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Jarod Creed is the owner of JC Marketing Services, LLC based in Waterloo, IA working with producers and firms across the Midwest. Creed specializes in education and development of executing margin-based marketing plans for producers that brings together all inputs and outputs. Creed is the former Senior Director of Customer Risk Management of Gavilon Group, LLC, a leading commodity management firm. Creed developed and led a new Gavilon organization called Gavilon Producer Solutions. Prior to joining Gavilon, Creed served as a Senior Account Representative for The Anderson’s., where he provided risk management services for large scale clients and mentored originators in both Nebraska and Iowa. Prior to working with The Anderson’s, Creed was a Grain Marketing Specialist at Team Marketing Alliance in central Kansas. The culmination of this experience has resulted in Creed’s specialized skills enabling many industry participants to provide industry leading risk management services by leveraging readily available information the changing grain network provides. Creed is currently sits on the board of the National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) International Trade and Agriculture Policy Committee and a “Big” in the Big Brother, Big Sister Organization of the Midlands. Creed attended Bethany College in Lindsborg, KS where he studied Business Management. Creed also proudly served the United States in the Air National Guard of which he was deployed on several missions.

Nichols Farms is located in Southwest Iowa, marketing bulls, semen and embryos throughout the world. Nichols Farms and its franchises are all family farms, selling Nichols Beef Genetics and offering Nichols Value Added Programs.

Mark Thorndyke grew up in a farming family, detasseled corn during the summer months while in college and now owns farmland in Ford and Livingston counties in Illinois. Mark’s professional passions led him to become a financial advisor, but he never forgot his roots and has a strong desire to help farmers achieve their life goals through a sound investment strategy. Mark is a wealth management advisor and Managing Director at Merrill Lynch. He also is Vice President of The Chicago Farmers. He lives in Lake Barrington.

Dr Jude L. Capper is an independent livestock sustainability consultant, with a BSc in animal science and a PhD in ruminant nutrition and behavior. Her main professional goal is to communicate the importance of livestock industry sustainability and the factors affecting sustainability to enhance the knowledge and understanding of food production stakeholders.

Pack Creek Capital provides listed and OTC risk management solutions that champion the best interests of our commodity clients.

Will Babler is a principal with Atten Babler Commodities LLC. The firm serves producers, processors and end users in the dairy industry by providing education, margin management programs and futures and options brokerage services. You can reach Atten Babler Commodities at 800-884-8290, info@attenbabler.com or www.attenbabler.com

Hope Pjesky is a farmer/rancher in northern Oklahoma, USA. She raises beef cattle and grows wheat. Hope wants all farmers to have better lives! She believes that farmers everywhere have a lot in common and supports all farmers. No matter what country they are from, no matter what size their farm is, no matter what they produce, no matter what production practices they use, Hope wants all farmers to be productive and have a good life.

Bill Kirk is the CEO and Co-founder of Weather Trends International. He has 26-years experience with a contagious passion for applying year-ahead business weather guidance and predictive analytics to help Fortune 1,000 companies and farmers everywhere achieve better business in any weather. To date, over $1 Billion in ROIs have been achieved for WTI’s weather savvy clients. This is the second company Bill has founded with the first selling for a 28X return on investment in 3 years. Bill has raised $6.8 million in venture capital from Kodiak Venture Partners, Trestle Ventures, and Innovation Capital. Bill served as a Captain in the U. S. Air Force and worked with NASA and the Space Shuttle Columbia Ferry Flights, briefed 1000’s of F-16 fighter missions and saved the government millions of dollars in the procurement of a $100 million dollar Satellite Data Handling System. He has published several business-weather and technical reports identifying winning strategies to capitalize on the weather, and has identified how weather influences the overall economy. Bill is regularly featured on Fox, CNBC and other national TV networks and quoted in Bloomberg, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, ICSC and Citigroup retail reports and other media outlets as an expert in long range weather cycles. Bill is also a consulting partner with the Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG) with leader status on their network of experts (Top 5%). He is named on four U.S. and U.K. patents as inventor and co-inventor for business-weather forecasting technology. Bill is a graduate of Rutgers University as an Air Force Distinguished Graduate with a B.S. in Meteorology. Bill currently sits on the Advisory Board of Directors for Millersville University’s Business of Science Masters Program, and is a lifetime founding member of the Open Atmospheric Society (OAS). Bill is a signatory and member of the Cornwall Alliance.

Granular is an agriculture software and analytics company dedicated to helping industry leaders build stronger and smarter farms. With cloud, mobile and advanced data science technology, the Granular platform makes it easier to manage a large farm every day and use data for critical business decisions. Connecting financial, operational and agronomic information into a single platform, farmers can boost their efficiency and productivity. Granular’s rapidly growing network of farms in the US and Canada is finding new ways to profit from aggregated data, expertise and market power. Granular is headquartered in San Francisco and backed by Tao Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures and Khosia Ventures. http://www.granular.ag