(rhythmic rock music) (rhythmic rock music continues) - Welcome to "A Shot of Ag."

My name is Rob Sharkey.

I'm a fifth generation farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

And yes, I am a farmer, but there are a lot of jobs in agricultures and we try to cover 'em all.

Today we're gonna be talking with Allie Piper.

How you doing, Allie?

- I'm good.

- You are one of those people that has another job in agriculture?

- Uh-huh.

- Yes.

- Yes, I do.

- So what do you do?

- So I, and my technical job title is I am the market strategy manager at my grain company, FS Grain.

- FS Grain.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Would that be safe to say that you buy grain?

- Yes.

Yep.

- Okay.

- So some may know us as grain originators, grain merchandisers throughout the industry, so yeah.

- [Rob] FS has to be different, though.

Market strategy manager.

- There you go.

- That sounds very official.

- It's very official.

- You're from Pecatonica.

- Yes.

- Where's that at?

- So it is in northern Illinois.

It's in Winnebago County.

- [Rob] Way up north.

- Yeah, about halfway between Freeport and Rockford.

- Yeah.

- Along Route 20.

- Now, does your territory come down towards Peoria?

- Yeah, so our furthest south elevator would be our Buda location, which is near your farm, and that would be closer to Peoria.

We also have a location in Ransom.

I think Ransom's really our furthest south, but I don't know.

- Ransom.

- Ransom, yeah.

So that'd be kinda by Streator, south of Ottawa.

- I didn't even, I've never even heard of that.

- Yeah, we have an elevator there.

- Really?

That's a town?

- It's a small town.

Actually, that's one of our busiest elevators.

We're on the BNSF railway there and we load 110 car shuttle trains there, and it was the first shuttle loader in the state of Illinois to send Illinois's corn down to the feedlots in Hereford, Texas.

- Ah.

How big is Ransom?

- Oh, it's very tiny.

It's really small.

- It sounds like a- - I would say- - A payout if someone has you held- - Right, yeah.

- Captive.

- Yeah, no, it's a small, small town.

- Okay.

Did you grow up on a farm?

- I did, yes, yeah.

- What kind of farm?

- So my dad farms, or with his brothers, and they raise corn, soybeans, and beef cows.

His dad, my grandpa, was a dairy farmer and milked cows until I was in college.

So in high school, that was my part-time job was milking cows after school every day, so- - At least you got the afternoon and not the morning.

- Yeah, yeah, grandpa didn't want me getting up too early.

He said I'd be too tired at school, so- - Is he grumpy?

He didn't want you to be grumpy.

- Yeah, yeah.

- That's work.

- I would be very grumpy.

It is work.

- What those dairy guys- - Yeah.

- And that's, did you do that every day?

- Yeah.

- Really?

- Mm-hmm.

- I mean, was the farming going back, whether it be dairy or that, was that something that you ever thought about going back to?

- I didn't think I would go back and farm by any means.

We didn't farm a ton, and, I mean, there was nothing on the horizon for me to come back to.

I was the brainiac and thought I was gonna go to college and- - [Rob] Are you smart?

- I really thought I was gonna be an ag teacher.

- Oh.

- Yeah.

- Like, you're book smart, though?

- Yeah, I was our valedictorian.

(laughs) - At Pecatonica, did they have their own high school?

- Yes, we did, yep.

- How many kids were in there?

- There was 48 kids in my graduating class.

- 48 and you were number one.

- Yeah, I was one of the valedictorians.

- Did you take all the, like, the lower class, you know how they do, so the kid takes all the lower classes and gets straight As where the smart kids take the electives and they get a B+ and, but you're the valedictorian.

That's how you did it?

- Yeah, no, we had AP classes.

I took all the AP classes and- - So do you have, like, a math mind?

- Yeah, I was a, I'm a math nerd, for sure.

- Really?

- So, yeah.

- Okay.

By the way, I'm gonna take a moment here, all right?

I wanna say hi to somebody.

Do you wanna say hi to them, too?

- Sure.

- Tate is watching us in Hanna City.

- Ah, Tate.

- So apparently Tate never misses a show.

- Awesome.

- Yeah, so Tate- - He's a big fan.

- Thank you for watching.

Okay, back to you and your math prowess.

(Allie laughs) - Yeah.

- Does that help in what you do?

- Yeah, for sure.

- Yeah?

- Yeah.

So I think one of the really nerdy, I guess, career things is when I was in college and I was a honor student at Illinois State, I was a presidential scholar there, so I had to take the upper level math classes as my gen eds and whatnot.

And so in calculus we learned about Fibonacci waves.

And then being in the grain industry, that's actually a chart thing that technical market analysts would track the Fibonacci waves and being like, oh, calculus, markets, math.

- Yeah.

- So cool.

- You don't have to, I'm a farmer.

I know all about the fiber optic waves.

It's, yeah, it's super cool and fascinating and stuff.

Did you take a bunch of classes at, you went to Illinois State.

- Correct.

- Well, you couldn't have been that smart.

- Well, they paid me to go there.

I got the presidential scholarship, so- (Rob laughs) - It was a joke, yeah?

So please don't email me.

Did you take any classes that kind of equate to what you're doing now?

- I didn't really, no.

I started, I thought I wanted to be an ag teacher, so that's how I kind of set up classes.

I quickly decided, and this is so naive of me as a young, you know, dumb kid entering adulthood.

I thought, well, if I'm a teacher, I'm gonna have to take home all these papers and grade 'em and- - Yeah, yeah.

- I didn't wanna have to work when I got home from work, and so I didn't wanna be a teacher, 'cause no other jobs do that, right?

- You get the whole summer off.

- I know, I know.

So yeah, that was my really naive, well, I don't wanna be a teacher, and if I student teach, and I had to do a study abroad semester as part of this presidential scholarship program, I didn't know if I'd be able to get all my coursework done, either.

So I changed gears a little bit.

I did an internship pretty much every summer that I was at ISU.

I did an internship for the Farm Bureau.

I did an internship for the Illinois Corn Growers Association.

- You're an overachiever.

- Well, I needed something to do in the summer.

I had to make money to pay for the rest of my school.

So yeah, I did all those different internships.

The ag department at ISU had a lot of different opportunities for students to do those things, and so I took advantage of those and got to try all of those different career paths and figure out that on paper, that sounded like what I wanted to do.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- And once I did it, it was like, oh, this isn't what I thought it would be.

And so I was lucky to get that experience while I was in school and not have to figure that out after I was done and had a degree that I maybe didn't necessarily want or need or whatever.

- I studied a broad in college.

(Allie laughs) - I bet you did.

I bet you studied several.

- No, just one, and I ended up marrying her.

- That's good.

- Yes.

You went to New Zealand?

- I did, yeah, so I- - That's a ways away.

- It is, yeah.

ISU had a internship program through the ag department and through the College of Business, and we did a business study there and worked for a company that was, they were investigating purchasing this patent to make a corn-based resin type of plastic that you would make injection molded things out of.

And there was a patent for this corn-based resin that they were gonna use.

And so they had us kind of put together a SWOT, strength, weaknesses, opportunities, threats analysis, a strategic business plan.

- Really?

- That's where the College of Business students came in and- - That sounds simply awful to do.

- Yeah, there were six of us that did it.

- Actually, it was really interesting.

- Really?

- Yeah.

It was really interesting.

- Were you north island or south island?

- We were in Christchurch.

We were in the south island.

- Oh, you were in the city.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- So we landed in Auckland, then flew to Christchurch, lived with host families for six weeks, and then we stayed for an extra two weeks and toured the south island mostly.

- Did you see where the hobbits lived?

- We didn't.

That was really far out of our way.

And one of the guys that did the internship with us, he was really into that and wanted to do that, but us girls were not into that and- - It's a sheep pasture.

- Yeah.

- Literally where it was filmed, the Hobbiton, it's a sheep pasture.

- Yeah.

- That's it.

- Yeah.

- So you're, it was a good call not going.

- It was really far out of the way and away from a lot of the other tourist things there, so we elected not to hit it up.

- It's, they take you out there on a bus and then before you get back on the bus you gotta scrape your shoes.

And all the city people thought that was the most novel thing in the world that you had to scrape the sheep crap off your shoes.

- Yeah, no thanks.

- Some people just like to do things, don't they?

- Yeah.

- Beautiful country.

- Yes, it was very beautiful.

- Yes, and people are so nicer.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, the host families that we lived with introduced us to friends that they had.

The friends took us out and about in the city.

Like, I mean, I was a farm kid, and we could ride the bus around the city and do whatever.

I never read a bus schedule in my life, you know?

So, but it never worried me 'cause you just show up and ask somebody and they would help you.

They were so friendly.

- Yeah.

Did you go to that Kentucky Fried Kiwi when you were down there?

- No, I don't think, I've never heard of that.

- It's a thing.

- It was a long time ago.

- Yeah?

(Rob laughs) - Okay, I asked you a question it seems like a couple days ago about whether you took a class or not that is helping what you do.

- Oh, yes, exactly.

Exactly, no, so I changed my mind all these different times while I was in school and did these different internships.

I took the one grain marketing class that I had to take as what they required to get an ag business degree, 'cause I double majored in ag business and animal science and then I actually minored in accounting.

So I just took the one- - Good night.

- Grain marketing class and- - Well, how'd you learn how to do it?

- So I worked at the local grain elevator right outside of Bloomington-Normal while I was in school.

- Let me stop you.

Tell people what a grain elevator is.

- Sure.

Yeah.

So a grain elevator is, you probably see them in all the small towns, especially down here in central Illinois.

The big steel silos.

They got the peaked roofs on 'em.

They kinda look like tin cans.

And the elevator, yeah, that's where the farmer would bring their grain, dump their grain to store it.

They would store it in those bins then until the market needs it later in the year, so all of the grain in Illinois and anywhere else where they grow grain is ready all at once and we need to supply that grain to the different markets throughout the year.

And so it's kind of a storage type of situation where then they would market it into the various marketing channels throughout the territory.

So there may be rail, there may be the river, they may truck it to a processor to be made into ethanol, corn syrup, different corn-based products, or soybean processors, as well, to make biodiesel and whatnot.

- On our other show, we go to Nashville and we do the man on the street and we show 'em a picture of a grain bin and they don't know what it is.

And I say, "Well, it's a grain bin.

What do you think the farmer is storing in there?"

And they always say water.

Water or milk.

- Right, yeah.

- Even after I told them that it was a grain bin.

So yeah, most people it, I don't know, it's kind of a reminder to me that most people just don't know much about where their food comes from, so- - Mm-hmm.

I always think it would be a great cheap, close field trip for small town, 'cause those kids drive by those grain elevators every day.

- [Rob] To go see a grain bin?

- To go to the elevator and see how they dump it and if they load it out, like in Ransom, Illinois, you could see us load trains.

I mean, we load trains every week outta that small town.

- I believe that's probably the most exciting thing in Ransom, Illinois.

- So, but they probably drive by all the time and don't really realize that's how those small towns are affecting global commerce.

- You could wait till the bin's empty, then take the kids in there and have them sing a song.

- I've seen that, yeah.

- Yeah, that's really cool.

- One of our partners, Western Grain Marketing, they did that with their local high school, the choir did when they built a new bin, and the YouTube video's really cool.

- Where the hell are, you confused me.

- Sorry.

- All right.

It's what happens when you talk to smart people.

- Oh, nonsense.

- So, all right, I'm a farmer, and I'm going to send my grain to your elevator, which means I am gonna be your best friend for a while, and you need to give me some advice on how to sell grain.

I mean, how do you do that?

First of all, that's a huge responsibility when you're talking to a farmer and are going to say, you know, maybe you should look at selling some corn today.

So how do you go about all that?

- So I work with farmers to generate revenue on their farm.

So they have all these input costs that they work with different people on and then they've got this one shot to market their grain.

Not one shot, but, I mean, your main revenue stream.

- [Rob] It's like the Eminem song.

- Yeah.

- You got one shot.

- Yeah.

- Mom's spaghetti.

- Yeah, exactly.

Mom's spaghetti right here.

(Rob laughs) So we work with you guys to minimize your risk.

There's different ways you can market your grain.

Some guys sell it as they deliver it across the scale.

Some guys sell it ahead of time.

Some guys and gals, I shouldn't just say guys.

- I wasn't gonna correct you.

(both laugh) - They will store it at our facilities and pay storage and then market it later in the year.

But yeah, I mean, generating that revenue, I find that in talking to our customers, farmers like you, they sometimes get emotionally attached to the grain.

You know, you toil on it all year and whatnot and- - I don't believe you.

- It's tough to let it go.

I've sometimes seen where the farmer's wife is the better grain marketer because she sees it as dollars and cents in the bin and- - You just, you lost all credibility.

(Allie laughs) - I'm gonna lose my customer here.

- There's no way- (laughs) - But there's not that emotional attachment to it, and so looking at price is pretty good.

I know what we've gotten in recent years.

Let's let it go.

Where sometimes the guy or gal who is growing that grain, toiling over it all year, I mean, that's their pride and joy of that year, and that emotional attachment can sometimes make it tough to send that stuff and do it.

- Yes, you are 100% correct in what you just said.

So since I'm looking bad here, let's talk about your, what is this?

- So my item that I brought to set on your desk, I brought this dozen eggs.

When my husband and I bought our first home, we lived in town right across the street from the high school, and I was at the county fair and I had wanted chickens.

I'd mentioned that I'd wanted chickens.

And I got a little caught up in the bidding at the local county fair and- - What were you talking about emotions?

- Exactly, yes.

So I called him and I said, "I just bought some chickens."

And I brought them home and we had nowhere to keep 'em.

They were in- - That's a good plan there.

- Yeah, yeah, they were in a dog kennel, basically.

We built a pen the next day and kept them and had chickens.

They were little.

They weren't laying yet.

And a couple days later the police were at my house.

- Oh.

- Yes.

And I had bought two pairs with a rooster and hen.

So I had two roosters that were letting the entire town know that I had just newly acquired chickens.

- [Rob] And that's not legal.

- It was not legal at the time, no.

This was before a lot of the backyard- - What is the name of the neighbor that turned you in?

- I know the neighbor, but I'm not gonna tell you on TV.

- I won't tell anybody.

- Yeah, right.

(laughs) - They'll bleep it out.

- No they won't.

- Yeah they will.

- I don't believe that.

- They probably will.

- We'll just call him Mr. Smith.

- Jerk face.

(Allie laughs) Did you have to get the fryer out then, get rid of 'em?

- Well, so I, he mentioned it, and it was kinda like the part-time cop mentioned it, and so I kind of- - You're like, who cares.

- Kind of ignored it.

I was like, oh we'll see.

- Can't believe I'm doing this, but I heard you had a chicken.

- Yeah, so I ignored it and then, yeah, just pretended like they didn't talk to me.

- [Rob] I bet your neighbor Mr. Smith didn't ignore it.

- No, he must have continued to call, because they left a note on my door.

I had an official notice from the police department that I had a deadline to get rid of 'em, and yeah.

- Yeah.

- So- - Did you eat 'em?

- No, my grandpa still had chickens at the time, so I brought them to his house and left 'em there.

- Well, where'd these come from, then?

- So now I live out in the country, yes.

- Ah.

So a few years ago we moved out to the country and I've got 15 chickens and they lay eggs and nobody cares and- - It's a gateway animal.

- It is a gateway animal.

We also have pigs that the kids show at the fair.

- You're gonna have a llama within a year, and maybe one of those alpacas.

- I don't know.

I want some cows, but cows are a lot more work than pigs.

We're kind of fair weather farmers.

The kids get their pigs for the fair.

We just got 'em last week at the end of March, and then we get rid of 'em.

- They're kunekune pigs?

- No.

- Oh.

- No.

- They're real pigs.

- Yeah.

- Can you tell people why they're different color?

- Yeah, so they're different breeds of chickens that lay the different colored eggs.

And so I thought it was fitting this spring Easter season to bring Easter eggs to you.

- It is very fitting.

- Yeah.

- Are these hard boiled?

- No, those are fresh.

You can scramble those up for breakfast tomorrow.

- There's nothing better than a good egg.

- Mm-hmm.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Again, I forgot what we were talking about.

Okay, so you wanted to be in agriculture.

- Yes.

- You didn't have necessarily a path to go back to and farm directly.

- Right.

- But- - And didn't really want to, I mean- - Okay.

- Driving tractors and whatnot.

I've never driven a tractor in my life.

- It's overrated.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- They don't even, you don't even have to drive 'em anymore, right?

- No, yeah, but, I mean, don't tell people that all of a sudden.

Mr. Smith will be making fun of me.

Let's switch here.

You ran for the school board.

Did you win?

- I guess I ran by, or I won by default.

So there was three open seats on our local school board and I was one of three people who ran, and I believe all of us will be seated here at the next school board election or school board meeting.

- It's a good thing there was only three, because the whole chicken scenario, that probably would've haunted you.

- Well, this was a different town, I mean- - [Rob] It sticks with you.

- Yeah, we had to leave town.

(laughs) - Once you get labeled as a chicken hoarder.

- Yeah.

(both laugh) What do you think that says about small communities, that this is not isolated, that you can't find enough people to do stuff like this.

- Yeah, I mean, in my town, so I voted last week and the fire board, the library board, the park board, I didn't get to vote for mayor 'cause we don't live in town, but that was the only election that even had multiple candidates run where somebody wasn't going to get it, so- - How many?

- Just two.

- Just two?

- Yeah, ran for mayor.

But it just, I kind of felt like, you know, after everything that the schools have gone through these last few years and decisions that were handed down, decisions that had to be made locally, and, I mean, you know parents, some agreed, some disagreed.

There was a lot more conversation about school policy than there has ever been, I feel like.

And still there was just enough people to run that ran in order to fill the open seats.

So, and I don't think that's isolated, like you said, but it just kind of speaks to- - It does surprise.

- What rural communities- - I'm a hypocrite 'cause I don't, I'm not on anything, but it does surprise me, especially after COVID, and there's lots of things on the grand global scale going on at schools that you're either on one side or the not.

- Right.

- You would think that that would be a fairly contested election.

- Right.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

What was your platform?

What did you run on?

- I didn't really run a campaign 'cause there wasn't- - [Rob] Chicken in every pot.

- Yeah, a chicken in every pot.

Yeah, no, I just think every student should have the opportunities they need to succeed, and sometimes I think the school is tasked with doing too many things, sometimes I think the school takes on a few too many things, and just making sure that the students have what they need to get the education that they need to succeed.

- What school- - 'Cause that's what they need.

- Is it?

- Pecatonica, yeah.

- Oh yeah, I forget you guys had your own school.

- Yeah.

- That's, I mean, that's almost rare anymore.

- Yeah, yeah, I mean, we co-op sports with a couple neighboring towns, but actually far and away in our little kind of neighborhood, most of our schools are individual school districts.

- [Rob] Are they?

- Yeah, there's not too many that the schools have co-op together.

- Have you had your first meeting yet?

- No, it'll, Oh, I don't know if it'll be this month or in May.

- Are you gonna yell?

- I don't think so.

- You don't know, though.

- Maybe I might yell.

- Okay.

I mean, is there anything that is very important to you that you're going in with?

- I think making sure that the positions are filled.

Like, if you read through the careers page on any school district's website, that's where they're lacking, whether they're speech pathologists, special education teachers.

We actually are hiring a second agriculture teacher in our district.

- Oh, that's cool.

- Yeah, I think that's exciting.

I saw that a position was posted and I was afraid our teacher was leaving 'cause it's, she's very new, but she's been great and done a really nice job.

I'm like, oh, I hope she's not leaving.

But they're actually adding because her schedule's full.

Her schedule's full, her classes are full.

And so I think if you read through, like I said, any of those listings you see where the special services and things like that that the students need, especially after having a year and a half or however many school years of craziness where they were at home trying their best to learn through a computer screen or whatnot.

- Mm-hmm.

- So- - Let's say a young person comes up to you, punk yute, they come up to you and they say, "Hey, I got a love for agriculture.

I'm not going to go back and farm."

- Right.

- What advice do you give 'em?

- Yeah, I mean, there is so many opportunities in the ag industry, and I think that kind of speaks to some of the different things that I tried through internships and whatnot that are out there that people don't know about.

You know, you grow up on a farm and live in a small town, you don't necessarily wanna maybe stay in your small town, or maybe you do, but you don't, what jobs are there?

You drive through some of the main streets of small town America and there's not a lot of opportunities that are trying to get your attention.

And I guess, so I work, we talked about our Ransom elevator, this small town, and they're working with someone in Fort Worth at the BNSF.

Every time a train comes in, they're talking to somebody down there.

They're talking to the traders across the Midwest getting orders of how they need to load that, grade it, whatnot, depending on what feedlot or ethanol plant or if it's going to Mexico if it's going for export.

There's so many different jobs along the way in agriculture that I don't think students know about.

I work with our app that we use at FS Grain, and so we have the person who is our customer service rep for that app.

We have developers that we say, "Hey, we wish our farmers could see this on the screen when they're out in the field."

And so software developers.

We work with finance and insurance people that- - Just tons of opportunities.

- All kinds of opportunities that are big city opportunities, some of 'em are small city opportunities, some are remote opportunities with the growing ability to work remotely throughout the United States that I just don't think that a lot of times we realize all that stuff that is available.

And a lot of it has to do with technology.

- I'm surprised.

I thought your advice would be if you want chickens, live in the country.

- You can live in town now, just not then when I got in trouble.

(both laugh) - If people wanna get ahold of you or find you on the internet, social media, do you, where do they go?

- So I'm not really super active professionally, I guess, on social media, but we have our FS Grain Facebook page.

We have our FS Grain website.

You can find us all there.

- Okay, well, very cool.

Allie Piper from Pecatonica.

- Yeah, Pecatonica.

- It's right by Ransom.

- No it's not.

It's really far from Ransom.

- It's close enough.

Doesn't matter.

Thank you so much for coming to talk to us.

It's really interesting what you do and I love your spirit and your passion.

- Thank you.

- It's just, it's almost contagious.

(laughs) - Thanks.

- Like a disease.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Allie, thank you very much.

Everybody else, we'll catch you next time.

(rhythmic rock music)