Lessons from the Farm: US Food & Dairy

Video transcript

[Super:]Across the globe, StoneX professionals draw on in-depth market knowledge and direct personal connections to deliver a unique advantage to clients that we call "Boots on the Ground."

Kyle Schrad, President, Global Dairy & Food Operations, StoneX Group Inc., FCM Division: I wouldn't be in my career without growing up here, without having that backdrop of being a farmer and having that experience you know, knowing the lifestyle, being to relate to what's going on out there every single day that really makes a big difference, I think, in what I do always. Dad bought this farm back in 1993. Dad was farming before that, so I mean, I've been on for a long time. There we go. The hog farm when I was really little kid, and then, you know, got into the crop farming around 9, 10, 11. You go to school, and then you get out of school, mom's there to pick you up, she's dropping you off at the farm, you're working until 9:30, 10 o'clock, you're going home, you're having dinner, and you're going back to bed, and you're doing it all again right away the next day. The old cardinal rule before you, you know, when you finish dumping before you head back out, you know, you got to make sure you get, your uh, you got to make sure you get your bin door closed because you know you'd be driving down the field dad start dumping and all of a sudden you'd see corn coming out the side and then it was like, oh crap. It didn't take long to notice that mistake. Dad was out here farming one day, and we had a little bit of a slow day in the summertime, and he's like, you know, there's this marketing guy uptown, and he does this stuff with futures and options, and he's like, I don't totally understand it, but he's like I think you're going to have to. So he sent me up there, and he goes, you know, why don't head down there one afternoon, spend a couple of hours, uh, you know, just getting an education, starting to understand this stuff and, you know, kind of getting a little bit of a background, right, so for me it was really about going through it and the continual nature of learning it and figuring it out and getting comfortable with it. And then once you get used to it, I think you get so much more comfortable with what's happening and what the exposure is and then you know, understanding, hey this is why I'm doing this.

I guess I've been lucky where, you know, Dad was working on a hog farm for years and years, so I got to see how the hog farm operated and what happened there, and then, you know, we've got the grain farm, corn, and soybeans here so you get a little bit different experience within agriculture, and now I'm, you know, really working and focused on dairies so I get to go out and see how dairies operate and what dairy men really do from a day to day, and it's fun to go see that. There's a couple in there, yeah, yeah, oh he's looking at these top ones, there's no dents up here. A lot of the chatter this and a lot of the talk is just getting to that black layer because once you get to that black layer, now you've got a good test weight going, um, you know, that's how you're really going to finish out and get it, get a good strong crop, high-quality corn and so we're really hoping we got a few weeks to go here. We're really hoping we can get to that point this year. The thing that differentiates us versus someone else, you know, just a simple research purpose, you do have those relationships on farm, so you are getting some of that anecdotal information. You know, we went out, we looked at the corn today, and you get a sense of just how far behind things are because normally, at this time of year, you'd see that black layer on the corn, and you can look at those years and say, wow, this, you know, is only about 50 percent of the way through the milking stage and you have those conversations with a bunch of different people in a bunch of different areas, and that's the information that people are really starved for. Today, when I look at my role and kind of what's really important for the client, I think about the fact that, hey, you know, I have the time to sit here and go through all these different things, read all these different pieced of publication, sort through all this information and then reframe that and organize that into something that's quick and easy for the client to understand and be comfortable with because at the end of the day I know that they're spending their time and focusing most of their energy on taking care of what's happening here on the ground. Boots on the ground just, to me, just means, hey, we've been there, we've done it, and we kind of understand what you're going through, and because of those experiences that we have, hopefully, we can work with you to develop something that's going to fit and work for your business.

[Super:]Boots on the Ground