10,000 acre operation benefits from MarketingPlus

     Pitch in. Work hard. Sweat a lot. Follow a good plan. Enjoy what you do. Be a good neighbor - good son, brother, mom, dad and farm partner, too.
     Talk it out. Think it through. Mind the details, and remember the goal. It's all in a day's work at Sumption Farms, a 10,000-acre, 1,000-head cattle operation based north of Aberdeen, S.D.
     The Sumption farm enterprise consists of two separate business entities, a general partnership and a corporation - and it is about as family a farm as it gets. John and Margaret started the operation, and each of their five sons, Chris, Eric, Mark, Taylor and Warren, are active partners.
     And with active partnerships comes a willingness to do what the job requires. "We all help out everywhere," Mark Sumption says, "but once the guys of us on the crop side hit the fields, we don't do anything but that, and same with the cattle guys once their cows start calving."
     The decision for each person to specialize in certain areas of the farm business came naturally. "As we got larger, it was easier if each person did a separate thing. It takes a lot of trust between each other," Mark says.
     With the farm having grown to include all five Sumption sons, and each of them marrying and having children, lifestyles partly made the move toward specialties more workable. "Everybody just trusts each person to make decisions, and gives extra help," he adds.
     The Sumption Farm partners meet weekly to talk about what's going on with different aspects of the operation. Even with the specialization, they discuss bigger decisions, such as property and machinery purchases. They talk through the positives and negatives. Day-to-day decisions, the individuals over each area make.

Marketing, Risk Management
     The Sumptions' relationship with National Farmers was established through the Dakota Marketing Coalition. DMC is an association of farmers from groups such as Farm Bureau and others, that wanted to take advantage of National Farmers' marketing and price risk management expertise. John made that connection, but now Mark works with Pete Lorenz, National Farmers grain marketing analyst.
     "I do the marketing, because I can take the emotion out of it. Marketing, we look at it like a business; we want 20 percent return," he says.
     The Sumptions are satisfied with the marketing services, risk management and prices they receive with Marketing Plus. "We move a fair amount of grain through National Farmers....Pete's done well. He's a sharp guy. He knows what's going on. Since I've been working with him, we've been doing a lot of forward contracting."
     The Sumptions' grain operation is getting in on a special opportunity through its work with National Farmers, as well. For 2010, they are planting 1,000 acres of non-GMO soybeans, and they're customer's paying $2/bu. over the board. And the deal's with no basis, so in the Sumptions' area, that's basically $3/bu. over the board.
     And the agreement is helping them play-it-GMO-safe, allowing one percent RoundupReady beans in this agreement for the risk of cross-pollination from nearby GMO fields. "Basically, all we're doing is contracting acres with this company out of Iowa, so it's a flat fee per acre for marketing," Mark explains.
     "We have done a few options through Marketing Plus, with Pete, calls and puts. We did buy calls a couple years ago on some corn, when it got really high, in '08, we sold a lot of corn a year out for $5 early in the year, and bought options later gained back some money on that," Mark explains.
     Good news came in the summer of '09, too. "We sold corn at $7/bu., when it was selling for $3.50/bu. last summer," Mark says.
     "It's like Pete says, you've got to pick a direction and stick with it. Seven out of 10 years you're going to be ahead, or ahead of the market.
     "Farming has shifted over time. If there's a profit to be made, take it. It may not be the largest profit you can take, but you won't go broke making a profit. Sometimes it's a hard thing to do, but you have to take the emotion out of it. I think that's helped us."
     Sumptions have also sold cull cows through Cash Cow Plus, and have been pleased with the final numbers dollar-wise.
     "We cull our cows really hard, because we have a fair amount of cows and we don't need the bad attitudes," Mark explains. "When it's cold out, they come through the barn, and come through the chute, they're ID'd. And if they're hard to handle, we cull them pretty hard. No reason to get hurt over them."

Living the dream
     All five Sumption sons went to college or trade school somewhere, and Chris, Eric, Mark and Taylor came straight back to the farm after college. Warren worked for Dakota Fluid Power, a hydraulic and pneumatic manufacturing and service company, and returned to the farm in 2004.
     "Honestly, I didn't think I'd be doing what I'm doing. I think a couple of my brothers did. When I came back to the farm, I didn't think we'd all be back. I love what I do. I think everyone else does."
     For their father, John, the successful integration of all his sons into the operation took planning and discipline. "I don't think my dad thought it would happen the way it has....Three or four years from now, he wants to come and do stuff, but won't want to come everyday. We've slowly transitioned."
     "Our wives complain we work too much, we probably do. Not we probably do. We do. We've grown immensely in the last 15 years. We're to the point now, we're not actively seeking ground. If someone came to us with land, we'd rent it. We've bought a fair amount of land in last few years, but we've turned away 10 times what we farm," Mark adds.
     Mark also emphasizes the importance of, and their good fortune in, employees on the farm. "We have a couple of guys who work for us who are super. We have to tell them to go home. They won't leave," he says. The retired truckers and two other part-time guys help on the tractors during spring planting, and with trucking during fall harvest.
     Looking at operation financial numbers at the first of the year, with the investment per acre necessary to put out there in farming today, the Sumptions want to make a 20 percent to 25 percent return, or they don't want to pursue more cropland.
     "If we can't make that $80 to $100 per acre, we don't want it," Mark says. "We've gotten to the point in our lives, where it's not worth the work. There's more to life than farming half the countryside. And the amount of capital it takes to farm, you need that kind of return, but there's a lot of risk there."
     "They have one heck of a setup," said Lorenz, their National Farmers Marketing Plus Adviser. "They are excellent producers, and are hard working, intelligent people," he emphasized.
     With the intelligence, hard work and heart the Sumptions show, no wonder National Farmers leaders named Sumption Farms one of National Farmers Outstanding Producers for 2010 at national convention in January.