His phone feeds him real-time weather reports. He gets commodity prices from the satellite radio in his tractor. His TV stays tuned to the Weather Channel. He calls the DTN system in his shop a “vital tool” and the Chicago Board of Trade his “best friend.”But Stuart Sanderson is no Wall Street investment broker — he’s a row crop farmer trying to reduce his risks.”You hear the term ‘risk management,’ but how do you avoid risk?” he said. “In farming, there’s a risk every day — we’re dependent on the rain, the sunshine, the warm weather, the cold weather. So, the risk is always going to be there. The key is to buffer against that risk. We can’t alleviate that risk — we can’t make it rain and we can’t make it stop raining — but if we position ourselves against some of that, we can survive times when our yields are at record lows and the profit’s not out there.”The secret to that, Stuart says, is marketing. “The profit isn’t made out there in the planting, it’s made in the marketing of your crops six months before your crops are even planted,” said Stuart, who along with wife Deborah and 2-year-old son, Spencer, are recognized as the Alabama Farmers Federation’s Outstanding Young Farm Family in the Wheat and Feed Grains Division.As an example, Stuart, who majored in marketing at the University of Alabama, said a large portion of his ’07 wheat crop was booked in early August when wheat was trading on the Chicago Board of Trade at an all-time high. The same is true for the 2007 corn crop. In both cases, the deals were done even before the seed hit the ground.”Now to realize that profit, we do have to make wheat. We have to plant it and get it growing,” emphasized Stuart. “A farmer is never going to sell at the highest or the lowest — we’ll always be somewhere in the middle.”Stuart says marketing is one of his roles as partner in Henderson Farms, a 4,000-acre operation that includes his cousin Chad Henderson, his uncle Mike Henderson, and his grandfather, G. W. Henderson.Risk is further reduced by diversification — the farm plants corn, wheat, cotton and soybeans. “I wouldn’t want to have 4,000 acres of cotton — that would be setting yourself up for a hit or miss,” said Sanderson. “But with four crops and four different growing seasons, that’s a big way we try to spread our risk out and avoid a total disaster.”Still, he keeps close watch on the weather and the commodity market by using whatever means necessary, whether it’s calling up fellow farmers on his cell phone or keeping check on the Chicago Board of Trade.”I don’t put a lot of money into the CBOT as far as buying and selling futures — that’s a risk I have absolutely no control over,” he said. “But I need to know what’s going on in that market. So, I get home, I pull up my computer, go to the CBOT and look to see what happened, see where the futures are going. The CBOT is my best friend — it’s not going to make or break us, but it’s going to help us get by.”He feels the same about the DTN system he keeps in his shop, the satellite radio in his tractor, the AccuWeather reports on his phone, and The Weather Channel on TV.”I’m all for technology,” said Stuart. “We farm 4,000 acres of land with five people. Without technology, without the more efficient equipment, we wouldn’t be able to do that.”That admiration for technology also extends to Deborah, an engineer with a missile defense and aerospace supplier who he met early one morning at the gymnasium where they both worked out.”Let’s face it — at 5 o’clock in the morning neither one of us ever look our best,” said Stuart. “I always had a ball cap on and sweat pants or warm-up suit, and a lot of times, a long-sleeved shirt. Debbie had her hair up in a ponytail and no makeup and workout clothes. So even though we knew each other, I guess you could say our first date was a blind date because we never saw each other cleaned up. That’s how we met. Her being an engineer and me being a farmer, we weren’t going to have lunch at the same place.””Stuart has brought a different aspect of conversation to family gatherings,” said Deborah. “It’s true. My sister is an accountant, my brother is a lawyer, I’m an engineer, and my best friends are engineers and business owners. … I didn’t know anything about farming until I met him, and I’ve learned a lot.”She said she sees her role as relating more to home life than farm life, such as taking care of Spencer, whose first word at age nine months was “tractor.””I’ve never seen such an excited child with the love of life that he has,” said Deborah. “As we get older, we lose some of that, but I want him to keep that as much as he can because he’s so happy and so excited about everything. I love that because that’s pure and straight from God.”Stuart also says Deborah provided emotional support throughout this summer’s drought. “Debbie was there telling me it’s going to be all right,” said Stuart. “We’d had three excellent years in a row, but this drought was leaving a bad taste in my mouth. But she kept reminding me of how blessed we were with our health, our son, our faith, and our business, that the sun is still going to come up tomorrow.”Together, the farmer and engineer have also become partners in the effort to bring Alabama’s first ethanol manufacturing plant to Decatur. Tennessee Valley AgriEnergy (TVAE), founded by a group of farmers including Stuart, raised $5 million in 22 days, and is expected to break ground on construction Jan. 1.”Our fuel is produced by foreign hands, and we see the situation it’s in now with the price of diesel fuel,” said Stuart. “We can’t afford to let our food production leave this country. I firmly believe that there are enough people in this country who will say, ‘We’re not going to do this again. We’re going to grow our own fuel.'”