SharkFarmerXM's podcast
Clint Prange 8-14-24
- ♪ Unstoppable, unshakeable ♪ ♪ But it rolls off a town unfakeable ♪ ♪ It's unavoidable ♪ ♪ You saw a little bowry between the lines ♪ ♪ Start to loosen of your mind ♪ - Hey, welcome again to Shark Farmer Radio. Hey, I'm your host Rob Sharky. We are live in El Paso, Illinois at the technology days. Mr. Shark Farmer is here. How's it going, honey? - I am doing fantastic, it's good to be back. We were back here last year, back again this year. It's so nice, I passed a root system. It's not every day you pass a root system walking in. What is that? - Well, they take the, I don't know how they do it. They had like a wizard, like redo the roots. I mean, it's huge. The roots of a corn plant, you don't realize how much is going on underground. It's like an iceberg or your mother-in-law. - Yeah, something like that. I don't know how that saying goes. - They say there's as much up on top as there is below. So, yeah. - Okay. It's true with a tree too, right? - Yes. - When you go like to take a tree out and you realize that the roots are going seven miles away. - That's right, that's right. But that's super cool, so we'll have to check that out. - A beautiful day here. This is nice not being to a farm show where it's not 150 degrees outside. - Oh my gosh, I'll take this any day. Today, we have a special guest. - I appreciate that, yeah. Very special. - Clint Prang from a Shelby V. You are a regional business manager at Bex Hybrid. What does that mean? - That's a good question. They say regional business manager, but I don't really manage the business. We've got people to be higher than manage the business. I pretty much just walk around, shake hands. In all seriousness, get a chance to do a lot of working with the sales teams, working with the agronomy teams. I get to do a lot of the hiring as well too with our teams as well. - Yeah, I still don't understand what you do, but I mean, you look happy. - I am happy, I am, I'm talking to you. We did this last year and we had a good time. You weren't too mean to, this year you may change that up a little bit. - Well, last year you were on and honestly, it didn't go well. And they said, you know, maybe let's let's let's, let Clint back on and you know, maybe- - A do over, I appreciate a do over. - A mulligan or something like that. - A mulligan, yeah. - Clint, I do apologize. He's had a dump time so he gets hangry and it comes out a little bit. - Okay, thank you. - Get him a Snickers. - Right? - At least I say that. - Hey, I'm not saying no. No, they don't, I don't even have my bell to ring. All right, Chad, you grew up on a farm? - I did grew up on a farm. So grew up in Northeast Missouri on a farm. You'd mentioned Shelbyville, Missouri. So I still a farm with my family there today. I mean, I just had a blast. You know, I had moved away from the farm for a while to just, you know, stretch professional roots, worked in the ag lending world and didn't think I'd really ever make it back to the farm and an opportunity came back to head back to the farm or head back to that area to work with a lending institute then. And we just, my wife and I are both from that same area and we haven't left since. So it's- - Mm-hmm. Now growing up on a farm, who influenced you? - I would definitely say the three biggest influences to me were my grandfather, my dad and my uncle, just the work ethic, they definitely instilled in all the grandkids, but I feel like I can only speak to myself, basically still do us how important it is to always give your best. It doesn't matter how tough times are. You just keep on working when those times are tough. And, you know, I also too, my mother and my grandmother, we were sharing some stories here earlier about that. Just, I can think about all the, it doesn't matter what time of year it was, what was going on. You know, we always had sweet corn time to work. We also had chickens to butcher as well too. And, you know, as a kid, you're like, yeah, you show up, you work big video. Of course, when you become the adult and you realize all the work that went on beforehand and afterhand by your mother and grandmother, yeah, you kind of have a little different appreciation for that. - You didn't do much. - No, I was there. I mean, I was the big kid. So I lifted the heavy things and then I ate all the food. So that's what I did a lot of. (laughing) - So you showed up and you realized that they had been working for a couple hours. Sweet corn was fun though. Isn't sweet corn kind of a way that brings your whole family together? I mean, everybody kind of shows up for sweet corn. - Well, you say that, but it's funny. Every time that the text message would go out or a phone call would go out over the years where my dad used to be kind of in charge of that now and it never would fail. Like he would send a message out, we're going to have sweet corn ready this day and everybody else had something to do at that point. It's funny how that works. - Yeah. (laughing) - Did you actually like the family went out and picked the sweet corners? Is this everybody around a table cutting it off? - Yes, to both. Usually what would happen, what happens now is I've got the sweet corn patch in my house. My dad has one is there as well too, but either him or myself or both of us or uncle would get involved, picked sweet corn the evening before and then the next day, yeah, we're shucking corn, we're cutting it off the cob, we're packaging it up and I'm a tad bit competitive. So my mindset always is we write down how many pints we did and then as long as we do one more pint that we did the prior year, then we call it a-- - Your competitive on sweet corn? - Why not, man? I mean, so we had green beans this year at our house and so my wife did, she did 67 pints of green beans last night. I said, hey, as long as we just do one more pint, that's all that matters. And then we ended up with 92 pints, or 92 quarts of green beans. - Yeah, what are you going to do next year? - More green beans, 193, at least 93. - I mean, you got to grow more now, right? - Yeah, but my daughter, my 13 year old daughter, see it's kind of my little bit of my trick a little bit. I got her interested in doing that as maybe an SAE project, canning green beans, so we're going to put more green beans out and she wants to-- - Oh, you can 'em? - Oh, yeah, yep, yep. - He's like one of those guys that go around and they do it and it's always a competition to get-- - No, I don't have any sheep, no. - I mean, can you picture him? He's like-- - It's an example, man. - He's as bad as those guys, you know, trying to shave off a second off of how fast they can do it. He's like shucking sweet corn. It's a competitive world of green beans. - Nobody likes those anyway. - If great dancing got into the Olympics, we should get canning green beans into the Olympics. - It could be, it could be an Olympic sport, people don't realize. - Do you put, do you put bacon? - I do, yep, I do put bacon in my secret ingredient though, is you put some beef bouillon coop, I can't say that word, coops into it, also tuna the water while you're cooking. Great, so then it tastes like a hamburger, a bacon cheeseburger with green beans. - Okay, I maybe don't disagree with that. I mean, he had me at bacon. - Today, we are live in El Paso, Illinois at the technology days. We will be back, right after the break. ♪ A ground shaker, a rule breaker ♪ ♪ Hold tight, he'll roll you through every acre ♪ - 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) - We are back in El Paso, Illinois, we're at the technology days. Me and Emily are here with Clinton Prang from Shelbyville, Missouri. Beautiful day out here. I mean, we've caught a good luck with the farm. - We have, it's absolutely gorgeous. We were talking about the root system as we walked in, you gotta see that. And, oh my gosh, they have a drone flying today and they have a, what is that thing? Is that a little lawnmower over there that's-- - Yeah, like a robot lawnmower. - Nice. - Do you got one of those, Clint? - I do not, but I heard someone telling me earlier that they have a Husqvarna version of that. They've got actually five of them. They have one down by the little pond area. They have one up by their yard, which I didn't know Husqvarna made one of those, but, and that demonstration's really just a show about just kind of some of the different innovations that are coming down the pipe or are already here. And you see something like that. It was like, man, that having one of those plant my field isn't that far off. - I used to laugh at the drones. I mean, two years ago, they were kind of a, I won't say a joke, but they were kind of a joke, right? - They were kind of a novelty. - Yeah, and I, I was being inside joke there, but, but no, we were right. I mean, in three years ago, I actually had someone spray a bean throw to mine with fungicide and with a drone, a really good job, it entertained the neighbors. That was great. - And the only reason I didn't use it the next year is because he went up tremendously on his application cost. It sounds like that's kind of come back down, but I feel like it was effective as anything else. - Yeah, we had two, and it was two fields that are very hard to spray with a high boy and that, so I didn't spray them. I always had the co-op do it just because I didn't want to beat my stuff up. And then, yeah, once this drone came out, they're like, yeah, you know, I think, I think we're done bringing a high boy in there. But they do, they get a good job. I mean, the coverage is there. So, yeah, I guess why not? - Well, that is one of the more popular studies that people have learned about is the aerial application versus drone application versus ground rig application and just seeing the different data points. They're not, I think we're in our second year of our studies that we've done with that, we'll be in a third year next year. But yeah, it is, I guess it gives more premise to the opportunities that drones do provide for us. And we knew, hey, when that new technology came out, just like anything else, it was gonna get better over time. And that one has definitely gotten better as the evolution of that has continued to improve. - Imagine it will be like in five years. - We'll have drones doing this podcast, probably. - Okay. - I see another buggy going by what people are here for, right? They're going out to the plots. They're going out to- - To learn. - To learn. And I mean, these buggies are full. - Yeah, it's neat to see a line already started out out there, you know, this year we moved to point, putting the shows into an extra hour earlier so people could show up early. And farmers are typically early risers, right? - That's a bad idea. - Yeah, it was a horrible idea. Actually, in this morning, I was looking inside here and so the show opened up at eight o'clock and already on the inside we were completely full at eight 20 and people were standing in line for the buggy tours that didn't start until nine o'clock. So very blessed, been a very good day so far. - So it says here that you, oh, you're married. - Huh, can you believe that? - Go for here. - I mean, okay. I mean, there's- - He knows how to close the deal. - 19 years, three kids, where did you meet Amber? - So I met Amber in Shelby County. I mean, I think we talked about this last year too, but so you have a short term memory, it's okay. But no, I met Amber at a demolition derby, the most Missouri thing you can think about and when we were both at our school. - Cars or combines? - Cars, cars. - Oh my word, could you guys even talk? I mean, I have to wear earplugs to those things. - I mean, when you don't have to talk, when all I just did is look at her and she understood what I was saying. - That's why it is a Missouri. Like when you and I met and kissed, you said like the fireworks are going off, they've had crash-up derbies going off behind them. It's how romantic is that? Went to Northwest Missouri State. Is that a real school? - It is a real school. We've got a mascot and everything. - What is it? - So it's a college, a university. So it's a- - What's a mascot? - The mascot is a bear cat, which is not even a real thing, but it's a bear cat. - It's so made up. - I thought he said it was a real mascot. - That's what he said it was a real college. - The mascot is a tangible thing, but have you seen a bear cat running? There's no such thing. - I've never seen Northwest Missouri State either. - Well, you need to in Maryville, Missouri. One of the winningest football programs in all of Division II history, a great agricultural program, get your bell out and ding that right there. - I would, but it's Division II. You could lose to like a high school team. - Well, but we had a lot of Division I schools that wouldn't even play that university because they were afraid they were going to get beat at that point in time. - He's just lying. - He went for ag business, but then he decided, okay, so what made you decide to stay longer and get your masters? - Well, it's an interesting story. So actually, I went to Northwest Missouri. The reason I went to Northwest Missouri State, I loved the campus, but big reason I went there is that they had just won their second national championship in football. I was recruited to go play there and then do track and field. And so I really loved the culture that that football team had put together. And then in that process, I actually ended up messing my back up. And so I can no longer play football. So I just did track and field. And I thought, hey, this is great. It's gonna be a lot less wear and tear on my body. And then lo and behold, my senior year, I ended up getting injured in track and field. So I had to stick around for an extra year anyways. And I thought, well, rather than getting a minor, I might as well go ahead and knock out my masters or miss, you know, they talked about everybody, well, it takes you about two years to do your masters. I'm like, I can do this in 12 months. And so I-- - It's like the corn all over again. - Oh my word. - And so I did a little over 12 months. - A masters in 12 months. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I did-- - I didn't know you could do that. - I tell people all the time that if you're ever thinking about doing your masters, the cool thing about undergrad's great experience, but the reality is on the masters, at least it was this way with me, is your most of those classes and those courses, those are things you really enjoy. So it's not like the prerequisites that you have to take. These are all classes that you really enjoy. And so, and even, I think it's still this way. So full time for a college students 12, 12 credit hours for your masters, it's nine hours. And so really, if I was gonna be up there anyways, I could still do 12 to 15 hours and knock that out pretty efficiently. - What did you-- - Shot put in discus. - Oh, so you weren't like a real track person. - Yeah, no, I didn't do any pole vault or what do you mean a real track person? - They don't even have those in the Olympics. - You're a six-time All-American in track. - If you don't watch any of the Olympics at all-- - I'll watch that break dancing. That's some good stuff right there. - Yeah, ballroom dancing, yeah, that's what it was. - So you must've been good. All-American. - Four-time regional champion. I mean, the record in the shot put. - Record in the shot put, how far? - Yeah, it was actually a four-time national champion. - Oh, nice. - For D2, which isn't even real, like you said earlier apparently, but-- - Yeah, how far did you throw it? - So shot put was a little over 66 feet and discus was a little under 200 feet. - That's a big one, is it? - 16 pounds. - 16 pounds. - Going to the bowling alley, grabbing a 16 pound bowling ball and throwing it almost 70 feet. - So in the shot put, did you do the spin? - Spinner. - Yep, you did? - Yep, I was a spinner. - Boy, I would think that'd be hard on your back too. How do you pull that off? - Back not so much. It's lost practice, biomechanics, a technique. Tremendous technical, these guys that were in the Olympics and that's kind of the cool thing. The Americans have just absolutely dominated the shot put the last several years and you've got some people that quite frankly, athletically they could be starters on any NFL pro team and they just have decided to go ahead and become shot putters. So it's all about technique. - Mm-hmm. Let's hear the grunt. - The grunt? - Yeah, when you threw it. - I never did grunt. - I yelled. - Oh, come on. - You might scare some people if I yell right now. - All right, we do gotta go to break. Today we're talking with Clint Prang from Shelbyville, Missouri. He's a regional business manager at Beck's Hybrid. We will be back, all right after the break. ♪ So relatable, we're between the lines ♪ ♪ Start to loosen up your mouth ♪ - 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) - Hey, welcome back to Shark Farmer Radio. We are live in El Paso, Illinois. We're at the technology days. It's the show before the big show in Atlanta, Indiana next week. - Absolutely. This is a one day show at Atlanta, Indiana is three days. - But you know, for the local people, I mean, that's nice if you don't want to travel all the way over there. - Yeah, I mean, mostly what you're going to see here today is a lot of people have traveled in within two hours, right? They can drive to this location. It's kind of interesting. We were in Effingham last week. I've seen several people that were at Effingham farmers that also came up here too today. So that's- - It's the ice cream. - It is the ice cream. First thing this morning, we opened up eight o'clock. I walk at 8 o' five. There's people walking in here with ice cream cones with smiles on their faces. - Hey, you know, at our house, when it's your birthday, you're supposed to have ice cream for breakfast. It's just tradition. So, you know, if you're going to come to Bex, it's like a holiday, you have ice cream. Ice cream for breakfast, why not? - So this is generally the part in a show where we say we're in the world as well, we're all supposed to find out. He goes on to Wikipedia, you heard of that? On Wikipedia and he'll look up Shelbyville, Missouri and he'll find out what they're supposed to be interesting facts, but he's not very good at his job. - He gets hung up on the post office and the train- - A lot of post office, true. Anything cool about Shelbyville, Missouri? Shelbyville is the county seat of Shelby County. - Oh my gosh, it is will. - It is will. - Remember how we said interesting stuff? - So probably the most interesting thing about Shelbyville is that is the hometown of Norm Stewart. Norm Stewart was a longtime MU basketball coach. The coach has started the coaches versus cancer, very winning coach. He's very competitive guys. Well, if you traced it back, there'd be some lineage to his and my family as well too. But yeah, that's probably the most interesting thing about Shelby County. Another fun fact, which people blows her mind sometimes, our county only has about 6,400 people in it. So it's a very rural part of Missouri. Right dead in the center of Northeast Missouri, exactly an hour away from Illinois and an hour away from Iowa. - Gosh, I mean, do you even have a Walmart? - We have 6,400 people in the county. We're about 45 minutes from the nearest Walmart. - Well, you need something in the middle, right? - That's true. - You have a dollar store? - We have lots of dollar stores. I mean, as soon as there's an open alpha alpha field for sale, boom, a dollar store. - You would think so, except for Bradford, Illinois. - They grow out of a pile of dirt, you know. - Yeah, but it's funny, we actually got 6,400 people. There's two big towns in that area. Well, no, actually there's three big towns. There is a dollar store in every one of those towns right now. And somehow they're still open. - Well, la de da. Did you go right into seed? - No, I didn't. My first area in the professional world was working for Ag Lending at Farm Credit Services or FCS Financial. Had an opportunity to be in a training role there where I was exposed to a lot of different aspects of Ag Lending that, again, when you're just a young dumb kid looking for a job, this could be impactful, useful information at some point in time later on in life. But I had a chance to go from that into a loan officer position. And just, I talk about that young and dumb spot. I'm still dumb, just not young anymore. - Yeah, we know. - Yeah, we've done this for 30 minutes now. But, you know, all those things from credit underwriting to doing cash flows, those things really end up pan out very well when it came to going back to the farm eventually at some pin. So I've been in the seed side. I worked for a different brand for a while, which I'm happy to say it was Pioneer. I had seven and a half great years working there with that company and organization and just... - My gosh, why are they coming to get you right now? - Why aren't they coming to get me? What do you mean? - These very large gentlemen with back shirts on. - Oh, no, it was great. That's how I have to tell people that it was great. But being here is even greater, more great. - Hold down, boys. - Okay, okay. But when I was my last role with Seishina, I was an agronomist and, you know, you kind of got the curtain pulled back when you became an agronomist from those organizations. And I just had a chance on this side of it, just to see like how the seed industry really worked. And I, you know, won't get into all those things from that aspect of that company. But seeing over here, just the transparency that you had here at BEX, the access to genetics, brought me here and then, I know everybody always says it, but it is the people. I mean, you will not, I dare you all to find a unhappy. Now maybe you found one. - We did. Her name is Kate. - Great job. I won't get thrown to the bus, but seriously, just that you have a lot of people here that have a passion for helping farmers out. They have a passion for seed, of course. And it just, we used to have a lot of fun. Everybody, I can't believe I've been here nine and a half years. And it still feels like within that first year. - I, you know, it's probably not breaking your heart that you're not in aglending here coming up the next couple of years. - These conversations, it's not, I told you there, I think it was an effing hammer. I just, I really appreciate how you shared that post that you had about, hey, folks, it's just, you know, straight or tough times allowed for innovation to pop up. Use this as an opportunity to try some new stuff. And yeah, in aglending, there's definitely gonna be some different conversations that are gonna be had than what has had, probably in the last 10 to 15 years. - Yeah, I made all that stuff up. - Well, I figured you would compete at it or something. - I just go by, your AI. - Inspirational speeches. - Well, and it's true, you know, in times that are hard, you know, if you're not getting good prices for your crop, it's easy to just sit around and complain with everybody, but that's when some of the great ideas, it like forces you out of your comfort zone. That's when some of the great ideas, some of our best ideas have come about, but it's, you gotta pull away from just sitting around, complaining with everybody, right? - Yeah, I could grow up on a farm in the 80s, so I wasn't involved necessarily in any of the decisions, but I mean, I was born and watched how that impacted my family, our family's farm. And, you know, luckily, we were some of the ones that made it out of that, but I mean, you don't come out of that with a different perspective. And the reality is, you know, with the blessing, we've have great things such as crop insurance and other safe nets that help us get through those things, but again, at the same time too, it doesn't necessarily replace everything whenever you've gotta completely change your cash flow for the next two to three years potentially, we look at grain prices, you know, look at corn, 350 in input, and when you're paying $1,200 for in-hydrous, it's a different mind shift for sure. - I always say my grandparents, you know, they live through the Great Depression, and when we would go for family get-togethers when I would take plastic silverware to make it easy. Like, throw away all the plates, like, so you don't have to do dishes, grandma, like you're always cooking and doing dishes. She would wash them and reuse them because they lived through the Depression. Well, it's kind of like, you know, when you go through the '80s, you don't come out unscathed. - So my great-grandmother, she lived to be 104 years old, and so we got to hear a lot of the stories, and I remember when we moved back to the family farm, we were able to move back into the farmhouse of her and my great-grandfather lived in, and so whenever we moved into the house, that house had been vacant for several years, and so we were all looking around like, where did they hide the gold? Where did they hide the gold? And it's like, well, we didn't find any gold. We found a lot of shoeboxes full of other stuff that they just hoarded over the years, but that's what you had to do. - Well, and I don't wanna make this a BEX commercial, but I mean, program on this downturn where you can, I mean, 'cause most people are gonna pull the reins in on any equipment, and then that catches up with you. I've been there, but if you can utilize this for awards program, then I gotta imagine that's gonna help. - Well, I can remember whenever I was doing my interview process of I was interviewing the company to see if this was the place I wanted to come work at, and actually that was one of the things from my banking background when I understood that the reality is it's, I think a lot of people use all the same, like you've got seed and then you've got programs. Well, yeah, we're BEX. We have seed and we have programs, but that program in particular, when you really get your mind wrapped around it, it's not just a program. It's a working capital multiplier, and the reality is people that are in a multi-year commitment with BEX are actually at an advantage to farmers that aren't in one when you start breaking it down from the working capital aspect of it. And now the seed's gotta perform, you gotta get the service. Those are table stakes in this industry anymore. But what it really boils down to is it boils down to who can truly help me succeed long-term. - Is there emails where people can find you? - I'm on Instagram, I can't tell you what that is. I think it's just Clint Prang on Instagram. - Great job, Clint. - Clint Prang. - Yeah, I'm on Instagram somewhere. Good luck finding me. - But, yeah, Clint.prang at BEX Hybers probably about the best way to get ahold of me. And if you can't get ahold of me there, call the office, I'm simple. - Yeah, okay, Clint, not a very good job, but we're out of time. I don't want you to go anywhere though, 'cause Sean Haney's coming up next. He's got a much better root model than you guys have. It's made of maple syrup. - Maple syrup. ♪ Caridiful, caridiful, caridiful ♪ ♪ The next year you go ♪