In last month’s blog, I shared some statistics on production agriculture, and why those statistics have me both proud and nervous that my boys want to grow up to be a farmer like their dad. I concluded the blog by mentioning that I am proud to have gotten the opportunity to join the Renew Biomass team because we are committed to rural Americans and investing in local farmers.
One large challenge that farmers face is that we are at the mercy of an ever-changing market. Significant price fluctuation from the time we plant or purchase to the time we market our crops or livestock, make decision making extremely challenging. At Renew Biomass we help alleviate this worry by providing farmers with multi-year contracts with a set price that is extremely competitive. This allows farmers a stable market to plan and budget from.
With ever-changing prices for agriculture products, many farmers have had to become diverse to make the farm work financially. Diversity helps farmers mitigate low prices on one commodity because it allows them the possibility of recouping some of the loss if another one of their produced commodities is steady to higher prices. Miscanthus is a non-traditional crop that grows very well on marginal land and provides farmers with another form of diversity. Since we pay a consistent price for the crop, it also helps farmers get by when their other markets are lower than normal.
Life is hectic for all and most will say there is just never enough time in the day, and farmers most defiantly feel this pressure each day. Tasks that must be completed on the farm are never-ending. Combine this with everything else going on in life, and it becomes very challenging to balance life as a farmer. This challenge drives many who grew up on a farm to not want to return to the farm after graduation. To help add some time back to a farmer's day we have developed a vertically integrated system where we take the lead on all aspects of Miscanthus production from planting it, to harvesting it, and then transporting it to our facility. This takes the time burden of producing Miscanthus at the farm level away from the farmers.
With rural America being so important to Renew Biomass, we also have made it our mission to bring living wage jobs to rural areas. Although this does come with some challenges, we believe there is a growing need for more jobs in rural areas for rural people.
As a company, we continue to work diligently on growth in the hopes of increasing the demand for our products. This will allow us to partner with more farmers in the production of Miscanthus as well as create more rural jobs in our production facility areas.