Ag Tribes Report: ICE Raids, MAHA Confirmation Hearings, soybeans burn in Brazil @TRFyeomanfarmer

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] The Ag Tribes report is brought to you by Legacy Interviews, a video service that captures people as they really are, so the future knows who they really were. Listen to Legacy Interviews, guests, Dan and Kathy Brooks on the unexpected experience they had sharing stories from their lives. I learned a lot about you that I didn't know. Oh,

Guest [00:00:22] Oops.

Vance Crowe [00:00:23] Oh my goodness. All the things about his youth, he doesn't talk a lot about it. And if somebody were on the fence about doing this, what would you tell them? Don't overthink it. Just do it because we were really nervous about coming. I wish I would've known more about my mom and dad and you. And you've said that too, that you wish you would've known more about your family history. Wow. I have no idea. Welcome to the AG Tribe's 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 one of the many perspectives of the ag tribes that collectively make up US and Canadian agriculture. This week I have Steve STRs Heim, A-K-A-T-R-F, yeoman Farmer I, and which he is a northern Iowa northern central Iowa vegetable farmer. Steve, welcome to the AG Tribes report.

Guest [00:01:34] Vance, thank you for having me on. What an honor to be here. Thank you.

Vance Crowe [00:01:38] So how in the world do you grow vegetables in northern Iowa here in the middle of January

Guest [00:01:46] With a lot of plastic? No, we have, we have about six greenhouses that we grow into. We use some geothermal technology in one of 'em to help us stretch into the deepest parts of the winter. And then we're mostly a traditional seasonal vegetable farm. Like what you might think of only on a very small scale. We're only about five acres going into 2025. So, but you can grow a lot of the vegetables on five acres.

Vance Crowe [00:02:09] Yeah. And you also have a, a sales model. I understand when I, when I brought you on, people wanted to tell me all about you, but you have an interesting sales model and how you're, how you're monetizing your farm.

Guest [00:02:19] Yeah, so, you know, like a typical vegetable farm, we do the couple farmer's markets. We do A CSA, which is like a subscription box for people that aren't familiar with that. We do a little bit of wholesaling into some restaurants and grocery stores. And then in 2024, we actually built an on-farm store. So we actually have our own retail space here on the farm.

Vance Crowe [00:02:42] Absolutely incredible. And I think you are my first, maybe second vegetable farmer here on the show. And this week's show's gonna be an interesting one. We will be talking about the, the ice raids and the fear that may be come, that, that it may be coming to agriculture. We are moments away from an up or down vote on RFK Junior. So we'll see what ag economists think he's gonna do for the ag economy. And we're gonna talk about some of the shenanigans going on with Brazilian soybeans. And finally, we're gonna talk a little bit about how the new right is gonna pressure the hog industry on a scale that I don't think the the hog industry has ever seen before. We'll also go over the Bitcoin land price report. We'll hear Steve's Peter Teel paradox and ask about his worthy adversary. And we're gonna do that all in just 30 minutes. So let's get started. All right. Headline number one, will American starve if ice raids continue? I wanna start off by playing this clip of a of the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security. Steven Miller. He's debating CNN's Jake Tapper on the subject of the need for illegal aliens to pick our food. How do you, how does President Trump make sure that the effort to deport people who are not in this country legally doesn't end up hurting Americans who want safe borders? Absolutely. But also don't want to see even more higher prices in groceries.

Guest [00:04:12] Well, I mean, I'm sure it's not your position, Jake, you're just asking the question that we should supply America's food with exploitative illegal alien labor. I obviously don't think that's what you're implying. Only 1% of alien workers in the entire country work in agriculture. The top destination for illegal aliens are large cities like New York, like Los Angeles and small industrial towns. Of course, all across the heartland. As we, as we've seen with the Biden floods, none of those illegal aliens are doing farm work. Those 30,000 legal aliens that Joe Biden dumped into Springfield.

Vance Crowe [00:04:46] Yeah, I'm talking about the ones that aren't No,

Guest [00:04:47] No, no, no. But, but I'm, no, no, but I'm explaining this. It's important to understand now

Vance Crowe [00:04:51] You're kind of changing the subject. I mean, I'm talking about

Guest [00:04:53] The ones No, I will, I will go, I will gimme 30 minutes. I'll go deep as you want. Explain, I

Vance Crowe [00:04:56] Don't,

Guest [00:04:56] Don't you and your audience

Vance Crowe [00:04:58] Don't wanna have, I'm talking about the ones that could, that, that work in the agriculture industry. What

Guest [00:05:02] I, I'm, I'm explaining you, you can come back in, talk

Vance Crowe [00:05:04] About the ones in the cities. I swear I'll

Guest [00:05:05] Do the, I'll do the whole answer. The illegal aliens that Joe Biden brought into our country are not full stop doing farm work. They are not the illegal aliens. He brought in from Venezuela, from Haiti, from Nicaragua. They are not doing farm work. They're in our cities collecting welfare. As for the farmers, there is a guest worker program that President Trump supports. Over time as well, we will transition into automation. So we'll never have to have this conversation ever again. But there's no universe in which this nation is going to allow the previous president to flood our nation with millions and millions of illegal aliens who just get to stay here. And we are especially not going to allow a subset of those illegal aliens to rape and murder our citizens.

Vance Crowe [00:05:48] Okay, Steve, they get way away from the illegals in vegetable farming. But what do you think you're in vegetable farming? Does the US need illegal aliens in order to feed ourselves?

Guest [00:06:00] You know, I know a lot of farmers on Twitter. I mean, there's guys you could bring on this show that are on Twitter that utilized the H two A program. And you know, I've talked to a lot of 'em in person on Twitter. I haven't really ran into anybody that's had a bad experience with that program, at least anything widespread. It sounds like they all really like it. We all encourage that legal process, but I, I don't really know how much I, I don't know the actual statistics on how much of that's illegal. Just a few weeks ago we saw some retweeting or whatever of that clip of the guy, I think he was in Wisconsin talking about if they deport all the illegals, we're not gonna have anybody to work on our dairy farms. That might be the case on that side of egg, but I, I don't really know in vegetables, I don't really deal with that directly. But just kind of what I see and what I hear first, you know, firsthand from some of those farmers, I, I don't know of anybody that's really utilizing illegal work.

Vance Crowe [00:06:57] Yeah. It seems to me that the H two A program, the challenge of it is just the, the massive amount of bureaucracy. Most people say, Hey, if you will pay for the consultants to get it done, you can get it all done. I've also been on the border right in Arizona where we have what is not an H two a program. We just, you know, allow Mexicans to come through a fence in the morning and then they go back at night.

Guest [00:07:19] Yep, yep.

Vance Crowe [00:07:19] And if we don't have those programs, the price of our produce and our milk, I think are undoubtedly going to go up. Yeah.

Guest [00:07:27] But do

Vance Crowe [00:07:27] You take his point on Well, you know, like it's, it's not good for us to be saying we want cheap food, so let's have people working slave labor.

Guest [00:07:36] Yeah. Yeah. I don't agree with the slave labor part. Like, I, I think that just distorts what the prices truly should be. And for a small farmer like us that, you know, kind of the, I don't wanna say the the bad guy, but what we compete is against is the grocery store stuff. You know, we, I we always say we have better quality, but you know, we're never gonna touch 'em on price kind of a thing and present day. I don't know if we're that far away on price. So I, I don't know. I really don't know what to say on that.

Vance Crowe [00:08:07] Is that right? Do you think prices are coming in line between the person like you producing at a small scale in the groceries?

Guest [00:08:13] Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, take lettuce for example. I mean, I used to be able to go into like, say our local Walmart and I, I don't really check our prices that often anymore, but I used to go into like our Hy-Vee, which is our kind of our big, you know, regional grocer here and, and check and see, you know, for like a head of a romaine. I mean, they're up at two and a half, three bucks ahead. And that's what we've been at for the last five years, you know, so we're right there on ahead of lettuce.

Vance Crowe [00:08:42] Well, we're getting quite a few comments and I'm loving it. Adam Lash says, I'm starting to think the dollars are going to be shifted from unnecessary items to higher priority consumables like food. And Carl Schlegel says it's the burdensome paperwork and the cost, the, the Alien worker program has gone up year over year plus travel and housing. So it does seem like this is a huge part of the ag system that's totally hidden from us.

Guest [00:09:08] Yeah, Carl's one of the guys I'd point to for firsthand experience. He's out in Maryland, great vegetable producer, great guy. He's on Twitter. He'd have a lot more insight on the H two A than I would, but yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:09:21] Well I think we're gonna watch this play out more. I don't think the Trump administration is saying they're not gonna go after farm workers, but I think that's definitely not the top priority. All right, moving on to headline number two. 90% of ag economists think that RFK Junior is bad for ag. This is from the Farm Journal Ag Economist monthly monitor survey. This is where they, they put in, put out a survey to a bunch of the ag economists at different universities and they asked if Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services is a positive for US agriculture. And 90% said, no. One economist said his disrespect for science is troubling. Another economist weighed in by saying his position on crop production will be an interesting storyline to watch in early 2025. Another economist says there are concerns about the division it will create within agriculture. There's gonna be a policy that might limit or restrict crop protection. However, not all economists, 10% of them don't think that it'll be bad for agriculture. In fact, it might restore confidence in agriculture. So Steve, what do you think of an RFK junior's potential impact on American agriculture?

Guest [00:10:32] You know, I, I guess I certainly like the attention he is been bringing to all this. I mean, I haven't heard so much talk and chatter on Twitter in 10 years of being on Twitter about, hey, we need to be eating better and, you know, eliminating the sugars and stuff out of our diets. And I, I start to maybe get a little bit fuzzy on some of the regulation. I guess I'm not really big on regulation in general. So, you know, I don't know if that's always the best tool to use, but I think just encouraging people and letting 'em know what some of those choices might be about not having to necessarily go with the conventional type stuff. And maybe there's other options out here, I think might be a little bit better take. But

Vance Crowe [00:11:18] Yeah, I mean I, I strongly suspect that his take on things like glyphosate are seem motivated to me. And so I at the beginning had really strong anti feelings against RFK Junior, but a few months into people yelling and screaming about how he, he would be bad. And, you know, you start looking at all of the decisions that health and human services have done in the past. And I kind of threw up my hands and said, you know what, like something's gotta change. You look around at the world, you have obese children, you have, you know, people wanting to take ozempic instead of being able to eat healthy. Something is wrong with our food system and I'm willing to give it a shot.

Guest [00:11:55] Yeah, I mean, I would agree with that. I mean, what, how could it get worse really, you know, in a, and I hate to sound so cynical about it, but I mean, we might have to break some stuff just to see what happens and maybe we go back to the way we were, I don't know. I don't know what the right answer there is, but yeah, I, I, like I said, I think the promotion, just the awareness is just a better take rather than, you know, wielding a hammer and saying, you can't do this, you can't do that. And you know, especially when it comes to chemical usage, I mean, I, I, there I think that there's a lot of misconception about some of that stuff and we don't utilize a lot of that on our farm. But I always say it's a, it's a tool in the toolbox and have we overused some of those tools by trying to pound a square peg in a round hole? Absolutely. But is regulation the best way? I don't know

Vance Crowe [00:12:47] Man. I love hearing you say that. I'm clearly a free market libertarian that thinks regulation often creates bubbles. One of the things that I think will probably come out is food manufacturing and additives. There, there is definitely a lot going on in the preservatives worlds in the coloring worlds that I think a long time ago I had a podcast with a guy named Laslo Babai who is the father of network science. And he said he believes that a lot of the obesity and problems that we're having with people's health is the little tiny bits of things that are in food manufacturing to create these preservatives. And I think it, no one was even taking a potential look at that. So maybe RFK Junior will bring,

Guest [00:13:25] Bring

Vance Crowe [00:13:26] That to light.

Guest [00:13:27] And we're seeing a lot of stuff on seed oils. I mean there's just, just so much of this conversation now that's just kind of a breath of fresh air, quite honestly, that we're even having these conversations. I mean, those first couple years I really got onto Twitter back in like 2013 and 14 and specifically around agriculture. And I remember some of these same people that are kind of championing, you know, RFK and let's do away with all this stuff. We're kind of making fun of people that were talking about this stuff. So it's kind of a fun, fun experiment to see people reverse their tune and their messaging here. So there

Vance Crowe [00:14:00] Has absolutely been a flipp where, you know, people that were on the left used to believe these things and people on the right believe this thing and it's, it's amazing.

Guest [00:14:08] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:14:08] Alright, well let's head on to headline three. The Land of Fire and Sand is Brazil's Harvest, soybean Harvest. As assured as everyone thinks, just this morning I heard a clip of torque from Barn Talk saying he was gonna plant all corn this year. And he said he talked to his input guy and that guy said most of their customers were planting corn because soybeans didn't look like they had a prayer with how much Brazil has been producing and selling to the global market. Well, at the same time, news out of Brazil has maybe shaken that a little bit. And I'm putting this out there to hear what other people think. Last night, a trans shipment conveyor belt in Mato Grasso, which is a large soybean processing area, caught fire disrupting logistic operations. While the blaze was brought under control, it highlights vulnerabilities in the soybean transportation infrastructure. And then earlier this week, at the point at the ports of per para guana, I don't, I'm not pronouncing that right, and Antonia in Southern Brazil inspections revealed that sand had been mixed in with the soybean meal cargoes specifically in over 50 trucks amounting to over 2200 metric tons of adulterated soybean meal. So this is a, a fascinating thing because it just goes to show you might be able to get a cheaper, you might be able to get more in Brazil, but some of their production methods and supply chain may not be that healthy. Yeah. So, Steve, I know you're a vegetable guy, but what do you think are row crop farmers missing a big opportunity going all corn when Brazil's operations may have some serious problems?

Guest [00:15:42] Boy, to me that just screams risk because of lack of diversity. I mean, I, I, I grow 45 crops and I already feel, you know, kind of a slave to risk in terms of crop failure and everything else. 'cause we don't have those little insurances and safety nets that maybe some of the row crop guys have. But yeah, I, I don't know. I don't know what to, I, I couldn't give any advice on that other than it just to me screams like maybe that just shows where we're at in commodity agriculture, that if you're just down to one option, what does that say where we're at? You know? Well, you

Vance Crowe [00:16:21] Said something really interesting here worth pursuing. I i if ag insurance, crop insurance seems to me to be an absurdity, like a, like a circus of absurdities, are you not able to get access to the type of crop insurance that a corn and soybean farmer might be

Guest [00:16:35] Able to get? No. I, I shake my head no, but they're coming out with some products now that vegetable and, and specialty crop producers can have access to. But you know, like it, it just, unless you're growing a field of one thing, it just doesn't really make sense. You know, it doesn't pencil out. And a lot of us are just so mixed, like how do you divide up, you know, we might have three crops and, you know, in a quarter acre, you know, type of a thing. And that's a, that's a lot of produce in that quarter acre, you know, and you can extrapolate that into some bigger operations than I am into, you know, the 25 acre, 50 acre, even a hundred acre guys, you know, they're just, it's just so tight that it just doesn't make much sense.

Vance Crowe [00:17:17] Yeah. It's, it's gotta be a little bit aggravating. I know, you know, for a lot of people that aren't involved in row crops, they don't understand that if a farmer can get five years of history on a field, then from then on they're always gonna be able to get, you know, subsidized insurance to cover 85% of that or somewhere around there. Yeah. And it makes it, so once you're in the system, it'd be very, very difficult to lose due to a crop failure. Yeah. And that just isn't true with vegetables.

Guest [00:17:42] Not at all. No. I mean, look at the, here in Iowa, the direct a couple years ago, I know I, I personally know farmers that lost their whole season and there's just nothing that they could do other than hopefully they had some savings, some of 'em created GoFundMe, you know, that kind of stuff. They lost fields, they lost equipment, they lost, you know, just, and they're just totally wiped out and there's just nothing there. So some of 'em got outta the business, you know, it's just, and that's just one instance. I mean, you look at droughts we've been having, you know, we get these odd rain patterns where you get 10 inches and then nothing. And I mean that just, yeah, it's so hard to mitigate any risk on that.

Vance Crowe [00:18:19] All right, well I'm glad we were able to talk about it. Even though neither of us do soybean farming. I'll be interested to see what Torque thinks after the news. Alright, headline number four, the final one of the night, the new right is slamming Brooke Rowan's position on crated hogs. Anna Kana, who is host of the Red Scare podcast, which if you have never heard, it is a wild female podcast about culture and art and what's going on in politics. And they are definitely a part of this new right movement. She posted on acts a response to Brooke Collins telling Congress. So Brooke Collins told Congress that she's going to force states to allow the sale of pork from created pigs. States like California had banned these STAs to stop what they called animal cruelty. And the Supreme Court had held up those bans. So Brooke is going back and saying, I'm still gonna find a way to make this happen. So Anna goes on and writes, factory farming should actually be the next big agenda item to pursue after you fix immigration and gut. DEI, we need an effective young rufo type. I assume that means Mark Ruffo to take on factory farms like they did with anti-racism and, and gender ideology enough needless animal cruelty and waste. So Steve, where are you at on created hogs? Is Brooke reins backing cruelty or is Anna way off in her understanding of, of the way we need to raise food in this country?

Guest [00:19:46] Boy, we could spend a whole podcast talking about this, and again, I'm not an expert on this, but I did, our farm started with pasture poultry because I wanted to feed our family and give our customers what I thought was a better quality product and not have things in a cage. So I guess my, my gut is to say, you know, I'm not a big fan of that system. I don't think it's, I think there's better ways, and I think Nyman Ranch and some other, you know, companies are kind of showing that there are some ways to scale better ways. But, you know, consumers spend with, you know, they vote with their dollars and right now there's just so much demand for cheap, you know, protein that I don't know how we change that. Again, going back to the regulation thing, I'm not, again a huge fan, but when it comes, I mean, there's a life right there. And I don't know, I, that might be where my politics on that get a little wonky. I kind of more or less agreed with the, the, the ban on that. But

Vance Crowe [00:20:44] You know, for me, the, I I've had a chance to work with the hog industry and one of the things you come to realize is why they made every single one of those choices about the way they put them in segregated systems, the way they have slats in those barns, the reason they're made outta the material. They are, you understand they're trying to resist disease, they're trying to do it at a scale in order to be able to compete. They were trying to deliver meat in a, in a way that people wanted it. But when the outsider comes in and looks at the final result, they don't like it and they have a lot of things that they can point to that says that's something you ought to change. And I think that this happened about 10 years ago, right, right. When I was, came into Monsanto. But I think that the difference is now, it does not appear to me that ag is ready for radical pushback on the, on the systems, particularly animal agriculture, crop production like seed oils. You see the American Farm Bureau having fractures fighting and doing infighting. You don't see any major corporations wanting to stick their heads up. Most of them are owned, owned by foreign countries now. So those people aren't gonna jump into this fight. Right. I think that we could see wild changes because I don't think the ag industry is ready to, to stop things, even if they're doing it for the right reasons.

Guest [00:21:55] Right. I agree. I totally agree. And you know, I, I know a lot of local meat producers, you know, through our local channels, you know, through farmer's markets and some nonprofit, you know, organizations and they've never been busier, you know, the last since COVID, I mean, it's just been an a cr, it's like the wild west out there for local food. We've never seen anything like it. And so, and it just keeps continuing and they're, they're having a hard time keep up. And I think you made a great point there about like the egg industry in general is just not ready for that demand. And like how do we scale up for that demand while at the same time kind of, you know, keeping, you know, supplies where they're at. So challenges ahead.

Vance Crowe [00:22:38] Yeah, I think consumers are gonna choose what their dollars, what they want. I know I personally started making different choices about what eggs they eat, even though they're more expensive. I just like 'em better. And if,

Guest [00:22:47] If

Vance Crowe [00:22:47] You can spend that money, you will. All right, that is gonna do it for our news headlines this week. If you have news that you think we should cover, send it to Vance at Legacy Interviews dot com or you can always send it to me on X at Vance Crowe. Now onto the Bitcoin land price report. Bitcoin last week was at 1 0 3, now it's up to 1 0 5, which is, you know, just a barely about a percent and a half up from last week. And Steve, we love asking about what is an acre of good farmland in your county? What county are you in and what is a good acre of farm ground cost?

Guest [00:23:22] We're up here in Mitchell County in the town of Mitchell. So our land prices, I didn't really hear any astronomical numbers this year. There might have been a couple, but I think we're kind of hovering in that 15 for good stuff right now in Mitchell County. I know, you know, a year, maybe a little bit more ago, we were here in 18, even a couple twenties, 21 I think a little south end of the county, but haven't really heard anything like that. Usually when you hit those numbers you hear everywhere. But I didn't hear anything like that this year. So I think we're in that 15 average, probably 12 and a half ish, you know, somewhere in that neighborhood.

Vance Crowe [00:23:58] Yeah, I think that sounds right. I was actually looking up some stuff. The farm land guy, the land guy from Farm for Profit was posting some stuff from Farm Credit America about how Iowa farmland prices are actually ticking down just a little bit. So, but at the $15,000 per acre, that means 0.15, Bitcoin would buy an acre of farm ground in Mitchell County or one Bitcoin would get you 6.6 acres. How does that sit with you, Steve?

Guest [00:24:24] Well, you know, I've had some conversations about Bitcoin on Twitter and I, you know, I'm skeptical. I, you know, I have a little tiny bit of it, little tiny bit of it, but the wild swings that we saw the last couple years are what give me a lot of pause. It's stabilized seemingly right now. I kind of follow it every other day or so, but I don't know if I'm quite ready to jump off that diving board yet, but,

Vance Crowe [00:24:50] Well, you already did if you bought some, right? You at least you've gotten a little bit,

Guest [00:24:53] I'm in the kitty pool right now. So

Vance Crowe [00:24:56] I think that that's actually a really good place to be when you're first learning about Bitcoin. People think, oh, I don't have $105,000 to buy a Bitcoin, but a Bitcoin is actually made up of a hundred million Satoshis and those, that is the tiniest unit. And so somebody could actually throw in a hundred dollars and get quite a bit of Bitcoin. And I think that's one of those mental hurdles that keeps people from understanding like, oh, I could buy just a little bit and I could experience this. Have you, have you gotten a Lightning wallet? Are you familiar with this at all?

Guest [00:25:29] No, I haven't. I just am on the, oh what is it? Coinbase, I think is the, the exchange I'm on. That's all I have really. I haven't really, I may have kind of read up on some of that stuff, I just haven't gotten into that.

Vance Crowe [00:25:42] So I think for somebody that like you that's running like a farm shop or a, or something at a CSA, it's amazing if you can get your customers on lightning, because right now, every time somebody pulls out that credit card, you have to give the credit card company 2.9% for that, for

Guest [00:25:59] On that

Vance Crowe [00:25:59] Transaction. Right? It's insane. Well, I think that what we really want is a digital way to hand money so I don't have to have a a pile of cash to hand to you. So lightning, what it does is you get a little wallet, you put it on your phone, and then you move Bitcoin into it and then it works super fast. It's not like the slow every 10 minutes Bitcoin system, it's still Bitcoin but it's in a different system. And so if you have a lightning wallet, I can send you, you know, a 10,000 SATs and, and then you're able to get that and you're only taking, you know, a fraction of a penny to get paid for it. Is that, I think it sounds like a pretty good idea for, for, for businesses like yours and mine.

Guest [00:26:38] Yeah, I mean eventually, yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:26:40] I don't think eventually. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna prove this. So I, I want people to go out and get a, a lightning wallet. So in the US you can get an Albi Go wallet, you can get a blue wallet, or in Canada you can get the wallet of Satoshi. Anybody that goes out and gets one of those, if you send me your receive address, I will send you 500 Satoshi and that'll get you started. And then now you can find your friends and you and your friends can send that money back and forth and all of a sudden you're gonna be like, this is not in the future, this is right now. So I'm gonna do that for the first 10 people that, that send me a receive address, I'll send you 500, 500 Satoshi's. Will you try that out with me, Steve?

Guest [00:27:20] Sure.

Vance Crowe [00:27:21] Alright then we'll, we'll see if you'll by this summer be accepting Bitcoin. All right, so I'll leave that behind. Now moving on to the Peter Teel paradox. So this is where I ask Steve, what is one thing that you believe that almost nobody in your ag tribe agrees with you on?

Guest [00:27:38] So your, your typical crowd might not be too aware of this, but like in my tribe, in in small scale ag vegetable agriculture specifically, there's this group of people that we call the rockstar farmers that have created these YouTube channels and tiktoks and everything else. And I have, you know, in my early years, I give all the credit to some of those guys for Get Me Started and whatever. It's really, really shifted though a lot in the last, I don't know, couple of YI don't know what the timeframe is, five years, maybe longer, I don't know. But it's all about, I think the content that they're putting out there. I I kind of grab a couple of their videos every once in a while and I think they're extremely hard, extremely harmful to like young farmers in terms of what their expectations are. They're on there. If you, if you get onto these, you know, you're the algorithm, you know, start feeding you all sorts of 'em, they're like, oh, you can make a hundred thousand dollars on an eighth of an acre. Oh, I made $350,000 in my backyard or in my basement with microgreens. And maybe they did, but I, the reality is that's super hard to do and we see so many of these young kids and new farmers coming in that put a lot on the line, on a real wish upon a star idea. And I, we, I was on the phone with Chris Jager, he's on Twitter as well, he's a vegetable farmer in southern Oregon this morning.

Guest [00:29:09] And we were talking about that and yeah, we both agree that it's just, it's, it's, I think it, it's, it's helped a lot of people with a lot of knowledge, but at the same time it's just morphed. And I think a lot of YouTube channels are doing this where it's clickbaity titles and, you know, they're just trying to monetize, monetize and, and the quality of the information that goes out doesn't really matter anymore. It's just, so I, I think where that makes it a paradox to my world is there's so many people that look up to those guys and I think they're just extremely harmful and it's, it's very rampant. Very rampant.

Vance Crowe [00:29:44] Well, I can't argue with you there. I don't have a, a feeling one way or another. Yeah, I think you're probably right. I know that I had a, a camera guy that worked for me for about a year and the way he had come to work for me was his failed pressure washing business. 'cause he had watched all these YouTube videos of pressure washing and how easy it was. And so he made all this big investment. He found out, no, this is not easy.

Guest [00:30:04] Yeah, well you're seeing that in other, on other channels of Twitter, you know, on like the small medium business Twitter community, you call that real estate Twitter, fin Twitter, whatever you want to call it. And so many of these guys that are just seeing these numbers, you know, they're going out and rolling up plumbing companies and everything because they saw a course on it or something like that. And they're just, man use, use some, you know, your bullshit meters really gotta be going wild when you read some, you know, see some of that stuff. And I don't know if they're meters quite working.

Vance Crowe [00:30:37] All right, I'm gonna give you a six five for this one. I think you're probably right for pushing back on some of those people, but not quite controversial enough to get one of those high scores. Alright, now let's move on to the Worthy Adversaries. This is where I ask Steve, who is one person that you deeply respect but you really strongly disagree with?

Guest [00:30:57] I had a hard time with this one as we were talking a little bit earlier. 'cause I'm not that controversial or confrontational, especially online. I like to kind of keep an even keel and take in both sides of an argument and kind of meet in the middle on a lot of stuff. But I have to give like yourself a nod on Bitcoin. Disagree on that. I, I think, but I respect you a lot and I, I mentioned Adam Jones too. If you're watching Adam, Hey how's it going? You know, him and I don't agree probably on a lot of stuff, but we've kind of met in the middle a little bit on, you know, some of the big packer kind of, you know, the, the big egg vertical integration type stuff. Choking out the little guys and not treating up, you know, but we probably disagree on some political things and different points of view. So I'm gonna give you and Adam a nod on my worthy adversaries. So thank you.

Vance Crowe [00:31:50] I'll take it. When you were saying I don't really push back on people on X I'm like, whoa. I've heard, I've gotten plenty of pushback from you, but I actually love the way you do it. I I love that you're like drop in there a question. It's an honest question, but it's also like not always easy to answer. So I I think you're a, a great interaction with on x really, really enjoy it and that's why I'm, I'm glad you were willing to come on to do the podcast to, to meet and as close to real life as you can without Yeah,

Guest [00:32:16] Sure. You shaking

Vance Crowe [00:32:16] Hands

Guest [00:32:18] For sure.

Vance Crowe [00:32:18] So you, you did good on that one. I like it. And Adam Jones. Yeah, that guy. That fucking guy.

Guest [00:32:23] Yeah, he's

Vance Crowe [00:32:24] Definitely a worthy Adam, great

Guest [00:32:25] Guy. I, you know, I don't

Vance Crowe [00:32:26] Know about great guy. He's a guy that's fun on X.

Guest [00:32:30] Yeah, I mean it'd be fun to get around the table with you two and a beer and see what happens. I'd be,

Vance Crowe [00:32:37] I gotta say I did when I had a, a big choice to make, I was invited to be on a board and I didn't know whether I should do it or not. I called up Adam 'cause he's my worthy adversary and I was like, if there was anybody that was gonna tell me this is a bad idea and I shouldn't do it and it'd be you. And he gave me really great advice. I think that's the benefit of having a worthy adversary. You find somebody that's not just like cheering you on no matter what you do.

Guest [00:32:58] Well and I think, you know, a lot of people sometimes I've always wondered, you know, as I've been on egg Twitter for the last 10 or more years now, since 2012 or 13, you know, like I wonder if people question why is this little tiny vegetable guy circling around like the big egg communities on Twitter and interacting with that and it's, it's for that it's ch it cha I mean I've learned so much about ag in general business, I mean everything. And it's challenged a lot of my maybe hive mind thinking that you get from kind of these small ag you know, niche group circles. And that's why I hang around. I've just learned a ton, shifted my point of view a lot on a lot of different things. So great place

Vance Crowe [00:33:40] To be. Well I, I think it's open for anybody. You don't even have to be in ag to be around ag Twitter, 'cause you, as long as you bring something to the table, a good argument. So man, this has been great. I'm so glad you were willing to come on. If people wanted to learn more about your vegetables, if they wanted to buy from you or they wanted to learn about you, where should they go?

Guest [00:33:59] You're gonna have to come to a local farmer's market 'cause we don't ship lettuce real well. So twisted river farm.com is our website. We're on Facebook, we're on Instagram, Twitter again at Trf Yeoman Farmer. And that's the best way to get ahold of me. I don't have much else to promote. I don't have a SoundCloud or a course to buy. So that's what you're gonna have to deal with. So

Vance Crowe [00:34:20] Well come for Steve's very simple, very polite, but very probing questions. Thank you so much Steve. If you've been thinking about doing a legacy interview, I strongly recommend you either go to Legacy Interviews dot com or just call us directly. (314) 866-2991. As you can see, we have a new background. We have continued to work on how can we make these more beautiful, how can we make the focus on the guest something truly profound? And as I said on X this week, we finally set up this studio in a way where it is actually just me and the guest in the room. We have the cameras there and everybody else is away in another room. And it is a, an amazing experience to just sit two people talking about their life stories, capturing all these experiences and putting it on video so that future generations know who their grandmother was, who their father was. So if you're thinking about doing that, go to Legacy Interviews dot com. Also, I'm gonna say this again, if you are interested in getting Bitcoin, you've not really known how to do it, go out and get a lightning wallet and if you're in Canada, get a wallet of Satoshi. If you're in the us get an Albi Go wallet. And if you send me your receive address, I already saw on the comments that Jay Curtis is pumping me for some Satoshi's. If you get a, a lightning wallet and you send me the receive address, I will send you 500 Satoshis if you're among the top, the the next nine people to do it. 'cause there's only nine left. So that'll be an interesting thing. You can either send it to me on X at Vance Crow or Vance at Legacy Interviews dot com.

Vance Crowe [00:35:55] All right, join us next week for another Ag Tribes report with guest co-host Steve Conaway. So thank you so much for joining and as always, feel free to disagree.