Published: April 21, 2008 11:40 am         

Agricultural consultants are low key

Profession is a budding one

“You have to keep your eyes and ears open at all times,” Maury Brannan said of his profession.

Brannan is an agriculture consultant. As an agriculture consultant, he has always been in the thick of things, helping large agriculture companies and farmers all across the world to determine how to grow specific crops, when they can and if they can.

A definition of agriculture consultants online at Encyclocentral.com states many agriculture consultants have been working in the profession for over 20 years. Consultants work with farmers to determine productive and profitable competitive farming techniques, according to the definition.

Brannan began his career in the field working with a company called Cargill, one of the biggest agriculture companies in the world, according to Brannan, and he was able to move up fast within the company.

“I was fortunate enough to get in with the company when I started,” he said. “Within five years at Cargill, I moved from analytical work to being one of the their top economists.”

Precision farming can probably best sum up what an agriculture consultant tries to teach farmers to do. Agronomy, entomology and plant pathology are all used by consultants to better a farmer’s chances of producing a productive crop. The individual issue for most farmers and the consultants they work with is determining what method the farmers should use that is ideal for their location and weather conditions. Brannan’s experience has shown him this is not an exact science.

“It depends on what you are analyzing,” Brannan said. “You can never be 100 percent correct.”

Crop scouting is a big part of his business. Crop scouting provides specific information on pest pressure and crop injury through field sampling by scouts. Scouts analyze the economic injury level and provide a scouting report as a record of their field sampling surveys. Brannan said he has found crop scouting to be quite profitable for him.

After 26 years in the business, Brannan split off on his own in 1991 and became an independent consultant.

Six to six-and-a-half day work weeks are the norm for Brannan for this type of analytical work. He begins his day at 5:30 a.m. by responding to a daily average of about 30 to 50 e-mails. He then checks the worldwide agriculture news wires and weather conditions, as well as the crop markets.

“It is all internally related,” Brannan said. “I just look for everything and do an awful lot of reading. Right now weather is having a tremendous impact on crops.”

Brannan said his local business only makes up about 10 percent of his accounts. While he is out traveling, he also has to keep up with the market prices of corn, wheat and grain, so he can properly consult with his clients. The travel is frequent, and the clients are some of the largest grain users in the world. He has found himself on four different continents, but his work with big clients has not made him feel a sense of empowerment.

“You have to remember when you do this type of work to be humble,” he said. “One still learns from other people and is still learning. This is that type of business,” Brannan said.

Brannan offered some advice for anyone interested in becoming an agriculture consultant. He said one thing to remember is that being an agriculture consultant is a lot different than being strictly a marketing consultant. He believes this is a business that can be taught at universities but really can’t be learned without experience.

“You have so many disciplines, and you can’t become an expert in all of them,” he said. “What you really have to have is something to offer which someone else desires. I’m a hands on person in a lot of this stuff. That is how you have to learn. It’s on the job training.”