Richard Dubke, Monroe Branch Financial Services Officer with 3 years of service How does your role at GreenStone tie into the YBSF Committee?
BEHIND THE SCENES– In this behind the scenes, two GreenStone employees share their work and passion to serve on GreenStone’s Young, Beginning, Small Farmer (YBSF) Committee. Autumn Rector, Traverse City Branch Senior Credit Analyst with 11 years of service How does your role at GreenStone tie into the YBSF Committee? As a credit analyst, I help customers determine what structure will best suit their operation. I analyze the loan options with their future goals in mind. This also allows me to see where some YBSF customers struggle to meet some of our loan standards or where they may need help preparing the documents that GreenStone needs in order to analyze their requests. In turn, this helped shed light on how GreenStone can be an even better resource by improving our program and processes to better serve YBSF customers. What background do you have that gives you unique passion to support/assist YBSF? My husband and I are also YBSF. We consider ourselves first generation. We both grew up 19
Summer 2020 — Partners
in agriculture, but never had a farm to come back to following our secondary education. Going through the beginning stages of starting our own operation has really fueled my drive to help others as it has proven very challenging. You want to run before you crawl and it’s very hard to do. The YBSF Committee has several work groups. What progress has your team made so far? The work group that I am working with is diving into GreenStone’s YBSF program and redefining it. We are looking at how to improve the experience and what we can add to better serve this segment of our customers. There is much more to come, but at this point we are working hard to make internal improvements to make this a much better program for the future of agriculture. What is your goal for the impact of your work with the group? I hope to help others, who may be in the same shoes as myself, get the start they need
and educate them on how to take the next steps with their business. Agriculture has changed over the years and getting started from the ground up can be very challenging. I believe GreenStone can partner with these “up and coming” YBSFs to help agriculture be sustainable and to keep these YBSF customers moving forward —they are our future. Share a YBSF customer experience that has stuck with you. One in particular is a young man who has worked in agriculture all his life for a local farmer. His parents farmed part-time as they both had off-farm employment. Together, this secured his passion for agriculture and it was very apparent. He began his own farm market, beginning small and came to GreenStone for his first loan, which allowed him to put in a well for irrigation and a green house. Each year he has continued to expand his market, offering more items and new experiences for the customer. I think he will continue to be a very successful operation and it is very exciting to see him grow each year.
As a financial services officer, we are always looking for ways to better help customers with the best products and services GreenStone has to offer. Being on the committee gives me a chance to help be a part of the development team, focused on new products and educational tools we can provide to help these farmers. What background do you have that gives you unique passion to support/assist YBSF? I am in the same age group as those that are considered a “young farmer”. I think this helps me provide perspective on what other young farmers would like to see and how to relate to them. I grew up on a family farm and I’ve been around agriculture my whole life. Early in my career here at GreenStone, I identified YBSFs as the future of agriculture. I have written many first-time loans to young farmers just looking for someone to give them a chance. The YBSF Committee has several work groups. What progress has your team made so far? My work group has been involved in identifying organizations in the industry we can partner with to provide education and resources to their YBSF members. By sharing knowledge on basic farm financials and helping farmers understand what products and services GreenStone has tailored to their needs, we can help create even more beneficial partnerships with YBSFs. We have many relationships already, and have identified more possible partners where we believe we could contribute to an even greater impact.