Managing risk is one of the most important things for any business, especially a business like farming that carries a huge amount of risk on many different fronts. A producer has to improve his land. We have to be marketers, accountants. There are a lot of things that we have to do, and managing risk is one of the most important things you can do when things are volatile.
We've had tools to manage risk, and there are new tools being created on the horizon. I'm sure others will take the place of those that have been changed. But the bottom line is that in Growing Forward I would encourage the government to find ways to facilitate or fund farmers in the process of managing risk. Take a look at what FNA-STAG is doing to create research to help farmers make better decisions, provide information, and give farmers the tools they need to do it on their own.
We have about 30 staff. Most of them are agrologists. We talk about succession planning, but more important is strategic planning on the farm. We have consultants in the program that allow for that, but it's a snapshot in time. It's a very dynamic environment.
What we do is work with farmers to manage that tremendous risk. ICE is putting up some tools out there for wheat and barley, for futures contracting on that side of things. We need more on the input side, because it's the forgotten side of farming. You have $40 billion in revenue and $38 billion of that is what you expand in inputs to get $2 billion in net, as an example.
We have to find ways of managing that risk. There are all kinds of things that are being done to buy futures on fertilizer and crop protection. I firmly believe we need more tools to do that.