Farmers have a lot of hats to wear. They’re mechanics, chemists, and caretakers, and they all have different areas of strength. However, one business is trying to help farmers with financial management.
“You only have so many hours in the day,” said Steve Kluemper, founder of AgriStrategies LLC. “That’s maybe not always the priority. Just like you would hire an agronomy consultant or mechanic, you could hire a financial consultant to help you do that crucial part of what needs to be done as a manager.”
Kluemper was involved in ag banking for nearly 30 years before venturing on his own to found his own company. AgriStrategies helps farmers make better decisions on investments and financing off their current situation.
“I can bring [that experience] to help them understand what they can do to be attractive to capital providers,” he said.
In short, Kluemper acts as a bridge to tell farmers’ stories to attract that capital and apply it to financial management.
“Typically there’s a story—[a financial institution] can’t just look at the numbers and see that it’s a good loan,” he said. “There’s a story. Part of my job is to reconcile what the numbers are saying to what happens on the historical timeframes and why we need this and what our projections are showing.”
With the unknowns in agriculture constantly growing, Kluemper said there is still a lot that we do know.
“Then you can apply some scenarios on parts that we don’t know and see what are some of these potential outcomes: how could we react to some of those outcomes, how are we prepared for some of those outcomes?” he said. “It’s not as much about guessing what’s going to happen, it’s thinking through how it could affect us regardless of what happens.”
More information on AgriStrategies can be found online at agristratigiesllc.com.
