Hello, everybody. Welcome, to our buddy seat state of the farm on a special report of payments today. Thanks for jumping on live with us. I'm gonna start off, do a little bit of, an introduction across our CRM. But before, we do that, I wanna share a little bit about our goals for today. So, we've got, we do this annual, State of the Farm report. And, this year, we did a special, iteration on payments in agriculture, and we want, our customers, to be able to understand where trends are going, what's happening, on the farm, and what are farmers really thinking when it comes to these digital payments, adoption in agriculture. And so, our goal today is to help you understand a bit about where those preferences are trending and what you can do about it, and what opportunities there are to, kind of be part of this trend as it continues to, go in the right direction, I think, in agriculture. So few housekeeping items. We use the q and a for for questions. So you should be able to submit questions, through the q and a effort, on the tool here, and we will we'll definitely address those questions as we get into it, later on, about half hour, and we'll jump into some question. You'll get a risk recording, after the webinar as well. And so, if you miss something, don't worry. We'll get it off to you. So alright. Let's get started. I'm gonna introduce to you guys the panels panelists that we have joining us. We'll start with Kelly Miller. She's from Compier. Kelly, give us a little background on who you are. Great. Thanks, Jake. I'm excited to be here. My name is Kelly Miller. I lead our biz our ag tech business unit here at Compier, which was is, only about four years old. And we created the ag tech business unit when we really focused in on, digital. We realized a handful of years ago that clients had more and more options to do business online. And Compier focuses on meeting the clients where they want to do business, and we knew clients had choices. And so we wanted to show up, where they were gonna be purchasing things online. So, ultimately, my team works and focuses in on embedded financing, for input, input loans, for, operating loans, term loans, and real estate loans. And so I'm happy to to talk a little bit more about payments and the things that we we see and the trends that, we've seen on our side. Thanks, Jake. Thanks, Kelly. Alright. Jackie Fotka, have you join us as well. She is from CoBank. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what your role is there and, what you're working on? Yeah. Great. Thanks so much for inviting me. I'm on a CoBank's knowledge exchange team. So we're a team of, economist and analyst, and my specific focus area is a farm supply and biofuels. So I work directly with a lot of our grain cooperative customers across the countryside who are the ones who are on the ground working with their farmers and and also looking for some of these digital solutions. Personally, I grew up on a farm in Southwest Iowa. My dad and brother still farm, now. My brother actually sells seeds, so I was, kind of reaching out to him too to see, you know, that's another part of this on on how, folks, purchase their inputs and and that component of it as well. I currently live in Central Ohio in a small acreage, north of Columbus, Ohio. So excited to be part of the conversation today. Right. Alright. Thank you, Jackie. So so far, everybody you've heard from our ag people, or we know this space super well. And, I'm gonna have you get to know Tony as well from our team. Tony Morcini joins us at Bushel. He's been on the team for a few months. He comes from the, financial world, fintech. And so, Tony, go ahead and give a little background on yourself. Hi, everyone. My name is Tony. Are you guys hearing an echo on me, by the way? Are we good? Okay. My name is Tony Morcini. I'm I'm relatively new to Bushel. Very excited to be here. I'm the chief digital payments officer, the the CDPO. And, I I've been in payments for about twenty years. I I started my career at Visa, where I worked in product at Visa for ten years, and I worked at a a startup called SoFi where I worked for about five years and, was recently at Figur, which is, in the payment in a payments capacity as well. So I'm, I joined in, early August for Jake. So I've been here about three months now and really excited for today's podcast. Alright. Let's jump in. I'm gonna share, a little bit about, some stats that we have, that we're learning and some of the trends, and then I'm gonna have these folks weigh in on some of these points. So let's jump right into the state of payments in agriculture. So right off the bat, we ask a question. What are the what are the top concerns, as a farmer that you have? And this is kinda thinking about twenty twenty three going to twenty or sorry, twenty twenty four going to twenty twenty five. And so, you can imagine these concerns are are are growing, but what was surprising and maybe maybe not so much is it was all around money. Price of equipment, profitability of the farm, and price of inputs. These are the current concerns from the farmer. It makes sense, but this is probably different than we've seen in previous years. And so maybe just to share a little bit about lending and how farmers are thinking about their their cash and and their their access to capital in the space. Kelly, give us a view on what's happening, from your perspective in CRM Credit Compier. Yes. Yes. This does not surprise us at all. We this is absolutely what, we definitely feel in our marketplace as well. There is, margins are tight. Margins are very tight, and their interest rates are high. They're now we're seeing, interest rates going down, which is a, a huge lift, not nearly as much as I think a lot of people would like. But the price of equipment's up. The price of our inputs are up, and the profitability is really hard, especially for, I would say, newer entrants or newer, new and young young and beginning farmers. It would be really hard to be in this, in this, farm economy right now. But I would say the last few years leading up to this, there's some been some real good profitable years, and this isn't new for us. Right? This isn't new for Compier. This isn't new for the Farm Credit System, and this isn't new for many farmers. Right? The farming is up and down and up and down, and you have to plan for years like this. And, so I would say that, one, Compier is very much committed to getting us through in these tough years as well. So we know that there's gonna be good years and bad years, and we wanna make sure that we're sticking in sticking in with with all of the years. So, not a surprise. And, I we definitely feel this in our marketplace, and we know that it's important to stick with our farmers during both times, both good and bad. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So I think I think we all understand this situation and why we're here. Of course, prices are down and, costs are still up. Let's dive in a little bit to this thought process. So how are farmers getting paid today? So we did twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four numbers here. So in the in the yellow is the latest data. We're seeing a trend. It's not a big one, but a trend towards less paper checks, which is what we like to see. Our goal at Bushel has been how do we how do we bring this industry forward, to a more digital offering. That could be ACH, that could be digital wallets, that could be all kinds of things. But right now, we're seeing a good trend. Again, ACH is probably the most likely path besides check to get paid in agriculture and also to pay. We see on on both sides. The problem here though, for agriculture is the average b to b transaction sort of done by paper check across other industries, is something like forty or fifty percent. So agriculture is behind significantly in terms of paper checks. The other thing that we're seeing from a from a receiving payment as a farmer is the trend towards, the younger folks seeing, you know, they're seeing, less and less on the check and more and more in ACH, which is good. Anybody under fifty, it seems that that trend's increasing. They're, you know, very rarely using a digital wallet still in agriculture. Probably just something from Bushel today, and maybe some traditional ACH. And the last piece of data that's probably the most interesting is that fifty and above range. Their preference is still something like seventy percent paper check, for inputs, for for paying for inputs. And so, of course, anybody younger than that is seeing it something like, hey. It's not really my preference to write a check anymore. So there's a pretty clear divide between that fifty plus range and, and and, anybody that's younger than that and where they wanna be able to to pay. So maybe let's talk a little bit, Jackie, over to you. What what do you see in terms of average age of the farmer today? What what are some trends that we could be thinking about there that that you're paying attention over at CoBank? Yeah. So the the latest census of agriculture data has the average farmer at fifty eight point one. So if you look at this chart too and you're looking at, where where the the average farmer sits, you know, that that that reveals a little bit. But if you dig in even closer, you know, over over one third of our farmers today are actually over sixty five. So just their familiarity with it, they are used to going into their coop and getting that check. They're used to having that tangible evidence of what they've sold and taking it into the bank and their trust factor too. Right? They are continuing to to kinda build on that. But then you look at the other spectrum, it's not really that surprising that these younger, producers are more likely to adopt it. You look at the fact that nine percent of our, producers today are thirty five or younger. They and and, you know, even a third of producers have ten years or less. So they probably a lot of, new entries are coming into agriculture from maybe working an off farm job, or maybe they still have an off farm job. So they have a greater familiarity with something that we all in in somewhat of a corporate world, right, take for granted that you don't get a check every two weeks. You you have it direct deposited. And so I think we're gonna start to see some more adoption as some of these farmers age, as they get more familiar with that, and become a little bit more aware of the digital options that are there. That makes sense. Kelly, you and you you finance inputs as well as some other purchases through your operating lines. Talk to us a little bit about is is is this data seem right to you as well? Are you seeing the same trends? And also, do you see a lot of drafts and paper checks still? Yeah. A couple of things that I would add is, you know, we have added digital lending. So think about where a client can apply online and start start a loan application online and kind of get their loan online. What we are learning is if they've started a loan online and got got their money there, that's how they wanna make their payments. And that's how they wanna make their payments, and that's how they want to get their money and use their money. So the expectations is if they start there in that digital channel, they expect that in, in that whole loop. Right? That closed loop system, it's they they are expecting to have that all the way through, and it is increasing year over year. So we've now been into it for about four seasons, with digital lending. And every year, it continues to grow. I would say the the facts on here around the age, surprised me a little bit. We kind of went into the digital lending side assuming it was going to be on the, I would say, younger side of of our kind of client set. But the reality is if the if the client is just more inclined to do business digitally no matter the age, they will use it. So we have, you know, we have folks as young as nineteen. And I think last time I had checked the, the maybe the the most the oldest, I think, was eighty two that we had, taken an application online from. And so there is it is, an equal opportunity here where people love it if that is how they prefer to do business. And so, I think we sometimes we think about this from the digital side only as an age preference, but that is not always the case. And so what I would encourage us to think about is is if a client, if as long as they have the choice out there, that is a firm belief in CRM Here is make sure that they have the option to do business digitally and don't automatically assume because of their age that they may or may not want to do business digitally. So that's one of the things that is kind of a hot button, I would say, with me. And so the biggest thing is if they start a transaction, digitally, they expect it to kind of do a full completion. And, the other thing with, our goals here at CRM here is to you know, if you're gonna get your money digitally, we wanna make it easy to get your money. We wanna, you know, make our money easy to pay us back and really easy to use. And from what I what I mean by that is, you know, Jake, you and I, our money, hopefully, is easy to use in our personal life. Right? In our consumer world, we're e we're we have an easy way to move our money. Right? We have an easy way. We can use our Apple Pay. We can use Venmo. We can use Zelle. Wherever we can move our money, I would love to be able to have that type of money movement for our farmers. And because our farmers are able to move money in their consumer life like that, I would love to have that for our farmers. And because they don't they have a consumer life and then they also have this agricultural life. So I I would love to have a world where they can have both. They can have a a world where they can the consumer movement of money can add up to the same way that they can move the agricultural their agricultural money. So I don't know if I fully answered your question, Jake, but that's kind of my thoughts around this movement of money and the age, thing for the payments. So okay. This this is great. So, Tony, I'm gonna have you come up here next to share a bit. But before we do so we have a similar question always to us at Bushel, which is, are you know, do you do you really get farmers that are older to use these products? Right? Our customers deploy this white label portal for their customer. The farmer can go in and self serve their grain contracts and their invoices and make payments now on all those parts of their business. And the question we still get is, do older folks adopt the tool? And the truth is, absolutely, just to your point, Kelly, like, yeah, just because somebody's older and we assume that they're not gonna do it, sometimes we don't even offer that that's just a poor approach. Right. And so giving, giving the customer always an option results in basically the trend line going all the way digital over time. I mean, we're talking customers that have had seventy, eighty, ninety percent of their farmer base adopt these tools. That's just where we're going. It doesn't matter the agent. So I think your point's good there, Kelly. One thing to think about in why agriculture is going to have what are the reasons why agriculture has this problem right now is different than maybe the consumer. One problem is credit card fees don't work in agriculture, at least not on the input side. Right? So the idea of paying three percent on a twenty thousand dollar fertilizer purchase is wild. Right? We just like, that's that's tough. That and if if if the, commercial if the agribusiness has to eat that fee, that's the entire margin on the product in some cases depending on what you're selling. And so that that doesn't work, that doesn't work. And so I think you need to figure out how we're gonna move money efficiently. ACH is one of those low cost methods, and, of course, paper check, people still think. But our view has been paper check costs somewhere between ten dollars and twenty five plus dollars a transaction to really process a paper check, let alone getting into, wires, which which is a a ridiculous fee as well. So there there's bet there's a lot of work to be done, here. So let's talk digital wallets a little bit. So digital wallets are outpacing all of the payments methods in outside of agriculture. We're seeing something like a trend of thirty one percent of, people who have digital wallets, whether it's Apple Pay or Venmo, are also spending something like thirty percent more. Interesting, trend there. And we're expecting digital wallets to overtake a debit card transactions by, at point of sale by twenty twenty seven. So those are all pretty interesting statistics. This is where the world's going to that consumer point Kelly made. So let's talk a little bit about this and, Tony, have you join me. So, farmers are getting used to the PayPal, Venmo, the the the digital wallet. And if if this is a huge trend, probably the biggest trend we saw year over year was in in twenty twenty four twenty twenty three, sixty one percent of our, respondents said, I don't use any digital wallets or any other kind of payment methods besides, you know, paper check. Now we're talking less than twenty five percent of that of that base. And so we have seen a significant uptake in all areas, on their this again, though, this is in their personal life. This is not, in agriculture. And so the question is what can we do about it? Tony, your team, when you were at SoFi and even at Visa prior, like, you started this trend. Talk to us a little bit about what you see, what some of the challenges in agriculture might be, and how we're gonna get there. Well, Jake, I mean so I'm right now at money twenty twenty here in Las Vegas, right, which is, like, the big payment industry. Really, the biggest payment industry convention. It's every year. It's at the Venetian and, every year. And, you know, I'll tell you, like, we are really here at Bushnell, we're right on kind of the cusp of something huge that I that this has really, enforced this in my mind with me being here at Money twenty twenty, and that is that a that, basically, what what I've seen my takeaway from being here at Money twenty twenty is that these vertically specific SaaS companies, which is what we are at Bushel, right, are massively getting into payments for their vertical, SaaS business. And it's and it's because the reason that this is is because the the sort of generic payment infrastructure that exists in the country really isn't vertically focused per se. Right? There are these generic tools like cards and ACH. But these vertically SaaS, oriented software companies have great networks of businesses. They've built up a lot of trust over years. They're they're a they're a trusted organization that the companies do business with, and they're getting into payments, these digital payments that have the middleware specifically built for those industries. And I and I tell you, I've walked around here for a couple days, and I'm like, man, we are really right on we're right on the cusp of what's happening across a lot of industries here. And and us being us being in the position of doing it for one of the most important industries, the agriculture industry. So it's really exciting, Jake. Alright. So let's pull up everybody. Let's have a bit of a conversation here. So maybe, Jackie, to you, how how does this play out in the commercial side? So you're you're working a lot of times, CoBank's working with the agribusinesses to to have to fund them. They they use US cash management. What what are what are the trends they're seeing? What are what are we not picking up when we're asking the farmer? Because this is really a farmer focused question. How's the agribusiness thinking about this, challenge, and and what are you seeing? You know, and this is, I've been trying to figure out how to you know, part of what we do at CoBank, we are directly funding, these green cooperatives. Right? And some of them have a lot of receivables that they have to report to us, and some of them don't have a lot, right, depending on their own financial. But as more stuff goes digital, it actually makes the job of the reporting back to CoBank easier, if they're able to get that data from the farmer. Right? Like, how much receivables, the average price of grain? And so, you know, just the other day, we were we were talking within our credit team of, you know, are there ways that we can make this easier? Because at the end of the day, you know, that takes time for them to enter all that stuff manually as well too. So if there's opportunities to streamline that on what they're getting from the farmer, that helps the Grain Cooperative, member and and, you know, better report to us, what they need to report to. So, you know, that's that's one part of it. You know, I think there's there's opportunities here to to kind of I love what Kelly said about the age. Right? Like, it doesn't matter the age. It really matters about comfortability. Right? Like, we we have to kinda get over that hump of Mhmm. Of just being comfortable with things. In your slide two that just talked about just in the last year, that comfortability level has actually improved a lot. And so, you know, baby steps maybe, but the industry is moving that way. I think we're gonna continue to see that. I think there's wins throughout the whole supply chain, starting with the farmer, also with the grain cooperative, and then ending here with with us as a financer that's working with them too. Making sense. Okay. So what what are we missing? There's a couple of things I think that, we need to talk about briefly, and then I think we can get to some of our questions. One is the mail service in the US. Mhmm. The the US post office, which I have my own problems with the government, but this this situation is not looking good. We're talking about, reducing service to areas that are outside of the core fifty mile radius of their major hubs. They haven't there's a there's a, interesting article we'll share, and, it's in the slides about this. And that what that really means is if you're not in the city, which at last I checked, there wasn't any CRM in town, you you're gonna basically have delayed mail expectations. A day multiple day delays, that's coming. And so on top of the fact that the government has asked us to stop chain sending checks in the mail because it's it's ripe with fraud, you're basically sending a a a piece of paper with all of your account information required to draw withdraw or to send money from. And so that that's some of the challenge that, is ahead of us. I think farmers already probably have seen some frustration of lost checks. We we've had customers that have told us that that checks were just lost for north of a year or two's time frame, not realizing they should have gotten paid. I don't know how you lose fifty thousand dollars, but this seems to happen in agriculture sometimes, and, of course, it gets eventually figured out. We have a customer who, is using our direct deposit tools with Bushel. They they received something like a half million dollars over the last three weeks. And our team made sure to call and make sure that they had everything sorted. They knew what they were doing. And the person was just so busy, that that money was sitting there, which is fine except that they've got debt to pay off and they know it. It's maybe an operating line, maybe it's got input financing they've gotta go pay off, and they, like, they just lost track. I mean, this this happens, and we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars in agriculture. So there's there's a lot of work to be doing because the best thing we can do is make it easy for these farmers who got paid from their coop to then quickly manage their money and go make their debt payments or start making, earning some interest on their money maybe even. So, thoughts on that? Like, what's the concerns from your customer base, Kelly, Jackie, to you? You know, I just think about, you know, how often I go to the mailbox. And quite frankly, if I have to find a stamp, you're not probably gonna get it anytime soon. But in in sincerity, I think there's a lot of that. And, you know, the reality is is we just need to make sure that we can make, things easier for our farmers. And so, one, we shouldn't if if we can get the money to them faster, if we can you know, whether it be with, you know, however it might be, it would be great to not have to depend on yet another, you know, either a third party service like the mail. If it's if we know that there's more fraud, if we know that there's gonna be delays, if there's other ways to make sure that we can get them to do, you know, on with their job, right, which is what they love to do is farming and, you know, pay their bills and do whatever it is that they wanna do and not have to worry about something that's coming in the mail, let's help them get there. Right? Let's help them get there, and let's not be a a blocker for them. And, you know, you had said something about about checks and drafts earlier, you know, kind of the stop who's in the way. You know, honestly, you know, and I I think Jackie and I, you know, the the CRM credit system, we've always had drafts. Right? We've always had draft. We've we've always had checks as well, and we wanna be a part of the solution. Right? We wanna be a part of a a good solution for our farmers. They deserve to have, a modern solution to be able to use use their funds and get their funds and move them how they want to use them. And so we wanna make sure that, if this is something that they want to use, let's make sure that they they have that option the optionality to use their funds in this way. So if if mail is a concern for them, let's make sure that we we take that off the table. I think I think too also, you know, ACH sounds, again, really, really easy. But, you know, like, one of my our pretty large customer, grain customer, you know, they're using that about ten percent with their producers, and that's really just driven by producers asking for it. Right? So that's a pretty small number. Now USDA is starting to do more direct deposit for their their payments. Right? So CRP, payments that are coming in from from farmers for farmers as well as, you know, the farm program payments. They're coming more in that fashion. So, again, that that, trust factor and being able to to get used to seeing that money automatically deposited and knowing when it's gonna come, I think that, you know, as we see more of that, they're gonna get more used to that too. Mhmm. So I I gotta butt in here on a solution. So we have to talk a little bit about some of the solves. And and Jordan, asked a question to us all here as well. What's been the lift on changing processes for agribusinesses that have adopted some of these new methods? So let me tell you some stories. I think it's important to hear some of these. So we rolled out with our Bushel wallet. We call it our payments tools, which is largely an ACH driven tool. Right? It's connecting bank accounts. It's making easy to move money in in big big dollars, hundreds of thousands, million dollar transactions. We've we've been doing this for a couple years. And this this fall, we rolled out direct deposit, which is our feature where a banner shows up in front of your farmer in a digital way, and they will simply enroll right there in your application, whether you're online or maybe it's your mobile app from us. But they say, hey. I'm ready to get paid electronically this fall, ACH direct deposit. Those words all make sense for the most part to farmers. And they simply do it right in the application. Traditionally, and the reason why all of our companies that we work with are probably around ten percent or less real adoption of ACH to their farmers is because the process is a paper form that they print off. Hopefully, they find on your website, but you might have to go in and get it. And then you fill out and you sign your name and write all your account numbers on there, and then you write a voided check. So you gotta waste a paper check, stick it on there, and send it to that grain company. But you probably do business with three grain companies, and so you have to do that three times. And, oh, just hope you don't change banks anytime soon or you have to go do that again. And so, that's in addition to having a liens and having to manage whether you can actually get paid directly there or if you have to have a check with two parties on it. There's all kinds of problems in egg. And with what we're seeing is just simply letting the customer enroll in direct deposit through our wallet tools in the application at their convenience is a huge game changer. So they're not doing it in the middle of the day because they're busy. That's when they're working. Their family's busy, so they're working. But when they get home and they're sitting on the recliner, they just made a grain trade to the platform from Bushel, but then they also went and set up direct deposit to make sure they're getting paid this fall correctly. And they choose which account to get paid, and that adoption is spiking. And so part of it is just getting the convenience part right. I mean, for a long time, we've been trying to dial in to, like, what is the way to get this to really work, and I think we we kinda cracked the code there. But we're seeing a path. And for the customer so the question to Jordan is how does the Acre business adopt this? If you've got an ACH payment provider in place or you work with Bushel to do that, you don't really have to change anything. You you just have the key is how do we get you information? So instead of sending that paper check-in the mail, voided with the paperwork, what we're doing is we give you a a secure portal to go and basically say, hey. This farmer asked to be added to your direct deposit program. Here's our account number and routing number. We show that to your finance team, copy paste over to ACH program, and you mark them as done. And that's as simple as that. And you just still pay the same way. And so, probably through CoBank's cash management tool. Right? And so there's that's that's what we're solving for. It's starting to work. I'm I'm telling you next year, it's gonna be exciting because we're gonna see something north of ten percent true adoption of ACH, and that's part of it is just making it easy to do that. Thoughts there, Tony? Maybe, you know, you're helping us work on this the next iteration of what we're gonna do here. What's missing? So I think, you know, I think that one of the the the real important things that we're focused on here, like, with the bushel wallet is is really the value proposition to the farmer. Right? And I think that's super important. And I think when I look at this, like, I try to look at, like, from two from two angles. I try to look at it, like, economically. Like, what are the what are the what are the financial aspects to the product that make it highly desirable to use, and then what are the specific features that are maybe specific to this domain? So what are the what are the agriculture specific features in the product? And I think if you put both of those two things together, and and so you you make it compelling financially and you make it compelling functionality wise, I think that I think you've got a real winner there, and that's what we're that's what we're trying to do right now, Jake, as you know. So I mean, the one one problem is the customer is worried about float, because as an agribusiness, when you write a check, that's a seven day float for sure. Maybe it's longer. If if the if the farmer's in Hawaii, it's two weeks float. And so that's that's part of the challenge, right, is is getting to change this idea that we do have to pay maybe faster because ACH is gonna be two days. And so that's part of the the the sort of resistance that we get. We're working on we we won't have all this nailed down till early part of next year, but we're working on things like high interest accounts and the ability for the farmer and the agribusiness to have higher FDIC insurance limits. They don't have to worry about their capital being at any kind of risk. And so that's that's some of the solves that we're working towards. I think that are pretty meaningful for twenty five, and Tony's helped us get there. Yeah. It it's like I said earlier, like, a a lot of these things in payments, they're like these generic sort of things that were made for everyone. And then you get into a specific industry, and you're like, well, you know, we we maybe two fifty FDIC insurance isn't really the right solution. Right? And so and so and so we we we come up with solutions for these things, and we make something specific for this industry that I think will be super high value at. So adoption is always the question. I think real life, we're really still at ten percent ACH adoption, at least when you're getting paid, as a farmer. I think it's similar, on payments for their inputs as well. It's still pretty pretty paper heavy as we as we're seeing. But the question is how do you drive adoption? And I think in ag, we've seen the last few years, you know, Bushel and others have driven adoption of other digital tools north of forty, fifty percent, seventy percent adoption from the farmer. The ability for a farmer to sell green on their own through a tool, that's through the roof. Everybody said, hey. We don't trust the farmer to do this, or we don't want the farmer to be able to do that. Now we're seeing fifty, sixty percent volume in a month through a digital way to sell grain. I mean, let the farmer do it when they have time and when they're thinking about it, and all of a sudden you're buying grain and you're not, you know, taking a lot of phone calls. And so we are seeing the adoption happen. Jackie, on the agribusiness side, what is your what is their biggest challenge? Like, I I think part of the problem is the agribusiness is still writing the check. And until they stop writing the check or give the real optionality, that's gonna be the main method because the farmer's not necessarily tearing down their door trying to get rid of the paper check. And so what are some of the ways in which we can move them that way quicker? Like, what what what are you working on? Yeah. And and I will just say to you and and I think this kinda fits into this, but the the the coop that's that's maybe ready to write a check. Right? You know? Like, they're they're looking a little, a little hesitantly at some of the, ACH due to the lien filings. Right? Like, what what do you need to do to, you know, in the heat of a battle when they're trying to vet those payment options when a lien appears? You know, it's easier to print a check with multiple names. But I think if they if we could figure out how to, like, find a holding end entity that could receive the ACH, and then work with the creditor in some kind of digital portal for the creditor to release. You know, is that us? Is that is that, Kelly? You know what? Mhmm. To get that forward, the payment onto the producers or creditors with those ACH instructions, I think that's that's something that that I've been hearing, you know, and something that I think CoBank is is looking into. And and I think, you know, just, again, farmers are very habitually, you know, they they have their habits. They they run a certain way. They work a certain way. So disrupting that sometime takes some time, and I think, you know, that's that's, again but if you can work for you know, when it comes to input purchases. Right? Like, is there a way to integrate that online ordering and, you know, make all that those components come together. And then, hopefully, they can, be able to see that as a greater solution. Right? Everything's in one spot. They can they can find everything that they need. And, again, I think that goes back to, you know, how that becomes useful for the farmer. Makes sense. And con convenience is a big part of this whole thing. When the when they can do it some when when it's on their own time and they don't have to be in person, all those things kinda change, how people think about it. So keep the questions coming. We we we've got about five or ten minutes we'll spend, yet together. Tony, anything you wanna add to that conversation, and kind of what, you know, maybe things you have questions for Jackie on, how do we how do we solve for this? So one thing I I was thinking, you know, you know, one thing that's a a risk really for the for the Grain Elevator on the checks is, you know, the the my big issue with checks has always been and I and has been the fact that when someone gets a someone gets a hold of one of your checks, you know, they they literally can order a checkbook with the same routing and account number at the bottom. I mean and you guys can try this. I mean, you can find you can find a an online merchant that that writes checkbooks, and there's no, like, check that you really own the account or anything. You you can just get one made, and and then you can start writing checks. Now, eventually, this will be fraud, and the account holder will be protected. But it's a giant pain, right, to to unwind these unwind this kind of fraud. And the the the the check is really you know, that number at the bottom, the account, the routing number is basically a private key that's visible to everybody. I mean, that's basically what it is. Right? So, you know, I I always think that the the industry should be incentivized to move off this for fraud if if if nothing else, basically. So that that's I I always like the, I always like the bill pay services that people have on their personal bank accounts as a better way to send a check because even though that that that manifests itself in printing a check, that's not your account. That's the the account number on that check is the is the account number of the bill pay company, not yours. So I always think that's a safer thing to do as well. Yeah. Obscuring obscuring these accounts is a big big, opportunity to make it harder. And right now, we've had we've had multiple grain companies and agribusinesses that we work with, retailers as well, massive ACH fraud. What happens is they convince the finance team to change where the payment's gonna go on an email. Mhmm. Yeah. Twenty million dollars is missing, and it didn't go to the right person. And, there's a huge problem. And so one of the things that you gotta do is you gotta get your security right. Some of the things we do with our wallet tool, I think, that are pretty unique and helpful is when a farmer shares their direct deposit, information, we set it as a one way only so you can only receive money there. You're not allowed to draft from it, pull money from it. And so even if somebody else got a hold of those account, numbers, it's not it's not like it could just be sweep sweeped out. And so those are some things you gotta fix, I think to get to get this working at at scale, and you gotta prove to farmers that it's it's safe to do it online. Kelly, thinking about online, I have a question for you. So Yes. You you are doing input financing online. You're doing operating lines online. Mhmm. What has been the what does that experience look like? How could maybe one of these agribusinesses listening in today, how could they get in touch with your crew? We're talking about doing this together for twenty five. Mhmm. What is what does it look like? What do those programs look like? Give us a little bit of detail that you can. Yes. Thanks for asking. Yes. So today, we have we offer input financing, and, where we've been the most successful is right inside where your client where your clients would go use their mobile apps or maybe in their portals. So if the client's gonna go in and look at their scale tickets, maybe make purchases, to have, you know, apply for financing. Right? So if they're gonna, you know, maybe pay a bill and it says, you know, apply for financing there, have have a button there that, you know, we would work with, Bushel to to help you, help put in there. And they the client fills out the completes the application in very short period of time. They get an, a decision that comes up very quickly, and then we we can help on the backside, get that documents out to those clients, and, the clients can be on their way and make the you know, make those payments to you and and move on with their day. And they can do that all hours of the day, twenty four seven, you know, Sunday to Sunday. And that's what we're actually seeing. We're definitely seeing, things come in in the evenings and on the weekends. To your point, Jake, that you said earlier, it's it's not during, you know, eight to five anymore. People are doing this when it when it's on their own time. So, yes, that's something we, we're planning to do, and that's absolutely, a great place to, put that, put the application and the financing. And it's just a very good thing. If you're an ag retailer listening in here, Kelly's CRM has got your back if you wanna offer some of these programs. It's it's pretty incredible. I mean, literally instant, financing in in some respects. It's kind of Mhmm. If you qualify and it's all done online, that's that's pretty incredible. And so more to come in twenty twenty five, I think, there. Jackie, you you, are thinking about, this from the other side. Talk talk to us a little bit about what where is the how do you how does CoBank come in and play a part of these these different partnerships? I know you're you're part of the system. What is what does it look like for you and your customer to kind of support these kinds of programs? And I think we talked a little bit with your crew about how do we get better information for your team to make good decisions as long as the both parties are willing to share that. What what are you what are your thoughts there? I think you had some ideas. Yeah. And I'm gonna have to just make sure that everyone knows I do nothing on the lending side. I am just a team of industry analysts and economists. And so, you know but I am, you know, on the ground a lot with customers and interacting with our credit teams. And so, you know, they know that there is a problem out there. And, you know, what is the best solution? How can we use data to to benefit the industry as a whole? Right? And and just like Kelly said, you know, more of our customers are are operating, in a space where they're they're providing more financing for their producers, because of, you know, the inputs or helping manage what you started off this conversation with, which is, you know, we are heading into a a lower commodity cycle. We're coming off two years of really good profits, but the profitability is slowly deteriorating. And so how can we help make sure that we keep the money where it needs to go, send the money where it needs to go, and and and everybody working together. And I think that's, you know, great to see some of the data point behind on the opportunities to to make those improvements and and what you guys are doing at Bushel. And and, again, yeah, CoBank and Bushel are having some of those conversations. I'm not privy to anything that I feel real confident in in releasing. Maybe you can. But, you know, I think at the end of the day, we are all here to help, you know, the mission to to help farmers, help the businesses that serve farmers to really make this, effective and useful. And at the end of the day, prevent fraud, right, and and make sure that that money is available where it needs to be available. Alright. So let's let's do a little wrap up. So some takeaways. One, we're trending the right direction. We're just slow. Two, there's some tools available from Bushel and some of these folks on the call here that can help you, so reach out to us. Whether you're on the ag retail side working on input financing for next year with Kelly's crew or you're working on, how you're paying your farmers with us in CoBank, we're we're here to help. Direct deposit's gonna be a big deal next year, I believe. And, I think the last component of this is, some takeaways from each of you. So, Jackie, Kelly, and Tony, drop your last takeaways as we wrap up. Jackie, you go first. I I mean, really just what I reiterated again. Right? Like, I think, there is an appetite to maybe try some things out and make sure that, it works and is effective. You know, I think the producers are really gonna be the drivers of this. Right? As producers themselves become more familiar with this, they're gonna be asking the agribusinesses to provide it. So agribusinesses need to be in a position that they're ready for that as well. Right? We we saw a huge adoption rate. You know, you have that number going, you know, from sixty or seventy percent that didn't have anything a year ago, and now it's down to twenty four four percent. Right? Like Yeah. This adoption can can come quick. So agribusinesses need to be able to position themselves to be educated on this, be aware of the opportunities that are there and the ways that they can provide those solutions to the farmers because the farmers are gonna want that, and so we've gotta be ready for it. Mhmm. Kelly? Yes. And, Jackie, what you said was, exactly right. And I think the, biggest shift that, I guess, we've probably had or kinda mindset shift is how do we go from a really relationship based business into digital? Right? We we thought, like, is it or? Right? Like, does it have to either be relationship based or digital? And it's not an or. It's an and. And so I think that's the key when you're thinking about it as, agribusiness, and it's it's so are the folks that are at those agribusiness retailers that those folks are doing, I would say, higher value work. So if you're looking at it from a perspective of the folks that you have in the field, you're now taking some of that work and and putting it digitally. Right? And and putting that in the work or the the farmers are able to do that either themselves, and they can they can do it by themselves because they want to. And then now your team members as an agribusiness can work at higher levels. Right? They can really work at that high level, that really important work that you likely want them to do and they want to do. That's more fun. That's more challenging for them, and we have that here too. Right? We're very much a relationship based business, relationship based lender, and we had a hard time with that. Right? It's change management one zero one, and so it's really key in making sure that you understand where you're at from a change management perspective. And so, I think that's you know, at at its core, that's what all of this is about in the adoption of it. So I would say that we didn't even talk about that, Jake, but I would say that's one of my last things that I would add. Awesome. And, Tony? I'll be I'll be selfish here. Twenty twenty five is gonna be super exciting for this industry as Bushel rolls out ag specific banking and payment solutions that are things that have previously only been available in the consumer space and to other industries. So stay tuned. So to Kelly's picture, how do we make it make sense for the farmer just as easy as it is in their day to day life? And, frankly, farmers, a lot of times, acting like a consumer, but they've got a real business, multimillion dollar business typically. So how do we solve that for them? I think we're pretty excited about that. So Yep. Thank you three for joining us today. Thanks for being on. I'll do a little bit of a wrap up here, and we'll we'll everybody get back to it. So, if you, are still on with us, thank you for joining. Thanks for listening in. We'll we'll send out a recording of the webinar. You'll get that in your email. And we want you to go to bushel wallet dot com if you wanna get in touch with us about some of these solutions. I think you'll you'll be excited to find that we've got a lot of things that are either solved or in the works that I think are gonna make this a big deal in twenty twenty five. And so bushel wallet dot com is where you'll find us. You can learn about our our solutions there. You can download the State of the Farm report. All that's available. You can sign up for our newsletter as well. So, thank you again for joining. This was a Bushel buddy seat webinar, and, we'll see you next time.