Labor, trucking, and China: an Iowa farmer's perspective

Narrator: Hey podcast, thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. We know many of you that were at the Farm Futures Summit the last 2 days may be listening in for the first time, and we are happy to have you tuning in. We strive to provide perspective and quality information to farmers like you. If this is your first time tuning in, please check out some of our previous podcasts that may be valuable to you. We hope all of you out there are traveling safe in the snow, especially truckers like Eric and his crew, who you'll hear from next. Enjoy the podcast.

Shay

Foulk: Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Ag View Pitch, and we're joined here with special guest Eric Oberbroeckling. Did I say that right?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: You got her.

Shay

Foulk: Great. And we're here at the Farm Futures Business Summit. So I was wondering if you can just kind of introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about who you are, where you're located, and what brings you here today.

Erik

Oberbroeckling: Well, thank you, Shay. Once again, I'm Eric Oberbroeckling. I'm from Garville, Iowa, small little town north of Dubuque, Iowa, right near the Wisconsin-Iowa line, that northeast part of the state. Also known as the Driftless area. We were— I don't know if it's blessed or not, but the glacier never passed over our neck of the woods. We've got plenty of hills and contours and not like the rest of Iowa that it's known for. Farm corn, soybeans, run a trucking business, and commercially feed some hogs as well.

Shay

Foulk: And you don't farm in Wisconsin, is that correct?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: We do not farm in Wisconsin, that is correct. Not to say I never would, but presently we do not.

Shay

Foulk: Really close though.

Erik

Oberbroeckling: About 2 miles as the crow flies, and our closest Walmart and everything we need to pretty much do for grocery needs or personal shopping is across the river in Wisconsin.

Shay

Foulk: We were having a conversation this morning that, you know, for some reason rivers tend to be a barrier that you might as well just be on the other side of the moon.

Erik

Oberbroeckling: Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, it's just hard to, hard barrier entry or hard entry to crack into a different area when you got a big river in between you.

Shay

Foulk: So tell us a little bit about your background. How did you get into farming and, you know, just kind of paint the picture up until today.

Erik

Oberbroeckling: Sure, you bet. Well, I graduated from Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids in '04. Actually came back home and started farming in 2004. My dad at that time took an off-farm job. There wasn't really room for two of us, kind of at a crossroads, you know, what to do. He threw his name in the hat for an off-farm job and they hired him. So, okay, I guess I'm coming back home to the farm. Came back home to the farm, farmed for two years, great experience. At that point in time, after that two years was up, I realized maybe having a four-year education might not be the world's worst idea. So I actually, speaking of Wisconsin, went to school at University of Wisconsin at Platteville, being it's pretty close to home, about a 60-mile drive from home. So I got my bachelor's degree in ag business at University of Wisconsin at Platteville, graduated in December of '07.

And been back home ever since.

Shay

Foulk: Great. And what'd you think of the University of Wisconsin? You enjoy your time there?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: Top notch. Can't complain at all.

Shay

Foulk: Oh, that's great. So, you know, when you moved back into the farm operation, then did your father still have that off-farm job?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: No. And he, when he, when I came back, when I went to school at Platteville, my father agreed the job he took wasn't really as advertised, wasn't a good fit. He came back home and took full reign back of the farm again. And by the time we came back, I came back home from the University of Wisconsin at Platteville. Our farm expanded enough, growing enough, there was a need for both of us to be around at that point in time. And since then, we've introduced my brother in the operation in 2012 as well.

Shay

Foulk: Great. And so 2007, 2008 is pretty decent time to get back into farming there for the first 5 years. How did, how did that look for you being back with the operation?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: Went very well. As my brother says, you got the good times. I got in in '12, right at the top of the cycle. So it was a good time to be back in ag, no doubt about it.

Shay

Foulk: So how did you get into some of the various other things that you're currently with, like on the trucking side of things? The trucking business really spawned or spawned out of a need.

Erik

Oberbroeckling: We had to need a couple semis around to haul our own commodities anyway. So, you know, you're hauling— where most of our grain goes, the Mississippi River. So come wintertime, we don't have a market or any— no reason to transport anything. We start hauling, uh, boxed beef for a packing plant out of Postville, Iowa, now defunct, and right now it's— that's the immigration raid a few years ago. But started doing that, and the one thing kind of led to another after that. Um, we also have a local sand mine near our house. Um, they called us looking for some hopper bottom to transport some silica sand. One thing kind of led to another. I'd buy a truck or two to replace one or two, and they kept them busy. So we didn't get rid of a truck. I'd buy another couple with the thought of trading off a couple older ones and kept those busy too.

So just kind of snowballed out of control at that point in a good way.

Shay

Foulk: And you're running how many trucks now?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: Got 11 presently.

Shay

Foulk: So it's interesting on the trucking, I guess I want to pick your brain on that a little bit, because what we see with a lot of producers is it's more of a cost reduction center. It's not a profit center for people. It's more of a cost reduction. How do you view it in your operation and then how do you fully utilize the labor that goes into that?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: From our end, it's a whole separate business. There's— there's not a cost reduction center. It's a separate entity. All that stands alone. Our trucking business bills our farm business for services rendered and services used. So it's a whole separate animal in itself from our operation. And really what it does, we said with 11 trucks, I've probably got about 25 different employees, a lot of them full-time, a lot of part-time guys. Some might drive 1 or 2 days a month. It really gives us good access for the peak periods of time in the ag world, spring and fall. If I need to pull 2 or 3 of those guys to run a grain cart or haul corn, so they're still driving a semi, I got— it gives me access to a labor pool to pull from to satisfy our peak season demands.

Shay

Foulk: And we've seen that with a couple other people, a producer out in Ohio, you know, they do the same thing with the trucking to where that labor source is huge. And it's kind of hard for people to understand that. But in peak season, it can make all the difference in the world.

Erik

Oberbroeckling: It definitely does. I mean, labor is hard. It's hard to find good talent. I mean, it's not that we can't offer competitive salary, just our hours aren't necessarily the 8 to 5 Monday through Friday that, you know, if you're a diesel mechanic or something of that nature, you've got pretty much set hours. We can offer a lot of flexibility here, but, you know, everybody's gotta weigh what works for them, their own personal situation, when they're looking to change employment.

Shay

Foulk: So I wanna talk to you a little bit too about having the trucks in a separate entity. Now, regardless of whether you're running that separate business or not, can you talk to me a little bit about the importance of having the truck separated from the farm from a liability standpoint and some of the considerations that you make there.

Erik

Oberbroeckling: Yeah, that's definitely— I mean, from a— you're driving down the road, 80,000 pounds. I mean, if you, you know, God forbid you have an accident or somebody would, you know, be hurt or even worse killed, you'd really want that business to stand alone by itself. Yeah, they can take my trucks and take all the equity in that business, but it really draws a fine line between the farm business and the truck business. Not to say they probably won't come after every— you know, our name's on the door. They're probably gonna come after everything they can come after. But from a liability standpoint, definitely the divide, at least you got one line in the sand that they got to jump through to get after any of your personal assets.

Shay

Foulk: And unfortunately, with how things are today, you know, there's all these semi-truck lawyers out there. And were you involved in a semi accident? They almost always initially come and say $10 million. That's what we're coming on, you know, and they start there and then maybe work their way down. But it's a huge liability coverage and it's a huge liability gap that I think a lot of farms don't take into consideration. And for whatever reason, we see that with a lot of people that we work with, a lot of farms that they don't want to separate the trucking. There's some tax things there. There's— this is just how we've always done it, or they're not viewing it as a business. They're just viewing it as a cost reduction platform.

And so, you know, I think for those listening, just take some time to really consider the trucking side of things and maybe something else that you should be looking at there of how do we get this in a separate entity? How do we make sure that we're covered?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: And I would definitely agree whether you've got 1 truck or 15 trucks, definitely I would try and get that pulled away from the farm. Farm business, there's definitely a different level of liability exposure there compared to driving down the road in the tractor at 22 miles an hour. Not to say something can't happen there either, but a lot of different exposures when you're running up and down the road every day of the week with 80,000 pounds behind you, right?

Shay

Foulk: So with the trucking, let's transition a little bit into the labor that we already touched on. How does the labor look on the trucking side, and then how does it look on, on the farming side? And have you had any struggles with that here in the last 10 years? Either, either way, I'm blessed with a pretty good crew of guys on the truck side of the business.

Erik

Oberbroeckling: A lot of them could swing both ways on the farm. They can swing to the farm side as well if need be. But I will say finding new talent is a struggle. I could probably use 1 or 2 over-the-road drivers. Anybody that walks in my door that would want to drive over the road and be good, I would probably find a position for them. It's a struggle. On the farm side of the business as well, that's finding good diesel mechanics, people who understand the seasonality of our business. I can be flexible in late summer and wintertime, but when it's go time, 80, 90 hours a week is common. Finding somebody that wants to live that lifestyle is, I will say, definitely a struggle. Part-time help doesn't seem to be too bad. I mean, I can find a lot of retired guys who want to drive a truck 3, 4 days a week. They're pretty easy to find.

Most of those guys would prefer, you know, 7 to 4, 7 to 5. You're not going to get them to work a night shift, or get them to work a Saturday or Sunday once in a while. But those folks are easy to find. I rely heavily on them. I've got a few retired folks that work for me now. They probably, probably some of our top income earners. But, you know, if they want, they can work 6 days a week, and if they want to knock off for 2 weeks, go fish in Canada, You're tired, go. I can't stop them from going. I can't tell them they have to be here. So I've really got a lot of those folks that are just assets to our business.

Shay

Foulk: Well, and there's a huge quality of life component that comes along with that that people appreciate. And I think we see that more and more with the younger generation, that they want to have more flexible hours and they want to be able to do a vacation. And so, you know, what are some things that you've seen that you've successfully implemented in order to either retain labor or to find that talent that you're talking about? Is there anything you've had good success with?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: I can't say I can paint that with one common brush. I mean, I can be— the flexibility, as you mentioned, for the younger generation is a big thing. I mean, we've got an individual works for us now, shop guy, drives truck. The shop, we give— we usually every week I'll give him a list of here's some stuff we've got to get done. I really don't care when it gets done. Just try and have it done before you take off on Friday. Not to say something's not going to come up in midweek that demands his attention immediately. Yeah, the flexibility is a big thing. There's some days he'll be in at 6:30 in the morning and some days it might be a 10 o'clock start but he hangs around until 8 at night. That definitely helps the younger generation. I mean, a lot of our, some of the trucking, on the trucking side of business, some of that is structured.

You've gotta be here at 7 o'clock to pick up a load. There's only so much flexibility when you've got appointment times to make as well. So it's kind of a give and take there.

Shay

Foulk: So anything else that you wanna hit on with the trucking and labor side that you think would be beneficial? You've listened to the podcast here for quite a while now. What else do you think would maybe be beneficial to people out there to consider?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: I will say on the truck business, as mentioned, just getting it separate from the farm business, that also allows— it forces you to do a second set of books to actually see what you're making or not making in the farm business or your truck business. And we found, I mean, they're, you know, the truck business started as probably a sideline, you know, business or kind of a cost reduction center initially. It's probably turned into a profit center for us equal to our farm business, in all honesty. And And it gives us a layer of diversity. Yeah, we haul, we pull hopper bottoms and pull dairy tankers around. It's some ag commodities, but some of that stuff's got to move regardless. It's a different layer. It's not cyclical like the ag is.

So it's a steady stream of income to help kind of buffer some of the little bit of the downturn we're in now in the production side of our business on the ag side.

Shay

Foulk: You just gave some people heartburn when you said, oh, we got to have another set of books. But I will, you know, digress and say With that, what we see with a lot of people is they think, oh, it's an additional set of books. It is, but it's so much cleaner when you can separate it from the farm business. And it's, it's in, you know, it's expenses and income, you know, everything else. It's separated very clearly within the book set.

Erik

Oberbroeckling: And it really forced on our farm side, as I mentioned, we, our truck business bills our farm for all the services rendered there. It really forces our farm business to realize there is a cost to getting grain hauled. It makes our farm business, my fictitiously inflate our cost of production on the farm side, but it accounts for all the opportunity cost and everything else as well.

Shay

Foulk: Mm-hmm. If anybody has any questions on that, you can reach out to us with Ag View Solutions. Chris and I work with a lot of people on that and would be more than happy to discuss some of that. So, you know, I appreciate hitting on the trucking and labor side. Let's do a complete 360 here. So you're in China recently. Tell me about that.

Erik

Oberbroeckling: Yeah, I had the opportunity to go to China for 10 days with the Iowa Farm Bureau Association back in March. Went in with a very open mind, kind of what to expect. Or, I mean, my dad's mid-60s, his comment before I left was, don't step out of line, they're gonna throw you in jail, they're never gonna see you again. You know, typical, you know. And I came back, I guess my take on it was the China I seen is not your father's China. Okay, that's kind of best I could describe it. A very clean country. I mean, I was, I was impressed.

Shay

Foulk: I really like that comment. That would be something that we could almost title it and do a separate episode on. I think there's enough people out there that have visited. So what, what specifically did you look with at the Farm Did you tour some farms? What was your impression on that side?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: Um, Charlie, the takeaway, the 30,000-foot takeaway, I mean, very— still a communist or very governing government-type body with a very capitalistic underbelly. That's kind of described their society to a tee. I did tour some farms. When we were there was kind of when the whole African swine fever thing was just starting to hit the news. We were there during that week or 10 days and that broke. We purposely steered away. If we were supposed to do a couple of feed mills or a hog farm, we kind of detoured and changed course after we found out the whole swine fever issue. I did tour a couple large dairies. Very surprised, one of them we were at, I walked— when I got there, for the listeners that have been to Fair Oaks, Indiana, I thought I was walking back into Indiana when we got there. There was the visitor center, the hotel, the eatery.

I walked in their learning center, walked around the corner, and there on the wall is a picture of a Peterbilt semi with a Clauss chopper blowing silage into it. That same exact mural is on the wall at Fair Oaks in Indiana.

Narrator: Interesting.

Erik

Oberbroeckling: There's no Peterbilts in China. No. So they, they copied— they took it right down to the mural on the wall from the design standpoint. That was kind of the first jaw-dropper.

Shay

Foulk: When you say large dairy, what are you talking?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: They were— this dairy, particularly on this site, they had, I want to say, about 5,000 cows, and they had multiple pods, very similar to the Fair Oaks model in Indiana. In China, there was a melamine scandal outbreak about 10, 15 years ago. It really took a lot of the distrust out of the dairy industry. They're all very transparent now. You— there are a lot of these dairies are mega dairies. They got— they're vertically integrated. They own the cows all the way to the processing facility. They got it from, you know, silage to baby powder. They got the control of the whole process, or infant for silage, infant formula, I should say. And the dairies, you go through a creamery, we toured a couple of them. It is marble floors, glass walls. You can see the whole process, very transparent and very open.

The dairy industry in China probably has a lot of potential for growth in the future, but it was very much again, very top-down. There's about 10 of these mega dairies in China that are not necessarily owned or controlled by the government, but their territories all touch, but they didn't intermesh or intermingle. So kind of a monopolistic mentality with the dairy industry.

Shay

Foulk: So we hear a lot of different views on China of, oh, they're our biggest competitor. Oh wait, no, they don't have their stuff together. Oh, but their government's doing this. From a farmer perspective coming from Iowa, you know, what, what was your view on it? How do you think that with what you learned on that trip, what do you consider moving forward?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: I would say they're, they're definitely a force to be reckoned with. And they've got one— the force to be reckoned with, but also a lot of mouths to feed. They've got 1.4 billion, with a B, people in that country. I mean, they got— they need, they need food. They, they can't they can't even begin to fathom growing it all or producing it all themselves. So that's their first, their first hurdle. They've got to secure a food source or to keep their, you know, happy enough. A full people and a clothed people are happy people. So that's their number one concern, is make sure everybody is, you know, content in that country. I mean, with the whole trade war we had going on, we were over there, you know, hopefully since resolved, but really made us, you know, think about not being the Don't find more markets, I guess, for our products, put it that way.

One member of our group made the comment trading with China is kind of like how Walmart deals with suppliers here. China is a big country, Walmart's a big company. If you're a big multinational company, you can't afford not to be in China. But at the same time, you put all your eggs in your basket and throw your horsepower at— look how like we did here in the States, you know, a lot of our soybeans went to China. If that market suddenly dries up or disappears for tweet or, you know, something, a foo for a black swan event, you're geared up for that. Now you've got a whole bunch of product you can't do nothing with. Very similar, kind of said, suppliers gearing up to supply Walmart and they decided to head a different direction. What do you do with this massive quantity of supply?

So that's kind of the one takeaway, you know, you definitely want to be in the market, but tread lightly and definitely have a plan B if possible.

Shay

Foulk: Do you feel we can affect anything at the farmer level? I mean, as outside of being part of the Farm Bureau and advocating and lobbying in some cases, you know, what can the farmer do?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: Probably smaller, smaller niche market type stuff. I mean, China, they want to add the value to most things in country. The one fact I got out of there, 90% of the world's soy crushes in China. That number just kind of floored me when I heard that. They want to buy raw beans and process and add the value there. You know, complete feeds could be imported in China, but raw, you know, ingredients can't be. So try, try to find something small where you can add value would be— but that's gonna be tough on a farm level, not gonna deny it. But that's probably your best deal if you want to try and get into that market. That's the one avenue you could attempt to go down. But aside from that, you know, do things a little differently. When we grow non-GMO soybeans on our farm, you know, try and find something that's a little bit nichey, if you will.

You know, not— don't be just a standard commodity grower if the opportunity would present itself and work for you. Again, it's That's some of that stuff. Not for everybody, but certain locations leverage your location. You know, we're 2 miles from Mississippi River. So that's kind of why the whole non-GMO bean thing works for us. We're close by. The buyer wants them on buyer's call. I can haul a lot of beans in a hurry, go have them deliver them 2 miles.

Shay

Foulk: You've hit on some key points that we hear repeated and getting shouted louder and louder to us. Find those niche markets. You know, look at diversifying your operation. You're doing that in a lot of different senses. Is there any way else that you're differentiating your farm? You know, what are you looking at here in 2020 and moving beyond to where you think you can improve your farm operation?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: Big thing is know your cost. I mean, if you know your— you've preached that before, and you hear that every conference you go to. This one's no different here at the Farm Futures Conference. But definitely know where you're at, know your cost, you know, and you know, set a margin to market. Don't try and hit the high. Control your costs. Try and in-source as much as you can. And we— about the only thing we hire out is a little bit of dirt work and tiling. We, you know, we're close to Mississippi River. We source all our fertilizer off the barge. We spread it all ourselves. We haul and spread all our own lime, do our own soil sampling. Try and— it's not going to save you $50, $60 an acre, but, you know, base it $5 here, $10 there. You do that over enough acres over enough years, it starts to become real dollars.

You know, yeah, it's easy to just call up town, tell the co-op to come out and spray, but, you know, do a little homework. You know, send a bid sheet out for chemicals. You know, try and do the little things over and over repeatedly. And, you know, leverage your location. That's the big— that's one takeaway I can give you as far as trying to— tips to succeed here in 2020 and beyond, for that matter. As far as drastic changes on our operation, status quo, keep doing what we're doing and onward.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah, consistent profitability looks different. Chris spoke on that a little bit yesterday. Look at consistent profitability versus, you know, huge time periods of profitability. And those who are consistent longest You know, he referenced Southwest Airlines. They're not necessarily the most profitable, but year over year over year, they've been profitable and they've stayed in business and they've looked at what they can do really well. They've looked outside their operations that, hey, there's some things that we can't compare ourselves to the rest of the industry. So how do we look to others to make ourselves better? And how do we improve?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: I would agree with that. And my dad will comment too sometimes, though, you know, we've got more storage and XYZ, or they got more acres than we do, or this or that. I really don't care what— I don't care what— don't look at— don't worry about the neighbors. Do what works for your operation. Who cares what the neighbors are doing? Just, you know, as farmers, we always kind of compare, we benchmark or look at our compared to what the coffee shop talk is, but get that out of your head, you know, do what works financially and makes financial sense for your individual operation. That's, that's the big, the big thing.

Shay

Foulk: So we're going to walk out of here, go back and listen to some more great speakers. Dave Kohl is going to be speaking here this morning. Looking forward to that. We're going to hit some breakouts and, you know, then we're going to head home in this snowy weather. You know, what are some takeaways here from the last couple days? What's one or two things that you think you're going to take from this and maybe action into 2020?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: You know, that's a very good question. You say you come to these conferences and the best part I get is that my dad will ask me, "So what'd you learn? What'd that amount to?" And I can never really rattle off one or two things. Probably it's just conferences like this in general, they get the thought process, get the wheels turning. You'll probably know what you gain from here, maybe 2 months from now, a year from now. That's how I mean that. I've been to TPAP in Texas as well, kind of same thing. There's not one thing you can take away, just a lot of thought. It's thought-provoking, right, is what a lot of these conferences end up being, which is a very— it's good that I'm trying to downsell the conference, but they're— it just, it's a unique way of thinking. Change your perspective, change your perspective, right?

Shay

Foulk: And we hear a lot of people, especially this year with how busy things are, uh, nah, I'm trying to, I'm trying to get away from conferences. I, I need to focus on the farm and I do agree that it's important sometimes to take a step out and work on your business and not just in your business.

Erik

Oberbroeckling: It's not necessarily what you learn or take away. It's the people you bump into in the networking portion of who you might meet. You might, you know, it might be again 2, 3 years from now, you might, that person you met at a conference 2, 3 years ago might come into your operation. You might need that person to rely on or glean something from them that can affect you a few years down the road that you don't know today is going to happen.

Shay

Foulk: Well, and we see that too with a lot of the farmers that we work with. You know, here in the last 3 weeks, we've had 3 or 4 separate farmers that did not hear us speak this year or the year before that, but almost 2 or 3 years back. And they say, hey, by the way, you know, you, you do some of the things with cost of production or business collaboration, right? And yep, yep. That's, you know, some of what we do.

Narrator: Great.

Shay

Foulk: Well, I heard you speak at such and such. And so I really do think that it's important to attend some of these things and just build that network and if anything else, build the resources, because a lot of times you don't know what's out there. Until you come to something like this.

Erik

Oberbroeckling: That's clearly so. I mean, yeah, I mean, you're getting— there's a lot of— just because you think you're doing it right in your operation, I'm sure somebody's doing something better somewhere. You don't have to find— go too hard, too far to find a producer that's doing something you could be— alter your production or alter your mindset a little bit, make you think a little differently, and ultimately be a better producer because of what you picked up at a conference, whether it be today or a year ago, or just change your way of thinking in general.

Narrator: Absolutely.

Shay

Foulk: Anything else that you want to add to this conversation, Eric? I've really enjoyed talking with you here?

Erik

Oberbroeckling: Nothing I can think of off top of my head. I mean, the big thing is, you know, we're great, we're grain producers. I'll say look out in the— from just a marketing side of things, look out into the future. I mean, don't— the carry is always out there. Don't be afraid to sell the carry. That's, that's my one takeaway. And I'm guilty too. I got caught up in all the hype and, you know, last summer, you know, we're going $5 corn. I got caught up in it as well. Get back to the basics. That's the big thing. You keep hitting base hits, the doubles, Try and get a systems approach. We— that's what we try and do with our grain marketing. Typically we've got one, the current crop, and two years out sales on the books. Try and just try and get a systems approach how you run your business. Don't change course of direction every year. I'm this year I'm going to sell it all pre-harvest.

This year I'm going to bid it all. If you get a systems approach, stick with it. You know, get it, get it fine-tuned and stick with what works for you. What makes sense? Bankers like it too.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah, well, and bankers like it because you're measuring things and then looking to improve it. You can't improve what you don't measure. And that's something that we consistently talk with farmers on that is you need to be measuring your cost of production. You need to be looking at your marketing and set your target margin. Know what your plan is so that when it comes to the greed-fear cycle of the marketing that we see so often, you can look at that picture and look at yourself in the mirror and say, why am I not selling corn right now? Why am I not marketing these beans? Why am I not looking into these niche markets? And it gives you a little bit different perspective to hopefully maintain that consistent profitability over the Definitely.

Erik

Oberbroeckling: And then look at your financial numbers. Oh, you know, not just this year. Go bail. I've got a spreadsheet we use. I've got 10 years of financial data rolled on one spreadsheet. I can see what our working capital ratio of 2009, the trend all the way 2019. If you can see some of those trends, you know, if you start seeing a trend, a lot of times you can detour it or get it stopped before that trend becomes a problem. Or if you got a good trend, how do we keep this good ship sailing? You know, if you got to have a lot of data laid out that you can see. Don't rely on your lender to put that together for you and tell you where you're at. Be proactive, make the numbers your own, and know your numbers and know what they mean to you.

Shay

Foulk: I think that's a great place to leave off there, Eric. Again, I really appreciate it. Let us know if you need anything down the road. But thanks for taking the time today.

Erik

Oberbroeckling: Thank you, Jake.

Shay

Foulk: Absolutely. And thank you everyone for listening. We will catch you next time on the Ag View Pitch.

Narrator: If you haven't already, be sure to check out our recently revamped website at AgViewSolutions.com. There's now a useful tools tab where where you can download some free tools that Chris has developed to better help your operation in 2020 and beyond.

Shay

Foulk: And you can learn more under the Consulting tab about what we do.

Narrator: If you have any questions, please give Chris a call at 319-533-5703 or email at cbarron@agviewsolutions.com. If you wanna talk marketing, shoot Duane Lowery an email at duanel@netins.net. Be sure to ask him about his daily market commentary. Subscribe and share the podcast to stay up to date on the most recent podcasts. Have a great rest of your week, everyone, and we will catch you next time on the Ag View Pitch.