Randy Schwalke, Courtesy Feed Marketing Advisors
By Eric Jenks, Special to NEAFA
For June, NEAFA caught up with Randy Schwalke, Founder and Managing Partner of Feed Marketing Advisors. “Feed Marketing Advisors (FMA) is a feed industry business advisory group,” said Schwalke. “Our firm consists of two partners, myself and Mark Krieger, the Director of Strategic Market Development. Additionally, we have forty advisors that make up the rest of the team. We work with seventy select clients, which makes up our feed marketing group. It’s a mix of feed companies, premix companies, ingredient companies, grain traders, packaging and bag companies. We work with all aspects of the feed industry’s supply chain.”
FMA was founded in 2008, though Schwalke’s career in the agribusiness sector goes back to 1973. “I live in Chester, NH today, but I grew up in Missouri,” said Schwalke. “I received a fellowship from Moorman Manufacturing Company, which was a large feed company at the time to attend Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri. Later they became ADM Alliance Nutrition, and I was involved in a number of different positions with the company over the years. I had an opportunity to become involved with Blue Seal, where I served as Vice President and President. In 2008 I left Blue Seal to found Feed Marketing Advisors.”
FMA has two different divisions; Merger and Acquisitions, as well as Strategic Market Development. “With merger and acquisitions, we represent buyers and sellers within the feed industry supply chain. We then help them find buyers and sellers as needed, and we help facilitate those related transactions. Part of that is giving a financial analysis of a business, so that they have a better idea of what their valuation should be, and how to solicit prospective buyers or sellers based off of that. On the strategic services side, we provide strategic planning, personnel development/training, financial analysis, operational efficiency and compliance, networking, and advocacy. For networking our clients inherently don’t compete with each other. The membership isn’t geographic based like NEAFA; membership eligibility is determined in part by not competing with our other members directly for the niches they fill in the agricultural market. We advocate for intra member business connections and relationships, as well as working with a number of international clients, where we’re helping them bring their products from Europe, Australia, etc., to establish distribution in the USA.”
Schwalke has a long history with NEAFA, going back to his time as President of Blue Seal. “I wanted to be involved with regional activities and groups,” said Schwalke. “I was President of the New England Grain and Feed Council, and I was on the board during the merger with the Eastern Federation of Feed Merchants. I like the networking that NEAFA offers, and the regional policy influence that the group has. I’m proud that the industry has a voice with our legislators because of the work that NEAFA does. They’re behind the scenes, they really have a finger on the pulse of what’s going on with legislative bodies in the Northeast.”
To learn more about Feed Marketing Advisors, you can visit their website at https://www.feedadvisors.com/