Cross-Cultural, Local Christian Missionary Practice through ILT.org

 

Ray Grabanski founded Progressive Ag in 1992 as a risk management firm with branches in insurance, marketing, and law. Ray Grabanski has supported many charities and organizations over the years, including pledging $1.1 million for scholarships at the non-ELCA Institute of Lutheran Theology, or ILT.org

ILT.org is an online seminary where interested students can learn about Lutheran theology from anywhere in the world. Students from ILT’s Doctor of Ministry program recently met with pastor Roland Wells from St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church of Minneapolis to learn about his research into a form of missionary service that works locally rather than globally.

Christian missionary practice is a tradition of traveling the world to bring the philosophies and ideals of Christianity to various populations. As the world changes, however, more and more people are immigrating to the United States, including many from countries that do not allow Christian missionaries to visit. Pastor Wells provided the ILT students with a five-day course on reaching out to people of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds living in the United States. The course fulfilled one of the Doctor of Ministry program’s two required “Missionary Journeys” to learn about Christian outreach.

Progressive Ag Marketing Named Best by op Producer Magazine

A seasoned agribusiness professional and agricultural attorney, Ray Grabanski established Progressive Ag in 1992 and leads in providing services for crop marketing, insurance, and risk management. Ray Grabanski’s company serves as a leading authority in the industry, and its marketing arm received recognition from AGWEB-Top Producer as the best agricultural marketing firm in the country.

Top Producer tracks the ranking of marketing firms nationwide through its Market Advisor Track Records, and over the past decade, has continued to focus on creating accurate company profiles. The accuracy of advisory services is tested by basing reports on actual trades made using the advice of each firm, with adjustments for storage cost and basis. Top Producer releases its reports on a monthly basis to provide farmers with the most up-to-date information and ensure they receive crucial advisory statistics before the conclusion of the market year.

For more information on Top Producer’s Adviser Track Records or to view advisor records, visit agweb.com/top-producer/marketing/adviser-track-records.

Types of Crop Insurance

Ray Grabanski graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree and then a master's degree in agricultural economics from North Dakota State University. He is now the president and lead market analyst of Progressive Ag, a risk management company. At the company, Ray Grabanski helps clients with his expertise in many areas of agricultural business, such as crop insurance.

In general, farmers purchase crop insurance to protect themselves in the event of a loss of crops or a drop in the price of agricultural commodities. These losses can be caused by natural disasters such as hail and floods or by economic forces. There are two general categories of crop insurance: crop yield insurance and crop revenue insurance.

Crop yield insurance comes in the forms of hail insurance and multi-peril crop insurance. As the name suggests, multi-peril insurance covers crops that are damaged by disasters other than just hail. Hail insurance is covered by the private sector, while multi-peril insurance is provided by the federal government.

The second type of crop insurance is crop revenue insurance, which guarantees a price for crops using a market- and commodity-based formula. If crops fall below a certain price, crop revenue insurance will cover the difference for the farmer.

The Master of Divinity Fellowship at ILT

Currently serving as president and chief market analyst of Progressive Ag, Ray Grabanski is an experienced commodity marketer and entrepreneur. Outside of work, Ray Grabanski donates to organizations such as the Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT), which grants accredited seminary degrees to most denominations of the Lutheran Church, including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

ILT, a Christian Lutheran seminary and graduate school in Brookings, South Dakota, works to educate individuals on the gospel and teachings of God so they can better serve the church. To this end, ILT administers a Master of Divinity fellowship program that currently accepts up to 15 individuals per year. The program provides a $5,000 scholarship and another $5,000 in work-study benefits, as well as free housing. Fellows partake in an expedited academic study program to obtain a Master of Arts or Master of Divinity degree, enrolling in 30 credit hours per year. Undergraduate applicants must have a GPA of 3.0, while graduate applicants must have at least a 3.3.

Characteristics of Commodity Markets

In addition to donating to the Norman Lutheran Church and ILT.org, a non-ELCA seminary, Ray Grabanski is the president of Progressive Ag. Progressive Ag is a premier commodities marketing firm in the United States that deals primarily with agricultural commodities. Ray Grabanski has many years’ experience in commodity markets.

Commodity trading has grown over the years with investors and marketers seeking to make gains through strategic buying and selling. Today, commodity trading has a number of unique characteristics.

An important characteristic of commodity trading is that it requires agreed-upon standards. Commodities are usually traded without visual inspection. An investor in the United States can purchase livestock in another country without visual inspection, but with agreed-upon standards, assurance is given to the purchaser that the commodities are in good health or of high quality.

Commodity trading is also very dependent on global trends in industrialization, legislation, technology, and politics. For example, the emergence of China as an economic powerhouse in Asia has led to a reduction in available hard commodities such as steel for other countries. Similarly, China’s tightened legislative controls with regard to corn imports from the United States have significantly flooded the global market with US corn.

The economic forces of supply and demand also play a vital role in commodities trading. Lower supply leads to higher prices while a higher supply brings down commodity prices. Therefore, major disruptions such as extreme weather which reduces crop yield can send the price of agricultural commodities up.

Kindred School District Funds Scholarships through Alumni Drive

Ray Grabanski serves as the president and chief market analyst for Progressive Ag, a Fargo, North Dakota firm that provides services for the agribusiness industry, such as risk management, marketing solutions, and legal representation. Outside his dedication to the firm, Ray Grabanski donates to several community foundations, such as the Kindred School District. The Kindred School District fosters student success through the Kindred Area Dollars for Schools (KADFS) Alumni Drive, which raises funds for student scholarships.

Established in 1991, KADFS acts as the scholarship fundraising arm of the Kindred School District and promotes the fair distribution of funds to students in an equitable and nondiscriminatory manner. Its past awards included amounts up to $22,000 and it has distributed more than $210,000 in award funds over the last 23 years. The program collects funds through an alumni drive that encourages Kindred School graduates to donate monetary gifts in any amount, and alumni may dedicate gifts in memory or honor of a loved one. Additionally, the KADFS will match donations of $250 or more, and all donations are tax deductible.

KADFS operates as the North Dakota chapter of the Dollars for Scholars program, an initiative administrated by Scholarship America. For more information about the KADF Alumni Drive, visit kindred.dollarsforscholars.org.

ARC-CO Case Potentially Responsible for Farmer Profit Loss Nationwide

Ray Grabanski serves as the founder of the North Dakota-based Progressive Ag Law, where he provides a range of legal services for farmers and agribusinesses as a licensed attorney. In 2015, Ray Grabanski began leading awareness efforts for discrepancies between promised payments and actual payouts made under a 2014 farm bill and the Agriculture Risk Coverage-County (ARC-CO) federal commodity program.

The United States Department of Agriculture created ARC-CO to serve as an alternative for direct payment programs for farmers. Developed in February 2014, the commodity program provided financial and price support for farmers in the event that they fell short of a benchmark revenue. Payouts by ARC-CO were dependent on product yield and benchmark price, a figure determined through an invasive 15-page survey delivered to farmers before the ARC-CO bill passed in July 2015. According to preliminary investigations and farmer interviews, many farmers failed to complete the survey for two reasons: it asked for intrusive information on private net worth and farmers were uninformed of the survey’s importance at the time.

Problems arose when farmers began seeing the first set of payouts by ARC-CO in October 2015. Due to incomplete data required to determine the benchmark price, farmers received payouts that vastly differed from those in neighboring counties. For instance, farmers in LaMoure County, North Dakota received no compensation for revenues lost while neighboring counties received payments that varied between $20.95 and $80.94 per acre. Furthermore, issues with the ARC-CO problem also affected farmers in other states, including Iowa, Indiana, and Nebraska.

Progressive Ag Law continues to investigate the case and holds regular meetings in North Dakota and other affected states to keep farmers abreast of the investigation’s progress. Farmers are encouraged to attend any meeting at their convenience.

For additional information about the case, visit progressiveaglaw.com/agriculture-risk-coverage-county.