CEO Conversations

Jason Brancel, President & CEO for Riceland Foods joins us on the Grainiacs to discuss the genesis of his career in agricultural cooperatives as well as dive into the Mission, Vision, and Values for Riceland.

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Some call us nerds. Others call us crazy. We call ourselves Grainiacs. We've got grain on the brain and we are getting inside our experts’ heads. In our podcast, we will discuss topics from every inch of the rice industry and our cooperative. Live from the Riceland Foods studio in the rice little town of Stuttgart, Arkansas, where the rice is always right and the beans are always better. Welcome to the Grainiacs podcast. I'm your host, Jacob Holloway, member, communications manager for Riceland foods, We are glad you are joining us and we hope you're having a Rice day. We have quite a bit to cover today with our inaugural episode, with our special guest, Jason Brancel, president and CEO for Riceland Foods, Inc.. How are you today, Jason? I'm doing great, Jacob. How are you? I'm great. Our topic today is the new and improved mission, vision and value statements for Riceland Foods. These are statements that guide The goals, future, and behavior of a company or in this case, our cooperative. Jason, before we get into this, tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, I was raised on family farms in Wisconsin, farms that were settled by my ancestors when they came over from Germany in 1867. So that's where I grew up and went to the University of Wisconsin at Platteville, earned a Bachelor of Science degree and then started my cooperative career back in 1993, working for an agribusiness cooperative in Southeast Wisconsin and have had wonderful opportunities to learn and grow over time. Span of coming up on 30 years now, working for large cooperatives in the upper Midwest and most recently serving as CEO of a cooperative in Colorado. Before joining the Riceland team here about 11 months ago. So some of those past career pass opportunities have been Chief Operating officer, Chief credit officer, Chief Financial officer, and this second tour of duty here in a CEO assignment. So it's that's a little bit about about my background to my wife Carmen and I moved to Arkansas and are enjoying living here in Arkansas. We're proud to call Arkansas home and really enjoying the people of Arkansas in the beautiful landscape. Yeah, it sure. It is beautiful for sure. I sympathize with you on that because, you know, I've grew up here all my life and I was just thinking this morning about, you know, working here at the office. I've kind of been missing the sunrises and sunsets from the tractor cab here lately. Yeah, We're glad you're with us today. And and just thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to be here. So we're going to get into our mission statement. Would you like to recite our mission statement for us? Absolutely. Here's our mission statement. Riceland, a farmer owned cooperative, helps farmers feed the world, sustainably. Awesome. So this is probably going to be kind of a hard question. What does this mean to you? This is our way. That's what it means to me. It's why we get out of bed in the morning and come here and do what we do. Helping farmers feed the world. It's a great mission. It's something that is inspiring to me. I know it's inspiring to the other 1600 people that work here at Riceland Foods. And I was just talking with a group of FFA students in our auditorium that were visiting from Kentucky. So we're hosting that group today and was talking about that mission statement and then why we think it's some of the why we think it's the best work that we can do here and how many great careers there are in agriculture, whether it's our 5500 farmer members that are doing the hard work of feeding the world, or it's our 1600 employee team members here who are doing all kinds of different jobs to support our farmers who are feeding the world sustainably. Is there in our mission statement on purpose because we know that matters and we know that our farmer member owners are the original environmentalists. And sustainability is such a key component of agriculture. It always has been, and it means new and different things today, and we're defining it in different ways. And that's the great work of helping farmers feed the world. Absolutely. Absolutely. So then kind of turning it, then what should this mission statement mean to our farmer members, the exact same thing, or should they be thinking something a little different? Well, I think that in my conversations with with our member owners, sometimes they think of it that way. Other times they think of it more on a local level. But at the end of the day, Riceland as a as an exporter of rice, we literally are feeding people in different parts of the world and not every cooperative can say that about what their members are doing and how they can watch the impact of what they do through their cooperative, all the way through to exports to other countries. And I think that's I find that at Riceland with with our members, they seem to they seem to really embrace that. The fact that what they do here, much of that product leaves the state of Arkansas. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. So we've kind of tackled the mission statement there. So next we kind of want to talk about our vision statement. So if you don't mind, would you recite that for us as well? Absolutely. I'm going to go back a little bit and talk about it this way. Okay. Our mission is is why we exist. Our vision is what we aspire to. And we're going to get to values. And values are how we behave, right? So our vision statement is rice land. A farmer owned cooperative is the best choice for farmers seeking a strong partner for their business profitability and agricultural impact. So what that means to me is we're helping farmers do collectively through their cooperative what they would struggle to do individually. Absolutely. When we're being the best we can possibly be, we're achieving that vision. Absolutely. So. So then where do you see that leading Riceland and its farmers right now as as a as a fresh CEO here at Riceland. Where I see our vision leading us is helping our farmers be even more profitable in the future than they are today. So as we go about the hard work of processing, milling, packaging, rice and then moving that into market channels, we get to choose the market channels that are the most profitable, and we do that every single day knowing full well that when we choose the right market channel and we deliver the right product to the right place at the right time for a competitive price, that value goes back to our farmer member owners and that connects certainly with our mission and it connects with our vision as well. So that's the key aspect of the profitability component. And then making an agricultural impact, our sustainability team, I talked about them just a moment ago, or the notion of sustainability. We have resources, human resources here in a sustainability team that are helping our member owners connect what they're doing at the farm gate with our sustainability programs and translating that into value with environmental assets. And that's as we know, that's a changing space. Yeah, it changes every single day, but that's a big part of the profitability and agricultural impact that we're helping our farmers achieve when we achieve our vision. Right? Awesome, awesome. All right. So we've tackled those too, and it is time for our quick break. When we come back, we are going to unveil Riceland’s values. Stay tuned. And we're back with Jason Brancel, president and CEO for Riceland. We've been discussing Riceland’s mission And vision statements, and we have now made our Way to Riceland’s values. Jason, would you like to take a moment to read our values to our listeners? I'd love to. As I mentioned before, our values are how we behave. We have over 30 locations here at Riceland Foods and each of those locations have their own unique personality, Yet the values are consistent across the organization. And here are those values honesty and integrity. Simply doing the right thing, working hard and working smart for results. Leading courageously. And I like to link that with our next value, which is being kind and courteous. We can lead courageously and be kind and courteous at the same time. Industry, leadership and innovation and a commitment to the whole. that we call One Riceland. Awesome. So I remember back when we were doing our winter district membership meetings, there were some things that you highlighted as ongoing efforts that we have happening now under industry, industry leadership and innovation. And there was one other I don't remember, but I know the leadership in innovation. So like you mentioned, Salesforce. Mm hmm. Would you like to talk about that? Yeah, absolutely. We've signed on with the world class customer relationship management software provider, Salesforce. Salesforce helps us gather information and institutionalize that knowledge, mostly with the relationships with our customers. But it can also be helpful with the information about our members and translating that into value in terms of you might be wondering what is success look like? From our perspective, success looks like we know what our customer needs before they know what they need because we've got great information, great data that helps us make decisions in getting the right product at the right time to the right place to our customer member base. So that's under this initiative of people, processes and technology, investing in our people, building better processes every single day and leveraging technology, right? So that's new and different ways to work that live under that headline in our value statement of industry leadership and innovation. Awesome. Awesome. Is there anything else there that you can think of that you might want to add before I ask you question about it? Well, oftentimes I linger a little bit longer on a commitment to the whole that we call One Riceland. And our our listeners might be wondering, well, what does that mean? One Riceland. I'll give an example of it. When we're in the midst of harvest and a drier location, has a some aspect of the operation apart mortar breaks down. They send out a message to the rest of the drier network on an app and say, We've got a problem here. Can anyone help? And somebody from another drier location says, I can have that part to you within an hour. That's an example of one Riceland where we are a highly collaborative, cooperative environment. We're working together as a team for for the greater commitment of commitment to the entire organization. Right. It also looks like making the best decision for Riceland every single time. And the best idea wins when we pull up chairs to a table here at the office and we're trying to make a decision for the organization, we're making the best decision for the entire organization and the best idea wins. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, that means a lot. You know, so I'm a future third generation rice farmer and future third generation member. And so it it's refreshing to me to hear that, you know, the farmers who have historically co-operated to have this co-op, this co-op, because that's why it's called a co-op. They have to cooperate together. Right. It's refreshing to hear that here in the building here, as a Ricelander, we are also instilling that cooperation in each other. Yes. And I just I love that. That's the cooperative spirit. Absolutely. It's that's why this company started 102 years ago. Right. When a group of farmers got together and said, let's solve some problems that we all face collectively through a co-operative that can help us do this better than we could individually. That cooperative spirit is alive and well. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. So now for a personal question, What is your favorite part of working at an agricultural cooperative? Great question. For me, it's it is all about the people and working with great people every single day. These people that have a passion for what we do. And as I've traveled throughout Riceland in the time that I've been here coming up on a year, I've met so many great people. And one thing that they have in common is a passion for Riceland and its success. There's a lot of brand loyalty here, and working for a co-operative is is a great way to be a member of a team and in my case, lead a team to fulfill our mission to help farmers feed the world. From my perspective, it's about two things helping farmers feed the world and making a positive difference in the lives of the people that we work with and the people that we work for. Farmer member owners. Absolutely. There's a big commitment to that here at Riceland. Absolutely. Jason, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule working for farmers to visit with us today. Thank you, Jacob. It's been a pleasure. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe. Leave us a rise rating and comment wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks again for joining us on the Grainiacs podcast. And for more information about the Grainiacs, Riceland or just Rice in general, visit us on the Web at Riceland.com and Riceland.coop, Or on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn at Riceland Foods. You can reach us by posting with #Grainiacs.