3 minute read
Executive Insights
Be a Somebody
Aaron Putze, APR ISA Chief Officer of Brand Management & Engagement aputze@iasoybeans.com
I’m a homebody. My preference for home over hotels is the result of my childhood. The family farm near West Bend was the center of my universe for nearly 20 years. Home was my favorite place because Mom and Dad kept things simple. Within the four walls of our modest, one-story farmhouse were faith, love and routine. Homemade meals were enjoyed together as a family. There was trust and accountability. Sundays were for church, grilling and finding the best fishing holes in the nearby west fork of the Des Moines River.
Home on the farm offered, as the Eagles once crooned, “a peaceful, easy feeling.”
While love of home is a good thing, it doesn’t get you far in today’s global ag marketplace. More to the point, you better be a somebody than a homebody if you want to make sales.
Attending the U.S. Soybean Export Council’s Agricultural Cooperators Conference held in Colombia was a reminder of this. The country of 53 million is a prolific producer of chicken, eggs, pork, milk and fish, all consumers of soy. The U.S. accounts for 78% of Colombia’s soy imports, or nearly 1.9 million metric tons of the country’s 2.4 million metric tons (a combination of whole soybeans, soybean meal and soybean oil).
The U.S. soybean industry isn’t taking this for granted. It took relationships to build this market and will take face time to maintain (and grow) it. For this reason, 20 U.S. soybean farmers (including three Iowa Soybean Association farmer directors), traveled to Colombia’s capital city of Bogotá earlier this year. They toured a feed mill, heard from Colombian ag industry leaders and networked with U.S. soy customers from throughout Central and South America.
Zoom meetings and telephone calls don’t build and sustain market preference for soybeans grown in places like DeWitt, Sigourney and Independence. Demand building begins with producing a soybean superior in quality to the competition, then defining its ROI based on customers’ needs. Finally, you need to show up at the buyer’s front door to promote its attributes and benefits with sincerity and conviction (and photos of family and the family farm!).
U.S. soybean farmers are no longer the world’s low-cost producer. Soy importers who buy on price will choose Brazil. Take China as an example. Once a home run for U.S. soybean farmers, the country with a declining and aging population will continue to use price (and politics) to shun U.S. soy in favor of South American suppliers.
But a new generation of leadership is taking the helm of farms and company management located in key soybean markets including Chile, Egypt, Venezuela, Mexico, Morocco and Indonesia, to name a few. They don’t subscribe to the, “We’ve always done it that way,” as justification for how they run their businesses. Instead, they gather information, meet with suppliers, review the numbers and gather around the board table to make business decisions. On quality, U.S. soy dominates. Greater protein and amino acid profiles accelerate animal performance, meaning more eggs laid and pigs, poultry and fish getting to market faster. That’s real ROI, and the new generation of buyers and feeders know it.
As one prominent soybean trade expert said during our time in Colombia, “Price plus quality” is what equals value. And there’s no better way to make this point (and sales) than by being a somebody.
