Ag Tribes Report: Electric Truck Mandates, Illegal deportation = food shortage? w/ @thefarmerslife

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] Support for the Ag Tribes report comes from river.com, an online platform for buying Bitcoin in the United States. Use the affiliate link provided in the show notes to purchase Bitcoin directly from River to grow your Bitcoin investment and support the podcast river.com. Invest in Bitcoin with confidence and Legacy. Interviews, a video service that captures people as they really are, so the future knows who they really were. Here's Legacy Interviews guest Phil Bender on how the experience allowed him time for personal reflection and an opportunity to honor his parents. What was the experience like of being interviewed at this depth? Very rewarding, very refreshing. You know, you're just, your sense of interest and the depth of the questions was really impressive and you stayed present through the whole thing because I pay attention to that kind of thing. You were really, were walking with me through it. This is a keepsake for me, but also a great way to honor my parents. There are a couple things about my dad you drew out today that I don't know if, if I've said, said that to him. I think it's a moment in time to reflect, engage, deepen your perspective on what you've accomplished. I am reflecting on my version of what I saw, what I felt, how I responded to it. That is a legacy that's valuable.

Vance Crowe [00:01:36] Welcome to the Ag Tribes report, a breakdown of the top stories affecting the culture of agriculture with your host, Vance Crowe. The report begins in 3, 2, 1. Let's begin. Welcome to the Ag Tribes report. I'm your host, Vance Crowe. Each week I bring on a co-host to represent the many perspectives of the ag tribes that collectively make up US and Canadian agriculture. This week I am joined by Brian Scott, otherwise known as the Farmer's Life on YouTube X and Facebook. Scott is a fourth generation farmer from northwest Indiana, managing 2,500 acres of corn, soybeans, popcorn, and wheat, with a focus on sustainable practices. His educational background includes a degree in soil and crop management from Purdue University, followed by a brief stint in retail before returning to farming in 2009. Scott uses technology extensively like drones for precision agriculture, and he's known for his advocacy work, educating the public through his YouTube channel the Farmer's Life. His online efforts have garnered near the 40,000 subscribers on YouTube where he discusses farming myths, particularly around GMOs and the real life operations of a modern farm. Brian, welcome to the Ag Tribes Report. Hey Vance, glad to be here. So this week we are going to talk about the price of corn and the start of the new year. We're gonna talk about the trucking mandates where electronic trucks are being pushed into the world.

Vance Crowe [00:03:09] We're gonna talk about a South Dakota dairy farmer who says that food shortages are just over the horizon if they deport illegals. And we're gonna talk about the price of a dozen eggs going around nationally. We're gonna do that and we're gonna find out Brian's Peter Thiel paradox, his worthy adversary, and of course, how much land is priced in Bitcoin in his little neck of the woods. So we're gonna do that all in 30 minutes, so we better get started right outta the gate. Brian, today, Susan Stroud posted, did you know that December corn has ended the year lower than it began? Seven of the last 10 years. The only year it finished higher in November versus the first trading day day in January were 20, 21 and 22, which were anything but normal. Today's CR open near 4 43 is 50 cents lower than last year's, but remains the fourth highest start for December corn from the past decade. What in the world is she talking about here, Brian? Are corn prices, are they good? Are they bad? What's going on with them right now?

Guest [00:04:16] So it's kind of relative. They've, they've been low for a while compared to what we're used to. Like she's threw out those three basically COVID years where things were were crazy high. So yeah, we're just over $4 now. I looked, we were at $6 back in the summer of 2023, which isn't all that long ago. I should have sold a bunch of corn for 24 and 25 then and I didn't. So I'll try to remember that the next time we get there. But they're, they're kind of decent now. Depends on how you look at it. They're low. We're close to cost of production or below it, depending on maybe where you are, what your land price is, all kinds of that stuff. But we're, what I say the other day, we're the highest we've been since June, so we're a lot better than we've been during this past growing season with the crop we've got in the bin. So it it's kind of relative. Yeah. Yeah. They're somewhat low, but at least here I had a big crop that I can, I can sell at these prices and it's been, it's been creeping up the last couple weeks, so we've been making some sales.

Vance Crowe [00:05:25] Yeah, A couple weeks ago, Zippy Duval, president of the American Farm Bureau was out there begging and pleading, you know, please, please Congress, make sure you give us the checks that so we can send them out to farmers. 'cause they may not survive if you're talking about prices going up or they're as good as they were in June, like, are farmers hurting?

Guest [00:05:44] Yeah. So I, I put out a tweet a week or so ago, I'm like, do you want this or not? And like, I, I don't really want it 'cause we had a big crop. Prices are kind of okay. I get a premium on half of the type of corn I grow and most of my beans are for seed. So I, I get higher than the market price already. So I'm not maybe hurting as bad as some, but what I found on Twitter, probably most of the replies were of my opinion, don't, don't give us this, it's just gonna keep the price of everything else inflated. This is just a pass through bailout for your banker and John Deere is what most people were saying. But then I

Vance Crowe [00:06:25] Yeah, that's what I had heard that like yeah, you know, people trying to negotiate contracts or, or new deals for equipment, nobody was coming down 'cause they're like, ah, I'm gonna be able to pop up that price again as soon as I know you've gotten that check and you can't argue that you don't have the money. 'cause I know how much you got.

Guest [00:06:40] Yeah, and if you, so like farm Credit posted out a letter in favor of it, like two and they just, they got scorched on Twitter for that. But then I had several replies of people from like Texas and places like that where they're on their second, third, fourth year of drought and I think cotton farmers are hurting if I understand that. Right. So I think it's kind of relative for me. It's like, oh, this is just gonna keep prices up. And I always say for, for tax reasons, whenever they send us money like this, a third of it's going right back where it came from next March. So

Vance Crowe [00:07:15] Is that right? Is that how it's brought into your, your balance

Guest [00:07:17] Sheet? It's the same, it's the same as selling corn. So if I, if they're gonna send us, I think right now it's $42 an acre for corn. I'm going to send what, $14 of that backed Uncle Sam a year from now.

Vance Crowe [00:07:35] Well, it seems like a good problem to have, but it is, of course. I'm not a big fan of it, but, all right, moving on to headline number two, the trucking industry pushing back on left Coast electric mandates. This is from Shelly Bohart Davis on XI just discovered that, and this is because I personally just discovered that there is a massive government push for electric cars starting from the model year 2024 manufacturers must sell an increasing percentage of Z EVs with targets reaching significant levels by 2035. So for example, 55% of class two B and three trucks, which include heavy duty pickup trucks like the f the Ford F two 50 used for towing and hauling. Then the Ford F three 50, they're, they're all gonna have to be, 55% of them are gonna have to be electric vehicles. So you gotta sell that 75% of class four through eight straight truck sales. So those are like delivery trucks, vans, they're gonna have to be electric vehicles in in some of these areas like California, Oregon, Washington state. And, and then the cla the, let's see here, the class seven, eight 40% of truck tractor sales, which is big rigs, 18 wheelers. They're going to have to be electric vehicles. So Shelly Bouchard Davis began talking about how there is finally large scale pushback due to manufacturers saying they can't deliver on this mandate.

Vance Crowe [00:09:05] They are also really worried that even though these mandates are going in, what happens if Trump comes in and reverses it, they've made a big investment there. So this is all sorts of craziness going on on one of the most important industries. 'cause everything you consume right now comes to you via a truck and there are giant mandates to push them to electric. So Brian, when you and I were getting ready for the show today, you were actually trucking, were you trucking in an electric truck?

Guest [00:09:31] I was not trucking in an electric truck. So I, I think electric vehicles can and will be awesome and more awesome as time goes on and we make a couple leaps in battery technology, that's, that's gonna help. But it's just to mandate it now or at all really doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And I know there was a thing, didn't California do something a while ago? Like if you had a truck older than X, it's gotta go and that would like qualify for the the three semis we run every day to just think that I've got these trucks that work fine and now I've got, I've gotta sell them and they're probably not worth anything 'cause nobody else wants 'em either. If we mandate this and I gotta go buy new trucks for six figures. What I'm, I'm trying to pay under 50 grand for a semi now and I don't even like to pay that much.

Vance Crowe [00:10:31] Yeah, I mean it's such a like a nefarious thing. I I think also the way that they did it, that 55% of your sales means that you now are being told if you wanna sell these other vehicles that you can at a profit or whatever you, but the only way you're gonna get these other ones sold is if you take 'em at a loss because like in your circumstance, you're not able to sell your truck or trade it up or you know, use it for some other thing. This is gonna totally distort the market and it's absolutely creating a bubble when you're right. If if electric vehicles, electric trucks were a better service, a better tool, people would use them.

Guest [00:11:08] Right? And I think they will be at some point, but, but not yet.

Vance Crowe [00:11:15] Yeah, I remember I was listening to Sean Newman's podcast and he was talking to the lumber industry and they love having these diesel trucks that do diesel all, you know, on their way up whenever they need it. And then as they use their brakes all the way down, they fill up their batteries and it ends up becoming this like great hybrid situation. But right now we don't have that, that kind of, you know, gradient where you can grab battery power and we don't have all the charging stations. I can only imagine how many charging stations you'd have to put out in the middle of rural America in order to be able to service all the trucks out there.

Guest [00:11:50] Yeah, I've been following, if people go look at Edison Motors up in Canada, they're, they're pretty interesting. And basically the idea is like plug and play, swap your big truck axles with electric axles. You keep a small diesel engine up front, it's an onboard generator. It doesn't power the drive train at all. It's just a generator. And actually I know a ram is coming out with a half ton pickup that's set up like that too. That might be pretty interesting.

Vance Crowe [00:12:18] Yeah. But anytime you force people to put this technology out before it's there or you give them incentives to put it out before it's ready, it's just not, it doesn't help. Alright, moving on to headline three. This was huge news in x, A South Dakota farmer says that deportation of illegals will cause massive food shortages in a CNN interview. Dairy farmer Greg Mos said that if Trump plans to deport illegal migrants moving forward, quote, no one will be producing food within two days. We will not have food, there will not be food anywhere. This kicked off a firestorm on x junior burdick. AKA junior cow farmer quote said quote right here is the problem. A dairy farmer who made his money by gaming the system, admitting basically that he hires undocumented or illegals to milk his cows. The actions of hundreds like him have destroyed an industry, rural communities and his neighbors. So he could have his, this right here is why America is dying. Brian, did you see this going on in X and do you think if illegals are deported, we're gonna run out of food in two days?

Guest [00:13:29] I saw that and I saw the interview you're talking about and of course everybody's talking about the, the two days. And of course I'm not, I'm a I'm a row crop farmer. I don't pretend to know how dare or produce work like at all. But the two days I would guess that is probably a little extreme. It might mount up pretty quick and I don't illegal or not migrant labor. There, there is the fact that those, those are the people doing that work, especially when it comes to, to produce about an hour east of here. You get into a lot of tomatoes and I saw a guy interviewed a while back and said, what if you didn't have any migrant labor? He goes, we've tried to hire local people and like they last a week at the most, they just, local people will not do it. So we gotta get that labor from somewhere. I don't know if we're gonna starve to death in two days. But

Vance Crowe [00:14:24] I mean there is no question that, I mean most of the produce that we eat is done by migrants, whether they're illegal or not. You know, that depends on who you ask and where you're at. A huge amount of our livestock are taken care of that way. I have to say, I think that it's hard to say that whether our Americans would do that or not. It's probably that Americans won't do it for the wages that we're willing to pay in order to be competitive. So if anybody in the system is using illegals, all of a sudden their cost of labor goes way down. And if somebody is saying, I can either stoop over and pick these lettuce heads like this all day, or I can do this really difficult work of cleaning up after these animals, or I could make the same amount working at McDonald's, I'm gonna go work at McDonald's. It's an obvious choice. You're gonna get way better benefits. So I think that it's hard to know whether Americans would work in those jobs. It's probably that they wouldn't work at them relative to other work that they could do.

Guest [00:15:18] Yeah, that's probably right. And I, I've actually bent over and picked up the lettuce like you're talking about. We, we have family that farms in Hawaii actually and we went and visited him one time and yeah, I would, I would rather sit in my air conditioned combine cab and listen to the radio than be half hunched over all day chopping heads of lettuce off of a knife.

Vance Crowe [00:15:38] Oh man, I, we will have John bolts on, he's the farm bureau president in, in Arizona, but I've been down visiting his farm actually and I couldn't even do it for like 10 minutes. I mean, you know, just, just being the size that I am and my, like I don't

Guest [00:15:52] Move

Vance Crowe [00:15:53] In that way. That work is absolutely brutal. But if you pair that with whatever minimum wage that we have, which then forces wage jobs for delivering food or working in a McDonald's or standing at the front counter of a hotel and it bumps that wage up so much, people don't wanna pay that, those kind of fees for how much it would cost us to get our food produced. So I think this is one, a problem of minimum wage and two, probably a problem of our infinite money printers that are constantly inflating our money. All right, headline number four. Speaking of prices, the price of a dozen eggs is too damn high. The average price for a dozen grade, a large eggs was reported to be around $3 and 65 cents in November. Showing a notable increase from earlier in the year. The price has been influenced by bird flu's impact on egg production. You know, Christina Hudson Kohler from Hudson Egg Farms always sends me an update. She was saying, Hey, we are right now getting $6 for a dozen large eggs out here, which is what prompted me to look into this. And there are wild fluctuations in price right now in California. There are egg prices for a dozen retail sold $8 and 97 cents all the way up to $9 and 12 cents in the Midwest. My supermarket right now is closer to about 4 25 a dozen. It's crazy. We eat a lot of eggs in my house, but I am actually noticing the price of eggs impacting our bottom line.

Vance Crowe [00:17:24] Are you seeing this, Brian? What? What's a price of a dozen eggs cost in your neck of the woods?

Guest [00:17:29] I looked at our Walmart today, they're 3 99 for a dozen like normal grade A eggs. I don't run through enough eggs to notice it in my budget, but I do, I do other stuff. Eggs seems to be the one that's, that's getting picked up on. But like my wife and I we're at like that income level we're like, you don't think about what you're spending at the grocery store, but lately, the last few months, like some of the stuff we regularly get or I like to grab a few ribeyes every once in a while or something. I'm like, geez, that's, that's a hundred bucks to eat a meal at our house. And they're like, this let, I mean it's 40 bucks to go to McDonald's for the four of us. That's it used to be like 19. So it's, yeah, it's, the price of food is is pretty noticeable right now.

Vance Crowe [00:18:17] Yeah, and I mean I was actually just noticing a tweet on X that the dairy farmers, whatever the co-op DFA was talking about, how there's been actually a huge increase in the amount of milk and butter that is being sold. I think this is largely a function of people doing paleo and carnivore diets. So there might be some aspect of just sheer demand. I know in my house when I moved onto a keto diet, the amount of butter and cream cheese that I went in increased probably, probably more than 50%. But I do think avian flu has killed off millions upon millions of birds. And I think that there are a lot of people that like are watching these prices saying, you know, are we ever gonna come out of COVID pricing for eggs? It doesn't seem like it.

Guest [00:19:07] Yeah. And it's, if you combine flu with, if there is more demand or you know, it's, it's January 2nd, people are trying like, I'm gonna go on the diet or whatever. Maybe demand is just ultra high right now and not enough birds.

Vance Crowe [00:19:21] Christina Hudson Kohler did chime in to say we haven't gone that high with our customers. I think it's just that the pricing board that she sends me was $6. All right, we have covered the headlines. If there is news that you think we should be covering, don't hesitate to send it to me on X at Vance Crowe or you can always send it to Vance at Legacy Interviews. We would love to find out what stories are going on. I always post that because the stories that I can see in my bubble are different than the ones that you're gonna see in your bubble. And as evidence that Brian sent me a couple of stories I didn't know were going on. Moving on to the Bitcoin land price report. Brian, what county do you live in and what is an acre of land cost in terms of US dollars?

Guest [00:20:08] I live in Carroll County, Indiana, and I would say right now a, a pretty good piece of dirt is is gonna be about $12,000 in our area.

Vance Crowe [00:20:20] And in your part of Indiana, are you like, you know, corn and soy? It's just growing e everywhere. It's super tall. Is it as beautiful and bountiful as Illinois and Iowa?

Guest [00:20:30] Yeah, not, not quite there we say we're on the, we're on the wrong half of our county and then we actually farm a little bit in white county, which a lot of that is flat and black and white open. But we farm the broken up sandy part of White county, so,

Vance Crowe [00:20:46] So all right, we'll factor from 12,000 per acre last week or the last time we did an ag tribes report, the, the Bitcoin price was $97,900. Today at last check it was $96,900. So it's about 1% off from the last time we did the ag tribes report. If you were to buy a, an acre of land using Bitcoin at 12,000 per acre, it's about 0.124 Bitcoins per acre. In other words, if you were sitting in Carroll County, Indiana and you had one Bitcoin, you would be able to buy eight acres of farmland. Brian, how does that sit with you?

Guest [00:21:25] Yeah, that, that's interesting. We just by chance a a neighbor cleaning up some family stuff, we kind of happened into 12 acres that attaches to the end of one of our fields. So if I had a Bitcoin laying around that would've taken care of three quarters of that purchase, it was 12,000 an acre actually. So

Vance Crowe [00:21:45] What do people in your tribe think of Bitcoin? Where, where is the ag tribe, the corn and soy people talking about it?

Guest [00:21:53] I don't hear much about it outside of being on, on Twitter for the most part. I kind of poke at my life life a little bit. Like hey, let's put a little bit like in the Bitcoin or whatever. I have a, I have a savings account I've had since I was a kid. One of those, like I, it's at a different bank than all our other stuff and I try to never look at it except when we do our balance sheets at the end of the year, it's, there's about one Bitcoin sitting in there and that money that I try to pretend I don't even have

Vance Crowe [00:22:23] Any idea what interest rate it's getting.

Guest [00:22:26] Oh, nothing at that bank.

Vance Crowe [00:22:28] So it's just burning away then?

Guest [00:22:30] Yep, pretty much it's inflating away.

Vance Crowe [00:22:33] Well then that gives me the perfect opportunity. If you were listening to the front of the show, you know that I have accepted an affiliate link from river.com which is a place to buy Bitcoin and this is the first time I have ever put myself out there to, to connect with an actual platform selling Bitcoin. So this actually happened a few weeks ago. My worthy adversary Adam Jones was giving me a bunch of shit about talking about Bitcoin. He told me that I was either really risking it for other people like what happens if they invest a bunch of money and lose it, how bad am I gonna feel? And then he also was saying that I sounded like a late night huckster that talks about gold. So I just wanted to throw something out there if you want something that's really interesting to look at, Google Vance Crow, Bitcoin, Warren Buffet. And when you do that you are gonna find an article from CNBC that I wrote in 2014 making the case for Bitcoin in detail long before most people had ever even heard of Bitcoin, let alone whatever push back on the Oracle of Omaha. Since that article was published, Bitcoin has had a 16500% return. I'm gonna repeat that again 'cause I actually had to practice saying that number 16500% return since that article was published. So this is not a huckster. If you had read that article or if you had been one of my friends at the time that decided, hey, this is a good idea, I'm gonna go out and buy that, you would've had one of the largest returns maybe you will ever get in your lifetime.

Vance Crowe [00:24:04] So up until now, I've only talked about Bitcoin and I've, the closest I've ever come to interacting with it is I offer a discount when you buy Legacy Interviews through it. And so we, we offer 15% off if you wanna buy a legacy interview that way. But I've never endorsed a group, I've never said, hey buy on this platform. But I recently was trying to update my regular purchase that I make of Bitcoin and I was using Coinbase and I get there and I start calculating the fees that they're charging and I was like, this is insane, I don't want that. And so I started looking around and I found this company River, which my friends had talked about and I was so impressed with it that after I signed up and I started using it, I looked into what would it take to tell other people about it. And I decided that I was gonna thumb my nose at Adam and say, you know what, if you're gonna call me a huckster, I'm actually going to tell people that I do like this platform. I think it's really good. And if you buy, if you sign up using the affiliate link that I've provided you, you will not only be able to buy Bitcoin in a great location or at least one that I use, but you'll also be supporting the podcast. In the last year I've been asked by no less than more than a hundred people what they, where they should buy Bitcoin and I personally am saying that I am buying on River. And if you would like to check out the affiliate link in the show notes. Alright, thanks Brian for sitting through that. I just wanted to give Adam Jones a a hard time here. Now moving on to the Peter Teel paradox.

Vance Crowe [00:25:41] What, what, turning now to the Peter Teel paradox. Brian, what is something that you believe that almost no one in your ag tribe agrees with you on?

Guest [00:25:51] I have a few, I gotta pick one here. I'm gonna go with, this goes back several years. I was at a conference, there's a panel discussion between I believe some barley farmers in Colorado and I think some executives from Coors. And they were talking about water usage, aquifers getting really low, aquifers, getting really low, all that kind of stuff, trying to conserve water and everything. And I've just had this thought in the back of my head for years, like, if we're draining the, the aquifers to grow cheap, crappy light beer, should we even be doing that at all?

Vance Crowe [00:26:35] Alright, we are going to move on and we're just gonna do the last section. I I'm, I'm not even gonna give you a score 'cause we can't interact on it, but who is your worthy adversary?

Guest [00:26:46] I have not been doing a lot of online arguing lately, but I decided to pick you Vance. 'cause I, I know we've gone back and forth a few times and you with other people about drainage tile in fields and in what effect that is having downstream. I wouldn't say maybe there's zero repercussions, but I think the, the benefits of tiling our fields as far as erosion and keeping nutrients where they're supposed to be, keeping the dirt where it's supposed to be and out of the waterways and being able to grow more crops on the same amount of land is out outweighs what little, what little things there might be downstream.

Vance Crowe [00:27:30] So whenever people gimme this argument back like, hey there, it's helping us not to have so much erosion and it's not, it's allowing our aquifers to, you know, be able to, you know, I don't even know the, the argument that you're making here, the one that I always come back to is if you look at the, the, the ecological footprint of the Mississippi River Basin, it is absolutely enormous. And if you are draining off all that water, 2, 3, 4 weeks faster than you were, than you were before because you, before you had pattern tile, you cannot say that that does not have a huge implication. And your point is, well it's maybe it's worth it that there's a trade off there and I'm willing to do it. But to me, I think that we like at least need to discuss what these larger impacts are and we're gonna leave it there. I think Brian can't hear me on this, so we're gonna leave it there with the worthy adversary and his Peter Teel paradox. Brian, I'm gonna say thank you so much for coming on. I'm not exactly sure what happened here, but on the whole, we had a really great episode. If you wanna find out more about Brian, you can find that on the Farmer's Life. He's got a fantastic YouTube channel and he is fun to interact with on X. If you're interested in having me do a legacy interview with you or your loved ones, go to Legacy Interviews dot com slash experience to be able to watch a video showing what Legacy Interviews are all about.

Vance Crowe [00:29:02] Also, don't forget in the show notes, I will include a link to the, the word of the adversaries and we will include myself on that. You can see other worthy adversaries and we will be back next week for another Ag Tribes report. Until then, feel free to disagree.