SharkFarmerXM's podcast
Trevor Froehling from Cissna Park IL 6-18-24
- ♪♪♪ - ♪ Unstoppable, unshakeable ♪ ♪ But it rolls off the town unfakeable ♪ ♪ It's unavoidable ♪ ♪ You're a little bully ♪ ♪ Between the lies ♪ ♪ Start to loosen up your mind ♪ - And we'll walk about getting this shark farmer radio. Hey! I'm Coach Rob Sharkey. We're in the studio today just outside of Bradford, Illinois. Studio powered by Bep's hybrid. She's a scorcher. - He's a scorcher. - Actually, it's not. It would be low 90s. - Well, it feels like it. You know, it's this first real shot of... - You're not used to it. - Yeah, that's what it is. - And we just came back from Oklahoma City. And I'll have to say it was just as hot and humid in Oklahoma City as it is at home. - Yeah, 20 hours of driving in two days. - That was crazy. But I tell you what, it was worth it. The American Meat Association, their reciprocal meat conference. Oh my gosh, we got to nerd out. - Meat nerds. - They call themselves that. So it's okay for me to say that. But meat scientists, butchers, professors from colleges all over the country, people from all over the world. - Yeah, I could tell all the vegan jokes I wanted to. - You could. And the snack bar cracked me up. I mean, it was like sausage links and all kinds of stuff like that. Like Jack links and it just cracks me up. - If you're like on the Atkins or keto, it was your dream. - It was our friend. - Yeah. - Yeah. And as a zoology major, you know, I got to get all sciency for a couple days. So that was fun. - The meat that comes off of a puffer fish is called Fugu. - Oh my gosh, that was a quiz bowl question. I mean, you learn something every day, Fugu? - Fugu. And it's, it can be poisonous anyway. - And who can we make fun of? We can make fun of one person today. - Oh, Joey Chestnut, right? - Yes, Joey Chestnut. - He's a world hot dog champion. And decided that he was going to sign with... - Impossible Burger. - Impossible Burger. - Yeah. - Who knows how much? - So they kicked him out. - He did. - I mean, if you're a hot dog company and you're sponsoring this event, I mean, it's your event. You can do whatever you want. - He was a champion for like eight years. And then he signs with Impossible. - Yeah. - He better sign for a big bucks. It's not worth it. - Be a winner. - He sold a soul. - Not a wiener. All right. Today we're going up to Assistna Park, Illinois. We're going to be talking with Trevor or Froling. How you doing Trevor? - How are you guys? - Doing pretty good. You're out in a tractor, aren't you? - I am. It's Casey. I'm here in Eastern Illinois and I'm just at the end of getting an 80 acre field done. So I have a successful week. - Okay. Are you doing round bales or what? - I do four by five round bales. I didn't start that way. I did the small squares and I learned very quickly that it was a lot harder way to make living. So I've moved all rounds and I let the equipment do the work. - Yeah, but can you, you can, like, if you had to put dollars to dollar, would you make more money doing the small squares in the rounds? - Oh, absolutely. But the dollar for labor is a lot more intensive. I much prefer it this way. I can start and finish almost as a one man operation on the round bales. - Oh, don't get me wrong. I was just curious. There's no way I would do it. I remember the straw. We only did straw around here mainly and man, oh man, that's, whoo, it was always a hundred degrees. - Always, always. - You'd always have some old dude that was my uncle that didn't know how to run a clutch on a tractor and always try to throw you off the rack of all the stuff. - Didn't know how to run a clutch and didn't know how to pay you for your worth. - No, my uncle always paid really well. - Did he? Okay. Was it your neighbor who didn't? You still talk about that. - Yeah, that ticked me off. Trevor, he didn't pay me for the time in between the loads. So I was in the mow and I worked like, let's say, seven hours that day and then he came and the check was like for three and a half hours because that was the only time I actually worked when I was waiting for his rack. I didn't get paid. - That makes sense. He makes a lot more money that way. - Don't agree with him. - That makes sense, he says. Well, Trevor, this interview just changed. You grew up on a dairy farm? Is that right? My grandparents, they were dairy farmers until the day they kicked the bucket. I grew up milking cows and around hay and it's kind of ingrained in me at this point. My grandparents are gone, but somehow I'm still doing the hay. - So I love the story, how your parents met. What was your dad doing and what was your mom's job? - Dad owned a milk truck business and then my mother was on his route. And after a couple of months of them picking up their milk, they just connected and the story ended with Trevor somewhere down the line. - Okay, I think we just heard the plot and the adult film somewhere. - Looks like your milk tanks fail, ma'am. Well, how'd you end up in Sistna Park? - Yeah, so I actually grew up in Buckley right next to Sistna Park, but it's basically where my family farm on my dad's side is where it was set up. My grandparents were grain farmers along with dairy farmers and then my grandpa on my dad's side, he was a milk truck driver too, and then he was a grain farmer. It was kind of where we ended up, I split my time between up north in Sistna Park and Danville between milking cows and going up north and working with dad on the grain farm during the spring and fall. And I went to school in Sistna Park and I graduated from there in 2012. - So now on your farm, what are you raising? - Yeah, so during the summer I do hay, I'd raise alfalfa and grass hay in the round bales, but also I run corn and soybean operation and I work with my dad, my brother and my cousin, and we farm about 2,000 acres between a couple counties in eastern Illinois. - Mm-hmm, how's things look? - We're gonna come around a little bit, we could use some rain now funny enough, it was so wet early, this is about the latest that I've ever gotten my corn and beans planted, but it's starting to come around now, you can see the nitrogen kicking in and giving the corn some color and my brother and cousin are outside dressing today while I'm finishing up a hay field. - All right, yeah, we're all hoping for a later fall, late frost this year because my goodness. - All right. - It's been a late start for a lot of people. - It has, especially driving southern Illinois and southern Indiana and actually most of Iowa. Anyway, today we're talking with Trevor Froling from Assistant Park, Illinois, when we come back we're gonna talk about some crop insurance, cash lease insurance, kind of a new thing. I don't know, I got a lot of questions, we'll be back after the break. - This segment is brought to you by Common Ground. Are you looking for an easy way to buy, sell or lease your land? Well check out Common Ground where they connect landowners and farmers and hunters too, by the way. Go to commonground.io, that's commonground.io. (upbeat music) - All right. What is today? Tuesday? - Today's Tuesday, which means like it's rerun number, oh, seven or eight with shark farmer TV tuned in at 8.30 on RFD TV tonight. - Yeah, we also launched a podcast with Elsie, I forget her last name. It's Elsie like rocket something anyway. - Rice archer. - Rice archer. - I had to think about that and get it right. - I got caught up on the name because it's a cow's name. - Well, and it's so funny because you wanted to keep saying Elise. - If you look at the word Elsie and you want to say Elise. I think that, you know, it's a good thing that she doesn't get her feelings hurt easily because you mentioned that, she goes, gosh, I hope I'm not named after a cow. - No, I think she's the type of a gal that would throat punch you. - Yeah, she might. She loves wrenching. So she is a full-time farmer. Farms has taken over since her dad retired and love is being back on the family farm. All she ever wanted to do. - Yeah, extremely supportive family. She rented her first farm when she was 14 years old. - 14. I don't remember what I was doing. I think I was still playing with dolls. - Yeah. I will say she also bar tends and she doesn't know how to make an old fashioned. - That cracked me up. I mean, I think it's a local bar. She just has what they want there. - She said all they do is pour some whiskey and she said it and I've never heard of it and I said, is it better or worse than Jack Daniels? She says, oh, it's nowhere as good as Jack. It's like, oh my gosh. - Oh no. - Anyway, that's at sharkfarmer.com under the Sharkfarmer podcast section. Today we're talking with Trevor Ephruling from Assistant Park, Illinois. He's a farmer there. He's raising corn soybeans and he's currently bailing hay in his tractor. - Because it's hot. - Yeah. Is air conditioning working, Trevor? - I'll tell you what, it gave out on me last week. That was a long hour and a half and I gave up and I got that fixed. I've tried to do, I've had it go out of me and I had like, I was spraying and this was, you know, that glass cab is like a magnifying box. I mean, it gets so hot in such a hurry you about can't handle it. - You know, I have a light complexion too and I'll tell you what, I had a worse sunscreen in the cab. Did I get sunburnt through the windows? - Yeah, I'm not sure how that works, Trevor, but whatever. - Sunscreen in the cab, that's awesome. - Well, I remember you had poison ivy one time and with that he did up your arm. - Oh my gosh, that was the worst. - Oh, good golly. - Now, Trevor, you're also your crop insurance agent. How long you've been doing that? - Yeah, so my father was a crop insurance agent and he's been doing it for about 20 years and when I was in high school, my job during the summer was to work with him and help him put together his production reports and his acre's reports in the fall and that's where I started and I got really interested into it and I really like the aspect of protecting yields, protecting price and making it so you can guarantee, you know, you make a dollar if you have a good year and I just was really enthralled by it and once I got out of school, I got my insurance license and I've been writing insurance since 2017. - Yeah, you actually understand all that stuff, huh? - Yeah, it's, if you're around it long enough, it kind of makes sense. - I've been around it for over 27 years, I don't understand any of it. - Well, can we give you some clarity on some of it today? - Okay. - Your dad must have been a good boss because, you know, when you have a high school job, you either love it or hate it. You must have been a pretty decent guy to work for if you wanted to then go into finance. - I really like numbers and doing numbers in my head and this product we're gonna talk about today, a lot of it is just simple numbers and math and guarantees and it just makes sense to me and that's why I really like working with it. - Cash lease insurance, a fairly new product, right? - Yeah, it was actually ran out August of last year, so it's still in its first year of existence. I've had a lot of fun talking to farmers and working with them on protecting their interests on a price decline going into fall. Essentially what it is is it doesn't protect yield, it doesn't protect yield times price like your regular crop insurance does, it only looks at price decline. So it protects a farmer in case there's a commodity decline going into harvest in the fall. - Okay, and you can buy it at any time? - Yeah, so it's actually available through common ground insurance group under by Hudson crop through the end of July, so every day a person can quote this and it's based on the board on December corn futures and November being futures and every day you can lock in up to 95% of a price on the board and if there's a price decline in the fall, it'll pay an indemnity based on what your cash rent is. - Okay, all right, so I mean, what's this different than a put? It's actually a much simpler version of that. So for example, two weeks ago, we were getting real close to that $5 number on corn. What I really like about this is it's simple, it's a 95% coverage level. So anything under 475 on your fall, on your November being futures, December corn futures, it's gonna pay out indemnity. If that number and that band is under that, it starts to pay you back, it's a band coverage. So 80% of that $5 would be $4 anywhere between 475 and $4 that would pay you back and then it maxes out at $4 and pay you 100% of liability based on what your rent is. So if I had $200 acre rent and I said, okay, if that price of corn was down to $4 in the fall, I want that $200 acre of my rent back, it would pay all your rent back. Okay, and it can be any, I mean, if you have like the nutty rents, say like a 500 bucks, I mean, it's the same deal, just different numbers. It's available to anybody that has a valid cash rental agreement. That person can get a quote and the max liability you can ensure is your total rent. So that's the key is the higher the higher liability, but obviously the more premium. The price on it right now is for every $100 of liability on corn, it's about a $4 to $1 ratio. And on soybeans, it's around six to one. Oh, so if a sharecropper walks in, you just point to the door and said, get out of here. Yeah, that doesn't work as long as you got a valid rental agreement written where you're paying a cash rent, you can get insurance on that acre. Yeah, maybe I'll just write it to where I run it to myself. You ever thought of that? Yeah, there's, there's all kinds of unique ways a person can do it. If you have an entity and you're renting it to yourself through the entity, you could still get the insurance as long as there's some way to prove that you pay cash rent on that ground. It's insurable. Okay. And this is common ground? Yeah, that's the common ground insurance group. And the actual insurance policy is written by Hudson crop and they're out of Kansas City, Missouri. Okay. All right. I've got more questions. Today we're talking with a Trevor Fronling from Assistant Park, Illinois. We come back. We're going to learn what will has found out, plus we're going to learn more about this insurance. Yeah, I like, I like getting insurance checks. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. We'll be back. All right. After the break. This segment is brought to you by Common Ground. Are you looking for an easy way to buy, sell or lease your land? Well, check out Common Ground where they connect landowners and farmers and hunters too, by the way. Go to commonground.io, that's commonground.io. So we're out in Oklahoma, we're talking to the meat science association, whatever. And they say, all right, our next speaker, and I'm like, here we go, they're going to introduce me. And they said our next speaker is a, he is featured on America's favorite radio segment. We're in the world as well. Oh. They hurt my feelings a little bit, but you're full of it. Aren't you? Well, what do you have for us today? Didn't you miss us, Will? I missed y'all and it's good to be back. Are you saying where you went on vacation or is that a guarded secret? Uh, no, I went to Eleuthra, it is an island in the Bahamas. Oh, geez. Oh, life is hard. I kind of hate you a little bit. A little bit. All right. All right. But today, I'm in Sysna Park, which is, yeah, it gave similar vibes, I'd say. Might be the similar temperature today. Yeah. Yeah. A village in Pigeongrove, township, Iroquois County, Illinois, population of 846, taking up the 2010 census. Okay. Another small one. Yeah. Iroquois County was created on February 26, 1833, out of a portion of Vermillion County. Oh, they stole it. Yeah. It was named for the Iroquois River, which was itself named for the Iroquois people. The county is located along the border with Indiana. A courthouse was built in Wattsica in 1866 at the cost of $28,000. It included a jail in the basement. This building was expanded in 1881, and a new jail was built in 1893, just-- Probably more expensive. Right. With inflation. Was it a Mosica on the movie Twister, where the-- No. That was in Kansas. Oh. Hmm. Emily, don't do movies. That's her will and I, okay? We got notable people. First notable person. Is it a movie you might know, Emily. Rex Everhart, Broadway actor, voiced the role of Maurice in the film Beauty and the Beast. Oh, he was a piece of furniture, right? What do you like, a chest of doors? He was one of those-- Or the pain cushion, I don't know. I like this guy though, John Masson, American aviator, aeronautical engineer, flight instructor, businessman, and revolutionary. He was the first pilot to conduct a passenger flights over Paris, as well as across the English Channel from Paris to London. He co-founded an eponymous flying circus, the Masson International Aviators. Eponymous. Yeah, he funded his aviation career with proceeds from Business Ventures in El Salvador, where he had led two failed revolutions and coup attempts against President Figueroa in 1907 in 1909. That sounds sketchy. That sounds sketchy. That sounds sketchy. That's our sketchy. The whole thing. Yeah, only months after becoming a pilot, he died after being ejected from his airplane over a field just west of New Orleans, Louisiana. I got to be careful what button you push. Oh, no, he said New Orleans, New Orleans, Monwell. He was competing for the 1910 Michelin Cup. The site of his crash is the location of Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, which was originally named Masson Field in his memory. All right, whoa, where he ejected is where they put the airport. Yep. That's so weird down there. Okay. All right, well, thank you very much. Today we're talking with Trevor Froling from Assistant Park, Illinois. Did you know all that stuff, Trevor? Hey, what? I've learned a lot about, uh, Trevor's what's telling you. Uh, Trevor is a farmer up there, he's also a crop insurance agent. Now when you're talking to people about these, uh, the farmers about this cash lease insurance, I mean, it seems to me, I'm surprised at something like this hasn't already come up. Is there a reason? This is all new. Say what? It's one of those things, a person, you know, they talk about their concerns. It's typically all been healed from my history, you know, from my, you know, childhood on, it was always yield yield and, you know, if last year was a way that we can learn that these hybrids and these have just advanced so much, it, it almost takes, I mean, I, I looked at my corn last summer, I didn't think there was any way they could be 200 bushel corn. When it wasn't as tall as me at the end of June and I'm not that tall and it was 200 bushel corn. And when you can create that kind of yield, even in drought conditions, uh, it makes you really look at what we're the value as an insurance and what we came up with is a, is a way to protect price and it's a price decline going into the fall, which I think the majority of farmers look at it and say that's where the real risk is going into a selling season is the price and this is a way that a farmer can take a price during the summer when the risk is the highest, lock on a higher number and get a little check for themselves in the fall that are short on, on price when they take their drain to the elevator. So if prices are, let's, let's call the prices are what they are now. Let's say they're decent, right? And then I end up growing a bumper crop and the December price is, let's say a buck and a half below, that's my, that's one of my best scenarios for getting a lot of big check from you. Yeah, if you have a really good year and everybody else around you has a good year and we have another trend line yield with USDA, we're going to, you know, prices are very likely going to decline going into fall and that's where CLIP would really shine as we have a bumper crop and there's too much around and the price is lower because of that and there's pressure and that's when CLIP will really pay well and it's, it's triggered at the end October, the fall price just like in your crop insurance, it's based on that number at the end October, the average of those contracts and that's when you get paid. And the way that we looked at it is, you know, on your regular crop insurance, it's always price times yield and then you have a 15% deductible max and your RP to get a payment and it's, it's really hard to get a payment when you have yield and price working against each other to get you an indemnity and you know it's a real insurance product now that you already have an acronym for it. The crop insurance is all acronyms, it's all short letters. So what's this webinar that you have? Is that a Facebook thing? Through commonground.io, we're going to have a live quoting webinar on June 26th, 10 in the morning. It's free to anybody that wants to sign up and come learn about exactly how this works. It's, it's kind of hard without seeing hard numbers in frontia to completely grasp it. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through live quoting and show people on, on the 26th, exactly how it works, what it costs and what it would take to get your money back. So you're going to do that live on the, on the web. You're actually going to be giving out real numbers and stuff. That's absolutely right. It'll be at 10 in the morning and you can register on commonground's website, commonground.io. Okay. I mean anybody could get on that. Is that intimidating? You know, we've, I've gone through the register of people that were on there before. I've had a lot of U of I people join that were, you know, run farm doc and, and yeah, it's, it's very interesting to have people on there that you kind of looked up to and looked for answers before and I've absolutely had that. And I look forward to it because I can show them a new product that it hopefully can help them in their operations too. Okay. Again, that's a webinar at commonground.io. It's June 26th. That's a week for tomorrow. It's next Wednesday. That's a day of the debates too in a dim. Yeah. Close to that. Yeah. All right. Trevor froling for, I'm system park Trevor. Thank you so very much. Everybody check out it next Wednesday. Trevor don't go anywhere though because Sean Haiti's coming up next. He's the largest provider for beaver insurance in Canada. Catch you here right next time. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO]