Be Prepared with FCS Financial
The Crop Insurance Team at FCS Financial is ready to help you manage your business risk with the expertise you need to make sound decisions. We’ll help you find the products that protect your operation and give you peace of mind.
By Mark Parker
Crop Insurance EXPERTISE YOU CAN COUNT ON Chris Broderick’s mom, Loretta, smiles and remarks that her son has been a farmer since he was three years old. “That’s all he’s ever wanted to do,” she says with obvious pride. Literally and figuratively, Chris followed in the footsteps of his late father, Tom, who was a well-known leader in the Missouri beef industry. Today, Broderick Farms combines crops and cattle. On the beef side, Chris runs a stocker enterprise, buying mostly black heifers throughout the year and growing them to about 800 pounds. The cattle run on grass and crop residue, supplemented by corn silage, gluten and ground hay to achieve a target gain of about two pounds per day. Corn and soybeans are the cash crops, including some waxy corn marketed to Ingredion and non-gmo beans merchandised as food-grade. Whether the crops are commodity or specialized, the Brodericks know the financial exposure is high when the seeds go into the ground. Careful management minimizes some of the risks but for factors beyond his control, Chris looks to his FCS Financial crop insurance specialist, Kristie Hulet. “Kristie’s great to work with,” he says. “She knows her stuff and does a good job for us. You have a lot of choices with crop insurance and it’s good to deal with someone who knows how to make it work best for you. “They’re all nice people at FCS Financial and we’ve counted on them for as long as I can remember — Dad went with Farm Credit in the early ‘60s and later served on the Federal Land Bank board.” Two years ago, having the right crop insurance coverage was especially important. “I was really glad we had it,” Chris notes. “Our corn made about 70 bushels and the beans were about 20 — 150 and 50 is normal for us so we would have seen over half of our crop gross income dry up and blow away without crop insurance.”