This episode features Jeff Kazen and Mike Rolfson, co-founders of Agris Academy and former Cargill executives with decades of experience operating in challenging global markets. Jeff spent 30 years at Cargill, including managing Venezuela's oils business during the country's hyperinflation crisis under Maduro, while Mike pioneered Cargill's Ukraine operations starting in 1995, building the business from a representative office to hundreds of millions in investment.

The conversation explores the practical realities of running industrial food operations in unstable environments, from Venezuela's currency collapse that made paper money worth more as fuel than currency, to Ukraine's wartime agricultural adaptations. Both guests detail how multinational corporations navigate corruption, secure supply chains, and maintain operations when basic infrastructure fails, offering insights into the hidden complexities of global commodity trading.

Venezuela's Currency Collapse and Dollar Hunt

Venezuela's bolivar collapsed from 1:800 to 1:12,000 during Jeff's tenure, creating a situation where 'the BTU value of a paper bolivar was worth more than it could buy - you could literally burn it for fuel' - Jeff

Cargill was forced to create dedicated teams whose primary job became 'dollar generation' rather than normal operations, desperately trying to export anything from salt to wooden pallets to secure hard currency for spare parts and raw materials

The government required all transactions in bolivars but couldn't provide dollar exchanges, forcing companies to either get dollars from exports or 'the corporation says we will put no more dollars in the country' - Jeff

Venezuela reached the point where they couldn't afford to fly in newly printed bolivars because the printing was done abroad in dollars and they lacked funds to pay the printing bills

Operating Under Socialist Regimes and Security Challenges

Cargill maintained extensive Venezuelan operations including flour mills, oil refineries, pasta plants, and consumer brands, but had to follow both US anti-bribery laws and local socialist regulations requiring bolivar transactions

Security became a major operational cost, with companies needing 'security experts that understood what they had to do on the ground to get shipments safe from the port to the plant' - Jeff

Brain drain accelerated when Venezuela nationalized plants 'at gunpoint' - skilled managers fled globally, with Jeff noting 'if you're a highly skilled manager operator, you don't want to stick around and start to have to do your job at gunpoint'

Cargill offices became 'pockets of developed world comfort' with satellite communications and nice facilities, while employees had to 'zip from secured compound to secured compound' and faced blackouts and empty grocery stores at home

Ukraine's Agricultural Adaptation During Wartime

Mike pioneered Cargill's Ukraine operations starting in April 1995, building from a theoretical representative office to 'seven or eight business units and a couple hundred million dollars invested' over five years

Ukrainian farmers adapted to wartime by simplifying operations, switching from complex crops like sunflowers and corn to basic wheat and barley that require 'materially less expensive' seed and fertility inputs - Mike

The biggest wartime challenges are human capital shortages - 'just to find people that can be part of your work teams, whether driving trucks or combines' - and damaged export infrastructure forcing reliance on smaller Danube River systems

Ukraine's rich soil allows farmers to 'get away with lesser intensive agronomic crops like wheat to still eke out a pretty darn good crop' despite reduced inputs and security concerns

Navigating Corruption and Building Trust Networks

Cargill's anti-bribery policies created competitive advantages in corrupt environments because customers knew 'you were actually going to make a contract and stick to the contract' and 'your word was your bond' - Jeff

In 1990s Ukraine, Mike's team bypassed corrupt state systems by going 'straight to the farms in smaller quantities' and building 'atypical ways of getting grain out of the country' through Danube River infrastructure

Western companies often preferred working together in difficult markets because they shared similar ethical standards and operational reliability, creating networks of trusted business relationships

The advice for new market entrants: 'start with a small business that you can run there with a reasonable investment and treat that as a learning curve' before making major capital commitments - Jeff

Resources Mentioned

Landman

Joe Weisenthal references the CBS television show Landman, noting how it depicts themes relevant to commodity trading including trucks that disappear due to cartel activity and then mysteriously reappear, paralleling the security challenges described in Venezuela.