Evolution of Ag Grower Conference

Kenneth Scott Zuckerberg is an accomplished financial strategist that serves as the lead analyst for grains, farm supply, and biofuels within CoBank’s Knowledge Exchange.

Ken brings more than 30 years of diverse experience spanning industry research, equity and capital structure analysis, and investment management. Before joining CoBank in 2019, he served in similar capacities at two other major agricultural lenders, Wells Fargo and Rabobank. Prior to that, Ken was the managing partner of Carlan Advisors, LLC, an independent research and consulting firm he founded in 2003. Earlier in his career, Ken was a senior equity analyst with several leading investment firms including Lazard Asset Management, Smith Barney and Keefe Bruyette and Woods.

Ken earned his bachelors of science in finance from the University of South Florida and is a graduate of Wharton’s General Management Program (GMP). He is currently pursuing a Master in Law degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School. Ken is also an Accredited Investment Fiduciary® (AIF®).

For 20 years, Brant Gilbert has served the Land O’Lakes member owners in various marketing and business operations positions. Currently, he serves as a marketing director for WinField United. In this role, Brant focuses on making sure digital investments enable revenue growth across services and product portfolios, while setting the strategic direction for projects that offer new outcome-based grain market opportunities.

 Brant’s specializes in aligning business strategy with marketing initiatives and developing plans which consistently exceed targets. Prior to his current role, Brant was a business optimization director for WinField United, which followed a tour of duty as a Marketing Director for Purina Animal Nutrition, another Land O’Lakes business.

He earned his MBA from Webster University and holds a bachelor’s degree from Butler University.

Craig started his career in 1988 as a hardware engineer at Motorola, designing and developing the first GSM and Iridium mobile stations and John Deere in 2002, developing the Starfire receiver and Greenstar display. In 2002, Craig founded ATG, providing RF manufacturing software. Acquired by National Instruments in 2005, he became a Chief Measurement Architect, developing AM, FM, RDS, Bluetooth, GSM, EDGE, CDMA2k, EVDO, WCDMA, and LTE solutions.

In 2012, Craig founded 640 Labs, envisioning a simple iPad as a data collection and monitoring device for agriculture. Acquired by Monsanto in 2014, he made his FieldView Drive one of the most ubiquitous and low-cost data collection devices in agriculture.
In 2018, Craig founded Sabanto, a company that provides autonomous solutions. He was the first to autonomously plant a farmer’s field in Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois, and Indiana. Raised on a farm in Iowa, he earned his BSEE at Iowa State in 1988 and MSEE from Illinois Tech in 1990. He currently has 14 patents.

Darrin Boster, President of Elevar Agri-Solutions, to present on global fertilizer fundamentals for spring and how they could impact the US markets.  Primary topics to include all macro fertilizers, government intervention affecting fertilizer markets, comparisons to the 2008/09 markets and what to watch out for this spring as market volatility remains high across the globe.   The desire is for an interactive presentation with any questions welcomed. 

Darrin was born and raised in Kansas, his father being a COOP employee for 39 years before his passing.  After college, Darrin spent 10 years with a grain handling company, Tramco Inc., where he advanced to the role of Controller, before moving to Koch Hydrocarbon in 1997.  Within that division of Koch, Darrin advanced to Director of Midwest Fractionation Services, covering 350,000 barrels per day of fractionation capacity and 5,000 miles of pipeline and 200,000 barrels of underground salt cavern storage in Oklahoma/Kansas and Texas.  He then transitioned to a fertilizer trading role in Koch Fertilizer, covering urea off-take produced in Venezuela and supplying import UAN to several E Coast terminals, as well as barge trading on the river system.  In 2006, Darrin started his own consulting business in the natural gas liquids industry, called Sandstone Energy, LLC, which he ran/grew for 6 years, until returning to Koch in 2012 and leading a sales team of all macro fertilizers in the Western Corn Belt (Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota and Wisconsin).  In July 2021, Darrin started the Elevar Agri-Solutions business with a goal of putting his experience to work in improving retailer procurement options and global market knowledge as well as aiding in retailer desires to share market information with their member owners. 

Rogo Ag is the only robotic soil sampling service provider in agriculture.  Our technology delivers best-in-class performance for location accuracy, core depth accuracy and core extraction consistency.  Rogo helps farmers optimize their fertility programs by reducing errors common to other sampling methods.  Precision farming begins with a precision map.  Farmers love Rogo because they know they are getting the most accurate soil data available, at a fair price, with unmatched ROI.

Mark Bloom is a Territory Manager for Rogo Ag, covering Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska.  Mark has over three decades of business development experience, including seed, chemical and software applications specific to agriculture.  Mark lives in Macomb, IL with his wife, Barbara.  He enjoys golf, reading and spending quality time with his three grandchildren.

Dale is the Director of Value-Added Grains for CVA. He started with CVA in December 2016 and works out of CVA’s office in Kearney, Nebraska. CVA’s specialty grain department currently trades White Corn, Non-GMO White Corn, Food Grade Yellow Corn, Non-GMO Yellow Corn, Non-GMO Soybeans, Organic Yellow Corn and Organic Soybeans in Nebraska from the Missouri River west to Gothenburg, NE. Dale has been involved in the specialty grain business for the last 30 years. Prior to CVA, he worked for DeBruce/Gavilon Grain as their Specialty Grains Manager for 14 years. Prior to DeBruce he worked for Cargill for 14 years, where he had various roles around Central Nebraska. Dale is a graduate of Kearney State College where he earned a degree in Agri-Business in 1987. Dale was raised on a farm in Central City, Nebraska.

Tim works with growers to help them utilize soil and applied nutrients to maximize yield and profitability.  He has a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a Master of Science in Agronomy from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.   He has been with Central Valley Ag since 2018.  He spent 11 years at Midwest Laboratories and 15 years at Werner Enterprises before coming to CVA.  He grew up on a family farm near Griswold, IA.  He and his wife live in LaVista, NE and have two grown daughters.