ADM.
UNLOCKING NATURE. ENRICHING LIFE.
Recently I had the privilege to meet with many of you, our valued farming customers, colleagues and partners.
The Farmers Breakfast programme was the brainchild of the team at ADM Agriculture, with 10 meetings arranged across the country, of which only seven were able to be held due to the coronavirus restrictions. These breakfasts are an excellent opportunity for all of us at ADM Agriculture and in fact the wider ADM; be it Milling, Oilseeds, Protexin, Wild Flavours, or indeed the Investor Services team to meet with you, the providers of the vital raw materials of nutrition.
These essential ingredients are the life blood of a symbiotic relationship benefiting everyone from producers, processors, distributors and consumers. ADM Agriculture is proud to be able to say that more than 6000 farmers across the UK are now working with us, and that number is ever increasing in these turbulent times.
You may recall the backdrop to these gatherings.
Week after week of biblical rainfall with no let up. Virtually the entirety of available UK arable land if not submerged was most definitely waterlogged and unworkable. David Sheppard, Director at ADM Agriculture, indeed commented in our last edition of Viewpoint that in a 35-year grain trading career one gets to see a fair bit, but neither he nor any of us had ever seen anything like this. As it subsequently transpired this deluge from above was just the start of this most extraordinary passage in history.
In the following paragraphs I shall reflect on history, and history in the making and will affirm the prudence of your choice of ADM as a partner to you our readers, colleagues, customers and friends.
As ADM’s UK Country Manager, I am always impressed by the enduring resilience of our clients in every sector of the UK business and none more so than our agricultural partners and customers. Their fortitude in the field transfers well to our meetings at shows, industry gatherings and most recently at the Farmers Breakfasts. Numerous intelligent and considered questions were and are proffered.
The question of the dependability of ADM as a counterparty was raised on several occasions and understandably so in these unpredictable times.
The anxiety that all of us feel about our business counterparties is founded not in the experience gleaned in “good times” but in times of extreme stress.
In 2008 the financial world as we knew it collapsed. Twelve years on and the UK has endured austerity, unemployment, a housing price collapse, a myriad of other challenges. Banks and their employees had become the pariahs of the early 21st century. In 2016 just as life was improving the UK decided to ditch the EU and Brexit was spawned; huge uncertainty followed and particularly for our farmers. A more divisive period in our recent history is hard to recall with families and friends divided the length and breadth of the UK.
For farmers; no more subsidies but an amorphous mantra of public money for “public goods”.
4 | ADMISI - The Ghost In The Machine | Q2 Edition
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