 So my name's Scott Center, I'm coming to you live this morning from Jonesboro, Arkansas. I apologize for not being there in person as originally supposed to be there in person, but we actually have a customer here from Japan right now and it's the first customer we've been able to host in over two years because of the pandemic. So it's been exciting to be able to see some of our friends that we do business with overseas and interestingly enough, the other night we went out to dinner in Fargo and he told us, our customer told us that that was the first time that he's had a beer outside of his apartment since the pandemic started. And when he flew over from Tokyo, there was only 35 people on his 747 flight to Minneapolis. So it was basically like flying a private jet. He said it was pretty darn nice. But anyway, my name's Scott Center, I'm a partner at SBNB and as Claire mentioned, we focus on food-grade soybeans and do a little bit in the small grains and a little bit in Paul's stuff, but primarily in the soybean industry and I've personally been procurement or working with farmers and doing contracting for 18 years for our company. So I've been doing it a long time and have seen a lot of different market dynamics along the way. So as we go here, feel free to ask any questions and we'll just kind of take it as it goes. But SBNB, we're a global food-grade soybean leader. I'm fifth generation on our farm. We farm just outside of Fargo and Castleton. But back in the late 80s, we recognized the gap in the global supply chain and started creating new market opportunities for our neighbors and friends and building a reputation of providing quality products that we now sell around the world. We are very invested in a safe and secure supply chain focused on food safety and identity preservation and traceability, which we'll get into. Our customers value our relationship-driven process and we work and do our best to solve their unique business challenges. We're 33 employees currently. Like I said, we farm just outside of Fargo and Castleton. We're currently about 4,200 acres and we're doing soybeans, corn and wheat. And we're entering our 33rd year of exporting globally. We are currently working in 17 different countries. 90% of our product that we contract is exported. And if you actually look at the overall sales, just strictly sales, that 10% domestic number is a lot of just the clean out and the byproduct that after we clean the soybeans and what we're just taking to the elevator. So overall sales were probably 95% exported. We currently are our top three markets are Japan, Taiwan and Thailand. We've never shipped a single bushel of soybeans to China. And we can certainly talk about that later if you have interest in it. But we we're contracting about two and a half million bushels under contract annually. And we're working with about 150 to 200 farmers and do about 75,000 acres. And we have two facilities, one in Castleton and then one in Bloomer, Wisconsin. And the reason I'm down in Arkansas is we're actually doing a little bit of production down in Arkansas as well. So I want to talk a little bit about the current marketplace that we're seeing around the world. You know, the pandemic has obviously changed a lot of buying habits. It's changed a lot of consumer loyalties. But food manufacturers are responding to consumer demands more than more than ever. I would say, you know, consumers today and you know, consumers today are are pretty demanding on on knowing where their where their food is coming from. And you know, part of that's twofold, part of that's on us as agriculture is not doing a great job of really educating the consumer on what we do. But that transparency is becoming more and more evident. And more and it's definitely an issue that is front and center on consumers minds. The problem that we have in agriculture is there's a hell of a lot more consumers out there than there are farmers. And so the consumers are the ones that are going to continue to ask the questions. And that's going to get filtered down all the way down to the farmer level. You know, safe food is a big topic. Supply chain transparency, obviously it's very difficult to watch news or or even just go through everyday life with what you're trying to order or what you're trying to buy and not have some sort of supply chain issue or supply chain supply chain topic brought up right now. And and that priority on safe food, you know, in the United States, the consumers of the US farmers have never let down the US consumer. They the US consumers never gone to the to the supermarket and not had food on the shelf. Well, that's not the case in other countries. In other countries that that has absolutely happened. And because of it, a lot of the a lot of the consumers in those countries are are very, very demanding on knowing where their food is coming from, what is being applied to their food. To give you an idea in Japan, I mean, Japan imports 95% of their food, because I mean, Japan's an island, Japan islands are mountainous. And so there's not a lot of arable soil. And so they can't grow a lot of a lot of their food, primarily what they're growing is rice. And so they're importing a lot of their food. And so it matters a lot to those consumers over there where stuff is coming from. And with some of the supply chain things that are happening happening, I mean, that this is a whole another whole topic and a whole another whole another presentation on shipping and containers right now. But everything we ship is in container and we deal with it every single day. On the sustainability stuff, you know, sustainability part of the problem with sustainability is is there's a different there's a different definition of sustainability for depending on who you're talking to. I'll tell you right now, like right now, everybody's talking carbon, everybody. And it's a tidal wave of what's going on. And, you know, there's not a whole lot that that we can do to stop that tidal wave. To me, from the agriculture side, there's a couple of flaws in the carbon in the carbon in the carbon system in that in that a currently. I mean, when you see some of these major companies saying, we're going to be carbon neutral by such and such dates, well, that's great. All they're doing is is by paying their way out of it, they aren't actually changing anything that they're doing in their company. Now, I think that that'll eventually change. But there's there's a problem with that. And quite frankly, the second thing is carbon doesn't necessarily resonate with with farmers on making them sustainable. You know, and all the farmers I talked to I said, okay, what does what does carbon mean to you? And they're like, you know, really not that much. But if they want to pay me to do it, I'll I'll take a look at it. And absolutely, I fully understand that. But but things that move the needle with farmers are more so, you know, water quality and soil retention. And those types of metrics are things that that the farmers care about, because that directly affects you on your farm. And so there's a lot of different things happening right now. In terms of sustainability that that I think are going to be coming down the pipe and and guys need to be ready and doing their homework on things. There's this this carbon thing is moving so fast that there's going to be a lot of things out there. Just make sure you understand what what you're looking at. And and and and quite frankly, if it works for your operation, do it. Because, you know, I don't know a single farmer that doesn't want to make more money, which is why you're at this, which is why you're at this this conference or this this meeting today. And then last but not least is the IP and traceability. You know, this these two things is what absolutely allows us to add value back to the value added acre. You know, in non jumo soybeans and organic soybeans, there's markets that are just basic non jumo beans. And they're not identity preserved. And so those markets are markets that that don't necessarily differentiate and quite frankly, because of our our area in the country and our freight disadvantage, we aren't going to play in those in those arenas very competitively. But when it comes to identity, preserve preserved preserved soybeans and traceable soybeans, we can we can play in that game all day. And so traceability basically gives us the ability to track to track the beans from the farmer all the way to the end user. Traceability is something that we're that we are trying to make a little bit easier. Right now, obviously, the heaviest lift on the whole thing is is trying to get the data from the farm to to the end user in the form that the end users are asking for it without making or being real intrusive to the farmer. And quite frankly, you know, from a traceability standpoint, you know, we can't necessarily trace back to a field because farmers don't store their crop by field, they store their crop by bin. And you know, we can say, okay, there's five loads from this field and three loads from this field, but we don't know exactly that it's going to be from that field. But one of the things that we're working on right now as a company is is we are working on developing a pipeline of data, so to speak, where where some of our internal software will will be able to talk directly with the farmers, whether it's my John Deere, whether it's Raven or whether it's, you know, whether it's climate, whatever, whatever software program that farmers using in their tractor and they just basically give us give us access and we go in and and pull the planting records and the harvest records and the spray rates and the spray dates. And the farmers won't have to double enter stuff when we ask for it. Right now, that's the basic info that that the that the consumers are asking for. You know, but they don't need to know adjuvants, they don't need to know water, they just want to know that that geysers are spraying the herbicides at the rates that they're supposed to be spraying at and not spraying off label and things like that. And so it's it's a burden. Currently, there's we have tried everything under the sun in the last 18 years to make the process of data transfer from the farm to us more seamless and easier for the farmer. And quite frankly, we are back to the point of just calling the farmer and asking, okay, grab your records, sit down, I'll take them over the phone from you because, but you know, I mean, there's just not an easy way and it's just, you know, not on the front of the mind of the farmer. And so when they're doing all the other things, they just don't think about it. And and I've yet to really meet a farmer that likes paperwork. And so, you know, if we can if we can get to this point, I think it's it's something that's going to be really handy and and will work really well for for both the farmer and the consumer. But but you're starting to see even some of the large grain facilities being asked for this type of information. And and that's just nearly impossible when you have 110 car shuttle facility. You know, that's just not how our grain system is set up. And the movement of grain is not set up in our country like that. So those types of big movements and those grain facilities are going to are going to have a difficult time trying to work through it, but they're working on it because they're getting asked the same questions we are. But one of the reasons why traceability works for us is because we do identity preserved. That identity preserved is simply just keeping varieties separate. If we go to a company in Thailand and they buy pioneer 91 m 10 soybeans, when when they when we go to ship to them, we ship them pioneer 91 m 10 soybeans. It's not just all soybeans are created equal. Every soybean variety is sold specific to a customer. And they're buying that variety, because every variety makes their end product taste just a little bit different. And that's why that's why some a lot of the times when you're looking at our variety guides and things that the food manufacturers don't necessarily change, change varieties as often as as varieties come out of the market. Because just because of the impact it has on their on their end product. But if they are able to find a bean that tastes the same or better, they'll absolutely they'll absolutely take a look at it. And so when we're looking at our genetic lineup, you know, currently we're working with 14 different varieties that we forward contract. And that's a lot. That's a lot because on our, you know, when we're cleaning and we're shipping, I mean, every time that we change varieties, we have a different shipment, we have to clean up our entire facility, which takes about three quarters of a day to do a full blowdown and clean. And and so, you know, there's a lot of downtime that comes with that many varieties. But we also want to have the ability to be able to fit varieties on all types of soil types and all types of maturity ranges. And so we have to have that that lineup as well. And so that's where, you know, we're constantly looking at at our variety lineup, we're constantly looking at ways to become more efficient on cleaning. And you know, that's those are some of the things that that play into some of the some of the lineup that we're that we're offering. But quite frankly, we go to the end user first with any new genetics and make sure it's going to work for them. And then from there, we go back to the farmer, you know, we obviously look at agronomics, and then we look at food quality, and then we go back to the farmer and say, okay, this is what has been approved. So we've got we've got varieties all across the board that that work for everybody. Is there any questions so far on some of the stuff I've been talking about? Sweet. Can you hear me? Yeah, yep. Yeah, I was wondering, like, so when you need, I guess, essentially, more acres of something, do you have farmers coming to you? Or do you, you know, tend to go to the folks that you're already working with and ask if they want to put in, you know, more acres or how do you, I guess, how do you have new new farmers grow for you? Yeah, that's a great question. It's a little bit of both. So we've been on a pretty steady growth curve. So we're, we typically are like next year, we already know we're likely going to be increasing again, increasing our acreage and our footprint. And so, you know, a lot of times we've, we've got, you know, we always go to our current grower base to see if they, you know, what they want to, what they want to do. But we also are always looking at new farmers and trying to increase the amount of farmers that we're working with, because, you know, the more farmers we have, the less, you know, it spreads our weather risk a little bit too. And so, you know, there's a lot of times I'll get a phone call from a farmer and, and, you know, we'll just talk through some of the things in our contract and talk through how the program works. And, and, you know, it, it absolutely could be a fit for them. And, you know, sometimes it's not. And that's okay. But, you know, I definitely encourage calling and seeing what, what could work because the bottom line, like I said, I don't have a meta farmer yet that wants, doesn't want to make more money. So the bottom line looks pretty good on it. Have you been contracting with many guys very far west, I know, like five, six years ago, due to freight and transportation, it didn't really pencil out. Is that getting better? Is that about the same? Yeah, so another great question. So we, we actually did some contracts up in that area about 10, 12 years ago. And, you know, at that time, at that time, it was we were doing some irrigated stuff. We did some flood irrigated stuff over by Sydney. We did some irrigated stuff kind of by Ray. We did some, some other stuff. Oh gosh, I can't remember that. It's just, just west of Glendive. And yeah, I mean, freight is always in anything out there is basically freight driven. But, you know, we've got, we've got potentially some receiving station capability out there that, that could, that could work in terms of a contract in terms of a contract for that general area. You know, one of the things that's actually hasn't worked real well for us out in that area is, is we, we haven't had a real good variety that, that is, that I feel comfortable with working in that area. I have, we have literally been looking for an early maturity soybean that would work well out there for a very long time. And I thought I had one a couple of years ago and it just fell on its face in the trials. And so we just, we scrapped it and went back to the drawing board. And I think we have now, I feel pretty good. And we have a 0.1 and even a double, double 09 that I think we're going to be able to do some contracts on. And so, you know, in our current variety lineup, we just have had a, we've had a pretty big hole in that real early maturity range, just because some of the stuff on the market just wasn't a good food grade bean. It's, it's fine just as a non-gimo bean, but it's not a good food grade bean. And, and so now we're getting to that point. And I think that as we, as we build those acres, that it could, it could potentially be a fit. Hey, Scott, Ryan, Eddie with AGT Foods, I have a question on your time. I've never heard of you. I know. Got a question for you mentioned on the chemicals about growers, you know, getting records and giving them to you. Have you had your customers ever require testing on your soybeans, like, like put down to parts per million, parts per billion on different chemicals, or is it just primarily records? So we, we have to do that with every lot of soybeans that we ship. And so primarily, so in our contracts, we have, there's a few, there's a few herbicides that are approved here for use that we can't use. And we can't use them. One is chloroparifus, which is going away. It just got banned anyway by the EPA. The other one is grimoxone or paraquat for burn down, and then roundup for burn down as well. And the reason is, and so in some countries, somebody use Thailand as an example in Thailand, they actually, they actually listed paraquat and chloroparifus on the hazardous list. And so they have a zero tolerance for any residue on that, on those soybeans and on with those two herbicides. And so if something were to show up on a chemical residue, so at customs, they, they randomly inspect the containers as they come in, they're not, they're not checking every single one. But as they come in, they randomly inspect. And if they find any residue, they will, they put you on a list and then they stop every single one of your containers. And we do not want to be on that list. I guarantee you that. And so we're pretty, we're pretty, we work with our farmers and educate our farmers pretty well to make sure that those aren't being sprayed. But we test everything, because every country is different in terms of, in terms of MRLs for chemical residue. And so, you know, it's, and it's important to, for the farmers to understand that those levels, even GMO tolerances, that is not, that is not customer, that's not customer driven. That is a country spec. And so if it shows up at customs and it's higher than the level allowed into the country, it's not getting into the country. And, and so we're much better off making sure that, that we don't ship something that, that has that. Because shipping stuff back is a lot more expensive than it is shipping it over there. Alright, so just a couple of things that I wanted to just chat about with some of the, some of the stuff that, you know, if I'm a farmer looking at doing any, any type of contracting, there's a lot of different stuff in contracts. And it's really just making sure you understand and trust the person you're working with. But you know, there's, there's different types of contracts out there. There's total production, there's specified amount contracts. You know, with our contracts, there's everything is based on Chicago Board of Trade. There's a lot of the crops being grown in that area that, that aren't Board of Trade driven, price driven. And so understand how the Board of Trade works, you know, knowing what your timeline is for picking your price, how that all works, understanding your, your specs in your contract and what your risks are. You know, it's pretty easy in a contract to see what opportunities are. But you also, you also should understand your risks. But, but I'll tell you, you know, everybody, you know, and Ryan, Ryan will, will obviously understand this for sure. But, you know, our companies don't make any money if we, if we don't sell product. So we're not out to, to reject a whole pile of product. If, if, if we can use it, we will. And quite frankly, we've gotten pretty good at, at Spitshine and stuff that, that may not be the best spec, but we will try our best because at our company, we don't, we don't speculate on this market. We don't go out and just contract and hope to sell these soybeans. When we contract, the beans are sold already. And so we just figure back our acres we need on that variety. We add a little bit of a buffer for weather. And then once we hit that target, we hit that target and we're done. And so, you know, if we have stuff that doesn't work for our customer, doesn't work for our spec, we're shorting our customer and we don't want to do that either because it's food, right? And so they want to make sure they can keep their, their their manufacturing plants going. But you should, you should understand, you know, how the payment process works, you know, cash flow and how that fits into your operation. Delivery is, you know, if it's delivered at a specified time, you can deliver when you want. If it's buyer's call, however it is, where you're going to deliver, what the act of God is, you know, things like that. I've had a lot of questions on bonded versus credit sale contracts and how that all works. So you should, you should understand that a little bit. And then, you know, what kind of information are you required to report on? You know, some of that, and that just kind of goes back to what, to what I was talking about a little bit earlier. But it's a great market. The demand is strong as ever. The, the customers, I'll tell you really, really like or buying from our region. North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota, they really like it. And they like it because if you think about North Dakota agriculture, you know, there's nowhere else in the country that has the diversity in agriculture that we do. And, and quite frankly, just about everything that we raise is food. We, we grow so much food and the farmers understand contracts, they understand quality, they understand, they have the right mindset and the right attitude to do it. And the end users really appreciate that. I mean, I can't tell you enough. That's one of the reasons why our customer from Japan is here. I mean, he's just like, I got to get over there and we took him around to meet a couple of the farmers because he's just gotten to know them as we've been working with them for as long as we have. And it's, it's, it's a great market to, to play in and, and it works. You just got to understand what, what's expected, what the expectations are. So any other questions for, for me about SB&B or what we do? Scott, I'm really curious. You said, you know, your primary buyers were like Thailand, Japan, you might have said Taiwan. Why hasn't China looked into specialty soybean? So China, China is, China, let's just, let's, well, two, two things. China is kind of like Walmart, right? I mean, you have to be prepared to supply China when China comes calling. But at the same time, you also have to be prepared from a, you got to make sure you have all of your, all of your logos, copyrighted and all that stuff and everything's good to go. China, up until 2016 has, they grow their own food grade soybeans in China. And they only import GMO beans for crush. They don't import any of the GMO beans for food. And so they actually put a tariff on, on their food grade soybeans leaving the country because they knew that they needed to keep them in country to feed their, to feed their population. In 2016, they were, their supply was quickly becoming short of their demand. And so they were out already starting trying to build relationships on things. And we have an employee that works overseas that is Chinese speaking that has been doing a lot of research in China. But then when all the tariff stuff hit, then that kind of put a halt on some of that because obviously it priced us right out of the market. And, and so now we're getting close to being ready to be able to do some more stuff in China. But, but right now we just haven't shipped them anything. The biggest market for us that we see other than China right now is India. India is a massive and I mean, me and Ryan, me and Ryan are probably going to have to arm wrestle on India a little bit. But India is, is a market of, you know, 1. However many billion people and, you know, 385 million of them are vegan. So it's a pretty big soy, soy consumption market. And, you know, it's a population of vegans bigger than the United States. So, but currently, they have pretty, pretty strict protectionist policies on imports and tariffs, things like that. So which we're trying to work through.