Eastern Iowa Farmer Spring 2018

Marketing
Tracy & Gary
Frahm
Miles
Tracy and Gary Frahm
met in college and farm
as a team in Miles.
Eastern Iowa Farmer
Photo / Brooke Taylor
Knowing break-even point allows
deeper analysis of operation
BY nancy mayfield
eastern iowa farmer
Tracy Frahm was a marketing
major at Iowa State University
in the early 1980s when
she met her future husband,
Gary, on campus. Gary was a farm
operations major.
Flash forward almost 40 years.
That chance meeting, as well as her
field of study, shaped her life’s work
on the Frahm family farm in Miles.
Tracy, who grew up “not on a farm”
in Mason City, is the chief marketer
for the grain business portion of their
operation. Gary handles the buying,
selling, and marketing of the feeder
cattle on the farm, which has been
in the Frahm family for four generations.
Tracy worked off the farm when
she and Gary were first married, and
she became a stay-at-home mom after
they had kids. In 1995, she started
a commercial game bird operation,
raising pheasants, quail, and chukar
partridges for hunting preserves. That
enterprise required some marketing
savvy. They did that for 16 years.
She started learning about commodities
marketing through Women
in Agriculture programs, “Annie’s
Project,” and Farm Bureau. At first,
she talked through each marketing
decision with Gary.
“We’d discuss it together and talk
about what approach to take,” she
said. As she learned about such tools
as forward contracting, hedge-toarrive
contracts, basis contracts, and
using options, she began to expand
her marketing efforts from just simply
selling grain for a cash price. The
combination of taking classes and
84 Eastern Iowa Farmer | Spring 2018