Episode 21 Crop and LRP Insurance with Mathew Little
Join Ben and Matthew Little as they discuss insurance and why it is important to think about on the farm.
- Transcript
[00:00:01.290] - Caleb (intro)
Welcome to beyond agriculture, the podcast that takes you beyond the scope of Ag and into the real life stories, conversations and events taking place in our community. Who we are and what we do is beyond agriculture.
[00:00:24.450] - Ben Robin
Welcome to beyond agriculture. We got a special guest with us today. We got Matthew little with superior Ag insurance, and we're going to talk about some crop insurance, insurance on everything, pretty much on the ag side as far as crops and commodities, livestock, LRP, things like that. So Matthew, thanks for joining us.
[00:00:46.050] - Matthew Little
Thank you, Ben.
[00:00:46.930] - Ben Robin
We'll start off, maybe give us a little bit of introduction of you and kind of your involvement in agriculture and what you do now for Superior.
[00:00:55.080] - Matthew Little
Sure. So I've been a lifelong resident of Bourbon county my whole life, 34 years old, farm. Myself and a family farm operation have been farming for a long time, for almost 15 years. Raised tobacco, row crops, cattle. I've been in the crop insurance industry for ten years. Got into the crop insurance industry because risk management intrigues me and how to put a floor under our crops. And it interests me on a personal level when I was raising tobacco and raising crops. But as I got farther into crop insurance and got to meet producers and talk to them about their operations, it really kind of just snowballed from there. And I really enjoyed getting around and talking at meetings and talking to producers about the risk they have out in the field, because it's a huge part of it's the beginning of the base of your plan for your operation is how we're going to set a risk management strategy. Under each operation. Everybody's got a different theory on what they spend on a crop. Everybody has different rents, everybody has different input cost. And looking at an individual producer's plan for the year and seeing how they're going to put a floor under that crop really intrigues me, and I've really enjoyed getting around meeting people and doing that.
[00:02:18.240] - Matthew Little
So glad to be here today to talk about it.
[00:02:20.280] - Ben Robin
Yeah, it's awesome now. So yeah, you're resident of Bourbon county. Do you cover a certain territory? Are you pretty much all over the state?
[00:02:27.460] - Matthew Little
I have been to Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee. I've been down to Georgia to talk to people about onions, work with a.
[00:02:38.160] - Ben Robin
Lot of different, yeah, sound like a lot of different crops, a lot of different producers. And yeah, it's probably definitely enjoyable part to get out and see the different country and how everybody does things out in their neck of the woods. We'll talk about some crop insurance first here. It's getting that time where we already should be thinking about the crop and what's going to happen this year? And of course, we're sitting here in central Kentucky with a lot of rain. Weather is the most unpredictable thing when it comes to farming and agriculture. So maybe talk a little bit about what you do in the crop insurance side and kind of how you help producers there.
[00:03:17.620] - Matthew Little
So what we do is we go out and look at the, I start every year the same. When I'm looking at crop insurance, I start to, in January, build a crop budget based off of university studies, based off of my historical performance on our input cost. And I think every risk management plan needs to start with understanding your budget and working with your lender on how far your budget is from what they're willing to lend and that kind of thing. How leveraged are you and those kind of things. So when I look at my budget and I see, for example, this year, corn running anywhere from $700 to $800 an acre, depending on who you are, you might have some share crop agreements and be in the cheaper than that. But if you're a cash lease guy, you're probably going to be in the seven to $800 range, is what we're looking at. So then I look at my crop insurance budget. I start to look at price discovery from February 1 to February 20 eigth for the December futures for corn, the November futures for beans, and see what kind of price we're going to lock in and see what kind of historical yield I have.
[00:04:31.690] - Matthew Little
And then we try to see what kind of floor we can put in for that for the best bang for our buck. How much are we going to spend to try to set it for? Sometimes those numbers are variable every year, what you're going to spend on crop insurance, but it's important to look at the year in front of us. Every year is not the same.
[00:04:53.700] - Speaker 3
That's right.
[00:04:55.070] - Matthew Little
Last year we were setting up a 591 spring price on corn and we ended at a 480. So, I mean, we were in a completely different scenario in what we were selling, what we were looking at, what our risk management strategy was for last year's corn crop.
[00:05:09.320] - Speaker 3
That's right.
[00:05:09.860] - Matthew Little
This year we're trending towards a 475 on corn in the 1150 to 1180 on beans. So that's going to completely change our mindset on what the risk management strategy for the crop could be going into the year because our costs have not come down dramatically.
[00:05:27.490] - Ben Robin
Right? Yeah.
[00:05:28.620] - Matthew Little
So the floor that we're putting in on this crop is going to be largely based off of individual budgets. What the producer looks towards spending and where you need to be are you an expanding operation? Are you a stagnant operation? Where are you at in your operation? Do you want to continue to grow acres this year? And that's largely dependent on your budget and what you're spending on rents and those kind of things. So just a few things that I'm watching for right now on the corn is that we came in at a $15.2 billion bushel corn crop last year with an expected almost 3 billion of that to be carried over. That's the highest carryover we've had in the corn market.
[00:06:13.690] - Ben Robin
Right.
[00:06:14.440] - Matthew Little
Since, I believe, 2014 somewhere. It's seven or eight years on back that we've had that kind of carryover. So there's not a lot of upside in that market for corn. So we're going to see some producers switch to beans and roll to beans to try to lock in some profit in their operation. So look for soybeans to be the acre shift from corn to soybeans because we only have 240,000,000 bushels of carryover in soybeans. So for that reason, we have a lot of probably movement in the soybean market to lock in some profit in our budgets.
[00:06:59.260] - Speaker 3
Yeah, for sure.
[00:07:00.100] - Matthew Little
Versus a corn budget. So those are things we're looking at on our insurance decisions and what that means for our insurance coverage levels and what kind of coverages we could try to lock in for our total operations. Profitability.
[00:07:17.840] - Ben Robin
Yeah, that's definitely something obviously we look at. We do have a lot of grain in our portfolio and maybe a little bit more down in central Kentucky. And the good thing is we have producers of all different sizes. And so whether it's somebody whose marketing is top of mind and then on down the line to where somebody that doesn't even think about marketing and insurance. And so I'm sure you've worked with a wide variety and can help consult those producers, and like you said, just kind of tailor it to their operation. Everybody's different. Everybody has different input costs, different fixed costs in that matter. But that's a good thing, is that you work with a wide variety of producers.
[00:08:06.890] - Matthew Little
Yea h. Everybody has their own theory and their own plan. We don't try to come in and reinvent the wheel, but I do try to offer just what I'm hearing in the market and what kind of educational points we can put forward to make the best decisions or at least feel like we made the best decisions. Sometimes that's all you can do. Feel like you made those decisions.
[00:08:26.640] - Ben Robin
That's exactly right. It's not always right, but like, you say, you got to make a decision when it comes to agriculture with the volatility and everything going on in the market. So are there any changes, I guess, as far as crop insurance this year, or is anything different from previous years or pretty much same program?
[00:08:45.720] - Matthew Little
We do not have a tremendous amount of changes. I mean, last year, one of the big changes for this area was adding a tobacco contract requirement for your full guarantee on a tobacco policy. So making sure that you have your contract signed early on tobacco and getting those to your insurance agent for him to turn that in, him or her to turn that into the companies and the AIPs, the insured providers, to make sure that you can get a full crop value for your tobacco versus a basement type price if you don't have a contract. So that was a big change last year that a lot of tobacco producers felt. But as far as anything else, there's always new products that are out there that we're always taking a look at to try to see how can we get coverage levels above 80, 85% on up into the 95% range. Because if you can close your deductible range between 85% and 100, obviously you have a higher chance of making sure that you're whole on your crop and making sure that you're going to make maximum profitability.
[00:10:01.710] - Ben Robin
Exactly right. Yeah.
[00:10:02.770] - Matthew Little
There's a lot of products out there that are new each year that are good for covering the 85% coverage on your corn and soybeans, between 85 and 100 to close that deductible down and try to lock in and maximize your profits. So we definitely take a look at those every year. We're seeing a lot of movement in the insurance world nationally on the livestock end. That's become a bigger thing for a lot of different reasons. A lot of the changes in the livestock program for LRP in the last three years, nationwide, that premium and participation has grown 600% to 1000%.
[00:10:44.510] - Ben Robin
Right.
[00:10:45.870] - Ben Robin
That's a good segway there. The majority of our portfolio here at Central Kentucky AG credit is livestock based. And even in central Kentucky, a lot of beef cattle, beef cattle state. And so let's talk about LRP. So we've spoken about it in the past and kind of maybe hit high level overview of it, but we could kind of dive into the ins and outs of the program. So tell the listeners, what exactly is LRP?
[00:11:15.190] - Matthew Little
So, LRP stands for livestock risk protection. You're going to be able to basically set a price floor against the CME futures on your cattle, your stock or background cattle specifically work very well in the LRP program, you're buying your 5456 weights and you're putting them out on grass and you're wanting to lock in a time period between potentially January and October. You can lock in that time period. You can lock in multiple different time periods of risk that you deem necessary for your cattle. It's subsidized. It's basically a subsidized put option. If you look at it, you're buying a futures cattle price versus an index price settling against the feeder cattle index. So if you look at those numbers, you're looking at your carry that you can get between your futures price and your index price and trying to maximize the carry that you can get in the market and lock that in. So it gives you peace of mind against the price decline, which for most cattle producers is a lot of the risk that they are exposed to and cannot control. I mean, we all have producer risk, we all have death loss.
[00:12:33.310] - Matthew Little
We all have externalities that are out of our control.
[00:12:37.120] - Ben Robin
That's right.
[00:12:37.700] - Matthew Little
That we all try to minimize through our production practices, our experience that we draw back on and try to limit our death loss. We try to get our grazing ratios up and make sure that we're getting our per day pound gain and things like that based off our experience. But to take that price risk, it makes you sleep an awful lot better every night to something that we have no control over in the market.
[00:13:07.180] - Ben Robin
That's exactly right. Yeah.
[00:13:09.930] - Ben Robin
So one thing about that that I find pretty interesting is you talked a lot about kind of the ins and outs of it, but it's a program, it's available for all size producers. There's a lot of different people that are expert marketers and can mitigate risk in forecontracting options, those type things. But it is a good program for some of the smaller producers because maybe talk about the type of cattle that are covered. I think it'll cover heifers as well. You run into that with any other kind of risk mitigation. So maybe talk a little bit about some of the details of the program like that.
[00:13:54.680] - Matthew Little
Yes. So as far as the program goes, if you were comparing it to an options play or buying or selling, put options on the board, the advantages to LRP there is going to be that you're not going to have the margin account. You're not going to have to worry about floating margin if the price goes up, if the price goes down, having.
[00:14:17.270] - Ben Robin
To put could be a lot of money in today's market.
[00:14:19.270] - Matthew Little
A lot of capital tied up in a margin account management, risk management example. So you're not going to have to worry about that. It's a flat premium due at the end, in arrears at the end of the policy. So there's some advantage there. You can buy it on one cab or you can buy it on all. You're not required to buy it on every calf in the county, so you can experiment with it. If you've got a load of cattle, 50, 60 head, and you want to buy it on 25, you can buy it on 25. You can buy it at different coverage levels, different quote, strike prices, right, at a put option. So those are all advantages tailorable to your operation and your spending level and what you want to spend. Normally, options contracts are bought on the 40,000 to 50,000 pound range, a single load basis. And that gives way to smaller producers being able to access that market in a way. So definitely smaller producers and even larger ones. We've seen a lot of feedlots start to take advantage of the subsidy that is involved with RMA, subsidizing these options and making them more price sensitive to producers a little bit a better pricing position, they'll be a little cheaper.
[00:15:51.640] - Ben Robin
Right?
[00:15:52.210] - Matthew Little
At times. Now, most of the time you see the shorter term lrPs, the 13 to 21 week, 24 week, those be a little bit more in line with cheaper dope. But the farther you get out, the risk gets pretty good. So if you can keep your hedging strategy in a tight window and try to keep yourself hedged out anywhere from 13 to 30 weeks, that you're usually better off than getting out in that 40 something weeks.
[00:16:25.950] - Ben Robin
That's right.
[00:16:26.490] - Ben Robin
Because too with that, you kind of think of futures and options as a stalker backgrounder kind of area. But there's opportunity in LRP for the calc operator, too, because I know that. Have you written any policies for any cow calf guys, or you use it yourself, kind of?
[00:16:49.110] - Matthew Little
Yeah, as a cow calf producer, you've got guys right now here in the next 60 days who are fall calvers that are more than likely getting ready to wean their calves. And if they're going to keep them over the summer, that's a lot of times that April to October stalker calf, when you're taking them from a cow calf over to a stalker and keep them to October and value add those and get them sold at a higher price and a higher weight, usually that time period there. Or if you're talking spring cows, when you wean those in the fall and keep those into the spring or on into the summer. That time period becomes something a lot of people want to hedge.
[00:17:36.390] - Ben Robin
Right.
[00:17:37.350] - Matthew Little
We've seen a tremendous amount of participation in the feed lots in all areas across the board. I mean, just learning to put a price floor under your cattle, because if you go back to 14 and 15 time range, we were set up in this same market situation right now. We were coming off a $7 corn. We were at a record high cattle price, and it collapsed in a six to twelve month period right there. And that's the period everybody talks about in the cattle market, most recent, the 14 and 15 time range of where we're trying to mitigate that risk and get a floor under these cattle to protect yourself in that time frame. When the index goes down from $260 to $2 in six months, that's where you've really got some exposure.
[00:18:33.230] - Ben Robin
That's right, yeah for sure.
[00:18:33.920] - Matthew Little
In the cattle market, when you bought those cattle for 232, 40.
[00:18:38.710] - Ben Robin
Exactly. Yeah.
[00:18:39.530] - Ben Robin
And that's what kind of what we were talking about before we started was just the amount of dollars that are tied up. Now we're seeing a record prices in all classes of cattle and beef. And with inflation and all that, and input costs, obviously, especially from a lender perspective, it is extremely important to at least cover your break-even. And really, there's no, like you talked about the subsidy. So what kind of cost can you figure into that? What's that look like?
[00:19:14.400] - Matthew Little
Well, the good thing about LRP is you can really tailor it to what I mean, depending on the coverage level you want to buy. If you buy it all the way up at the 99% coverage level, you can get anywhere from $50 to $80 if you drop it down in the 70 to 90 range you can go $10 to $50.
[00:19:39.310] - Ben Robin
When you look at, it may seem like a lot of money when you're looking at a budget, but if you look at what you purchase those cattle for and protecting that investment, what you're going to have in inputs, whether you're grazing them or feeding them, whatever the situation might be, you're going to figure that margin and look at the futures markets, look at what you're going to sell them for, and you got a margin there. A lot of times it's a big margin, and it kind of makes sense to maybe up the coverage level to cover that, especially in today's market.
[00:20:16.530] - Matthew Little
If you're looking at your budget right now and you have room in your budget, you've got a lot of margin in your budget right now in these feeder cattle. If you're talking a 500 pound steer for $1300 to $1,500 and then locking in something off in the fall for 21, 2200, you're looking at a 700 $800 spread.
[00:20:36.770] - Ben Robin
That's right.
[00:20:37.280] - Matthew Little
$50 to $60 on insurance isn't really, that's something that you can build in there to guarantee.
[00:20:43.870] - Ben Robin
Exactly.
[00:20:44.850] - Matthew Little
If you're leveraged in the market, if you're borrowing money and you've got a lot of expenses, you're adding to these cattle. If you buy them for 1300 and you're putting four or five hundred dollars into them, then it's something that we're all going to have to get used to doing. If you're background in cattle at some point because it's getting harder and harder to make it work on paper without doing.
[00:21:09.270] - Ben Robin
That's exactly right. Just the volatility. I mean we look at kind of economic situations in the United States and globally and just the amount of volatility and how quickly markets react. The demand for beef, the demand for commodities, that changes every hour honestly if you really look at it. So yeah, being able to have some type of assurance with that, that hey, we're covered, given a dropout in the market. So that's definitely huge. So maybe talk about a little bit about kind of how that works. So if a producer is interested, they've never done it before. What's that process look like? What do they need to do?
[00:21:58.140] - Matthew Little
So process step number one would be contacting a licensed insurance agent. One that has received the training to sell LRP through RMA standards and getting with that agent and setting up an established policy. It doesn't cost anything to set up a policy and be ready to put in an endorsement. If you start receiving quotes. If you have an agent that's sending you quotes to look at every day, it might be a good thing to discover what you think is a good price or what the market is doing. If anything, get your education to the future. Get accustomed to the futures market. And there are agencies out there that are sending daily quotes out to monitor those prices and be able to set yourself up and be ready to put in an endorsement. So once you've opened up a policy, you're at that point ready to put in a quote, endorsement or a contract in on the kettle. Well you've got between 05:00 and 09:25 eastern time every day to put in an endorsement because it's based off the Chicago trade. Sure, the Chicago border trade. So when you get that quote in the evening from an agency, you can look at that, monitor that, see if there's a value in the strike price.
[00:23:23.330] - Matthew Little
That's offered that day. And then once you make a decision to strike on a price or set in a contract, then you'll call your agent. The agent will send you some paperwork, docusign, come see it, sign it, whatever and get it signed and send you a schedule of insurance. And you'll know that based off the CME futures and the feeder cattle index, if you buy a 260 futures price right now, then come October, if the feeder cattle index is below 260, then you're going to get paid the difference, right. That doesn't have anything to do with what you sell your live cattle for because you're buying a position in the market.
[00:24:09.200] - Ben Robin
Sur e.
[00:24:09.730] - Matthew Little
You're not buying a guaranteed live price or spot price. You're buying a position in the market which is against the futures in the feeder cattle index.
[00:24:21.430] - Ben Robin
Right.
[00:24:21.920] - Matthew Little
So you always have your basis to consider. What's your basis at your local stockyards? Those kind of things. Meaning what's your local stockyards price they're giving for the cattle versus the feeder cattle index. You always have to monitor that basis there. So if you lock in a 260 and your historical basis at your stockyard is five to seven cents, if you sell your cattle for 255, then the index could come in at 260.
[00:24:55.810] - Ben Robin
Sure.
[00:24:58.030] - Matthew Little
But if the index gets below the 260, you're going to be doing indemnity based off of the weights that you insure.
[00:25:04.070] - Ben Robin
Right.
[00:25:04.500] - Ben Robin
And like you said, the time frame. So you're essentially trying to match that up with when you're going to sell us cattle, typically. So what's that look like? So I buy a contract or buy a policy, whatever weeks may be. After those weeks are up, am I obligated to sell those cattle? What's that kind of look like?
[00:25:31.610] - Matthew Little
So you're not obligated to sell the cattle by the policy. You can keep the cattle, you can retain ownership, you can send them out west, refeed them, reinsure them again. Once the policy expires, you're allowed to sell the cattle as early as 60 days early. If you see a spike in the market, so say I put in like an October endorsement right now. I could sell those cattle if it was ending October 29, I could sell them as early as 60 days before October 29. If there's a spike in the market, you run out of grass, any always.
[00:26:07.500] - Ben Robin
Of situational things, right.
[00:26:09.260] - Matthew Little
Something could come into play, you lose a farm lease, whatever the case may be. Now, the policy will end on October 29 if you have bought that date. So if you sell them 60 days early, then you are leaving yourself what the market does on October is what you will performance of the policy.
[00:26:31.390] - Ben Robin
Right.
[00:26:32.670] - Matthew Little
But there's some flexibility as far as being able to move in and out that 60 day period or keep the cattle beyond. One thing that I do point out that we run into an awful lot is making sure that if you set up a policy, you set the policy up in the name that you're operating the cattle or operating in the entity. A lot of people have grain, a lot of people have cattle. And some people sell their grain as Matthew little LLC grain company and Matthew Little cattle company to keep those. But you need to make sure your policy is set up in the entity that you are selling your cattle. And that's important because it's important to keep good records. Whenever you deal with insurance or something, RMA will need those records. Potentially. If you sell at the end of the, and you expire for a claim at the end in October, you're going to need to turn in your sales receipts.
[00:27:36.910] - Ben Robin
Right.
[00:27:37.490] - Matthew Little
You need to make sure you just keep good records and be a good record keeper. If you are a cow calf operator and you burnt those cattle on the farm and they're your cattle and you vetted them, then you need to have feed records to make sure you keep a good track and record of those cattle to be able to equate those to your policy so that you get paid if you have a claim or if you don't have a claim, you keep your records for three to five years.
[00:28:07.970] - Ben Robin
Right.
[00:28:08.590] - Matthew Little
For record retention requirements.
[00:28:10.170] - Ben Robin
Were you talking about the settlement? What I think about is you're settling the contract, or I keep wanting to say contract. You're settling the policy at the end of that period. If that's what you decide to do, like you said, you can terminate that early. You spoke about it a little earlier. But for those that don't really know, what is that settled on? So you've determined your price. Where does that price come from and how does that settlement work?
[00:28:42.070] - Matthew Little
So the price that you lock in your strike price is going to come from your CME futures contract trading months. They're going to take that right off the CME futures board. A lot of us get it to our phone and that's going to be your strike price. So you're looking right now January 29 off in October, up in the almost 270 range now. So that's coming straight off the Chicago Mercantile Exchange CME futures board for feeder cattle. So that's where you're going to set your price. Then it's going to expire off the CME feeder cattle index. The CME feeder cattle index is the report. The rolling seven day average of every 800 to 850 pound steer that sells in the Midwest.
[00:29:38.830] - Ben Robin
Right.
[00:29:40.170] - Matthew Little
At the 15 to 20 locations of cattle selling in the Midwest, which is what makes basis so important.
[00:29:47.790] - Ben Robin
Sure.
[00:29:48.970] - Matthew Little
If the feeder cattle index was running 230 yesterday for 800 to 850 pound steers, that doesn't mean I sold my cattle in Lexington, Kentucky, Paris, Kentucky, Campbellsville, Mount Sterling, wherever you sell. That doesn't mean that I sold my 800 to 850 pound steers for 230.
[00:30:07.780] - Ben Robin
Right.
[00:30:08.440] - Matthew Little
There's some basis involved there, which is the transportation cost of those cattle going out west. If that basis is five to, should probably expect to sell my cattle for anywhere, my 800 to 850 pound steers from anywhere from 220 to 230.
[00:30:25.880] - Ben Robin
Right.
[00:30:27.210] - Matthew Little
So it gives you an ability to, within $0.10, estimate my price within your basis. Estimate your price, or at least what basis we track around here.
[00:30:39.970] - Ben Robin
Well, I think that's what a lot of people get kind of intimidated with, is that it is a subsidized program, but it is similar to futures and options and that whole market. I think people kind of maybe segment that and get a little intimidated by it. But it's all relative. We're still growing cattle. We're just in a different area. Our prices are obviously different, but it is still relative. So you're looking at a layout of what the market is and what it's doing. But you do have to, like you say, adjust that to back to where we are here in central Kentucky. So, like I said, I think some producers get intimidated with that, but call you up and ask you questions, I mean, that's the biggest thing. And you're open and there to answer any questions and help those producers out.
[00:31:39.760] - Matthew Little
Sure. Well, always start with your budgets. I'm big on starting my risk management plan with my budget. Same thing for feeder cattle. What are we looking at on a stocker feeder calf running through the summer this year?
[00:31:53.010] - Ben Robin
Right.
[00:31:54.530] - Matthew Little
What are we buying them in at? What's our cost of gain? And then go from there. Do I need $2,200 worth of coverage on that calf? Do I need 18? What do I need to get myself in a good profit point?
[00:32:09.420] - Ben Robin
Well, yeah, I mean, not just even break even what we look at from the lending standpoint with lines of credit and things like that, but like we say, like locking in that margin if I can spend a little bit of money to make this much, even as a small scale producer, it just makes sense.
[00:32:27.710] - Matthew Little
On the pricing component of it. I always compare LRP to the revenue portion of a corn and soybean, because a lot of times, if a producer is intimidated with the pricing mechanism of LRP in the CME futures, I go back to a corn policy and, well, let's talk about how corn is set. Corn is set. How is the spring price set on corn? The spring price on corn is set off of a price discovery period from February 1 to February 20 eight of the December 2024 futures. So last year we set 591 on corn. So we're buying a CME futures corn price.
[00:33:07.020] - Ben Robin
That's right.
[00:33:08.570] - Matthew Little
Am I going to get 591 for my corn? Well, that's the futures price that I have set as a floor is what I'm trying to get to. But then I need to maximize beyond that based off the deductible that I choose, my EPH and those kinds of things. But it's the same pricing mechanism of how we're coming up with the price for corn and soybeans for LRP in a lot of ways.
[00:33:30.880] - Ben Robin
That's right.
[00:33:31.410] - Matthew Little
Yeah, look at that.
[00:33:32.320] - Ben Robin
Yeah, definitely.
[00:33:33.110] - Matthew Little
It can be intimidating looking at the index and some of those things, but if once you look at what the index is and how it equates to our local cattle price.
[00:33:41.370] - Ben Robin
Right.
[00:33:43.350] - Ben Robin
Well, that's something you can do just sitting down with the producer that is, we say, intimidated, but doesn't necessarily know the intricacies of the program. But just sitting down and saying, like you say, here's what my operation looks like, here's what I either purchased these cattle for, here's what I think they're worth, here are my inputs, here's what I want to cover, and you can do everything else as long as they can give you some numbers in that. To me, it only makes sense. Like I said, in the markets we have today, it's, I think, extremely important to have that. So, anything else you want to cover while we're, while we're here?
[00:34:27.300] - Matthew Little
No. I look forward to hopefully getting out and seeing a bunch of people this year and look forward to hearing opinions that are out there in the world. I learn a lot throughout the year by listening to the farmers that we do business with, 100%, and hearing about their operations and understanding what their particular operations. And like I said before, when I go to Northwest Indiana and talk to a producer, it's never going to be the same thing as Southeast Kentucky. I mean, so every producer has got a different budget, a different mindset, and I really look forward to getting out and seeing people and seeing that and putting together a plan for this crop year for everybody.
[00:35:08.950] - Ben Robin
Yeah.
[00:35:09.700] - Ben Robin
Well, we appreciate you taking the time to talk with us and definitely want to have you on probably again later on the year to just kind of get a pulse of what you're seeing and what's going on in the markets. Obviously, you can hear from the podcast how knowledgeable Matthew is in all areas of agriculture. We'll put your contact information in the show notes, and if you got any questions, they'll give you a call and get you in contact with him. So we appreciate it and we'll see you next time.
[00:35:42.660] - Matthew Little
All righty. Thank you, Ben.
[00:35:47.470] - Outro
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