Angie Setzer is all grains all the time--she’s VP of Grains for Citizens, L.L.C. in Michigan, and works from a home base in Iowa, where she tweets as @GoddessofGrain and also appears on grain media shows such as Iowa Public Television’s Market to Market, Ag News Daily, and The Bubba Show.
Setzer spent a few minutes talking to Ceres on a busy week in which she was focused on Chinese soybean tariffs, a wave of exemptions for refineries from the ethanol-supporting Renewable Fuel Standards, and a visit from the in-laws.
Q. Kernels of Knowledge, your new podcast, tries to explain how elevator companies make money. It seems to be partly an effort to demystify the business for growers, and partly educational so they can make better decisions. What do you hope the podcast will cover, and who do you hope will listen?
A. We have had a conversation about how it’s always been a bit of an adversarial relationship, the farmer and the elevator. It’s been “I need you, so I’ll put up with you,” on the farmer side, and on the elevator side, at times a predatory relationship.
We want to remove the adversarial aspect...Donna, my cohost, and I are small elevator operators in the corn belt, and the last thing we want our customers to think is we’re taking advantage of them. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship.
“What (marketing crops) comes down to in the end is blocking and tackling, protecting profits when they show themselves, and managing risks.” -- Angie Setzer
We want to make sure farmers know how we make our decisions, and how we make our money. A lack of transparency encourages skepticism.
My business practice over the past 13 years has been to help educate my customers...doing our podcast is really a way to introduce a whole new realm of farmers to those techniques.
This image from Setzer’s appearance on Market to Market has become one of the most popular memes on Ag Twitter.
Q. Can you talk more about why farmers should be more actively involved in marketing their crop, and hedging strategies?
A. Farmers can take advantage of market structure and marketing techniques. Traditionally a big crop would mean a big profit for those grain houses, and we’re not seeing that anymore.
Farmers aren’t being forced to dump at the widest basis level come harvest time.
Q. What’s stopping some farmers from doing more hedging?
A. A lot of farmers love the agronomics side, they love the production side...your field conditions are X, you do Y.
But on the marketing side, it’s like being a blind weatherman most of the time. You can take into consideration everything you know about the market, and it still doesn’t mean it will happen.
Based on the fundamentals of soybeans right now, we’re way overpriced right now, but that and a dollar gets me a cup of coffee.
That frustrates farmers...but what it comes down to in the end is blocking and tackling, protecting profits when they show themselves, and managing their risks.