We continue our conversations at Trade Talk with Farmers Business Network’s Charles Baron.
Q: Let’s talk things going on with FBN here as we near the end of the year. First, I should hit on this: Cyber Days, talk about what you guys have going on there from a product standpoint.
CB: Cyber Days is really FBN’s biggest purchasing event of the year for producers. So for that preseason when producers want to lock in the most savings of the year, we make a huge program available. And it’s become kind of a tradition at FBN. It started as (the question of) why shouldn’t farmers have Black Friday and Cyber Monday just like everyone else? And it turned into a whole month for us.
We have a huge program across crop protection, livestock, animal health, feed and biologicals. We even have a pilot going on now in liquid fertilizer as well. So hundreds of products with typically our best prices of the season.
The ability to lock in 0% financing for the entire year for producers, and the ability to use the FBN acre plan system so they can actually map out their whole needs for the entire year for each crop and know exactly what their cost per acre are going to be on their inputs. And so that system gives farmers more transparency and control and really just drilling home. (It tells them) here’s exactly what my input costs are going to be so they can market with confidence.
Q: Well, and thinking about making those decisions, obviously this is the time of year. I mean, we’re wrapping up 2024 harvest. We’re making a lot of decisions for that 2025 crop. And with the way interest rates are and cost of inputs a lot of farmers have been talking about that in general.
So there’s a lot surrounding this situation right now that a lot of decisions are going to be made that are going to be pretty critical, right?
CB: Yep, absolutely. And so in the last two years, we’ve seen huge swings in the prices of inputs, especially things like crop protection and fertilizer.
Seed has kind of continued to go up, but didn’t have all the volatility that chem and fertilizer did. Chem prices skyrocketed in ‘22. They came down in ‘23. This year they kind of bottomed a bit. And what we’re seeing is just on the fundamental basis of the supply dynamics with the international producers and what’s coming into the country. We think for the most part prices are pretty stable or will be pretty stable, meaning we don’t expect them to skyrocket. We don’t expect them to go down much further. There are some prices 240 where we do expect 240 to be going up. And we advise farmers to be getting ahead on that one especially. But you also just have more variables in play this year.
So we have just had the election. We don’t exactly know what that’s going to mean yet in terms of trade policy. We don’t know what that’s going to mean in terms of tariffs or other changes in supply. And our manufacturer is going to change terms out there for folks who are downstream. So those could be issues that do bring price increases this year on certain inputs.
We want farmers to be cautious about that, be mindful of that. We don’t yet know what that’s going to mean. So be prudent and lock in when you can. We provide price guarantees on products during Cyber Days as well for our loyal customers so they can get certain price protection on that product should the price go down. And we try and give people the most secure, most confident way to buy for the whole year.
Q: Interest rates too, I know you guys have some options there. On the finance side for farmers, obviously that environment is a totally different conversation as well.
CB: Yeah, that’s when there’s more positive things going on. So you’ve gotten the second round of rate cutting here, and then there should be another one in December.
For growers who’ve had to lock in interest rates over the last two years, this is a good time to refinance they absolutely should be refinancing any land purchases or operating notes that they have. FBN’s finance platform is very easy to use. We have a full program from land appraisal and valuation through the AcreVision system. You can check out the value of all your farmland and any parcel you’re interested in. Then you can get easily qualified.
There’s instant quoting, basically a 15-minute application get you going and a very, very rapid approval process. So we’ve extended over two and a half billion dollars now of credit to growers. It’s been a very successful program and something that FBN growers have really valued.
And again, you can use that for land purchases, operating notes on the farm and input purchases, and (there’s) equipment loans, which is something new we have this year as well. And then both on those input and operating notes, anything you buy on the FBN store is eligible for that 0% financing program. So you can use that operating line to buy everything you need on the farm and then the 0% is just there for you when you buy inputs on FBN.
Q: I should ask as well, give a plug when it comes to technology and AI. We’ve talked about this before but share with folks who may not be aware of your guys’ AI advisor.
CB: Norm is our AI advisor. This is artificial intelligence, not the other AI for cattle.
AI is basically your ability to talk to technology and allows technology to talk back to you. So as opposed to googling and searching for the answer for things, with AI, you can put the question in and say, “I’m dealing with this issue specific to my livestock or my crop, this agronomic situation or my machinery” and it’ll have a conversation with you and it will help you solve the problem. So it actually works like a human. It’s incredible.
Norm can pass an agronomy exam. We’ve tested it on multiple different state licensing exams. It’s trained on public source data from things like extension universities as well as FBN’s corpus of information. And that makes it a tremendous advisor. We’ve trained it specifically on chemicals, diseases and pests, so you can use it for label questions, application timing questions, mixing compatibility questions, product selection, you name it.
So you go onto FBN, you go to either fbn.com/norm or you visit any product page on the store and there’ll be a little button for Norm on there and you can have a chat. So if you haven’t talked with AI, check it out. You know, give it a shot, because a lot of farmers love the fact that you’ve got an agronomist there 24/7 who can talk to you.