RYAN MARTIN (aka “weatherstud”) graduated from Purdue University in 1996 with a B.S. Degree in Applied Agricultural Meteorology. However, Ryan has been involved in operational forecasting and broadcasting since 1992, and with agriculture all his life. Ryan was born and raised in North Central Indiana on a small diversified livestock farm. The family’s main enterprise was sheep and hay production. “It seemed like we could never get a hay cutting in the barn without some kind of rain popping up over the top of us, and I wanted to try and do something about that…so I became a meteorologist. While it still rained…we ended up with fewer loads of “rained-on” bad hay.” Ryan has worked in the private weather sector for over 22 years, providing weather information to a wide range of clients, and weather broadcasts to over 400 stations in the U.S. and Canada, including 6 of the top 10 radio markets. Wanting to be further involved in the agriculture industry, Ryan entered the world of farm broadcasting in 1998, starting an Agriculture programming department from scratch at WBTU-FM in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Ryan relocated to Kansas in October of 2001 to work as the Farm Director at the Mid America Ag Network in Wichita. In December of 2009 Ryan sold his interest in a news and weather production company he started, and began work toward a career as a Commodity Broker. Holding Series 3 and Series 30 licenses, Ryan used solution oriented approaches to trading, in order to solve the challenges that the markets, weather and ag industry throw at us on a daily basis for some of the biggest players in the trading business. That problem solving approach led Ryan to develop Site Assured Weather as a risk management tool to mitigate the problems that weather brings to not only the Agriculture Industry, but to all market segments. Ryan transitioned to the physical side of the grain trade in 2016, working 1 on 1 with farmers to purchase soybeans for the largest soybean crush plant in North America…Louis Dreyfus. This has allowed Ryan to meld his two biggest passions…weather and agriculture in the biggest way possible. Ryan currently produces weather forecasts for numerous radio stations and private consulting clients across the country, and continues to develop and enhance ways to mitigate weather risk using a seasonal forecast model he designed – all while daily working with producers wanting to market grain. A happily married father of two young sons, Ryan covets his time on the water and is happiest there, cruising, fishing or floating on his boats. He also is an avid motorcycle enthusiast and mechanic who enjoys building and restoring cars, motorcycles and tractors.