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Coverage & Stewardship Crop Insurance Customer Feature
Mark D. Zacharda grew up on Zacharda Farms, which was owned and operated by his dad and uncle.
➡M ark Klett uses GreenStone’s exclusive crop insurance analysis tool, Optimum, to present options to his customers, including the Zachardas.
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Winter 2022 — Partners
He helped milk cows until they sold them at the turn of the century, and then he helped them cash crop. However, he didn’t go straight from school to the farm. He graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in agriculture science and earned a teaching certification from Saginaw Valley State University, and then he moved to Virginia to teach high school biology. “I really enjoyed being a teacher,” Mark said. “Farming can be stressful, but teaching can be even more so. They’re similar in a lot of ways. There are farmers who just get by…if yields aren’t terrible, and if prices aren’t bad, and you have crop insurance to back it up, they can make it. Some teachers also just phone it in, but if you want to really do what’s best by the students or optimize your farm’s profitability while doing what’s best by the environment, you have to really work.”
