Farm Bill Lobbying, $100M Chicken Farmer Settlement, and 70 Dead Horses from Tainted Feed

Greg Gunthorp [00:00:00] The Ag Tribe's report is brought to you by Farm Test, a field trial design, execution, and analysis service that makes it easy to ask your fields which management practices perform best to start your field trials. Visit Farm Test, ag and Legacy Interviews, a service that video records individuals and couples telling their life stories so that future generations have the opportunity to know their family history. To learn more, visit Legacy Interviews dot com. 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 [00:00:49] Welcome to the Ag Tribes report. I'm your host, Vance Crowe. Each week a co-host and I represent the perspectives of one of the many Ag tribes that collectively make up US agriculture. This week I am joined by Greg Gunthorp, an artisanal producer and processor on a regenerative farm in northeast Indiana. The Gunther family has been raising pigs on pasture for at least four generations. Greg, glad to have you here. Welcome to the Ag Tribes Report. Great to be here,

Greg Gunthorp [00:01:19] Vance. I'm excited about this.

Vance Crowe [00:01:20] Alright, well, today we are going to be covering a lot of topics. We're gonna start with the Farm Bill and Pivot Bio, trying to get their technology listed in that Farm bill. We're gonna talk about the 70 horses killed with Tainted Field and, excuse me, tainted feed. And we're gonna talk about Pilgrim pri Pilgrim's Pride settling their lawsuit after years of fighting about whether or not they were fair to the people that grow their boiler chickens. So of course we are also going to review Greg's Peter Teel paradox and we're going to hear about his worthy adversary. And we're gonna do all of this in just 30 minutes. So let's jump straight into the headlines. Starting first with a story that comes from X. I was flipping through X yesterday and saw Zach Townsend, an owner of TNT Agronomy and Pioneer Hybrid and Premier Dealer for Precision Planting. And he tweeted Word on the street in DC is that the Pivot Bio lobbyists are working to get Pivot mandated into the Farm Bill and it might be worth it to reach out to your state rep and follow this up the ladder. So as soon as this happens, there are all kinds of tweets going on. And so I decided to look into it. And if you look at what Pivot Bio is saying, they actually have been saying from the very beginning, they posted something back in the spring of 2024 that they were trying to influence the Farm Bill on an, on an article that they titled Pivot Bio is pleased at the outline, re released by Senate Agriculture Committee chairwoman Debbie Sten, bro Stab Boat.

Vance Crowe [00:02:55] How, how do you even say that?

Greg Gunthorp [00:02:56] Stab.

Vance Crowe [00:02:57] Stab. All right. Anyway, so they jumped in to the feed and said, no, our goal is simple. We're trying to make it easier for American farmers to be able to use some of these programs that are put out there by the USDA. I even got a call from Amanda de Jang who's from Government Government Affairs telling me that it's all about the product, how it's designed to give a, so what Pivot Bio is doing is they're putting a seed coating on a seed and it's supposed to help them be better at doing nitrogen fixation from the air. So we could go into a lot of details on this, but maybe let's just start, Greg, with what do you think should private companies be lobbying for what they wanna see in the Farm Bill?

Greg Gunthorp [00:03:41] Oh, that, that's a great question. That you know, the, I'm not really sure that we should limit private companies for lobbying to get things in the Farm Bill. 'cause my take on it is we probably have a Wall Street Farm bill that, you know, we've got multinational corporations that are lobbying to get their desires into the Farm Bill. So, you know, the Farm Bill is heavily lobbied from all kinds of interest, public, private. And I personally believe that we ought to probably get more interest that actually benefit independent family farms.

Vance Crowe [00:04:15] Yeah, I mean it's, it's actually totally astounding what all goes into the Farm Bill. It's also kind of shocking that this is an issue being talked about on X because as far as I can tell, the Farm Bill has been just completely frozen. Nobody talking much about anything. I think most people expecting that because they got that extension to September 30th before it has to pass, that nothing really is gonna happen until after the election. What do you think, is the farm bill just frozen right now? And this is all people pontificating? Oh,

Greg Gunthorp [00:04:43] Oh yeah. I think it's all people pontificating. You know, I, I follow DC and Farm Bill politics quite a bit and I see no chance at all that we get a farm bill out of this, or even out of a lame deck session. It's going to the next one. No doubt. You know, so what I actually see about this specific topic though, I think it's kind of cool that we as a society now are starting to talk about biologicals. You know, we, we've had an agriculture that is extremely productive and efficient, but we've had an agriculture that has used a huge amount of inputs over the years and now we're, as a society in both sides of the aisle are starting to talk about some alternatives to that. And that to me is encouraging. I'm not sure that personally I'm looking for inputs to create those biologicals, you know, we have a regenerative farm and you know, I'd prefer something like Clover to fix nitrogen or you know, adaptive multip grazing and bringing the grass down and building carbon to create fertility on our farm. But I think it's really cool that we're looking at biologicals to take nitrogen out of the air rather than producing it with natural gas.

Vance Crowe [00:06:05] Yeah, I mean the microbials are everywhere, right? It's a little like the, when I was talking with Amanda, she pointed out it's a little like saying crop protection, right? That's it's, you're saying something that's so big and so encompassing. And with this particular one, I think they're trying to say, look, when people, when farmers are trying to use some of these conservation programs set up by the, by the USDA, then a lot of them are written with very old technology in mind and they're very restrictive. So from her perspective, pivot Bio is just saying, Hey, why don't we allow, or additional technologies make the writing very explicit that you could use this other kinds of technology. But when I see it on Twitter, I see people saying this is like we are in a down economy who's gonna be adding more to their products. This seems like a way to get this mandated so that farmers have to do this. What do you think is like, where are people right or wrong on this issue?

Greg Gunthorp [00:07:03] I mean, people are absolutely correct that the government tends not to be progressive and the government tends to be way behind the times. And people are very, very wise in being worried about concentrated power of the government and forcing things onto independent farmers. I mean, I'm worried about that also. I think it's probably somewhere in between though I, I can't picture the government forcing people to use biologicals. I think in general, when you get all said and done, the USDA has actually done a pretty decent job of holding up carrots rather than grabbing sticks to get to force farmers to do things. As far as crop farmers go,

Vance Crowe [00:07:47] Yeah, my sense is that this is an attempt to use taxpayer dollars, which is supposedly a carrot to get people to do stuff and it makes it so the farmer is not actually the one that's going to be footing the bill for trying this product out for, for better or for worse. I think they're, they're just trying to use the system that's there just like everybody else's with the Farm Bill. And you're right, it is a huge trough for large corporations. Alright, anything else before we move to the next headline?

Greg Gunthorp [00:08:13] No, that'd be about all. Yep.

Vance Crowe [00:08:15] Alright, well this is one sent in by you, something I had not heard of, but this just came out in the last about two weeks, that Pilgrim's Pride has a $100 million settlement over chicken farmers pay. So Pilgrim's Pride, one of the largest US poultry producers agreed to pay a hundred million dollars to settle a claim that it conspired with rivals to Underpay Chicken Farmers and Reuters was pointing out that Tyson Foods, Sanderson Farms, Coke Foods, Purdue Foods all previously settled for large amounts, multimillions and Pilgrim's Pride, it it looks like maybe had the largest bill of them all. When they did do this settlement, they accepted no responsibility. They did not accept that they had done anything wrong. But the after years, more than seven years of hard fought litigation, which included over 1.7 million court documents to be reviewed. Greg, what do you think poultry business is vertically integrated and the margins very, very small. Are lawsuits expected when the system is so streamlined?

Greg Gunthorp [00:09:22] You know, I, I actually believe that the United States Department of Ag Packer and Stockyards administration has been charged to keep an eye on this to ensure that farmers get a fair shake in the marketplace. And you know, we all know that when concentration gets too severe, that individual farmers have a really hard time negotiating against those concentrated powers. And the chicken Farmers of the United States have got a raw deal for decades and it's only got worse. As you know, only a handful of companies controlled the chicken industry and you know, lots of them have complained for a long time that the companies set up areas and no other person can bid for the use of their chicken barn. And you know, when you've only got one place that you can use your chicken barn for, you have zero negotiation powers. And so I, I was elated to see this lawsuit come out. A good friend of mine, Dudley Butler, was instrumental in helping this lawsuit get started. If you remember he was up there at the Packer and Stockyards administration during the Obama years and they literally ran him out of town. So, you know, I mean this, that's a quite a beast up there in DC and it's quite a beast to try to get around any of this to get a handle on any of this antitrust, you know, enforcement. And one thing, you know, I'm not gonna get into politics 'cause I'm actually not a fan of either side of the aisle, but one thing this administration has done more so than any administration since Teddy Roosevelt, is that they've actually done some antitrust work.

Greg Gunthorp [00:11:07] And I, I strongly believe we don't need a concentrated government and we don't need concentrated business. That both of those have some very strong problems in our society. So I, I think this is a great win for the Chicken Farmers of the United States and I think it's a great win for the direction of bringing us back to something where all of us have a better chance of being independent.

Vance Crowe [00:11:32] Yeah. You, you mentioned like the how small the chicken world is. There were 24,354 complainants on this class action lawsuit. And that sounds like a big number, but really those are individuals that have a few chicken barns and the, with those chicken barns, every single aspect of it is controlled from they, the, the, the companies send them the chicks, they send them the feed, they tell them this is what you're gonna be delivering. And with that kind of concentration, without the ability to go somewhere else without competition, it makes it very, very difficult to push back. Do you know any more details of the story about what, what exactly it was that they were pushing back on?

Greg Gunthorp [00:12:13] Oh yeah, the good friends of mine, Bertrams were one of the people, but there were several of them. If you Google Craig Watts, he was one of the whistleblowers talked about the predatory practices. But basically they could never speak up about any of these issues. But you know, that whole tournament system where they're put a against each other and basically half of them are gonna lose money regardless because the top half make money, the bottom half always lose money. But, you know, they, they, as you mentioned, they don't control any of the variables to decide whether their chickens are gonna do better. You know, they don't control what chicks they get. They don't control what feed they get. If they open their mouth, they get worse, you know, so it's a, it's a no-win situation. And you know, it's, I always jokingly say the only thing that they own on the farm is the mortgage, the mortalities and the manure. And I wish I was joking, but that's really all they own in the whole situation. And you know, if you only gotta sign your name on the dotted line one day of your life and you're a contract chicken farmer and the mortgage is high enough, you have no choice but to be a contract chicken farmer. 'cause you lose the farm. If you open your mouth or you do anything else and you've got one company that you deal with, it's literally in my mind, it's buying a very, very expensive job.

Vance Crowe [00:13:38] Wow. Well that's a really interesting perspective and I'm uhm glad to have heard it. I'm sure the poultry companies themselves would've something else to say, but many of them were not commenting on any of these stories. So it seems like this has been one of those class action lawsuits that led everybody to go to their corners fight for seven years and now it's finally shaking out. So I hope your friends have have done okay throughout all this us All right, moving on to headline three. This is the last headline of the day and it's really tragic. One, a feed company takes responsibility for 70 horse death horse deaths in a single day. The, this I got outta Sports Illustrated of all places. The rodeo industry has been devastated at the recent loss of dozens of horses owned Bayer and Sun Rodeo Company. Generations of talented bucking stock died after ingesting what was reportedly tainted feed. So initial reports are speculating that the horses had all been poisoned with an ingredient called monin. Is this one you're familiar with?

Greg Gunthorp [00:14:42] I I think it's trade name would be Enson. I think the chemical name is Enson or Monson.

Vance Crowe [00:14:48] Yeah, that's right. And so these are actually an Ionis four, which is a feed supplement for cattle. In fact it's in most cattle feeds, certainly in in CAFOs. And, but the challenge is that it is actually ta dox toxic to horses, even incredibly small doses. So it appears there was some kind of problem with either a sensor or how well things were cleaned out. So in an open letter signed by the president of the Livestock Nutrition Center, which is the place that is responsible, accepting responsibility, he said words are cheap, but we are dedicated to assist and support, support the Ueler family and make this right because our customers and employees expect and deserve it. Greg, you're a business owner. How does a business that accidentally poisons its clients', horses survive?

Greg Gunthorp [00:15:36] Oh, this is such a tragic situation, but you know, when you get all said and done, you know, and I don't wanna make light of it, but I'm sure it was a accident somewhere through the process. Nobody willfully puts rementon in horse feed, you know, horses. And I think dogs would be highly susceptible to this too. But you know, as you mentioned, it was commonly fed my family fed cattle up till 1985. And I think that we used it when the calfs were coming in. I think it's commonly put in for cocc acidosis. It's also I think commonly used 'cause it's a really good growth promoter. I'm not sure what the mechanism is for that, but you know, I I think that it comes back to my other comment though, you know, the on concentration, you know, independent feed companies, it, you know, it sounds like by the statement that he makes, they're gonna, they're gonna stand by this. I don't know what exactly that means. It's probably gonna be tragic to their business also. And I, I'd just be willing to bet you that they just feel absolutely sick about this. No, nobody would ever want this to happen.

Vance Crowe [00:16:51] Yeah, I was contacted by a guy that runs a, a feeding operation with cattle and he said, looks like a, you know, it could be a very, very small accident that turned into a terrible tragedy. 70 horses is almost inconceivable. You think about not just the, the price of those animals, particularly if they're, you know, in rodeo competitions, if they're studying out, if they're, you know, doing all the things that workhorses do to make money for their owners. But then also people are so attached to horses. So you have to figure these had owners that loved them, that cared for them for years and years and years. So an absolute tragedy.

Greg Gunthorp [00:17:27] Yep. Yeah, it's huge tragedy, you know, and people are for sure attached to horses and their pets. I mean this, there's, yeah, it's just bad. I don't know, I don't know what a person does in that situation.

Vance Crowe [00:17:41] Well we hope for the best and know that man mistakes happen, but oftentimes in business somebody has to pay for it. So we will track this and see what ends up happening, both with the Livestock Nutrition Center and, and with the, the Butler and Sun Rodeo Company. So I will report back on that. So that's gonna do it for the news section of this. If you have news you think we should cover, you can always send it to me on X at Vance Crow or you can send it to me in an emailVance@vancecrow.com. I have to say that almost all of the stories that I've reported on in the last two weeks have been sent to me. So definitely I know that I'm interested in hearing what is going on in your ag tribe. Alright, now onto the Bitcoin land price report. Greg, what county do you live in and what does an acre of good land go for in terms of US dollars up there?

Greg Gunthorp [00:18:36] I'm in Lag Grange County, so up in the northeast corner of Indiana and good land would sell for about 13, $14,000. So I'm gonna say $13,000.

Vance Crowe [00:18:48] Alright, so if you were gonna do that at the current Bitcoin price of 56,100, it was a little low when I was making these calculations. We're somewhere around 0.23 Bitcoin per acre. So in other words, one Bitcoin would buy you just below four acres of farmland in La Grange County. How do you feel about that? Would you like a Bitcoin or an acre of land more?

Greg Gunthorp [00:19:15] I'd like an acre of land more, but short, funny story, I was at a dinner in Denver back when Bitcoin was a dollar and there was a guy two seats down from me trying to talk everybody at dinner into buying 200 Bitcoins just as a joke. And I didn't have a sliced idea what bitcoins were, but man I sure wish I'd have bought those 200 Bitcoins. I was too busy trying to get myself onto a podcast from a or a radio show in New York for the person that was sitting beside me. But I can still to this day wish I'd have bought 200 Bitcoin. I'd probably be sitting somewhere besides right here right now.

Vance Crowe [00:19:54] Yeah, I think that the, for the next probably 30, 40 years, we're gonna hear all these stories of times when people had a chance to buy it. And I think it's entirely possible that people will say, my dad got it for $56,000 and that will be a very, very low price. But who knows? Alright. Oh go ahead.

Greg Gunthorp [00:20:12] Land's kind of land's kind of the same way, right? My grandpa bought a whole bunches of land, he bought the land right across the road from where I'm sitting $172 an acre. And when he passed away, he said that every bit of land he bought, he never thought any of it was cheap. You know, it would be worth that 13, 14,000 an acre. Now

Vance Crowe [00:20:32] I, I couldn't agree more. I think that that's, when you look back on things, they always look cheap, but in the moment you gotta really, you know, yeah

Greg Gunthorp [00:20:40] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:20:40] Grin and bear it. Alright, now we're gonna go to your Peter Teal paradox. This is where I ask Greg, what is something that you believe that almost no one you know agrees with you on?

Greg Gunthorp [00:20:52] I would say the thing that I believe that most in the direct marketing or the local food movement don't believe is that I believe that it's not regulations that put most of the MO small processors and it's not regulations that keep most of the small processors out. Then I believe that it's just sheer economics economy of scale is real and that, you know, it costs a lot, it's a very labor management and capital intensive business and it just does not work economically at a really small scale compared to the industry.

Vance Crowe [00:21:29] So when you're saying this, it is like it, you're absolutely killing it on how much I disagree with you because my natural instinct is to say it's the regulations and the amount of inspectors that come by and say, well, you know, you gotta get aluminum back here in this storage room and that's, you know, gonna cost you about a quarter of a million dollars and I'll be back in six weeks to check to see if you did it. But until then you can't sell any meat. That's my perspective of it, largely informed by Jason Mock, but also just kind of my understanding of government. What's wrong with my perspective on that?

Greg Gunthorp [00:22:01] Well the, you know, I should first mention we actually get three USDA inspectors per day. So it's not six weeks later that they're coming back, they're coming back that day or tomorrow to make sure that you actually change something or they're gonna halt your operations. But I, I think the problem with that perspective is that, you know, when you get all said and done, I think we all, you know, anybody that's getting animals processed has an expectation that their processor is facility is spotless. When they start in the morning, they have an expectation that they're gonna put labels on 'em that are correct. They have an expectation that their people are gonna know how to butcher the animal, that they're gonna know how to cut it up. All of the things that professionalism requires, I think that the owners have an expectation that, you know, we're gonna build the facility so that the floors slope to the drain so that the walls are washable so that we can actually clean the facility. All of the things that are required to be able to do those things efficiently and we're gonna ever have to build it at a scale that we can actually run pounds through the thing. And nowadays that's a facility that's millions of dollars and you know, lots of people talk about that. The battle is getting their product processed under USDA inspection. That's just the tip of the iceberg. It's only, and don't get me wrong, that's a hard hill to get up, but it's only when you get to the top of that hill that you realize that it's the mountain behind you that you have to figure out a means to sell into this marketplace that you actually can fit into.

Greg Gunthorp [00:23:33] And your product's way more expensive because you're a lot smaller, you got a lot more labor per pound that you're producing, you got a lot more facility cost per pound you're producing and you have to compete against these guys that are literally bringing in, like in the beef side. You have to compete against these guys that are importing the cheapest beef in the world from 20 other countries.

Vance Crowe [00:23:55] So you're saying that the reason that this is keeping, that we don't see this proliferation of small farmers that are raising their own cattle is not because of the regulation saying, hey, there's, there's all these barriers that you've gotta get through. It's the fact that just by sheer volume you're not gonna be able to compete with commodity meat packing and that's what's keeping them out,

Greg Gunthorp [00:24:15] Right? I'm saying that their price is two to three times the price of what everybody else beating on that same restaurant's door can sell it for. And I'm saying yeah, that that price is what's keeping them out and they've gotta get a lot bigger to even get remotely close to that price.

Vance Crowe [00:24:32] Well I remember in Jason's episode when we did Vance Crowe podcast with him, he talked about ha ha seeing the scale of some of these large meat cutting operations. I've seen one myself, they're just enormous. But at the same time, I, I'm pushing back on this because I know guys that are raising beef and they want to sell it to me, but in order to sell it across state lines, they have to go get A-U-S-D-A inspector. I don't think that USDA inspector is making their floor any cleaner or making them, you know, operate any better. But it definitely is adding costs and time and, you know, permission into the system. And I think if they were able to just sell to their friends and neighbors, it would be a lot easier for them.

Greg Gunthorp [00:25:13] Oh, I mean, don't get me wrong. I I agree with everything that you said there. The, the regulations are very difficult, especially for the really smallest players and they're definitely a barrier to entry. I do not believe though, that if we got rid of the regulations, 'cause we, we technically have none, we have exemptions in the poultry side and you know, we just got done talking about that the poultry industry is extremely consolidated and, you know, controlled by a handful of corporations. The little pasture poultry people, almost none of them compete in the wholesale market. And you can slaughter up to 20,000 chickens on your farm in almost all states with no inspection unless the state has a law that's different than that USDA doesn't stop you from that. So it's the equivalent of the prime act in poultry. We don't have that in beef or in red meat. And you know, Congressman Massey keeps arguing for it and I do not personally believe that that's gonna just cause transformational change in the beef industry. Will it make a few farms have the ability to sell to you or to their neighbors? Yeah, and I think that would be great, but it's not gonna change where Disney gets their beef. It's not gonna change where, you know, the restaurants downtown get their beef, they're not gonna buy uninspected meat. So it's not gonna overnight transform the meat industry. The people that are still gonna sell to them, whether there's USDA or not. Those restaurant customers, our restaurant customers are gonna require sanitation level that's at least equal to of what USDA requires or there's plane not gonna buy the product.

Vance Crowe [00:26:54] Well, I will absolutely take your point that there are large markets that they, they have absolutely no way to get rid of that liability of the small farmer that isn't getting USDA inspected. And so they're gonna want all of that and maybe it isn't enough for small farmers to be able to produce if the USDA gets outta the way, but I'd still like to see 'em get outta the way even, even if it doesn't change the entire system.

Greg Gunthorp [00:27:18] Oh, I mean, I I don't disagree with you. I think it'd be good. We, I, I've said all along, we ought to have exemptions, we ought have safe harbors for the smallest inspected ones and then we ought to have safeguards for consumers. And I think that those, we need regulations that are relevant to the scale of the producer and the processor.

Vance Crowe [00:27:39] Sounds great. This is an excellent Peter Thiel paradox. I am going to give you a a nine three, I think that you've gotten the highest score, mostly because I absolutely disagree with you, but I'm really, really glad you brought it up. Now moving on to the worthy adversary section where we spotlight individuals that challenge our perspectives so we don't ignore criticism that would help us get better. Greg, who is your worthy adversary?

Greg Gunthorp [00:28:06] This one took me a while to think of it and, and I gotta say I've matured a lot through my social media process because I thought of a few, but I thought no, they still have me blocked so I'm not gonna mention them. But I think the one that challenges my thinking the most is probably Wanda Petsky, Minnesota Farm living fellow hog farmer and a really good hog farmer and seems like just a good person in Minnesota. But we definitely raise hogs in a different production system than what she does and have a very different perception of the hog industry.

Vance Crowe [00:28:46] And what, how would you describe hers? Could you steal man, her perspective?

Greg Gunthorp [00:28:50] You know, she's much more in favor of confinement, large operations and is not really opposed to the consolidation in the industry.

Vance Crowe [00:29:07] Sounds good. You know, Greg, I am gonna throw you up as my worthy adversary this week. You're gonna go on the list, we keep a list of where the adversaries and that's 'cause the way you got on the Ag tribes report is you were saying like, Hey, I, I'm too hot for this, but I appreciate it 'cause you got my attention and I was definitely glad that I brought you on to, to hear your perspectives, that it is not just the regulation that's keeping people out, it's the, it's the economics. So you're gonna go on that list as well. But I think it's a good list to be on if you in the audience would like to see the list of where the adversaries, we put a link to it in the show notes. It's also on my list, so it's just called the Worthy Adversaries list. Thanks. Thanks for your good choice there on Wanda. I know I, I've known Wanda for a long time. She's a great lady. Alright, so Greg, I want to thank you so much for coming on. I also wanna spon thank our sponsors. We have Legacy Interviews, recording family stories so that future generations have the opportunity to know their family history and farm test.ag. A system that allows you to take where the marketers are telling you about their products and actually test it on your fields and see which ones not only yield the most, but which ones are more profitable. Greg, thanks so much for coming on. If people wanted to learn more about your farm and operation, where should they go?

Greg Gunthorp [00:30:27] You can follow me on Twitter. We have a, we also have a website. We don't do a lot on it, but gunther farms.com and then I'm on Twitter, I think it's G Gunther, also have a on Facebook problem, me on Facebook. But usual social media, places

Vance Crowe [00:30:47] You're not hard to find. I was able to find you in a bunch of different places. Thanks so much for coming on. Join us next week for another Ag Tribes report and as always, feel free to disagree. Ah.