Southwest Agribusiness Consulting, Inc.

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Southwest Agribusiness Consulting, Inc. was formed in 1999 to provide production agriculture in the South Plains with professional assistance in the development and execution of personalized marketing and management plans. Since that time, we have been serving customers in most of the major crop producing areas in Texas, as well as parts of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado. Our programs are specifically designed to assist agricultural producers and users of corn, sorghum, wheat, soybeans, cotton, rice, sugar, beef and energy regardless of the size of operation. Making key marketing and management decisions on the behalf of customers, however, requires a high level of communication and a strong support network to insure success. Therefore, we feel fortunate that our company is able to offer our customers access to a number of highly successful producer-oriented consulting services.

Marketing Plans: To facilitate the efficient development and execution of individual price risk management plans, we have an association with Hurley and Associates of Charleston, Missouri. This unique producer-oriented program brings our customers a wealth of information and ideas about how to address commodity price risks. In addition, the Introducing Brokerage service provided by this program gives our producers numerous trading advantages that are available through a large trading base.

Commodity Hedging: To provide our customers with access to risk management products available from the commodity exchanges, we offer to manage an FC Stone, LLC commodity trading account. This relationship allows us to interact, on our customer's behalf, with a highly professional clearinghouse operation and world leader in commodity brokerage and trade information. Each customer trading account is managed separately, with the individual's unique risk management profile in mind.

Custom Cattle Advisory: The fact that the cattle industry continues to consolidate and vertically organize suggests that the way beef producers address marketing and management risks must change. For this reason, we have retained the services of Giles Enterprises of Canyon, Texas. Owner Kelly Giles provides marketing and management consulting services to cattle operators involved at all levels of the beef/cattle supply chain. His relationships in retail sales, beef processing, cattle feeding, procurement, genetics, animal health and nutrition gives our customers affordable access to progressive cattle management practices.

Financial Management: The fact that profit margins in agriculture are thin relative to many other industries suggests that a more aggressive approach to financial management is justified. To provide support in this critical area, our company has a license to sell Perception Accounting developed and supported by Redwing Software of Redwing Minnesota. This fully integrated financial management program was specifically developed with agricultural production in mind.

Benefits of our program: Our consultants, then, provide professional assistance in developing individual marketing and management plans, and follow through with the execution of these plans with discipline in the marketplace. We feel that there is more risk in doing nothing than in making profit-oriented decisions utilizing sound marketing principles. Therefore, a major benefit to using our approach is the peace of mind to concentrate more intently on production activities at critical times, with the knowledge that we are monitoring the markets with your best interest at heart. We emphasize, however, that it is important to think through these methods, and realize that they are part of a set of risk management tools, and not a short-cut to success. Agricultural marketing and management decisions are most successful when based on profitability, and not the hope of outguessing the markets.

Please contact us if you would like to find out more about how we could assist you with your marketing and management challenges. We would be glad to send you more information about our services and approach.