Cultivating Connections: Corn, Wheat, & Soybeans

Video Transcript

Bailey Elchinger, Stonex Regional Director: So I grew up on a small hog operation. I grew up doing chores.

We had to clean pens every day and feed, walk, and water. So it was instilled at an early age that pigs eat before you do.

We're very lucky to get to raise our family the same way that we were raised.

They get to grow up in a community and in agriculture that has similar values and similar ways of doing things that we did growing up, and there's no place I'd rather raise my family than on a farm.

Some girls play dress up, like princesses, and my girls pretend to show pigs. All day, every day.

Having grown up on a hog farm that saw all the cycles, right? Saw 1988, saw 1998, saw the early 2000s, and all of the ups and downs that came along with that really teaches you a lot about how markets function and how agriculture is a part of all of that broader global picture.

So it really grew my interest in agriculture.

I knew from a young age that in some way, shape, or form, I just wanted to be in agriculture.

We grow corn, soybeans, and soft red winter wheat.

Bailey's Husband: Beans look nice and clean so far. So...

Bailey: Yeah. Nice three-bean pod, not a flat, empty pod, but a nice full one. Is exactly what we want to see...

Bailey: To me, boots on the ground just means that I'm in it.

My hands are involved in agriculture every day, and my paycheck at home depends on whether it rains or not, as well as most of my customers... who are really impacted by weather, drought, and markets.

And, you know, I don't just tell people what to trade. Right? We have to sit at the dinner table and talk about marketing our corn crop for the year too. So I think that gives me a different perspective, maybe, than some others.

When I have conversations with producers, and I'm able to say, "On our farm, we're thirty percent sold today," or "Hey, I actually just told my husband to sell some corn this morning."

I think that really does inspire action from my customers.

They all have to haul this load in to finish up that contract.

Man: Yeah, looks pretty good.

Joel Sonnenberg, Grain Marketer: So I work with Bailey on – from her as a producer, actually buying her bushels – and then also with her position at Stonex. It's a pretty unique relationship that you don't always have, where I'm working with her on both sides of the table.

We've built great relationships with our customers. It's very individualized customer relationships.

And you really have to know their business. You have to know how big they are, how they operate, what they can handle at harvest time versus what they can handle in the springtime, and how quickly they need to move product. And that really comes from that individualized relationship with the customer, no matter their size.

Joel: Stonex is great to work with. There's, you know, a local office here in Bowling Green that we work with on day-to-day stuff. But then there's also all the information that they have across the U.S. and globally that we can rely on for valuable market information. That's broken down in a way that's easy to digest. And then pretty much any type of option strategy you can think of, Stonex is there providing insight, allowing us to create a customizable product that I can pass on to customers.

Bailey: It's really neat to be able to serve as that connection from our local farming community to the broader global marketplace. And I get to be that liaison between those two places, and I think that's such a neat opportunity. Our customers are well aware of the breadth of knowledge that Stonex has to offer.

And we've tried to empower them with access to our market intelligence site to really explore all those interactive tools, all those interactive reports, so that if there's something that one of their producers wants to know, like a specific question on USDA data, not only can I help them with that, but they have access to that data right at their fingertips.

We are not a place that's going to place a trade, take a trade, and wipe our hands and move on. We are here to build relationships that last a lifetime. Whether that's me learning about a customer who's been here twenty years before I got here or one that I'm starting with today that I want to be here for another twenty to thirty years. We are here to build a long-lasting relationship. If your business is successful, I'll be successful, and that's the first point of importance.