Ag Tribes Report: Water Wars, CA Worker Woes, & USDA Whistleblowers: @JohnBoelts

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. Bring the wisdom of Legacy Interviews to your next agricultural conference with a keynote by Vance Crowe. Listen on for a preview of one of Vance's most popular offerings, my grandfather's acts. Someone once told me the greatest threat to our civilization is our inability to pass down our institutions. That's exactly what's happening to agriculture firm led organizations. Even the farms themselves are struggling to keep young people engaged and those that can't end up faltering even going away. So many conversations about succession focus on the legal or accounting side of it, but in my grandfather's acts, I offer principles for starting conversations that will help your organization or farm survive the test of time. I give audiences tangible ways to discover the motivations of others to delegate power so new leaders can emerge and to identify a path to succession, even if one isn't obvious. This talk will empower your audience to begin some of the most important conversations of their lives, so that what they've built can be passed on and we can preserve the culture of agriculture. 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.

Vance Crowe [00:01:32] Welcome to the Ag Tribes report. I'm your host, Vance Crowe. Each week I bring on a guest co-host that represents one of the many ag tribes that collectively make up US and Canadian agriculture. And this week we have John Bolts, a prominent figure in the agricultural community, known both as a vegetable farmer and is the current president of the Arizona Farm Bureau. John joins us from Washington DC where he has been on Capitol Hill. John, welcome to the Ag Tribes report.

Guest [00:02:03] Vance, thanks for having me. Great to be with you.

Vance Crowe [00:02:05] So what are you doing in dc?

Guest [00:02:08] Well, you know, there's never a shortage of worker work for, for those of us in agriculture up here on Capitol Hill, and with any administration regulation is is part of life in, in any business, but particularly in agriculture.

Vance Crowe [00:02:27] Yeah. And so there, it has to be an amazing time to be in DC right now. Totally different than any other time. 'cause I I think you've been there several times before.

Guest [00:02:36] Yeah, I have. And certainly heady times. A lot of the things are, you know, international and, and very confrontational, I think is probably the best way to describe it. But sometimes showing up at times like that, I think gives an opportunity for those of us that want to talk about food and how it's grown or fiber products and how they're grown and produced. I think maybe it gives people a little sense of hope, and I think more people can agree on what we're talking to them about. So maybe it is an opportunity.

Vance Crowe [00:03:11] Well, I I think that listeners, if they don't know you, we are in for a real treat. I've known John for years and years. He and the Arizona Farm Bureau have been a great friend to me. We've gotten to go through a lot of experiences, even during COVID when we were worried about our supply chains. John came on the podcast and talked all about how his, his melons and vegetables and everything were being harvested. So we only have 30 minutes and we've got a lot through to get through this week. On the AG Tribes report, we're gonna be talking about the Arizona water conditions and how it's become a real fight. The California Farm Bureau's stance on illegal migrant farm workers. We're gonna talk about the Doge USDA tip line and its explosive growth. And we'll also dive into what Brick Rollins Brooke Rollins has, has been up to as the new Ag Secretary. We're also gonna cover the Bitcoin land price report. We'll hear John's Peter Thiel paradox and ask about his worthy adversary. So let's jump right in with the first headline. Arizona's Water Becoming a Real Fight. Arizona's Agriculture Sector continues to account for a significant portion of the state's water use with estimates indicating it that ag consumes between 72 to 75% of Arizona's total water supply. A substantial part is drawn from the Colorado River in December of 24. Arizona designated a new active management area near Wilcox, making this the first designation since the 1980s. And they're trying to curb the excess excessive groundwater pumping in the Wilcox Reserve.

Vance Crowe [00:04:42] And then also on the policy front, governor Hobbes announced the Rural Groundwater Management Act on the 31st of January, a bipartisan initiative to create new agencies for conserving rural groundwater. So John, it is super complicated. I have to imagine Arizona is always in a water fight, but what's really going on there right now?

Guest [00:05:04] Yeah, Vance. When you live in the desert, you're conscious about how every drop of water is collected, used, and, and then cleaned up to reuse. Right? When we were kids, we all learned about the water cycle and how water really doesn't go away. It, it's used again and again, and agriculture's a good example of that. But yeah, we're we're heavily engaged as Arizona Farm Bureau and the farmers and ranchers in the discussion about water use and want to maintain the access that agriculture enjoys today for food and fiber production. We always remind folks that upwards of 90% of the state of Arizona drains into the Colorado River. So the various rivers, streams, tributaries, almost all of them flow into the Colorado and the little bit of other part of the state flows into Mexico for the most part. So upwards of 90%. And then what we utilize water wise, whether it be groundwater or surface water out of the Colorado, it takes, you know, that 70 to 75% of the, the fresh water to grow a hundred percent of the food and fiber that everyone depends on every single day.

Vance Crowe [00:06:22] So on the policy front, what is, what's changing? Is the fight intensifying or is this just the news?

Guest [00:06:29] You know, a it's the news of the day, but I think it also is important when, when headlines show up that are relative to agriculture, or in this case, you know, the essential ingredient, irrigation water, it gives us a unique opportunity to step forward, talk about what we do. Sometimes food and fiber is so abundant, abundantly available and affordable in the United States that people forget that we all depend on it because it's so readily available and affordable, but also that the rest of our economy is built on it. AG is, you know, less than 10% of our economy these days, or the food, the food economy employs less than 10%. There's one or 2% of us producing it and getting it to, to market and, you know, maybe another 8% or so that are processing, handling, preparing it, working in the restaurant industry. But if we don't do what we do effectively, then the rest of the economy can't hum along, can't tick people can't make their living. So it's essential to every other industry that, that agriculture is able to do what we've been doing in this country very effectively for so long that people, our generations are removed away from the farm. And that doesn't mean that we have something that we need to lecture people about. It gives us a unique opportunity to talk to them. And so water policy is key to that. There are reasons in our country why food is so abundantly available and affordable, and that centers around agricultural water rights and having an available water source for farmers to produce food.

Guest [00:08:07] And we don't pay for water in the United States at the tap in your house on farms, things like that. We pay for water delivery and that's unique. The whole world's not like that. And monetization of water frankly scares me and it should scare everyone.

Vance Crowe [00:08:27] And the, the governor's water policy, the one that got enacted just in December, how did you, did you participate in the production of that, or I guess in January, at the end of January?

Guest [00:08:36] So the governor launched her bill had been working with the governor's office. She has some great staff, and I think her desire is to lead on this issue in Arizona, we have a shared government, we have a Republican legislature with a Republican majority there, and we have a, a Democrat governor, and I look forward to them coming together and Farm Bureau playing a big role in, you know, negotiating what will work best for Arizonans, not just for their food and fiber production, but also, you know, for water availability for, for every use. And there, there are concerns there. Everyone will agree that there are challenges with water in Arizona. We live in a desert like we talked about before. So it's something that we have to be engaged with. I don't think the governor's proposal will probably win the day, but I think it's important that they put something forward and that they're, that they're, that the ideas that they're putting forward are out there and available to the public for discussion. Ultimately, they, they encourage the legislature to enact and the governor to sign some very large cuts to agricultural water use. So much so that it's unlikely to be viable to stay in production agriculture. So that's kind of a challenge and we look forward to finding some common ground where we can and working forward.

Vance Crowe [00:10:02] That is very diplomatic of you, John. All right, moving on to headline number two is the California Farm Bureau sticking up for illegal migrant farm workers. Wall Street Apes, an ex account with over 800,000 followers. Put out a tweet really criticizing the California Farm Bureau saying that they've been working within, within California to protect illegal workers and their families. The California Farm Bureau says the industry has taken a hit after immigration agents conducted several opera operations in Kern County last week. That's according to Wall Street Apes. So I actually reached out to the California Farm Bureau. They've, they've been an extraordinary organization that lives in a very bizarre world to ask them, you know, do you do, have you been supporting illegal farm workers? Do you have anything you wanna say? They sent me back a, a press release that said, to provide long-term solutions. The Farm Bureau has outlined three key priorities, modernizing the H two A agricultural visa program to make more flexible and responsive to labor needs, providing earned legal status for current agricultural workers, recognizing longstanding contributions to the US food production and crafting immigration policies that reflect the reality of agriculture in a diverse state like California. While supporting lawful immigration policies, the Farm Bureau cautioned against indiscriminate enforcement of actions that do not account for workforce stability. John, you are very close to this issue.

Vance Crowe [00:11:33] You're in Yuma, California or Yuma, Arizona. The farm bureaus are in a tough spot needing to ensure the harvest can come in, but also recognizing that there is dramatic pushback from the general public. What do you think about farm bureaus and their role in, in legal and illegal workers in the farm production?

Guest [00:11:54] I think farm bureaus across the country and American Farm Bureau certainly appreciate that we have a need for a legal workforce in agriculture to provide for Americans food and fiber needs day in, day out. Our biggest challenge is that in 1986, the laws that were crafted didn't provide very well for that. And agriculture has been left to wither on the vine for the last 40 years, 50 years now. So we're, we're sitting here struggling, trying to get by with the workers that we have, which are inadequate. We're losing market share due to free trade agreements. And so California's in a tough spot, as is many other states across our nation. There's a large number of undocumented folks working in agriculture and hospitality and construction and a number of other industries. And so we face a challenge of how do we advocate for needing a legal workforce. But we've been dealt the hand, we've been dealt for the last 40 plus years. So I can understand California's position there where I farm in Yuma, we have a legal workforce of about 50,000 people working in production ag. That's an awesome thing to have, but we are fairly unique in the United States. Hardly any place in the United States enjoys that. So this is a huge challenge for not just American agriculture, but for American consumers.

Guest [00:13:27] 30 years ago, people sat down to the Super Bowl like we all did a few weeks ago and watched the Super Bowl and said, wow, this is great. And had some guacamole from avocados grown in California. We don't do that anymore. 97% of the avocados consumed in the United States come from Mexico. That's not by accident. It happens because we don't have enough hands to harvest the crops in the field. We use the H two A program heavily, that's our legal uncapped guest worker program. But it is extremely flawed. In fact, it was designed in 1986, really not to work very well at all. And through numerous public policy actions taken by various administrations over the years, it's become a very challenging program. Yet it's the only lifeline agriculture has for a legal work program. So we're really challenged and, and really need a rescue, frankly.

Vance Crowe [00:14:29] Yeah, and it just seems like people are willing to tear things down when, when revolutions come about, which I think, you know, there can be some big positives to tearing down bad systems, but, but you also have to make sure that the system that is feeding you and making sure your whole everything works can stand up. Do you think that we are gonna run into actual harvest problems with the way the immigration is being handled right now?

Guest [00:14:53] We were running into those in the late nineties, being short of people. There's a real possibility that if enforcement action happens across the greater part of the United States, that we'd have even bigger challenges. And some of these folks immigrated to the country overstate of visa have been here for a long time. It's a very challenging topic. But bottom line, Congress has left American agriculture to wither on the vine and we, we need solutions to it and we needed them like 15 to 20 years ago.

Vance Crowe [00:15:26] Well, let's hope they find a good way to, to resolve this. Moving on to headline three, which is related Doge USDA tip line gets a hundred thousand followers in a single week. Doge USDA put out the following, post Doge is seeking help from the public. Please DM this account with insights on finding and fixing waste, fraud and abuse related to the US Department of Agriculture. This one post, the only post that's been put out there got retweeted over 4,300 times and has 2,500 replies. And that does not count the dms that people probably sent privately. Some of the notable replies include Senator Thomas Massey, what happened to the assault weapons and the millions of rounds of ammunition they purchased to keep farmers in line. Why do they need it? Oilfield Rando said, Hey guys, the Inflation Reduction Act authorized $10 million for racial equity commissions and the bin leak said, centralized supply chains, health inspectors and regulations favor large agribusiness at the expense of small to medium farmers support local and regional food systems, improving financing for small farms. John, what do you think of the Doge USDA tip line and would you have any recommendations for them? John, can you hear me? I don't see. Okay. Well, John did a great thing by, for me, he was offering to, to do this while he was in DC so he's in Capitol Hill. He had to find a place where it was gonna be quiet enough and it would be warm enough.

Vance Crowe [00:16:58] So I, for one, think that this is gonna be an interesting and exciting time. There were a lot of people that had comments about what they thought should go on Dojo's list. I think for many of the A people in ag, they were watching U-S-A-I-D and the horrors that were going along with a lot of those expenditures. And having been somebody that lived in DC and had seen the, the gigantic building that is the USDA, it is truly staggering to imagine just how much money is being spent in USDA. I know a lot of people in AG talk about the fact that 80% of the farm bill is actually SNAP benefits. So I think there's gonna be many, many things that get looked at and including how are SNAP benefits allocated? I, I know both Brooke Rollins and RFK Junior have spoken about how they wanted to remove a lot of the processed food that's in there. I think there is a whole bunch of equity and inclusion benefits and groups that work throughout. I know several people in different states have told me about this. So I think there is a whole lot of cuts coming to USDA. I did receive a phone call from a listener who said that some of the USDA cuts, while he's pretty close to being a libertarian, cut a little close to the bone. There were some people that are in the, the part of the USDA that monitors are you doing the sort of soil conservation work that you need to be doing in order to get your loans in your crop insurance and some of the important people were taking out there.

Vance Crowe [00:18:29] Also, I heard that Doge sent out resignation notices to a whole bunch of people that were doing poultry and, and it turns out that some of them were actually fighting avian flu, so they had to bring some of them back. This becomes very controversial because sometimes people are like, whoa, whoa, what's going on? If you guys are cutting all these important people, nuclear scientists, people fighting bird flu, what are we doing? My personal take is that I've seen bureaucracies and I've lived in places and worked in bureaucracies that are incredibly complicated. And I don't think you can take them out one piece at a time. I think you really do have to tear things all the way down to the foundation and from there you're, you're gonna break some things and I think it's when those things break, you try and put 'em back together. The challenge is we're talking about services that impact 330 million Americans and people all over the world. So there is definitely a tension here. I think that USDA top tip line man, I, I really do hope we get to see inside of, of what tips people were putting out there. Alright, headline number four is really just asking about what have you seen Brooke Rollins doing, the US Secretary of Agriculture. Brooke Rollins has been doing a lot of meet and greets from everybody from the governor of Texas to the FFA and many of her things on, on her ex timeline seem to be her waving and saying how great ag is. So I was gonna ask John, what do you think is, is she, you know, going to start getting in there and implementing any of the USDA things?

Vance Crowe [00:20:02] Is she a placeholder while they wait for Doge to come through and cut? I don't actually know, but I, I don't see big pronouncements when I go out on X to try and look around and find interesting things that she's been up to on news stories or even the ai. It really just says, you know, these are the people she met with and, and how she thanked them for being a part of agriculture. So I needed somebody like John around here to tell me maybe some insights that he had that about what she's up to and what's going on with her. Alright, well that's gonna do it for the headlines. I want to thank the several listeners. We had Sean Haney ask about the Arizona water conditions and then we had a couple of listeners call in to tell me about stuff going on with the USDA. This is always greatly appreciated. If you have stories you think we should cover on the Ag tribes report, you can send them to me on X at Vance Crow or you can email them to me at Vance at Legacy Interviews dot com. Alright, we're gonna move on to the Bitcoin land price report. I had a chance to talk with John who lives in Yuma County and he, I was like, all right, well what's a, what's an acre of good crop land cost? And just like everybody I ask, they say, well there's a wide range. But what John said that was so interesting was the wide range ranges from $15,000 an acre to $60,000 an acre. And I said, how can this possibly be? Is it because you can plant things on one field that you can't on another? And he said, yes, actually in his county, Yuma County, there are microclimates that make it really efficient to be able to grow melons and certain types of vegetables and you could go just a few miles away and have a totally different crop that's available to be planted there.

Vance Crowe [00:21:45] Maybe something like cotton or, or you know, some of the other row crops. And so he gave me this huge long spread. And so with Bitcoin's price being at 98,400, which is about 2% above what it was last week at 96,000, that's a big stretch, right? You can, you can get a couple of acres of land if you're on the high side and and on the low side. So with that big widespread, I don't know what you can say, the Bitcoin land price report is this week, but since John's not here, I thought maybe I'd take a little bit of time to explain something we've been talking about on both on this podcast and on my long form interview show, which is I've been encouraging people to get a lightning wallet and I had a few questions this week about, well what is a lightning wallet? How does it relate to Bitcoin? Well, with Bitcoin you're never gonna see somebody using Bitcoin to buy a cup of coffee. And the reason is, is the reason that Bitcoin is so secure is because of that mining. We talked about this last week that about every 10 minutes, all of the transactions that were submitted get put into a block and then that block gets added to the blockchain. Now if you were trying to buy a cup of coffee and it took 10 minutes for your transaction to be confirmed, and that's just not efficient. So instead what people do is they take Bitcoin and they load it into a lightning wallet. Think of it as like an abacus where we say, I have so much money in here and then I slide a little bit of that money from me to, let's just say my friend Jay and then Jay and I can put that money back and forth in an what's called an off chain transaction, meaning that it is not going into the blockchain.

Vance Crowe [00:23:27] Then if I decide, hey, I've had enough interactions with Jay or Zach or whoever I'm sending SATs to, I want to put them back into Bitcoin, well then they take those transactions and they say, ah, Vance has this much now and he used to have that much, we're gonna submit that into the blockchain. So that goes into the blockchain and becomes permanent. So lightning in a lot of ways is like a, you're spending money, it's not as secure as the regular Bitcoin, but you can do things in incredible speed and with ease without needing to use the entire blockchain. So we have been experimenting and exploring with Lightning. It has been an absolutely fascinating experience. I have learned a ton. And if you would like me to send you some Satoshi so you can start sharing them back and forth between you and your friends, maybe you can listen to the podcast on the Fountain app and send me some, some Satoshi, the smallest unit of Bitcoin for putting on the podcast. I would love that. What you can do is go to river.com and download their app. They have become a sponsor of the show, a partner of the show, and when you download their app, there is a lightning wallet on that app and it actually works great. All you have to do is go to your receive wallet and ask for a lightning invoice and then you can send that to me. You can either send it to me on X or you can write me an email at v Vance at Legacy Interviews. And then when you do that, I will send you now 250 Satoshis. Last week it was 500 but we are lowering that subsidy by half and I'm gonna keep doing that until we're all down on Bitcoin.

Vance Crowe [00:25:01] The next 10 people that do that, I'll send you 250 Satoshis for you to play around with and have fun with. Alright, so I wanna thank River for helping me out with this. And now we are gonna move to the Peter Teel paradox. This is where normally I'd be asking John, John, what is one thing that you believe that almost no one you know agrees with you on? And I don't know what John was gonna say and I think many of you have actually heard my Peter Thiel paradox, but I'll go ahead and use it 'cause I don't have another one, but it's one I feel strongly about and I'd love to hear some more novel arguments and that is that I believe that pattern tiling is changing the watershed of the Mississippi River and for many of the benefits that are happening to the individual farmer and even some of the, the erosion control that we're handling, I think this is a large contributor to the huge spikes we see on the Mississippi River and then the subsequent drops. If you are somebody that watches that, we continue to see the Mississippi River dropping below the ability to have full barges on that Mississippi River. And I think it is because we are draining the entire Mississippi watershed so much faster than we ever have before. And this is something that is not being talked about and held up as something that is an actual pretty big downside to pattern tiling. But that's just one man's opinion. I've had a chance to talk with people that expertly install tile. They've given me lots of reasons to understand that what that pattern tiling is valuable. I just think this big downside should be addressed.

Vance Crowe [00:26:34] We'll ask whoever is on next week about their Peter Teal paradox and now we're moving to the Worthy Adversaries. This is where I normally would be asking my guest, who is one person that you respect but you strongly disagree with? And I'm gonna go out there and say stock cropper. So that is Zach Smith, he's a longtime friend of mine. We get into these raging epic battles back and forth. Oftentimes they're in jest, but he believes that there's a lot more that we should be doing as a collective and that the government and laws should be doing. And I am a free market capitalist that believes that if you wanna care for land for generations, it shouldn't be something that you're doing because you're getting a benefit from the government that they can turn on and off. But instead you should be saying, Hey, this land is valuable because I took care of it. I made sure to, you know, put high quality nutrients on it. I did the right thing with cover crops, I did the right thing with erosion. And that over time that if these things are as beneficial as they're claimed to be, then you will see the value of that land going up. And people will say, ah, the more that I do good practices on my land, the more valuable it it becomes for my property. So Zach believes that we need to make sure that the government is looking in on people and and making sure they're doing what they're say they're doing and that we also give them incentives to be able to get things done that they might not be willing to try on their own. I, I really enjoy the disagreement.

Vance Crowe [00:28:05] I find a lot out from having this and Zach is definitely my worthy adversary. You can follow him at the stock cropper. No, he's at Zeus Prime on, on X and they, I will put him on the list of worthy adversaries that I have on X. You can check out that entire list by visiting my Twitter feed and that will give you a chance to see all the many worthy adversaries that have been on from our guests. Alright, that is going to do it for this week's show. I want to thank John for jumping on. He was really taking time away from legislators. A lot of his hard work that he's doing out in Arizona, he, that guy from the warm place was sitting in a big coat while it's cold outside. So thank you John for doing that. Also, I want to thank River they've been a wonderful partner to work with and find ways to make it as easy as possible for people to experience and touch the Bitcoin Lightning system. So if you would like to do that, send me a lightning receive address and I will send you 250 Satoshis. And then finally, Legacy Interviews. This is the service that me and my company provide where we sit down with individuals and couples to record their life stories so that future generations have the opportunity to know their family stories. This has been a wonderful service we just got done with a family from Canada that had an amazing story and I don't know that they've ever told it before. Their children and their grandchildren are gonna get to hear about aspects of how they grew up, why they made the decisions they made, and, and really what makes wonderful and successful family.

Vance Crowe [00:29:43] It is a wonderful thing to do. And if you would like to capture your loved ones, go to Legacy Interviews dot com to find out more. Alright, I am going to wait to find a host for next week's show. It may be a Canadian that can tell us about what's going on with the tariffs. It may be somebody doing illegal immigration, who knows? It has been such a wild ride that, yeah, I, I'm gonna wait a little bit to figure out who the next host will be. Thank you so much for tuning in and as always, feel free to disagree.