Hey everyone, I'm Mitchell Hora.

I'm a farmer from Iowa.

And I am Zach Johnson.

I farm in West Central Minnesota, and this is the fieldwork podcast, which is by farmers,

for farmers.

Every single episode, we talk about what works and what

doesn't in sustainable agriculture. Thank you very much to the Walton Family Foundation for their

support this season. So today, Zach, we're going to talk about banking. And for farmers,

having a great relationship with your banker is super important. So today we're going to talk to

Mark Schober. He's a guy whose job is to figure out what works and what doesn't for the ag banking

industry. The whole thing really boils down to that if the bank can help farmers to find better

technology, that they can overall reduce risk and help their farmers to be able to

ensure that they have long-term profitability. It's an interesting way to think about banking,

honestly. You don't hear that a lot from somebody within the banking industry. And Mark works for

Bremer Bank, which is actually currently the ninth largest ag bank in the nation. We need to let you

know that we recorded this before Brammer Bank became a sponsor of fieldwork.

It's always fun when that happens because it must mean that the guy from the company

didn't run away screaming in pain after he talked to us, right?

Yeah, that's a good thing because, I mean, we've had that a lot.

That might be where Oprah's at.

Maybe we should check on that one. I'd be interested to talk to them more about potentially financing our coconut crop

and ensuring that we have a helicopter because we need transportation to get to our coconut

...