Dad's wisdom: Roger Rix

Narrator: Welcome back everyone to the Dad's Wisdom series. We're super excited to get rolling on this one again. We've had positive feedback from pretty much everyone that's listened to these. There's so much wisdom, so much knowledge out there that we can gain from the prior generations. If you have someone in mind that you think would be a great fit for this Dad's Wisdom series, please reach out to us. You can reach us at cbarron@agviewsolutions.com. Or at agviewpitch@gmail.com.

Shay

Foulk: We hope you enjoy. So this is, this is recording. So welcome back everyone to the Ag View Pitch. This is Shay Foulk and I'm joined with special guest Roger Ricks today. And I was wondering, Roger, if you could just kind of get us started, tell us who you are and where you're from, and then we'll just jump into it.

Roger

Rix: Very good. Roger Rix from northeastern South Dakota. Farm there. We're on our 5th generation on our operation and we started as a livestock small grain operation and our grain operation. Now we're just a grain operation.

Shay

Foulk: So tell me a little bit about, you know, how you were raised, how you ended up there, and if you could just tell me a little bit about, you your story up to today.

Roger

Rix: Sure. I guess probably starts from the beginning because obviously I grew up on the farm and I had no desire to do anything else. I had opportunities to go on high school trips in the summer and I said, no, I'm staying. I got to work on the farm. And it grew from that to when I was probably 14 years old asking my dad, okay, where's the college that teaches ag? So I spent 4 of my better years or more enjoyable years at SDSU in Brookings and then came directly home from college to become a partner in our operation and been there ever since and transitioning to the next generation.

Shay

Foulk: That's great. You know, when you think back to those formative years and that time that you spent you know, working with your father in that operation. Is there anything that sticks out in your mind wisdom-wise, you know, doing this segment on Dad's Wisdom that you feel you got from your father that still sticks with you today?

Roger

Rix: I guess what caught me by surprise is when I came home, within 2 or 3 years, my dad pretty much turned probably 90% of his decision-making to me. As a late 20-year-old individual, and it was pretty daunting. But he was there to help guide me through the mistakes and to be there to ask questions. So, you know, I was taking care of the marketing, taking care of the agronomy, taking care of most all the management style or management decisions. But him and I, we did work together. My dad was very involved in the local school board and so forth, so he had things he was doing and he just pretty much turned it over to me. And that's basically what I've done with my sons. After a couple of years they were home, I said, okay, you take care of the agronomy, Grant. You've got as much or more knowledge than I do in agronomy. You take care of it all. You got questions, I'll be here to answer.

Shay

Foulk: So the responsibility that your father gave you, you felt that that was a good path and a good decision, obviously. And now you're implementing that model with your boys.

Roger

Rix: Exactly. You know, I made a ton of mistakes, just like any 20-something or 30-something-year-old. And the mistakes that I made when, you know, 30-some years ago, were not as necessarily as economically disastrous as it could be now. But yet I knew that if things were going to move on to the next generation, it was time to give those reins or those abilities to the next generation, just like my dad did. And as long as I'm here to help stop maybe some pitfalls or help go through some pitfalls and basically the only way you learn new lessons is to make some mistakes and you say, oh, I can't do that. That was stupid, you know? And so you just go ahead and you've learned a lesson and you move on.

Shay

Foulk: Make some mistakes, but not, not the big ones.

Roger

Rix: Exactly. Exactly. And that's the big mistake or the mistakes now, small mistakes now are still big compared comparatively to 37 years ago. So I think it's worked pretty well, worked well with my dad and I and my sons. They're getting ready to make a decision about something and it's not uncommon for them to say, Dad, this is beyond my knowledge. What do you think? And so I feel good about that. They're asking me for my input and to help them make their decisions.

Shay

Foulk: So we'll come back to that in a little bit. I like how you led us down that path. Paint a picture of what the operation was like, you know, size operation when you took over, and then how did you grow it through the years, and what were some of the key decisions along the way there?

Roger

Rix: When I first came back, we fed about 300-400 head of yearlings and farmed in the mid-2,000 acres, somewhere 2,500 to 2,800, somewhere in there. Over time, we were fortunate and some land came up for sale and some opportunities where we had an individual come up and offered us 2,500 acres to rent and just some different things like that happened to grow our farm. And very quickly we figured out, or I guess I figured out, that we weren't able to— we weren't good livestock people, but we were pretty good, pretty decent farmers. We had, that was more of our interest and my interest and to be in the farming. So over the time and different opportunities were made available to us that, and to myself that we've grown from 2,800 acres or whatever in the mid-'70s to just under 10,000 now. Not all, obviously not all owned, but quite a bit of his own, but it's also rented.

Shay

Foulk: So that was definitely a big decision to make. And a lot of people that get out of livestock say it was the easiest decision they had to make. But for, for someone in an operation to focus on their strengths and move away, you know, like you said, you realized you were a better farmer than you were livestock producers. What went into that decision-making process? Was it apparent or did it take time?

Roger

Rix: It took time. Because when you realize that you probably should be vaccinating the cattle or you have a sick steer or whatever, you should be getting them in and then you're being tugged by the corn planter. I need to get the corn planted and realize, you know, there shouldn't be that tug. You should know that you need to take care of the animal and then do what you have to do. And it just became, as we grew our farm operation, it just became more of a tug, what we should be doing. And it just got to the point where economically the livestock industry wasn't doing real well in the late '90s. And our feedlot operation needed, our facilities needed a lot of work. It became very apparent that if we were going to keep doing livestock side, we needed to stick a ton of money into it to do it right, or go ahead and move a different direction.

And I'd pull a couple of our employees alongside to say, okay, this— we have this opportunity to add more land to farm, or should we do this or stay in livestock? And each one of them said, I prefer to grow our farm. And kind of empowering my employees to say that that's what they'd rather do also. So it made it— there was a lot of factors, monetary and facility-wise, and just say, okay, let's move in the farming end. And it worked out well.

Shay

Foulk: Was your dad a part of that decision-making process?

Roger

Rix: Yeah, he was. He was, was, he, he, it was tougher for him because Dad, my dad said, you know, the livestock are what made our farm what it was. They made running the cattle on the corn stalks in the fall and running feedstuffs through them. And in that generation, you needed to be multiple operations within your farm to make money. Whereas as the farming industry has grown, it was apparent to me that you needed to specialize a little more and focus more of your efforts in the one certain aspect of your operation.

Narrator: Right.

Shay

Foulk: What, you know, looking at some of the major growths that you had during that time period, what did people say when you took on that, you know, significant amount of land or you decided to get out of livestock? You know, what did people say? What conversations did you have outside of the farm operation with those decisions?

Roger

Rix: You know, very little. As probably most people are listening to your podcast understand that farming is a very close to the vest situation. I had some friends that I talked to a little bit about decision-making, but the bulk of our decision-making we made on our economic ideas or our gut feelings, so to speak, at times. As far as the public, none of us, nobody in our operation goes to town for coffee. So we really don't care what other people think in that aspect of how we're doing our business. I know, I'm sure there was some people looking around the corner wondering what the heck, what the heck's Roger doing now? But a lot of the opportunities that were presented, we knew if we didn't jump on somebody offering us 2,600 acres to farm, We were concerned if we didn't farm that somebody else would take it.

So it was kind of a snap decision and in that aspect, but we knew it was a once in a lifetime. And once that decision, that was probably one of the major decisions that we did is this decision we had to make in March, right before spring's work. These guys, two brothers, brother and brother-in-law decided that they were going to quit and come into our yard and asked us if we were interested in taking on their operation. We only had one 12-row corn planter and a 30-foot drill. So I talked to Iron Man and said, we're going to put a lot of time in to get this done. Are you willing to do that? And he said, yeah, yeah, let's get it done.

Shay

Foulk: Wow. What do you think that your operation, your farm, or yourself, what do you think you've done differently that has helped made you successful over the last few decades?

Roger

Rix: I guess being open to changes, being willing to be innovative, and always looking for better production practices. You know, as I went through my college experience and learning where to find, glean new information and go into meetings and not being necessarily a closed-door operation, that we're always talking and always trying to learn more. And that's what I did, and my sons are following suit as well. They're constantly trying to learn, go to different seminars and learning better practices, and willing to be— willing to take on new ideas and in our operation as far as technology and practices.

Shay

Foulk: Things certainly aren't slowing down in the ag world.

Roger

Rix: No, they aren't. No, they aren't. But I'm thinking my life should start slowing down here at some point.

Shay

Foulk: Time to maybe hand over some of the reins.

Roger

Rix: I've had most of the day-to-day management stuff, but I'm still around and I appreciate the fact that my sons come and ask me at times what I think we should do.

Shay

Foulk: No, that's great. And it's a good position to be in, you know, maybe doing some more of the fun stuff, the actual farming now, sit in a tractor and do some of those things.

Roger

Rix: Exactly. Exactly.

Shay

Foulk: I guess to change directions a little bit, I was wondering if you could take a minute to talk about, you know, what's been the hardest part of your story? What do you think that on the farming side has been the most difficult part of it?

Roger

Rix: Economics have been difficult. We've went through some tough times back in the '80s, but we were in a financial position to grow our operation at that time. The geopolitical thing is really difficult to handle if you're paid paying attention like we all need to with the global structure of life, that's been really difficult to know that the bulk of our operation, the bulk of our income, the end result of what we're doing, so much of it is beyond our control, whether it's the Lord giving us rain and sunshine and everything we need to do to get a good crop to to the what's happening in Washington, D.C. or China or wherever that affects our prices.

You know, it's— those are difficult to, to deal with, but we know that that's part of the process and be willing to take a deep breath, know that tomorrow the sun will come up again and, and, uh, and it will be— it'll be— everything will be fine.

Shay

Foulk: And it's just being able to control what you can along the way.

Roger

Rix: Exactly. Yep. Yeah, we were you know, there's things that are beyond your control and you just try to deal with it.

Shay

Foulk: If you had anything that you had to do over with your career, what do you think it would be?

Roger

Rix: I think a lot of the mistakes I made when I was in my 20s and 30s, it'd be nice to go back and not make those same mistakes. I mean, there were financial situations that decisions a person made that you look at and say, yeah, that was a, it could, that was a hit, could have been a bigger hit, but if it could have been a home run if I didn't do it or whatever. And I think we all, we all know that that's a situation for all of us. We make decisions at a certain moment and you realize later that that was probably not the smartest thing in the world to do. As far as our operation. We passed on a few opportunities that I wish we would have taken, but overall we were able to put ourselves in a position to accept most of the opportunities that were presented to us, and we were fortunate in that aspect.

It came into a situation where my grandfather had a pretty good-sized farm, farmed well over farmed over 2,000 acres in the '30s. And he, they pretty much didn't grow much after that point. But yet we started with a very nice land base and gave us opportunities to grow from there. And it probably gave us some opportunities to make some mistakes that maybe other people weren't able to make or didn't have. The consequences were different for somebody else.

Shay

Foulk: Could you maybe narrow in on what you think the best and worst decision is that you've made on the farm over the years?

Roger

Rix: Best and worst. Probably the best decision was when people, those two individuals came to our operation and asked if we would be interested in taking on their operation, taking on their land, and that and some other land opportunities were those are probably our best decisions. Worst decisions probably are multiple, and most of it's the economic decisions where deciding to sell your crop at a certain time, and those are the ones that you look back on and said, you realize that that wasn't a very smart decision. So it's the marketing probably ended up Over time, I could pick out different ones, different situations that where we made a bad decision. It wasn't fateful, wasn't something that would take you out of business, but yet those are probably stem of most of the decisions that I made that I feel like I made a mistake, but they weren't fatal.

Shay

Foulk: With picking up that land along the way, and we didn't discuss whether it is rented or leased or bought, do you think buying land now is the same as it was, you know, when those acquisitions came along?

Roger

Rix: Oh, absolutely not right now. When we bought quite a bit of our land before, it seemed similar at the time as far as being expensive and hard to justify, but The numbers then were, seemed big at the time, but within 4 or 5 years we pretty well paid off the land. And so we had a pretty good land base to start with. So if we added a half section of land, we were able to pay it off fairly quickly. Right now we ended up having a situation we had to buy some family land and that's been stressful. But yet on the other hand is one of those things decisions you have to make. 800 acres that's been in the family forever, farmed it my whole life.

Were you going to have somebody else farm it or were you going to make a decision at 60-something years old that I'm going to, I'm basically going to be in debt trying to get that kept within our operation for my sons and my grandsons to farm at some point. Am I willing to put put myself out there and be willing to take on that financial responsibility for future generations. And we made the decision to do that, but it was, that was quite difficult. It's going to take, instead of having land paid off in 5 to 10 years, it's going to be probably the rest of my life. And hopefully that's a long time yet.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah, I think so. I think it will be. I was wondering if we could maybe talk a little bit here on, you know, how did kids in the picture affect the farm? How did that change the operation and how you, you know, work through that time period?

Roger

Rix: My sons, twin boys, I knew early on that one of my sons, Grant, particular Grant, would be interested in farming. And my other, Jarrett, I wasn't quite so sure about. And they're both back now. The decision I'd made from very early on, and I kind of wish that I'd done it— my dad had done the same for me— is that to make it a situation where you, once you graduate from high school, you get an education somewhere, trade school or a 4-year university or whatever, and then you go work somewhere else for 2 years minimum. And that's what I told both of my sons. I said, there's plenty of room here for you if you're interested, but you need to do this first. And if you want to come back, great. If you don't, I'm okay. I know what my future is going to look like then.

And then once that timeframe went through, Grant came home probably 2 years and 2 days later, and Jared was more like 4 years or so after high school, so, or after college. So at that point, you know, I say this is good. I'm not gonna throw everybody under the bus and say you got to buy me out. They may have to pay me a salary for a little longer than what I'm worth, right, as far as getting work done, but that'll be my retirement plan. I don't plan on going anywhere as long as my health is good. As long as I can go to Vegas when I feel like I want to go there or Arizona or wherever, but I'm gonna, as long as I can do those things, I'll stick around and help where I can.

Shay

Foulk: What was that decision like when they decided to come back to the farm and obviously a little bit different timelines there, but was it a no-brainer or how did that look for the operation?

Roger

Rix: Oh, it was a no-brainer, particularly for Grant as far as his decision and what our as far as my ability to allow things to happen. Jarrett, I mean, it was similar with Jarrett also. I mean, I was glad to have him come home and be part of the operation. He isn't, he's more business-minded than he is agricultural-minded, or production-minded, I should say. But he's He's growing to be a very valuable part of the operation. Probably taken him a little longer because he didn't have the ag background as far as when he was in high school and college and that. So he, it's taken him a little while longer to grab a hold of the agricultural part of production, part of our business, but he'll be there very quickly. He's getting there and so he'll be just fine. It was an easy decision to I think make. probably the happiest person in the whole process was my dad.

He was here, he said he was very happy when both boys came home.

Shay

Foulk: What a great opportunity too, to be able to continue to farm with your family and have your boys want to be a part of that picture.

Roger

Rix: It is, it really is. I mean, like I said, you know, with the time, timing and all that, I know and talked to Grant, when he was, I think it was second year after working for Monsanto or in that, during that, his second year of employment. He said, what's your plans and are you thinking of coming home? He said, yeah, I'll be home. I'll be coming home. He said, okay, well, we're through working in this old Quonset for a shop. We're gonna build a new shop and we're gonna put a, make a nice office for us to be in and so forth. So it just, it made that decision, okay, we're gonna go the next step. We're going to start building for the next generation. We aren't going to just say, we aren't, I'm not going to be looking at shutting it down in 20 years or 15 years. We're going to look at the next 50 years.

Shay

Foulk: And how old are the boys right now?

Roger

Rix: Uh, my sons are 36.

Shay

Foulk: So if you could go back and talk to your 36-year-old self, what, what would you tell yourself? And then how does that translate to today with the boys?

Roger

Rix: Oh, that's an interesting question. I think it's probably what I'm trying to do with my sons is the fact that you can make mistakes, but keep your eyes open and be willing to make a mistake, make a decision that could be a mistake, always be willing to look forward and be progressive and know that 100% of your decisions are not going to be right. But err on the cautious, but don't be so cautious you don't make decisions to move forward. Because if you don't move forward and stay static, you're going to be going behind.

Shay

Foulk: And everybody knows that risk is a huge part of agriculture today, always has been.

Roger

Rix: Oh yeah, tremendous. Tremendous risk. We invest 100% of our equity every year to get the crop planted and harvested. So there's a lot of risk, but that can be minimized by how you run your operation. And I'll be the first to admit we're in kind of a great area of the country to farm. We very rarely get a crop failure. We have the same issues as far as weather and markets and everybody else does, but we've, we've, we're in a great situation as far as our operation, as far as the type of soils and climate and so forth.

Shay

Foulk: Looking forward towards the future, especially being involved with the, with the boys, and even if it's salary on the advisory board, you know, if you had to diversify the operation as it is today, What ways do you think that you would do that, or what do you see for the future of your operation?

Roger

Rix: That's a good question. We did quite a bit of diversification when we first, when I first came back. We were obviously in the livestock, as I said earlier, but we did quite a bit of seed cleaning and doing some of those things and doing a little bit more of custom work. And then until our operation grew to a point that we didn't have time to do custom work or time to do the seed cleaning and all those kind of things. We just got to that point where our operation grew to the point that we needed to just concentrate on what we were doing and do it better. Diversification, I see probably diversification and we need probably is to continue to look at different crops. As far as our operation, you know, corn, soybean, corn, soybean, it's all it is.

So there is other crop opportunities out there and we need to, or there could be, we need to be always open to trying something different because if there is another crop out there that would work well in our climate and our soil types, we need to be looking at it and and trying it and not just be locked into a corn and soybean farmer.

Shay

Foulk: With that being said, how do you feel about where agriculture is today? Because you've seen some significant changes. And how do you feel about agriculture in the future?

Roger

Rix: I'm, I guess I'm very positive in the future. I've seen, like you said, a lot of changes, smaller operations back when I first started that are no longer around that have been absorbed by other operations. There's probably— that's probably going to continue, not to a great degree in our area because most of the farms are family farms in our area that are nice-sized operations that are very economical in structure. Going forward, I think there'll probably be some more of the consolidation, but not so much that'll change the landscape a lot. I don't see a lot of other opportunities as far as the production side. I see people doing a better job at it. And there could be more collaboration over time that maybe two operations will share machinery or share their operations.

Shay

Foulk: One of the tough questions here, what do you want the legacy of the farm to be? What's your vision for the operation?

Roger

Rix: I think that was something we were supposed to do as far as our peer group, wasn't it, Shane? Yeah. Yes. And it's something I need to work on. I guess I hope what our legacy has been in the past as far as my grandfather and my father and what mine will be, and my son's going for is that we were honest, hardworking, didn't take advantage of situations and people. We— I have never taken on an opportunity that, that I went behind the doors to get a hold of. Every opportunity we've had is when people have come to my door and said, we'd like you to We like the way you farm, we like you to farm our ground. And so we've never went out and done some things that I know other people have done. We've waited for the opportunities to come to us, and we hope that the opportunities come to us and will continue to come to our operation.

The fact that they trust what we do and they know they're going to be treated fairly.

Shay

Foulk: That's phenomenal. You know, any, any last advice for, for your kids or the listeners out there, you know, that you think will provide value that you'd like to pass on as part of a dad's wisdom?

Roger

Rix: I guess continue to keep your, your eyes open. Be attentive to the small things that are done with your operation. Look at your family and make sure you're paying attention to your family because that is your legacy, is your family. And be careful not to stay in that legacy just because you might think you want another quarter of land to farm. It's not that big a deal in the whole process. Just be, if you're doing things right and you're treating people do it right, you'll, those opportunities will show up.

Shay

Foulk: That's great. You know, I think that kind of wraps up our conversation here. We're so thankful to join you here today and, you know, truly appreciate the wisdom and advice that you shared and for telling your story. Thank you very much, Roger.

Roger

Rix: You're welcome. Thanks for asking me.

Shay

Foulk: If you'd like your father or someone who has shared wisdom with you in your farm operation, please reach out to us at agviewpitch@gmail.com. Thank you so much for listening, everyone, and we will catch you next time.

Narrator: Thanks again for listening, everyone. If you would like to hear more content from Ag View Solutions, listen to our other podcasts such as Dad's Wisdom or our current Harvest Series. Ag View Solutions works as an integral part of operations like yours, side by side for farm profit management, business collaboration and structuring, facilitating industry-leading peer groups, and coaching and consulting tailored to your farm's unique needs. We know that no two farms are the same, and we are here to help make your farm be the best it can be. You can learn more at agviewsolutions.com, email us at agviewpitch@gmail.com, or call Chris Barron at 319-533-5703.

Shay

Foulk: We really look forward to talking with you.