First of all, I certainly echo Travis' comment. We don't want to have programs that influence producers' decision-making. We talk about all the things we can do in the supply chain. Can we go after niche markets? Can we specialize, or should we diversify? There's no question that we think, and I expect you people also think, that the producers should be the ones to make those decisions.
But whatever the producers decide to do, one of the biggest factors in our industry now is that we're tremendously capital intensive. We need money to operate, and you know what that means. We borrow it from the bank or from a farm credit corporation, or from wherever else we can borrow it. There's no question that when I sit down and talk to my banker, it has an impact. I need my banker to have confidence in me. If I say, “Jonathan, I need this much money to build a barn and fill it full of pigs,” he needs to be confident that I'm going to pay him back. He knows that agriculture is one of the higher-risk businesses that he could lend to. Why would he lend to farmers? There are all kinds of other people to lend to. The fact that I have a good business plan and I have a good place to sell my pigs, that it looks like I can probably pay him back and that I also have a good risk management program that I can rely on makes him a little bit more confident, and he'll lend me that money. Otherwise, I just couldn't do the things I do.
So to answer your question, there's no question that the risk management programs we have do help. We're all farmers here and we all hopefully have collected from these programs in the past. There's no question that they help.
I've often thought that if I had gone into some other form of business and worked as hard as I've worked in agriculture, I probably would have been a little bit better off. We farm because we love to farm, but we need to have that security, we need to have that backdrop. Obviously, the more money that is in these programs, the better. That's a very general statement, but we know we have to be very careful with these programs.
The answer to your question also is that it's very easy for the money to go in the wrong direction, you're right. We need to be very careful about how they're designed.
I'm going on too long, but yes, the answer to your question is they do help.