Dad's wisdom with Bruce Moody from Fremont, Indiana

Bruce

Moody: Thank you for listening to another Dad's Wisdom episode brought to you by the Ag View Pitch. We believe that sharing these stories, experiences, and wisdom is crucial to improving our businesses and learning from others. If you have someone that would be good for a Dad's Wisdom, please email us at cbarron@agviewsolutions.com.

Chris: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ag View Pitch, and today we are going to have a conversation again on Dad's Wisdom. We're fortunate enough today to have with us Bruce Moody, who farms in Fremont, Indiana. Bruce, how's it going?

Bruce

Moody: Ah, it's just another day in paradise.

Chris: Yeah, so you were here today and we were kind of working on some farm stuff, and I decided that it would be a great opportunity to corner you here, and I was able to get you cornered and kind of dig some wisdom out of you as a dad and as a farm operator that's got a lot of years of experience. And so With that said, Bruce, would you go ahead and give us a little bit of background about yourself? Tell us a little bit about your operation and kind of how you got started in farming and where you're at today.

Bruce

Moody: I'm third generation on the Fremont, Steuben County, Indiana ground. My grandfather bought the first ground in 1904. He was a schoolteacher, bought it as an investment. His dad, my dad, was born 4 years later and and he was there all his life. And I took over out of, well, kind of out of high school, out of college. I started renting ground and graduated from Purdue. And a year or two later, one day mother said, hey, we think you'd ought to buy the farm. And I looked at her and said, well, okay. And so they wrote me a land contract that I could live with. And so then in the next decade, I bought about 1,000 acres of ground. Wow. And that was more about my birth date than being smart, because inflation and one thing another, and you could roll one thing to another.

And started buying— I think the first initial purchase was about $250 an acre, and the last major purchase was about $1,500 an acre. And that was over about a decade.

Chris: Wow. That's awesome. I'm going to come back to that in a second. One thing I do want to hit, uh, hit you up on a little bit is just a little bit about your family. A little, uh, tell us a little bit about your family, and I'm going to come back to that land purchasing thing here in a minute.

Bruce

Moody: Got 3 blonde daughters that were raised on the farm, but not much interest in it at this point, and trying to figure out what to do next. Some, some transition planning that's kind of went awry, and now we're talking about a collaborative thing with, with you, of course, and Shea, and I'm excited about that.

Chris: Cool. And we're gonna, we're gonna come back to the transition and the collaboration stuff here as well. And so let's go back for a second. You mentioned, you know, you were a grad from Purdue. If you were to talk to you know, young people that are in college, just out of college, young producers that are trying to grow the business now in today's environment. And, you know, you talked about inflation. We're in— as we record this, we're in a pretty inflationary time frame, and some things are really starting to change. So with that all said, you know, what advice would you give some of these young producers and some of these operators that are trying to figure out how to navigate some of the financial challenges right now?

Bruce

Moody: I think an important thing for somebody that wants to farm, wants to farm with Dad and all that, he needs to get away from Dad for a couple, 3 years or more, whether it's go to college and learn some things there and kind of get his eyes opened or go somewhere else for a while and see how some other people do it.

Chris: Right. What, uh, from the, from the financial side of things, you know, and we're going to get to this decade that you were talking about here in a minute, but, you know, from a financial standpoint, any, any things that stick out that, that you would be telling producers to be watching, to be paying attention to?

Bruce

Moody: Get with a banker that, that talks your language, can talk your language, and has your interest in, in mind as well as his own. And I've had kind of two, two bankers that stand out in my career. And the last one is still my banker, and I don't know, I've probably been with him 20 years now.

Chris: Awesome. Well, that's, that's really good advice. I think is, is you got to have partners, right, in, in any of this, and need to look at the banker as a partner, right? Right. So let's get to the decade thing that you were just talking about during that time frame. So give me the give us the time frame of the decade where you were able to accumulate— would you say 1,000 acres?

Bruce

Moody: About 1,000 acres.

Chris: Okay.

Bruce

Moody: That was— I think, I think I bought a home farm in '72, um, and that was about 300-acre farm, 300 acres. That was a land contract with my, with my parents. And, um, at the time I kind of— okay, you got the confidence and I got the guts. So I started renting ground right out of high school, actually. Still farm one of the farms, original farms I farmed. Must have rented it in '67 or '68.

Chris: Still farm it. Okay. What year did you graduate from?

Bruce

Moody: We're going to high school in '66.

Chris: Okay. And then college?

Bruce

Moody: College at '70.

Chris: Okay. So from '72 to '82 then, that decade? 1,000 acres. So put that into today's perspective. I mean, because it's all really is about perspective, isn't it? I mean, right now, a lot of us as producers, and especially some of the younger ones that are questioning, well, these— how do I— how do you buy land? It doesn't even cash flow. And you look at, you know, commodity prices and the volatility that we see in commodities and how that influences land values, and then We just talked about the inflationary component that's going on right now, the massive amount of money printing and all that stuff that, that 3 administrations in a row have done. And that's definitely influenced some of this stuff. Talk a little bit to the listeners here of, you know, does it make sense to be buying land? I mean, what, where do you, you know, because capital is a limited resource, right?

So are you a are you a land buyer? Are you a land renter in this type of environment? Or how would you look at that?

Bruce

Moody: At 73 years of age, it's got to be some good reason to buy it other than just to be, to be a general, general buyer. No, I am not.

Chris: What about if you were 25? What would you tell your 25-year-old self?

Bruce

Moody: You got to have a base. You don't have to have a lot of base, but you got to have a base that you feel feel secure with and, and know that you got a place to be. And I, I can't imagine being 100% renter for your career. Okay, I'm sure there's a few around, but don't know how that would feel.

Chris: Right, right. Um, so I kind of want to lead into, you know, transition. You talked about, you know, the transition for you was, okay, do you want to buy the farm?

Bruce

Moody: And let me back up a little and this will tell you a little what, how crazy those days were. Okay. The last major purchase was what, at kind of a high price cycle. And I knew it was a good piece of ground come up for sale. And that landlord, I wasn't renting at the time, but the owner sent a letter to 10 people around the county and said, I'd sell my farm. And it was noted to be a good farm. But everybody kind of knew we were due to break the land cycle and so on. I think it was a 30-day notification. On about day 28 or day 29, I contacted him and said, well, I got a little interest in your farm. And he said, well, you're the only one that contacted me. Well, that, that kind of sets the stage for negotiations. And it turns out we negotiated a land contract where I could default on principal payments for 2 years It was a non-recourse loan.

And as it turns out, I got half the crop, which made the down payment. There were times it was really hard to make that payment in that 10 years, or actually, I— yeah, 2 years I defaulted on the principal payment. But you got to think out of the box. And we're in a period where most of the lending has been done by banks and whatever. And I suspicion we're going to get to a period of other opportunities at some point here. I never thought land prices would get as high as they are, and thank you, Lord, that they are. But it's, but it's a curse to the young guys.

Chris: I know that, right? But is it, is it relative, do you think? I mean, you look at what land values have done, say for example, over the last 30 years, we're on a trajectory of, you know, pushing slightly over 7% annual value improvement just on, just on a trend line. So, you know, is it, is it a scenario where, you know, if we stay on that trajectory, on average, you know, you're gonna have your ups and downs. But, you know, I guess my question is, if you're telling your 25-year-old self, would you buy land? Or would you be vested in some other—

Bruce

Moody: I think there's a lot better places to put your money, better return than land. But there are, there's, there have been opportunities and will again be opportunities in land. And the stability that some land to begin for a young farmer, I think, is important if it works in a longer-term strategy of farming with dad or kind of a base of operations for where you think you want to grow.

Chris: And transitioning to the next gen— you know, the generation after the next generation.

Bruce

Moody: Well, and I think that transitioning is what's going to give some opportunities to people that, you know, there's a bunch of people that don't have succession plan and, and don't have heirs, and that's the thing that's going to give opportunity to some young, young guys.

Chris: Interesting. So, um, I want to go to another topic that's sort of connected to this, but you had an experience that was extremely unfortunate, um, just what, a year, a little over a year ago. Um, tell us a little bit about what happened. You're in the middle of a transition.

Bruce

Moody: And, uh, well, no, actually we were down the road a ways. We were probably almost 10 years into it with— I was semi-retired and pretty happy with that. I had a 40-something, 48-year-old partner, and then a younger 32, 33-year-old partner that were basically handling most of the management. We'd been with that plan for oh, near to 10 years, and, and all was going pretty well. And I got a call at 2 o'clock in the morning from the senior partner's wife, and he had passed. No, no sign of it coming. It was just out of the blue.

Chris: Yeah. And so with that terrible experience and, and that unfortunate situation, there's things that come out of that that can easily be helpful and useful to the listeners and can kind of help some other people out with that information. As you look back on that, you know, there's certain things you can do and there's certain things you can't do. As you look back to that situation for his family, for your family, and in the midst of that, what things, if you could go back, you know, and you can't do that, but if you were to give advice to other people that are in the midst of transition, what things did you learn in that process?

Bruce

Moody: We had not been counseled well on the value of insurance. And I think a lot of farmers probably haven't been. And I think you need to find somebody that you can trust and can talk that to through whether it's an attorney, an accountant, or whatever. Do your homework on insurance and what it can do, what it could mean as a partner as well as a family member.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so kind of what you're saying is especially if you're the senior partner in the situation and something happens like that and somebody passes, all of a sudden you're in business with the rest of that individual's family when in fact you think you're in business with that person. They're unfortunately out of the picture. Now you're in business with new partners, and that's where the term life or something comes in from that insurance side of things, right, to make sure that you can buy them out and take care of them better.

Bruce

Moody: That's right. Would have been a good investment.

Chris: Anything else that in transition, so you're looking at other opportunities now and in transition What any other things that you learned or things that you think are important to be planning for or thinking about for the listeners that are, you know, knowing they're gonna, they're gonna transition someday? Like you said, you know, you have family members that aren't interested in directly being involved in farming, but yet you want to try to set things up so that the legacy of the land and the operation itself can go forward. Can you talk a little to that?

Bruce

Moody: In that original transition plan, we had used what was formerly known as Kennedy and Co. to help us through some of that reorganization. And I think it's critical that we as farmers don't know all that we should know or could know about some of the business things and happy to work with you and Shea now on another plan. But I think it's, I heard Paul Niefer speak on a podcast the other day, just need to bring in some outside expertise. Especially when you're looking at transitioning or collaborative or any significant change. Just get some good people around you.

Chris: Mm-hmm, okay. On the collaboration side of things, that's something that if you go back in history, years and years ago, farmers did a pretty good job of collaborating. You know, we worked together and thrashed together and all these kind of things, right? You know, and then, Technology starts to enter into the picture. As farmers, we come— we become very independent, which is good to a large extent, but, you know, looking across the fence and saying, okay, what resources do they have that we have that are in excess that maybe we could collaborate in a way and, and kind of minimize some of our expenses, you know, collaborate in a way that we put our minds together and maybe make some better decisions, or you know, with labor being a huge issue in a lot of areas anymore. Any comments on what you see in collaboration or what you've seen over the course of your career?

Bruce

Moody: Part of this is from experience in that first transition plan, and part of it's in, in what I see here in the collaboration we're working on, is find people that you're very comfortable with, that can trust, of course, but have some different skill sets where you could put 2 or 3 people together with, with different skill sets and there's some real synergies there that can happen.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, that's kind of what we're trying to do here. So hopefully we can, we can deliver on that. And it's really all about the people and stuff. So I forewarned you about this question, so I'm going to throw it at you again. I forewarned you off, off line here. That if, you know, if you could go back and you can tell these, these listeners that are in there, they're 30-something, if you could go back to that age, you know, are there any key learnings that you would throw at them and say, here are the 2 or 3 things that you really need to pay attention to in your career in agriculture?

Bruce

Moody: Uh, you, you told me you're coming here and nothing's coming to my mind, but You just gotta keep your mind open, I think, is a lot of it. And just because somebody's done something one way for a long time, that doesn't make it right. Yeah. You've done a great job here with what your collaboration with neighbors and whatever have done, but you're also adding value in teaching other people what has worked and what isn't working. That's part of going back to what I say, get some professionals around you that you can learn from. We're never done learning. Never done learning.

Chris: That's great advice. And I like what you said about, you know, the idea of, you know, just because you've always done it that way doesn't mean that's how you need to keep doing it. It was funny, just last night, Shay stopped in here and our seed plot is right across the road and we have our signs facing. So, you know, as you come at them from the side, you can see them. And he's like, why don't you turn them and face them back out from the field? And I'm like, well, I don't know, we've always put them up that way. And so, you know, sometimes, as you say, you know, we need to step back and look at things and think out of the box. And, and maybe if we answer the question, well, that's how we've always done it, that might not be the best answer.

Bruce

Moody: Well, with that example you just had, I can think back a couple times in my lifetime where I needed to listen better and, and just take, take some things that maybe people aren't poking at you about, but yeah, but turn them around and see what— if you can make them positive.

Chris: Yeah, it's, it's sort of like self-reflection, or, you know, I think we all probably need to maybe do a better job of, of, uh, you know, looking in the mirror and saying, you know, am I listening? And, and how do I How do I take constructive criticism? Do I take offense to it or do I take it in and say, oh, maybe I should think about that? So, okay, well, on a lighter note here, you, when you got here today before we had our meeting with you and your partners here, you were talking about your area has a lot of rocks and in our area I said, well, we have a lot of rocks and you had a little, um, uh, lesson for me, and I guess I would like to have you tell the listeners your, your lesson on how rocks— I think it's on how rocks reproduce.

Bruce

Moody: Is that right? Well, sex life of a rock.

Chris: Okay, sex life of a rock.

Bruce

Moody: You can't even spit it out yet. I know it's got you flabbergasted. Yeah, it does. I've taught you a few things about rocks. Exactly. Size and denominations and whatever, but, but you really had no idea that rocks had a sex life No, I had no idea that they have a sex life. Well, I'm sure you're like a lot of other farmers, and every spring you go out and pick them all up.

Chris: Yeah, we pick them all up.

Bruce

Moody: Probably miss a couple.

Chris: We have missed a few.

Bruce

Moody: Yep. Well, if you go out, particularly in July, and you lay your hand on them, what do you feel?

Chris: In July, if you put your hand on a rock, it's going to be warm, I guess, you know.

Bruce

Moody: That's right, it's going to be warm. And you kind of made the rationalization it's probably the sun, right?

Chris: Yeah, probably.

Bruce

Moody: Well, no, that's not right. They're in heat.

Chris: Oh, okay.

Bruce

Moody: They're in heat. And, and if there happens to be a couple rocks in the same field, if you go listen really close at night, if you're listening to the corn grow and you hear a little clicking noise, well, that's those rocks getting together in July. And then their gestation period is about 8-9 months. Every spring you're going to have a new bunch of rocks, don't you?

Chris: Okay, well, yeah, we do. And then they're various sizes, so that's always— some of them grow better.

Bruce

Moody: There's Yeah, there's BFRs and MFRs and LFRs. LFRs. Yeah, we learned that today too. So, okay. But you said that you had, you got rock boxes on your tractors.

Chris: Yeah, we do.

Bruce

Moody: And I said, well, you just got stones. If you can pick them up, they're stones. Rocks are something you can't pick up.

Chris: Those are the ones you go to with the backhoe.

Bruce

Moody: Yes, that's right. That's BFRs.

Chris: Gotcha, gotcha.

Bruce

Moody: I'll let all your audience kind of translate what that BFR is.

Chris: Yeah, well, I think we can probably figure that out, so, and we'll keep it family friendly, but, you know, but it's kind of like the kids, they always have all these letters that are supposed to mean stuff and that actually means something. So any other words of wisdom that you have, you know, the all the way from, you know, graduating from Purdue and to explaining how rocks' sex life works and everything in between. Any additional words of wisdom or thoughts?

Bruce

Moody: Not really. It's just a little levity helps and just keep at keeping at it. Yeah, that's kind of what it is.

Chris: That's right. So, well, Bruce, I think this was a great conversation. I had a lot of fun visiting with you. And if you think of any additional wisdom, we'll be back out bugging you after harvest again. So maybe we'll have to get together and see if we can see how things made out with the rocks and how the gestation period's going and that kind of thing. Okay.

Bruce

Moody: So, well, you got to have some snow to work— make that work too. Okay. So they come out from under the snow.

Chris: I see. I see. Well, we'll keep learning. We'll keep learning. That's the key.

Bruce

Moody: Open mind.

Chris: That's right. So, well, Bruce, thank you very much. Really appreciate your time and really appreciate you sharing your dad's wisdom with us today. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Yeah, and thanks everybody for listening to Dad's Wisdom. If you've got somebody out there that's interesting to talk to, and your dad or somebody that could share some wisdom with us, please let us know. We'd like to continue doing these Dad's Wisdom segments, and hope you have a great one, and we'll talk to you again next time on the IV Pitch.