00:00 Is it down Ag economy, the right time to expand your grain facility? That's what we're talking about in this episode 00:05 of Extreme Ag Cutting the curve. Welcome to Extreme ags Cutting the Curve podcast, where real farmers share real insights 00:14 and real results to help you improve your farming operation. And now here's your host, Damien Mason. 00:21 Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme as cutting the curve coming 00:25 to you live via tape from Commodity Classic 2024. Here we're in Houston and we're in the booth of Superior Grain. 00:31 Our buddy Rodie Berg is here. I've got Kelly Garrett, Chad Henderson, and Johnny. We extreme mag. 00:36 We're asking a question and they're going to answer it is a down economy in agriculture, a time to consider expanding, building, 00:44 improving your grain infrastructure. You know, these things take a long time. It's a capital improvement. 00:50 Also, ag economies, you know, they go up and down, but here we are, 20, 24 off 40% of our high farmer income of 2022. 00:59 That's a big number. I'm asking a question before I get to you, the expert here. I wanna go to these guys. Johnny, 01:05 you're the superior grain guy. We were at your facility in summer of 2023. I climbed up on the dryer, we shot good stuff, talked 01:12 to our, our friend Brian Adams and you about all the reasons you've done what you've done. But you did that before heading into this economy. 01:18 You did it during the good ag economy. What would you ha, what would you do if you were heading into right now and you hadn't built all the stuff you had 01:25 built, would you still pull the trigger? Absolutely. I mean the reason we're doing it are ag agronomic base, so we know 01:31 what we're gaining by that side of it. We're gaining the premium in the price, early harvest price. So there's multiple reasons to look at it. 01:38 Just 'cause the price of the futures is down, the bases are gonna be up during that early harvest time. We're gonna still capitalize on that premium. 01:45 Chad, you are doing a green facility, uh, improvement in 2024 at you and uh, Stewart on and, and talk to, uh, Rodie about that. 01:55 You had no choice. You pulled the trigger on in 2023 and now it's taken till now to get it all going. If you knew what was coming in 02:02 2024, would you still pull the trigger? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I'm like Johnny, you know, it's, it's about getting the crop outta the field 02:06 and without that we can't get the crop out field. We can't sit in lines, we can't hire enough drivers for trucks. 02:11 You know, the machines just keep getting bigger. We just keep buying more of 'em and we just, we have to get the crop outta the field. 02:17 So that's the way we can do it. Then the store inside, that's, that's the whole new animal. You know, 02:21 Kelly, you have, and I'm not being any weem. I mean it's just, it's an observation for the amount of acres you farm. 02:27 You have as little of a grain infrastructure as probably anybody on a comparative amount of acres. One might ask should you expand your grain facility 02:36 and your grain handling, uh, infrastructure and if so, is it down ag economy of time to do it? Well, yeah, our operation has 02:43 definitely outgrown our facility. We rented another facility, things like that. We quadruple the size of the dryer 02:49 and I a hundred percent agree that it is the time to do it because it's a multi-year project. 02:54 If we only do it in the good times, you might not ever pull the trigger because the good times don't always last. 02:59 It's a multi-year process to, to do this and to continue doing it and you have to budget it in and kind of have a steady flow. If 03:06 You'll rodie one thing that I think anybody that's been, uh, you know, observant enough 03:10 and worked in agriculture, when, when the chips are up, you can't hardly get somebody to show up and put grain drainage tile in. 03:17 You can't hardly somebody come up and, and build you a building because everybody's got money and they wanna get off their books. 03:23 I could make the case just on the standpoint of availability of guys like you and the crew to come out and do it. 03:28 The time to do it is when you get somebody to do it and it's gonna be a heck of a lot easier and a down economy than when things are 03:34 so flushed they're trying to spend money. Absolutely. And we've talked about it before, that mentality of, uh, farmers, you know, not, 03:42 I don't need it this year, you know, and so we've got, actually right now we've had a full slate of, uh, people buying stuff 03:50 and we still have room in the, in the schedule right now. You know, there's other years. Where 03:53 Are you trying to sell me? I mean like right now, are you trying to say, Hey Damien, we still squeeze you in about mid-July. 03:58 We can get out there and build you some units, don't you do it? Oh, next week. 04:03 Quite maybe down Here. All right, so the reality is, um, if someone asks you, you, you're in a sales role, obviously, uh, man, 04:11 Roddy, I've got the plans. I like your specs. You know what you're doing. You sent your tech people out. 04:19 I'm not ready because I'm worried about the economy and agriculture. Do you get that All the time? And what 04:24 do you tell 'em? Um, there's that, you know, there is some legitimate concerns with that, but at the same time, um, timeframes are, 04:35 are are huge right now. Um, equipment's not bad, but you get into more of the peripheral stuff like electrical, uh, transformers right now, 45 04:44 to 50 some weeks out. So if you have to put into electrical or if you have to get other, you know, 04:50 MCC cabinets or something like that. Yeah. Some of that stuff's a year out. Yeah. You're looking at a project for 25, 04:55 Although it's probably fair to say that 25 isn't gonna be somehow, remarkably better a economy like it was just two years ago. 05:02 So you could almost say, well I don't wanna do this 'cause I think the next two years are gonna be bad. Next three years are gonna be bad. Your answer, 05:08 You had that crystal ball. How do you, how do you know? Got it. I'm gonna go to Chad. You're pulling the trigger on this. 05:13 You are putting in a new, uh, improvements to your grain infrastructure. Do grain bins make you money? Clearly they must. 05:19 Or you wouldn't be doing it. Oh yeah. Every year. You know, and, and you're gonna have that one year, you know, I don't know if you've seen it, 05:24 Johnny, what, what'd you sell for corn far? When we come out the field, we come out and then when we put it in the grain bins, then we actually, 05:29 you know, maybe decline something. Yeah, it happens sometime. You know, it's a market, it's, it's it's commodities. 05:34 It's traded, stuff happens, but you still, you can't replace the fact that there's more bushels in my bin because of the bins. 05:41 Right. If I didn't have the bins and I had to wait in the truck lines or whatever to get it out or storms 05:46 you're leaving in the field, you can't leave the property Field. The answer I would 05:49 have, I guess, or maybe, but I, I haven't, I've never deployed a couple million dollars of, uh, capital toward a 05:54 grain infrastructure set up. Um, but you have, you're still gonna have the bushels. Yep. You're still gonna have to market those bushels 06:01 and you still, if you do it right, can make that grain make sense. Whether you're gonna down ag economy or a good ag economy. 06:07 That would be my thought. But also it's easy for me to say I haven't deployed two or $3 million toward the infrastructure. 06:12 Your thoughts. Yeah, Same thing you're saying, it's, you gotta have the, the projects in place. 06:17 You gotta have the dryer already in place to take advantage of these deals. So Kelly, you know, you made a comment 06:23 that he didn't have a big enough facility right there. He's, you know, rented some more. I'm in the same situation, 06:28 but what it allows me to do, I can get a third of my crop out before anybody else really gets started in my area. 06:33 So I don't have to have the big facilities. I don't have to tie up all that capital because I'm able to utilize that and we'll flip our bins two 06:40 and three times in a season. Yeah. And that really helps us be a lot more efficient. Cost per bushel goes way down when you do that. 06:46 But on top of the cost per bushel going down on the infrastructure, we're making a lot more money 'cause we're picking up that harvest premium. 06:51 What's interesting is if anybody pulled into your grainy yard, your barning yard, where you'll call it your facility, 06:55 they would say, oh, this is undersized for what their, what their acreage is. It's all relative. I mean, 07:01 whether I've got a hundred thousand bushel or 200 a million, whatever, you don't have as much grain capacity as you have grain productive ability, 07:10 but you utilize it more. You are, you are one of those guys that uses your dryer three, four. 07:16 It gets used a lot of cycles. It gets a lot of turns, you know, if it's a restaurant And there's times when our dryer run 10, 15, 20 days 07:21 without shutting off, you know, we will run for a couple of months. Yeah. But there'll be stretches 07:25 where we got enough grain in the wet bin and we'll have a stretch. It will not shut off. It's a factory. 07:30 And that's just allowing us to take advantage of these opportunities with the market and the harvest time. You know, that's a big deal for all 07:36 of us, especially when it sets into rain. Now what's interesting, you said it was running like that and that's when things were really good, 07:40 22, 23 record farm income. You still were running it that way. Is there more pressure on you to run it that way now 07:45 or does it stay pretty much the same in terms of the, how you run the facility? It's more pressure now I think 07:50 because those are the easy, that's the easy money to pick up Building and expanding. 07:55 When you and Stuart and I talked about it, you're doing it anyhow. The thing's been in process. You 07:59 got, you know, you pulled the trigger. Are you a little more scared now? Are you a little more wince? 08:02 Are you a little more gun shy now than you were six months ago? Or is it just Nope, the decision's made? No, 08:07 The system's made and I'm, and two, you know, you, you build your first set of bins. Okay, then you get them paid off 08:12 and then you build more bins. Well, those bins pay for those bins and once you get the infrastructure, you get it, 08:17 you get the wheel turning, you get it going. It's just like irrigation systems. You know, you get one to pay for the next one. 08:21 You know, so you have to look at it like, this investment, I'm not paying for this 08:24 150,000 bushel bin that I'm putting up. No. My other 400,000 bushel is paying for my 150,000 bushel bin. 08:31 Is he, is, is this farmer sentiment you've heard before those bushel, those bins paid for these bins? No. Farmers 08:36 Don't usually look at, that's the first time I've ever heard that. You like that? Are you gonna use that now when you're 08:40 talking to potential customers? Absolutely. Hey, those bins that are out there right now, they're gonna pay for your next ones. Yeah. Between, 08:46 Between Stuart And him. Yeah. I, I can start a business with those two guys. I like it. You know, it's starting 08:51 to sound a little pyramid emish. No, really all you gotta do is get more people to, to sell Amway under you. 08:56 Yeah. There You go. I don't think that's still some reasonable thought coming out of this. First off, there's pressure to utilize a facility 09:04 in a very maximization of capacity manner. Absolutely. But also they're not saying they're afraid of a down economy to expand you. 09:14 Your thoughts. You hear this, you think about it, you're in this position every day talking to these guys. There's a lot of, there's a lot of hesitancy. 09:21 I mean that's this mentality from, from Johnny and Chad is different than what we hear a lot of the time. It's kind of outside the norm. 09:30 You know, most guys are, are are, they are gun shy. Yeah. Spending in that, that down economy 09:35 Or a little more forward thing for sure. By the way, what kind of business would you start with? He and Stewart? Would it be kind 09:38 of a multi-level marketing thing where it's kind of like all you need is more people permit? Yeah. Yeah. Kelly, you've been sitting there 09:44 and I I I know you got thoughts. So your thoughts hearing him, him and, and now that the fact that there's gonna be a lot 09:50 of reluctance to do big capital deployment, um, uh, expansion facility. If we think we're gonna have a couple year downturn, 09:58 I still think that the business has to run, and this is part of making the business run. The business still have to run. 10:02 You know, I'm the numbers guy, these guys are right. And I, I believe the perspective that it is looked at is wrong. 10:08 People wanna look at it that I can afford it during $7 corn, but not during $4 corn. 10:14 That's the wrong number to look at. Look at the value add that the bin provides. And probably if, you know, you still have 10:20 to write the check, but probably that value add Yep. Is a lot bigger percentage of your income during $4 corn than seven. 10:28 And, and the, the basis that we can establish the carry in the market, getting the crop out of the field, the bin is a value add. 10:35 The drier is a value add. And that exists in a $4 market and a $7 market. And the value add is more important. 10:41 The downturn, you start to go down this road before we even hit record. And I said, you know, save that for the air. 10:45 Because the point I was gonna wonder is, you know, when $7 corn, you can let some sense blow in the wind, you can make some mistakes, you can haul it to town 10:55 and you can swamp, you can haul it to town and pay a dock fee. You can, you can overpay for, 10:59 I would think when things are tighter is when you can justify being in control of the crop a little bit more. And to do that means infrastructure, am I thinking 11:08 Right? That's right. Just like you're saying, we can't control the weather. Me and Chad don't have a lot of irrigation 11:13 for the acres we farm, but one thing we can't control is the timeliness of harvest. Yep. And those premiums, 11:17 because I wanna be the first to market and I wanna clean up that easy premium being first to market. 11:22 But I also wanna be last, so when I put in the bin, I'm fine with sitting on corn to June july to wait on 11:27 that premium to get hot again. Yeah. So it kind of, I'm not the guy selling October, November, December. 11:32 We're the guy selling in August, September and really not selling in to June, July. By the way to explain that, 11:37 because we talked about this, I think for the listener and the viewer, you're in a market in western Tennessee where the basis gets really, really favorable for you 11:46 by right before anybody in Iowa or Indiana or the traditional corn belt is harvesting because the, the, you're close to the Mississippi River and, 11:53 and the markets have shrunk up and there's a real big demand. So that's why you're, you can justify 11:57 grabbing 35% moisture corn as long as you can use it, your own dryer to dry it. And Also, and also speed of delivery too. 12:03 Yeah. I mean, you told me before me and you was talking anything like, hey, they needed 50,000 bushel in three days or something like that. 12:09 You know, so you gotta keep that in mind. They'll go to a, a grower that has a nice facility and a fast facility to get 'em where they know 12:16 that the trucks can come in and just do business with you. Well, I think we should bring up the, the geography, 12:20 the geographical or location aspect of it close to the river and at a, at a part of the country where long 12:28 before the corn belt has corn available, you can be available. And that's where somebody maybe in 12:33 Minnesota can't justify it as well as you can because they can't grab a 25 cent positive basis in August. I mean, let's speak to that. 12:41 Yeah. So I mean, for us, we're doing, going into feed meals for chickens, dog food, you know, cat food, all these type of feeds down there where we are. 12:48 Aren't you allergic to Cats? Yeah, I'm highly allergic to cats. But, but up there we're killing. Yeah. 12:53 I forget the cats, but up there we're killing them. Are you got dairies, cattle operations going on ethanol plants, they're running out of feed the same way. 13:00 So for us, we're almost 60 miles from any type of delivery point. Sometimes I haul all the way down to where Chad is, 13:05 if the premium's right. And there's been times when the elevator called us and said, Hey, we need 50,000 bushel tomorrow, 13:11 and we wake up at six in the morning and there's been 20 trucks sitting in our driveway. They send the trucks, they want it right 13:16 now we can deliver it. So we take a, we take a full advantage of those opportunities. I wanna go with Kelly. Um, the person that's listening 13:22 to this says, wait a minute, I'm listening to this. I, I like what extreme ag guys have to say. You're always thinking gimme business ideas, 13:28 but it's easier for you to tell me to go out and spend a million, 2 million whatever on new, uh, grain facility and a downturn. 13:34 But you haven't, you are definitely undersized, you're the most undersized of anybody in extreme ag in terms of your grain facility. 13:40 So what has been your reluctance? I think it's because you're gonna tell me you haven't needed it because of access to places to go with. 13:47 You haven't needed, you know, well, we just spent a half a million dollars on the dryer. The dryer to me was more important than the green bin. Okay. 13:53 You know what I mean? There's only so much, uh, financing or money to go around and we just put in a half a million 13:58 dollar dryer and quadruple the size of the dryer. Like Johnny, we're turning those bins over four or five times during harvest and running through there. 14:06 One of the big bin that we have has a side draw and there'll be times, you know, you'll, you'll go to the ethanol plant, you could take wet corn. 14:12 Wet corn, it's fine. Then all of a sudden they only want dry corn. Well that dryer allows us to keep harvesting. Yep. 14:18 Capture that basis. They'll, they'll give a better basis. Right. So, and they'll just accept dry corn and, 14:22 And in August they'll take wet corn, but finally you're gonna be paying 40 cents, 60 cents drying charge and that goes on a market of $4 14:30 Corn in September. They'll take all the corn you got, all of a sudden they get full of wet 14:33 corn and they want dry corn. Yeah. So we switch to that and That's where the facility makes money for you 14:38 because now you can't pay 45, 50 cents, whatever, that kind of thing. Here's another thing. If I were in your position, 14:46 it's a 30 year investment. It's, it is an infrastructure improvement. This isn't something that, that you're going to, uh, put up 14:52 and then it's, it's gone in three years. Can't you speak to that and say, okay, it's a down economy now, 14:58 but wouldn't it be nice to have had all this capacity five years ago when things were up and you could have made money on it? 15:04 Is that one of your sales pitches? That That's one thing you Need Stuart and Chad to help you on sales training. 15:09 I mean really I'm thinking about this. It is a long-term investment. How do you view it? Yeah. Long-term investment. 15:15 But I can get really fast returns 'cause we're after these premiums. Kelly doesn't need the grain storage 15:20 'cause he's gonna flip them bins and, And see he's at his ethanol plane's right there close. Yeah. You know, how far is it from you? 10 miles. 10 miles. 15:28 So see, you know, I mean, it, it all these, all these factors come into play. Yeah. And I mean, you just gotta be able 15:32 to do what works in your area. For me, my dryer makes me more money than my bins do every year. 15:37 Your dryer makes more money than your bins every year. How old is the oldest green bin at Henderson Farms? Well, More than 30. 15:45 Uh, yeah. Pushing 30. Uh, no pushing. Pushing 45. Pushing 45. Yeah. Yeah. We don't that, you know, 15:54 but we don't use it as much anymore. Yeah. You know, obviously it's a small be we can't even get in there structure. 15:57 Sure. The oldest working being we got is oh 7, 0 6 0 7. Same for me. Yeah. 2006 we kind of transitioned outta cotton. 16:06 2007 we put in our first grain system. We've evolved over time and I mean, Did you, and so the person 16:11 that's right now asking the question, boy, is it down economy of time for me to put in this grain infrastructure? 16:16 Uh, oh six was pretty good. That's when things started to get good, but it hadn't been up until that. 16:20 But you still pulled the trigger. Look at, Look at, look at oh seven. We had a Easter freeze. Remember that? Yeah. 16:25 I lost everything. We had 1400 acres of corn built. Two 60,000 bushel bins and a 20,000 bushel bin. And we just made a, we had to go back. 16:32 We, we had 1200 acres froze out. We went back and replanted it. We had a drought and then we only made enough corn 16:39 with a corn we had booked to fill one bin. Yeah. So the first two bins, they didn't get anything in 'em. 16:44 First year we filled that one bin, but we made a dollar on it. We made a dollar on. I said, just hold on, 16:48 we make the payment this year. Yeah. We coming back. That's an oldie buddy goodie right there. We haven't heard anybody from the south say Easter freeze. 16:55 I was just gonna say, you know what, I don't, what I don't what I don't like Easter freeze where cabin, 17:00 I'm not very, I'm not very easily shook or rattled. I've been in show biz enough. But when you started throwing out you like, is he, is, 17:08 is he being like, is he being puppeteered? Is there somebody, Matthews always talks about the Easter of freeze. 17:14 I thought there was a ventriloquism situation going On for a While. All right, get me outta here. What do I need to know? 17:19 We've asked the question. Is a down economy a time to expand your green infrastructure? Or more importantly, for those people that are afraid 17:24 to do it, maybe now is the time to consider it. That's why we're asking a question here at commodity class of 2024. Your thoughts, 17:30 Timeframes, availability on peripherals. Sometimes equipment. Uh, the other thing too is we just had a, a big elevator, 17:37 local elevator, burn down, stuff like that. You lose a, an elevator now you lost, that's one marketing opportunity that you 17:44 Bought. You have learned something from the, the, the Henderson Sanderson connection on how to use, use fear to sell stuff. 17:50 Hey, what if that place down the road gets hit by a tornado? Wouldn't it be nice to have your own grain structure? 17:54 We had one shut the doors on wheat and we like never got the wheat out of it because we had two places to take 17:58 wheat then we had to take it to one. Took us to October. There, there is some truth to that. 18:03 When, when you're, you're very vulnerable. I mean that's one thing I'm hearing you, It's nice to be self-sufficient. 18:08 Yeah. Vulnerability. Uh, when, when you got a weather thing, okay, where else get me out of this. But, uh, yeah, 18:13 So you, you tie into that and just always having new opportunities come up. That's the big thing for me. 18:17 And you know, you're talking about $7 corn, it'd be a lot easier to really capitalize on that premium, but you capitalize on every year. 18:23 But on year it shoots up to $7 and you got the facility in place already. It's always harder to buy the new thing 18:28 coming out or what's in demand. It's easier to put it in because nothing's getting paid for in a year. 18:33 You're an a a a numbers guy. Always the person that says, Hey, I can handle the down at economy. 18:38 'cause that'll turn around and I'm getting the idea that I'll put, you know, more premium on it. I can capture bases. I'm here. 18:43 What Chad's talking about about timing, you know, you just gotta keep, you know, keeping the improvements, the infrastructure, all that interest rates. 18:49 What if the person says, I don't mind the die on ag economy, but the interest rates. What do you tell 'em? 18:55 The last grain, uh, bin we put up is 150,000 bushel bin. We put up the overhead drag from a lag 19:00 and I think that at that time, that was a $330,000 project and we went to the FSA and got a loan 19:06 and I, that money is still there and I think it'd be three, 3.5%. I would suggest you do that. So 19:11 Rather than go to your traditional under USD programs on grain storage still exist. 19:15 And we always, when we do big projects, we look for any type of grant that's out there. A lot of the energy efficiency grants. 19:20 Me and Rodie worked on the one when I put the big dryer in. There's grants out there that pay for a large portion 19:24 of these as long as they're being more efficient for the future. Are you able to do that with your new, uh, facility, 19:28 either USDA or a grant or an energy efficiency thing? Haven't have anything Right now available with a be With a Be Itself now. 19:33 And it's on Dryers. Dryers really focused on dryers being more efficient with, And you're not changing your 19:37 dryer, you're just doing a bin. Not this year. You're dryer a new dryer's in the offing. Our new 19:42 Dryer is definitely in the Boots. Our Dryer, our dryer project, like I said, was a half million dollars and they haven't announced it 19:48 yet, but we're hoping we get a grant for 220,000 A REAP grant. Like That's what I got for the energy efficiency. It 19:54 Makes it a no-brainer. I, I'll, I mean a person that's going to be skeptical or saying Yeah, but I got jump through hoops 19:59 and I gotta, you know, go through a two year audit. Is that how easy or how hard? Uh, I Mean there is hoops to jump through, 20:05 but I mean it's, it's up to 40% of your cost back. Yeah. I don't mind jumping through a hoop here and there for 200 grand. Yeah, 20:11 And there's, there's people out there that work with you, like a coach that have come in 20:14 there and tell you what you need. I need all this paperwork filled out by this day. If you get approved then we'll 20:19 worry about the rest of the paperwork. So you're really not having to do all of it and you might not get it. 20:22 You really just gotta get the application process done. They'll let you know if you're gonna get approved and they can kind of rank you and then you go through. 20:28 It was a, took us a couple of months, but it really wasn't a couple of months of work. It was just a few days of work here and there. 20:33 The grant writer does both of the work. It's worth every penny. We Have a nice lady named Bonnie does a great job. 20:38 That's fantastic information. Anything else on the way out the door here? No Good asking a question. 20:43 Is in down Ag economy a time to consider grain infrastructure expansion or improvement? You know, you might be afraid to do so. 20:50 We just heard a lot of really good reasons why maybe you shouldn't be. It's a long term capital project. 20:54 You've got really good information from these guys. That's Johnny Rell from Tennessee. That's Chad Henderson from Alabama. 20:59 That's Kelly Garrett from Iowa. And Rod Berg from Superior Grain. If they wanna learn more about your 21:03 equipment, your product, where do they go? Superior benzs.com. Superior benzs.com. Until next time, thanks for tuning in here 21:09 to another fantastic episode of Extreme Ag Cutting The Curve coming to you live via tape from Commodity Classic 20 20 20 24. 21:16 That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. Make sure to check out Extreme ag.farm for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out 21:24 of your farming operation.