(bright music) - Hello, and welcome to "Farm Connections".

I'm your host, Dan Hoffman.

On today's program, we get down in the dirt with Jim and Merlene Stiles#* as we discuss plants and the projects they have been a part of around Austin.

We talk to Cortney Duncanson of Compeer Financial about financial risk management in agriculture.

And the University of Minnesota Extension brings us a new "Best Practices" segment, all today on "Farm Connections".

(bright music) - [Announcer] Welcome to "Farm Connections" with your host, Dan Hoffman.

- [Narrator] "Farm Connections" is made possible in part by- - [Narrator 2] Minnesota Corn Growers Association, working to identify and promote opportunities for corn growers, enhance quality of life and help others understand the value and importance of corn production to America's economy.

EDP Renewables North America, owner operator of Prairie Star and Pioneer Prairie Wind Farms, Minnesota and Iowa.

EDPR wind farms and solar parks provide income to farmers and help power rural economies across the continent.

- [Narrator 3] Northern Country Coop, a full service cooperative in grain, agronomy, feed and lumber.

For the latest news, job openings and podcasts, you can go to their website NCountryCoop.com.

(bright music) - [Narrator 2] R&S Grain Systems is a family-owned business, serving its customers for 50 years with leading designs in the manufacturing of grain-handling equipment and grain storage systems.

You can call them for a quote today.

- Welcome to "Farm Connections".

I'm with Jim Stiles from SuperFresh in Austin, Minnesota.

Welcome to "Farm Connections", Jim.

- Thank you, Dan.

- You have a beautiful place and we really like the things that are going on here.

Tell us about your business.

- Oh goodness.

Oh my, yes.

It's quite a business, yeah.

It's a garden center, it is in full swing now and we keep that going all through the spring and summer and into the fall, and all year we have the bakery going where we have donuts and breads and cookies, and then too, we also have a lot of local foods here too that we really enjoy.

We're foodies, my wife and I, we enjoy trying different foods and restaurants and local items like that, so that's always a part of our passion too.

- Jim how long have you been doing this business?

- Yeah, so I moved up here in 1980- - [Dan] From?

- Yeah, from Iowa.

I grew up in Oelwein, Iowa and came up here and my dad was here from 70 to 80, and then he moved down to Arkansas.

But before, that we've always been in the produce business, going around the country, getting fruits and vegetables and bringing them here.

Well, it used to be just a produce market here, and over the years, we've changed and evolved.

- Well, Jim, you moved from Oelwein, Iowa to Austin, Minnesota.

You worked in the family business, or did you buy it right away?

- Yeah, right away.

I worked in it for 20 years before, we were familiar with it, the produce business, but my dad, he left then and moved to Arkansas and we communicated closely and he helped a great deal too with phone calls and coming up and helping out, but yeah, we've made mistakes, made a lot of mistakes, but you hopefully learn from them and hopefully, they're not too devastating of mistakes and you can learn and go to the next challenge you have.

- You're still here, you're still serving the community, so obviously, you had at least one more good decision than bad.

- [Jim] Yes, yes, I know.

Yeah, yeah.

- [Dan] Speaking of family, so when did Merlene come into the scene and how did you meet her?

- I know, yeah.

So in 84, I was here for four years and being a single guy, you don't always know where to go and YMCA, and I didn't go there to meet her or anything like that, just to get in shape, and once you walked through the doors, it was like, hallelujah.

A lot of great young people around there and friends that we made and as a benefit, in one of the classes, there she was.

- So go to the YMCA, right?

- Go to the YMCA, do good things, and yeah.

- Aerobics, class, meeting people, conversation, and then a spouse.

- Then a spouse, yes - Wow.

- That's quite a deal for a membership fee.

(indistinct) (Jim laughs) - Yes.

Yeah, priceless, right?

Yeah.

- I would say.

So it's a pretty challenging business because you've got the seasons, but how do you kinda master the weather in your environment?

- Well, thank goodness we have greenhouses, right?

That we can heat.

And in order to prepare for each season, we have to start in February.

We get the plants in February, so we have to start before that, actually.

So it becomes almost a year-round business in that regard, even though we only have the plants in the spring, because you also have to order everything in way ahead of time, a year ahead of time.

And so you have to predict what you will need to order, do your ordering, prepare the greenhouses and change the plastic once in a while and keep everything going, the heaters that are needed as we know in Minnesota, and we need those heaters in the evening in February for the plants and into May sometimes.

So it's a challenge to keep everything in shape, and then of course, the watering.

The watering is a big operation as well, to keep everything watered and to keep the water flowing.

- You have a background in biology.

Tell us about that.

- Right.

I have a Master's in Biology from St.

Cloud State, and I've always, fortunately, been able to work in biology in some capacity.

I was the Sakatah Lake State Park Naturalist one summer, and I've been working for the City of Austin in the lab at the wastewater treatment plant.

I've also done research at the Hormel Institute.

I've also worked at the University of Minnesota, so really a wonderful experience in my career.

And then one of my real, I think, contribution was to SuperFresh was developing the prairie plants and getting the prairie plants going here.

And then Jim and I planted our first prairie in 2004 in our front yard, and we didn't really know what we were doing.

And so we planted six foot high grasses instead of three foot high grasses, but our neighbors are very tolerant and we're very fortunate in that regard.

And so over the years, we've discovered that, oh, a lot of things get shaded out if you plant a lot of tall prairie grasses as well.

So we've just learned a lot along the way.

And Jim now especially has learned how to propagate the prairie plants, not just to buy them in four-inch pots.

And so that's been a real learning curve for us as well.

- Well, that is pretty neat.

You've done the experimenting, so you can tell the customers and other landowners how to do it.

- Right, and we do that too.

We do tell them how they can collect their own seeds and then either have them outside in the winter, or have them in a refrigerator in a moist bed of paper towels or something, because they do have to be in our winter in order to sprout in the spring, they have to experience our winter.

So it's kinda interesting how prairie plants work.

- Your biology major came in very handy.

- It did.

- You did some work with the Jay Hormel Nature Center as well, didn't you?

- Right.

I was an intern there for a year and learned a lot of the curriculum, was able to volunteer after that with a lot of school children that came out there.

And then when I worked for Austin Public Schools at the high school, I taught Environmental Studies, and we went out there for 10 field trips a year, doing different activities.

So the Nature Center has been an integral part of my work and my volunteer work as well.

- Merlene, you certainly contribute to the community, the surrounding community with beautifying, and also providing a product that people need and want.

But what other things have you done to integrate into the community?

- Well, we generally donate to a lot of fundraisers and where we can, we help out the different organizations that we're involved in, especially Austin Audubon Isaac Walton League, Friends of the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center.

And then, so we are kinda privy to what they're doing, so we're like, oh, you need this, you need something, so we supply it.

Or sometimes a group will come out and just say, "Can you give us some door prizes?"

So we'll give them some hanging baskets or something.

- Well, you're so embedded and really involved in the community and that's perhaps different than some large corporations.

So thank you for that.

- Oh, you're welcome.

We enjoy it.

- [Dan] Well, she claims that she's been a good partner and part of the business.

What do you claim?

- Oh yeah, she's wonderful.

She's not here all the time, which is good.

'Cause I can throw things at her and get her ideas, and her knowledge of science is just wonderful.

She's has a Master's in Aquatic Biology and she just understands science and food too, things that we share and yeah, the plants and helping us out in the store too to just have a safe environment for our customers and a fun environment that helps too, with other passions of ours, local passions of groups that we belong to and being able to help them.

- Well, it's so important to have the passion because there's a lot of hours and there's some days you don't always get paid for your hours but you have a business to run, right?

- Yeah, yeah.

It's busy this time of year, it's a lot of hours, it's seven days a week, 12, 14-hour days, but it doesn't last too long, it lasts maybe six, eight weeks or so, and then we can relax a little bit.

But too, we have great help here at SuperFresh and I'm always thankful for that.

Oh, yeah.

- [Dan] That's huge.

- It is, it is.

And people, a lot of our employees enjoy the flowers, they enjoy the local food and too, we just have the best customers too.

They just love to come out and shop and look, and lots of times, they'll bring family out or friends that are visiting and when you can work around plants and flowers and good donuts all year and good coffee, local coffee and things like that, it brings a smile on the people's faces.

- Jim, many times people working with plants or a yard want little advice on what to do for pollinators and how to make their environment better.

Any advice?

- Yeah, well, people come in and they say, "Gee, Jim, my garden isn't doing very good this year.

A lot of my vegetables, they aren't really setting fruits, and certainly for that reason, pollinators are very necessary.

But pollinators too, it's that whole food chain where pollinators provide food for birds, and it just goes up the scale from there.

So and they recognize native plants.

Pollinators do, birds do, turkeys, deer, squirrels.

I mean, they recognize native plants, and for that reason, they're very important.

- [Dan] If a customer comes to SuperFresh, do you have any resources you can share with them, booklets, pamphlets or anything like that?

- Yeah, we sure do.

Yeah, we have this book right here.

It's from Saint Paul Audubon And Dan, I'm gonna ask you a question.

How many larval insects does a chickadee family feed their young in one clutch?

So if they have three or four chicks, how many larval insects?

- Many, I'm not sure.

- It's like six to 8,000 larval insects.

- Wow.

- I know.

And where do they get those from?

Well, oak trees are a huge source.

Oak trees supply over 500 species of larval insects, over 500 varieties of larval insects, and it's good with oaks, it's good with native shrubs, it's good with native prairie plants.

So in that respect, that's why we need a balance, and to have that balance of native trees or shrubs, maybe a little patch of prairie in your yard that helps those larval insects.

That is wonderful.

If you like to look at chickadee and cardinals and all those birds, like we all do, we need those things in our yard.

- The cycle of life.

- It is, it is.

And that's above the ground.

You start going below the ground with native plants and the average root system on native plants, anywhere from five foot into the ground to 20 foot down into the ground.

And just imagine what kinda insects live in that soil, and there too, diversity is key to healthy soil.

- Jim, I'm thinking I've got a visual of that root system and I'm thinking it's probably gonna help protect our soils from moving around either by wind or water, any thoughts?

- Oh, wonderful there, Dan.

In our front yard, we have a native prairie in our front yard and our sump pump goes out to our native prairie and it doesn't go out of that native prairie, but exactly, you do a small patch of prairie, maybe five foot by five foot.

Native prairie can absorb eight inches of water in six hours, and it can do that again and again and again.

So those roots go down, the water will go down too.

And that's why buffers are so important along our waterways.

If people check out mill pond and a lot of them do, we planted thousands of native plants around mill pond, not only to help with water quality, but to help with insects and frogs and turtles and birds, and of course, the flowers and then you get the pollinators too.

- Awesome advice.

Thank you so much, Jim.

- Yeah, yeah.

You're welcome, thank you, Dan.

- Stay tuned for more on "Farm Connections".

- [Announcer] "Farm Connections Best Practices" brought to you by... (bright music) - Hello, I'm Bruce Potter, Integrated Pest Management Specialist with the University of Minnesota Extension, and today on "Best Practices", I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about a relatively new insect pest to Minnesota soybeans.

Not that we didn't have enough pests before, but we picked up a new one.

We confirmed it in Minnesota in 2018, although one of the growers had mentioned that he'd seen the problem for several years previous.

In 2015 and through 2017, the insect was observed in East and South Dakota, Eastern Nebraska, Western Iowa, but it was assumed to just be a secondary invader to plants, soybean plants that were damaged by hail or disease.

In 2018, this thing blew up in the spring and we realized that this insect was capable of causing plant damage and death to soybeans all on its own.

The adult (indistinct) over winter and pupate in the spring.

And the adults emerge in mid-June.

They lay eggs at the base of the soybean plant.

If you're looking at the soybean field, a lot of times you'll see the damage worse on the edge of the...

In fact, almost always, you'll see damage worse on the edge of soybeans adjacent to the previous year's soybean crops, as that's where the adults move out of.

To distinguish this from a disease, look at that lower stem, you'll see a dark discoloration.

A lot of times, there's kind of a black border between the green, healthy tissue above and the damaged tissue below.

But if you peel back that outer layer of the stem, the bark, if you will, you'll start to see some white to orange larvae in the stems, there's three larval instars and they start out white, the last instar turns orange and it's pretty distinctive.

We've got a similar insect that feeds on white mold fungus, but this insect is not associated with white mold, It'll be on plants that are relatively disease-free.

There's three flights of adults, the overwintering flight, the one in July and another one in August.

When the plant or larvae are mature, they drop to the ground and pupate, and that last generation in August, the larvae are (indistinct) overwinters.

You'll start to see plants wilting in July.

And again, damage is usually worse on the edge of the field, and as the season progresses, that damage affects more plants and moves further into the field.

So if you see damage like that on your soybeans adjacent to last year's crop, pay some attention, take a look at what's underneath a few of the surface of some of those stems.

We also have a scouting video available, and there's a soybeangallmidge.org website that has quite a bit of information on this insect fact sheets webinars.

When we're monitoring adult flights, so when those adults are out, it'll be posted on that as well.

So thank you for listening.

This has been "Best Practices" and I'm Bruce Potter, the University of Minnesota Extension.

- Welcome to "Farm Connections".

I'm with Cortney Duncanson from Compeer.

Welcome to "Farm Connections".

- Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

- Oh, it's great to have you here.

You do an awful lot with risk management and finance, can you tell us what that is and what it means?

- Yeah, absolutely.

It's really about understanding the risk of your operation and what things can you do to protect your operation, to be viable long-term.

But really honestly, before you can just jump right to the risk management, you gotta understand your financials and your base numbers, 'cause it's really hard to have an effective risk management plan without understanding where you start and where your goals are of where you want to be in the future.

- Well, Compeer does lots of things, including financing farm operations, correct?

- Correct, yeah.

We strive to be a trusted financial services partner in agriculture and rural America.

So we do provide loans, leases, do different types of risk management.

So we have crop insurance, life insurance, as well as some other additional services.

We have a dairy consulting team and a tax and accounting team as well that will help clients on farm.

- Why is risk management that essential?

Why does it need to be provided?

- Well, just think about volatility.

Look at today, I haven't looked at market prices lately, but this morning, corn was over $7 and soybean, $17 and what it was four or five years ago, we were sub-$3.

So it's that volatility.

You never know where that rollercoaster is gonna be.

Look at land values, what they've done the last year.

So that volatility can really be that positive where we're in the markets today, but can also have those downturns, think about the supply-demand or the supply right now for our chemicals and the price increases we've seen with Roundup and other chemicals as well.

The volatility is there.

So understanding that where your numbers are at and what things you can do to manage and mitigate that risk with those volatilities that are important.

- So is it safe to say that you help producers protect their margin?

- Yes.

Ultimately, at the end of the day it's producers, they make all the decisions on their operation.

We can provide guidance and expertise of what we see their financial numbers telling us, we do some benchmarking as well, so you have that peer-to-peer analysis, part of it, really where their competitive advantage advantages where they can really stick out and also where are their areas of focus that they can maybe tone in on to really try and improve upon?

But at the end of the day, with that, we can only do our job of really helping with the financial counseling aspect as long as clients can provide us the financial information to help tell their story.

- Can you think of one particular success story in your business that really makes you proud?

- Yeah, so, I come from the underwriting, the Credit Department, so really, that analyzing, looking at numbers.

But I would say, we really strived with that too, is we call it a team relationship model.

And so leveraging all of the expertise we have at Compeer.

And so that yes, you have your relationship manager, that main salesperson that works with the client, but we have a team of experts and let's leverage everyone when we can.

So for example, it's bringing underwriting on farm to help maybe share those benchmarking reports and what we're seeing in that peer-to-peer analysis.

So I think the success story around that is meeting with clients, maybe in times when things are really tough and it's helping them through, okay, what are your options?

And what is your plan B, plan C when plan A doesn't work?

And how do can you manage those margins and get back to a profitable level?

And being willing to really think about all of the options.

And there might be times when you have to have those tough conversations and challenge yourself to what makes most sense, and that can tie back to that risk management of how you understand your numbers, where can you protect yourself?

Whether that's through a marketing plan, whether that's through crop insurance, whether that's through a transition plan.

We often talk about the four Ds, death, disease, disability, and divorce, and everyone thinks, and always wants to say, "That'll never happen to me.

I'm protected, that that'll never happen," but they do happen.

So what plans do you have in place that you can protect and have your operation be viable in the future if one of those big Ds occur, and how can you weather that situation?

- What's at stake if risk management is not in place or it's subpar?

- Well, you really gotta ride that volatility rollercoaster, and you don't understand, how do you get from point A to point B then?

You are a price-taker.

You pay for inputs, whatever the inputs are that day, it's really hard to truly, maybe plan ahead and manage your margins at the end of the day.

Another piece we talk about a lot is liquidity, working capital, your current assets minus your current liabilities.

What can be turned into cash in 12 months?

Is another way to look at it.

And the more of that you have, the better positioned you are for two things, to withstand adversity, as well as to be positioned to be able to take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves.

You can buy that combine you've been wanting to buy, buy that neighbor's 80 acres when it comes up for sale, expand from 100 cows to 200 cows, whatever that may look like.

And so without some risk management, you may be jeopardizing where that working capital position can be and how you can take advantage of either of those two, of weather the storm or take advantage of opportunities.

- Great advice, Cortney, thanks for helping our farm families.

- Thanks for having me, appreciate it.

- You're welcome.

Stay tuned for more on "Farm Connections".

It all comes down to planning.

When we take the time to set a plan, we set ourselves up for future success.

Whether that is in crops or cash, a little planning goes a long way.

I'm Dan Hoffman, thanks for joining us on "Farm Connections".

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