When reminiscing about how we used to give away Carson City circulated Morgan silver dollars, minted with silver from the Comstock Lode mine, as an incentive to new subscribers, it dawned on me that that was 40 years ago. Those silver dollars are worth about five times what they cost us back then.

When the company started in the early 1980s, I was a refugee from the Ag Depression of the 1980s, becoming a broker so that I could continue to farm. The initial owner of the company was a stock broker and I was the commodity broker. I was the one who came up with the name of the Company, CommStock Investments, in order to cover both investment classes. The owner, who had a family legacy in the beef packing industry, left to become CEO of a beef packing plant in Dodge City, Kansas, and subsequently he sold me CommStock Investments.

The initial version of the CommStock report began as a radio report on a single station, KICD in Spencer. That was back when the recording technology was an 8-track tape, and as stations were added it had to be individually re-sent from a master recording to each station. There was no editing the report while recording it, so when I had a cold there was some sneezing and coughing in those reports. Today the recording is digital, easily modified and put out for stations via internet/email. Radio station coverage grew to where at one time, most of the Corn Belt, from Kansas to Wisconsin, had a station carrying the report.

As part of my retirement transition, we transferred the duties of the radio report in June of last year to Marlin Bohling, who is the master of our more recently created CommStock Channel podcasts on YouTube. I do not believe that the internet existed when the CommStock report was first initiated. Technology has aided producing and airing the report greatly.

CommStock Investments moved its offices from Spencer to Royal, Iowa, with the partnership of the Royal Telephone Company who offered us T1 cable high-speed internet in 2000. In fact, because we needed high-speed internet brought in for our business, the small rural town of Royal benefited from this too. Sister companies, AgriVantage crop insurance and Royalty Property Casualty Company, were created, sharing the offices in Royal.

Back in the 1980s, the DTN/Farmdata satellite quote service became popular and DTN needed analyst content. The CommStock Report then became a subscriber service aired over their system, starting a once-a-day report and then a.m. and p.m. reports. Internet subscribers were later added. The initiation was extremely successful and subscribership grew. Newspapers were looking for farm columnists and the CommStock report was edited into a weekly column and continues to be carried by a number of papers today.

It is hard to imagine now, looking back at the scope of my overall daily job responsibilities as the company grew, how I could do all that was done. First to go was livestock, where I had been feeding both hogs and cattle. The crop farming was ongoing, where after 51 years, this year I became the landlord to my son, Matthew, who has taken over the operational management, renting our farms in Clay County. My wife, Jane, who worked outside our home as we built the company, eventually came into the office to help run the company to support me bringing a new level of professionalism that added value. She had a similar farm legacy in her family and she and I merged the two. We have been fortunate to find talent and commitment in our CommStock employees who have helped build the company. CommStock Investments is a family business with a son-in-law, Josh Van Ryswyk, serving as CFO/compliance officer in the Des Moines executive office.

I look back with disbelief that at one time I was farming (my father greatly contributing), doing full time brokerage, writing the CommStock Report, sending it to radio and satellite services while editing it into print articles for the media. At one time, I was also president of an investment company, Brazil Iowa Farms, that was farming nearly 20,000 acres in Bahia, Brazil, as another responsibility. Plan B, an aggressive soybean trade strategy to compete with Brazil promoted through this report, took my son Matthew and I to Brazil for the first time in December 2001.

Today the core CommStock report is now a product of several contributors. I still write the p.m. report Monday, Tuesday and Thursday each week. My son Matthew, who spends a couple months each year on his wife’s family farm in Minas Gerais, Brazil, writes the South American report for the Wednesday p.m. CommStock Report. I think that it is the best report on South American Ag out there, because he lives it. Matthew oversaw the operation of the BIF farms in Brazil for a decade before returning to the U.S. when that company was sold and he then got his MBA.

Matthew has transitioned over the past few years to become president, CEO and now full owner of CommStock Investments. Over those years, our brokerage business, which we clear through RJO, has expanded from the single office in Royal, Iowa, to offices or representatives in Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota, Illinois and Missouri. The companies’ executive offices are in West Des Moines.

Matthew and his wife Carol both hold dual U.S./Brazilian citizenship. Her family has a large farm operation producing soybean seed, corn, dairy and coffee in Brazil. She is a “farmer” and graduated from business school in Toronto, Canada. My daughter-in-law was named to the 2024 Forbes list of 50 most influential women in Brazilian agriculture. Carol interpreted for Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds at the Iowa Farm Progress Show when the governor spoke to Brazilians in attendance. The coffee operation, 1,200 acres, is her responsibility and they began importing it to the U.S. several years ago to roasters. It arrives in containers on the east coast, is shipped to cold storage in Indiana and then distributed to roasters. It is certified by Starbucks. It is available through their www.GauchaSpecialtyCoffee.com website for purchase. Hurry to buy it before the tariff gets added.

This is the 40th year anniversary report … not my final retirement announcement. I still feel relevant, able to share my perspective of fast-changing world events and am transparent to subscribers in how I am managing our farms, investments and businesses in this developing turmoil. I tell you what I am doing and that becomes my advice. There is no other report like ours. www.commstock.com

I wouldn’t miss this for the world. I love history and if you have not figured out its significance, we are seeing some serious history in the making right now. I think that my experience should be helping some people, which is what this is all about.

I want to sincerely thank each and every subscriber for the long-term relationship that we have carried with so many of you and for your support. I have always looked at this report as a means to communicate the interests of independent family farmers in the ag sector and world beyond, starting before there even was such a thing as social media. It has been 40 years and we’re still going.