, they poke at USDA, they're out of touch, or they're behind on the size of the crop or the not as good of a crop. And things are late, but it is the center. No, politics is supposed to be organization. The push back, though, Charles, that I'm, I think we're going to have discussions in the next few months and years. Is that why we need a government service to provide that data when there are private companies that can do it that have real information that are coming from farmers, just like USDA does? But where does that put you?

[Baron] Well, it was funny. It's funny because Sonny Perdue and he was the, the ag secretary came to our farmer to farmer event, which was a big conference, and he said the exact same thing. He said, I don't know why USDA does this, maybe benefit just a benefit. But, you know, I think, look, a government can do things that a company can't do, right? A government can make sure there's responses from every county. There's a certain statistical significance that they can get. so, you know, the government provides a different mission, has a different purpose, than a company provides, you know, for the public good and has to serve all farms, you know, around the country. You know, so there's some things that inherently the USDA system is going to be better at doing what have been, you know, proven that it's really fantastic at doing it's getting very rapid information to growers. And so we may not get every county, we may not get an equal representation of all farm sizes. but you do get statistical significance and we give very timely information, to growers. And when we get into planting or things like our acreage reports, which we do acreage forecast estimates in March, for growers, we're sometimes a week, two weeks ahead of the USDA number that comes out. And we have been just about the most accurate group, in the industry at predicting the ultimate acreage number, not the not the March number, but what that ultimately is coming out later in the summer. is those final those final acreage numbers and final yields, because there is real wisdom in the crowds and the statistical power of those polls that we can we can, generate for growers are real. And so, so that's, that's a different type of value that you can create for growers and farmers can trade on. We're very, very, you know, careful on how we get that information. to our growers. We want to give it to them before those USDA reports come out so they can decide what they want to do with it. But, that's yeah, that's one of the benefits of being in the system. And certainly we do other types of analysis where we use satellites to analyze, yield.

[Yeager] Which is what large companies do. They are insurance companies. They have satellite data. They can tell that your field was sprayed with something that it shouldn't have been. And that's, an insurance claim or it wasn't or it wasn't, Dan. I mean, yeah, we have all sorts of data out there, but there's always this apprehension about big data, and you're going to fight that. Does that mean, that's going to be something you're going to have to probably defend for the length of your time with the company?

[Baron] This year. Yeah, I think there's always been, you know, call it a healthy, healthy kind of, you know, skepticism, irrational. So, you know, for farmers as to, you know, how should I feel about this, you know, is this good, ultimately good for me or ultimately, you know, bad for me? and, you know, the way we've always, you know, just tried to make sure the anchored sort of principles of FBN from the beginning was that FBN actually started out of farmers fear of companies larger companies in agriculture that were existing machinery companies, import companies, etc. won't name them, creating their own data capture systems that then farmers knew, you know, how that was, that was going to come back to them in the form of prices or that was going to come back to the form of loss of control. And so we wanted to create FBN as independent platform for growers that they ultimately fit determines the value from. So if you're not forced to use data in FBN at all, you can just buy chemical. You don't have to share data to buy a chemical or anything like that. But if you give, producers a platform that ultimately is theirs, they can share prices, they can share data if they want to, then they can make sure there is an independent, source of information out there. That's not controlled by, other manufacturers or retail or, or, you know, equipment manufacturers. So we work with all systems and that's really an important premise. So ultimately what we believe is, you know, if you have those foundations, you have the right principles in place. and you have rules around anonymity and data security and data privacy. that a farmer can benefit, you know, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a year, by simply seeing what price, you know, variation might be on inputs or, you know, doing yield analytics on their farm and saying, hey, my yields tracking 5%. But if I changed hybrids and I switched seed brands, then I might find a 5 or 10%, you know, bump. And how much is that worth to me? Right. so there's tremendous power to be gained there for growers and, it's just it's it's we want to create a system that's independent and we're unbiased. You know, certainly we sell products, but those two are separate. You come in to see the analytics or only the farmer results and the products that are for sale. And those are the prices as, as you can see them and you can see what market prices are for products. We don't sell it.

[Yeager] You sound like, you know, good salespeople. and the good I mean the to provide what the benefit is. So all I really need is, you know, just a good flannel shirt. I don't need the paring knives or the thermometer or anything like that for my company out there. That's there. As long as you have that you're in, you're going to be like everybody else. Well, that was, you know, one of the funniest, one of the funniest things when we got started was, we we came to a group of growers, an agronomist was working with, and they, they had all put their data in. We were looking at all their seeds, and we're looking at all the prices they paid. And they had brand A and B, you know, brand B and C, and the agronomist was recommending all these seeds to. And we found that these were big farms, was up in North Dakota's 5 or 10,000 acre farms. And we found the average, yield savings. Oh, geez. You know, or you'll gain was on the order of. I'm sorry. There's a pricing savings order of 50% on the seed that, you know, brand first brand being on the net net economics of it. And we said, well, why are all of you planting this clearly inferior product that is cost you, you know, tens of thousands of dollars for stale turf? And Guy raised his hand, said, I got an L coming trip and then said, well, did anyone else get now cutting trip?

[Baron] And then you know, sheepishly, every hand goes up in the room, you're like, okay, well, you that costs you $50,000 or, you know, ten, 20 or $30,000. How much does it cost to go get the nicest L cutting guide? And, you know, Colorado, so, do the economically rational thing on the decision on your farm and then go play by the all cutting trip on your own. right. But don't don't take the trip to Jamaica or the trip, the l cutting trip or whatever it is that's coming along with the product and causing that to make an irrational decision. when you're when you're doing the bottom dollar, you're going.

[Yeager] To have to do analysis now of elk hunting guides and how the market for them is going to go up because of what you said. Charles, I thank you so very much. We can keep going and I have a strong feeling we'll talk again. Thank you. My thanks to Charles Barron, and thank you for watching. coming up in the New Year, we are going to have a new feature that I'm pretty excited about. And I think you will, too. We've already talked about the behind the scenes. We write about the behind the scenes in our Market Insider newsletter. We're going to continue that, but it's going to come to this podcast as well. I hope that's enough of a tease for you. We'll see you on the other side. Thanks for watching.

[Yeager] Bye bye.