Drift & Return

Cole Stock of Western Grain Marketing joins the podcast this time.  Some heady topics around the idea of "fairness" in markets.  Is zone bidding ok?  The group talks about some alternatives to trailing stops to help defer pricing and finally make some poorly informed guesses as to what corn cash price will be as we roll into harvest.  

Rodney and Gabe are joined by lender Jacob Chapman for some discussion around NPV and better understanding what Jacob on the banking side really digs into before underwriting a loan. Some technical difficulties on this one so it's a bit more edited than normal If you're interested in our take on Iran and current markets the TL;DR is Rodney and Gabe remain wary but hopeful.  How can the duo hold both views at the same time?  They're human, contain multitudes and may in fact contradict themselves from time to time.   

Rodney and Gabe talk with Matt Webster from River Valley Cooperative.  Overall a good chat on how to position yourself in a market that's opening up a little bit and creating moments where you can lock some expected profit.  We also reflect a bit on some of the "free money" opportunities we've seen come up over the years and the dangers those posses.  Rodney and Gabe also claim to have a plan to have some more consistent podcasts again - we'll see if they're able to execute  You can reach Matt at - [email protected] and Rodney at [email protected]   

Rodney & Gabe are joined by crop Insurance Agent - Ryan Leifheit to discuss some of the biggest changes in crop insurance as a result of 2025 legislation (OB3).  Rodney and Gabe close with this sentiment, but crop insurance is where every risk management plan in the US begins - not using crop insurance, when you can, is throwing away some of the biggest subsidies US farmers have access to.  The 2026-27 program is one of the more generous we've seen in the programs current edition. If you're looking to better understand how to optimize the choices in front of you Ryan is ready to assist - you can email him at [email protected] And as usual if you're looking for help on crop marketing, and understanding how those crop insurance decisions impact how you approach grain marketing reach out to Rodney - [email protected]   One day soon we may stumble on what Gabe can help with, but as for now, the search continues 

After an end of year break, Rodney and Gabe catchup on how they spent the holidays but also venture back into risk management territory, covering how time should be part of your marketing plan and some specifics on how to work around it.

Rodney and Gabe get a chance to talk with Yasha Protnoy of EarthAcre about how a technologist create solutions for corralling data from the physical world that doesn't smoothly lend itself to systematic integration - in this case where government managed title searches aren't the norm for determining land ownership.  We also talk about EarthAcre's unique and intuitive approach to assessing biodiversity, that creates an alternative path to evaluating ecosystem health and diversity.    

Rodney and Gabe chatted with Ben Brame ( https://www.contango.live/ ) in this episode. Ben dropped on us the unique combination of insightful and funny nuggets, and we ended up in place we didn't expect where Ben asks us to think about "what information did you have access to" when a given price, like the contract high, trades. It's a far kinder and reasonable filter on how to asses pricing performance - a great idea, still some work left on execution building out that benchmark. We may have ultimately stumbled on the secret benchmarking sauce - how did I perform against my own sense of procrastination. While the crew briefly touch on the expected failure of SNAP funding's impact on commodity prices - we just wanted to share a bit more on our thoughts with regards to SNAP: A desire approaching a sense of duty to keep our friends, neighbors, communities, and ultimately fellow humans well fed is something Rodney & Gabe believe is and should be shared beyond beliefs, political or otherwise. Seeing this critical service, SNAP, fail to be funded through legislation or emergency action is incredibly frustrating and disappointing to see. If you're lucky enough to have extra resources, if you haven't already we strongly encourage you to reach out to your local foodbanks and lend a hand.

Gabe and Rodney talk with Rob Huston, co-founder of Innovative Grain about the challenges small businesses face in extracting actionable insights from their data, even when they're doing everything "right".  

As harvest fast approaches in northern Illinois Rodney & Gabe catchup the weekend after their respective town fall celebrations. If that's not enough for you, they go back to the well covering some fundamental and tricky parts of understanding volatility and option pricing. Here's to wishing you dry (but not to dry) weather and a safe harvest!

On this episode Rodney & Gabe are joined by Heather Gieseke of BounceAg. Heather, a long time on and off again co-worker of Rodney and Gabe shares some surprising insights from the carbon/sustainability side of ag in that it looks like the demand for increases in sustainably in the supply chain continue to grow. However, figuring out how to engage with that demand from the farm still remains tricky, for which we're grateful for Heather 's advice on how to approach things.

This episode Rodney & Gabe are joined by Dean Durdan of Orchard Point commodities. Dean shares his current view of the market, and goes quite deep into how he thinks of managing risk as a merchandiser (get that flat futures price risk outta' here!) and how to put that hat on when managing farm income.

In this episode Kathryn Glowinski helps the team lean into the drift theme pretty hard - answering questions about how companies approach information security in a world where AI enables almost anyone take a reasonable shot at accessing information they have no right to. While AI in its current state allows people to skip developing expertise, the group considers how effective this actually is today. Unsurprisingly the conversation goes a bit down the nerd mine with some strong analogies using world of warcraft - so approach with caution.

Rodney & Gabe convince Jake Mower to join this episode to have a talk about benchmarking pricing performance. Jake is the top of the call sheet when Gabe and Rodney face problems they're not sure how to approach, and he didn't disappoint. Jake brings his usual thoughtful approach to how one might realistically think about benchmarking someone's pricing performance and some common pitfalls.

Rodney & Gabe caught up with long time friend, Nate Brabec. Nate is a row crop farmer in Central NE and runs a modest cow-calf operation as well. Our excuse to get him on was to chat about Cattle markets (they're still going up!) but Nate, with his typical humility dropped some gems on his approach to grain marketing and accepting the inevitable frustration of missing the highest prices.

This episode Rodney and Gabe are joined by Marcel Artal, CEO of Hedgit.  Marcelo has built a solution, incorporating AI that helps identify key moments to make pricing decisions.  Topics are across the board in this one from reconciliation of pro-capitalist orientations with guaranteed minimum incomes, understanding the difference in how commercial operators and traders have to look at the market, and giving your brain a brake in a painful price environment 

Rodney and Gabe are joined by Kevin Bauer to talk a bit more about current market volatility. While this year certainly stands out at a bit of a surprise at its historically low levels we do touch on that the temporal relationships hold true. Next episode Rodney and Gabe expect to chat with Marcelo Artal CEO of hedgit.ai about how the world looks from Argentina these days, and how Marcelo uses AI to significantly cut down on how many decisions he needs to make when helping Argentine farmers manage price risk.

Rodney and Gabe talk about how to get yourself out of your own way when managing pricing decisions and wrap up this seasons crop insurance discussion with Rodney walking through the math on why pricing some of your crop ahead of harvest is a good decision whether or not you have a production shortfall.  Looking ahead to next episode, Rodney and Gabe are excited to have Kevin Bauer join and talk a bit about volatility and getting paid for risk.

Rodney's talks about his forays into "Vibe Coding" where he shares that it works about 80% most of the time. It's a real barn burner for the statistics aficionados out there. Gabe and Rodney mostly discuss crop insurance and ways to more proactively use it as part of a risk management plan.

Rodney and Gabe reflect on notable changes between now and when they started.  Not only does this include shocking insights around soybeans, but also ethernet cables.  Buckle up!

A brief intro on what Rodney & Gabe are looking to do with this new podcast.