GRAIN GUY FIFTY BLOG

How a Handful of Rivers Feed the World Part 1 — Why Only a Handful of Rivers Matter When folks ask how many rivers there are in the world, they expect a clean number. The truth is we do not really know. It depends on what you choose to call a river instead of a creek or a stream. Some sources talk about thousands of named rivers. Others say there are tens of thousands if you count the smaller and seasonal channels that have local names. Even when you narrow it down to what th

You'd have a hard time finding a better place anywhere to grow corn and beans. And that's why Macon County is, proudly, the home of GG50.

I didn’t start diving in some tropical paradise. Hell, I didn’t even start in a place most people would willingly swim. I got certified in the borrow pits of central Illinois, cold, murky water that smelled like mud and tractor grease, the kind of place where you learn to trust your gear before you ever see a coral reef. I was a country boy who worked hard, and when I finally got the chance to play hard, I took it. Diving became my escape, my reset button, my Jimmy Buffett Ca

I was driving from Mt. Zion up to Bloomington to work out of the Advance Trading(ATI) office. The sun was shining. It was already eighty five degrees. The forecast said we would hit ninety later in the afternoon. As usual, I was doing my unofficial crop survey along the way. I watched the fields paying attention to color, canopy, weeds, maturity, and if there was standing water in the ditches or not. But something else caught my eye. I passed hundreds of windmills on that dr

A civilizational ranking built by an operator who scores grain systems for a living and decided to point the same framework at world history. I build scoring models. That is what I do. You hand me a grain elevator, a logistics corridor, and a supply chain decision. I will hand you back a ranked analysis with weighted dimensions, era-normalized comparisons, and a defensible bottom line. A few weeks ago, I decided to point that same framework at something a little bigger than a

I grew up a California kid in the 1950s and 60s, watching cowboy movies and TV series and then walking outside to see the real thing. There were ranches all around our place, a couple of jackpot rodeos nearly every weekend within an hour’s drive, and plenty of classmates who ended up riding line on cattle in the Sierras right out of the 1860s playbook. By the time I made my way to Cal Poly’s ag program, a lot of my classmates in animal science were headed for a life that look

If you've followed my writing on grain, logistics, management, and supply chains, you already know what I do. This is a bit of the story behind why I do it and what's been driving me since I was a kid. In the late 1970’s I watched a management and leadership training film entitled “ You Are What You Were When”, produced by Morris Massey. The theme of the film was that your core values, the things that drive your decisions, reactions, and worldview are shaped by the era and

What the GFAI Survey Reveals—and What 50 Years in the Grain Industry Confirms The latest GFAI October eSurvey on aging infrastructure offers a telling snapshot of how investment decisions are being made across our industry. The top five drivers: Cost of upgrades (~80%) Safety or compliance concerns (~60%) Capacity limitations (~50%) Long-term strategic planning (~40%) Location or logistics (~20%) These results mirror what I’ve seen over five decades in the grain industry

Poor writing doesn’t just soak up our time. It comes with real costs to our career success, in the form of lost credibility, broken contracts and stalled career

It has been a few weeks since nearly 4,000 grain industry professionals attended the 2025 GEAPS Expo in Kansas City. The Expo features...