ADM Halts CO2 Injection After Brine Leak, Hurricane Destroys 170 Poultry Farms in Georgia

Vance Crowe [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, do 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. Here's Legacy Interviews customer, Dave Helen on the healing and relief his parents felt after telling their stories. I bought a legacy interview because when I was listening to the podcast and heard about it, I thought it was a great idea. And then my mom listened to your podcast and she said she wishes she had that for her grandmother. And I said, well, why don't we do that for you and dad? And she never considered it for them, but it just quickly became like a really good idea that they were excited about. My parents never in their life had such a long period of time where they spoke about themselves. At first they were uncomfortable with that, but then quickly became comfortable and just realize how much of themselves they could get out there in that period of time where they are the focus. My parents enjoyed the experience, particularly my dad. He kind of struggled through his life of thinking he wasn't successful, just didn't have the material wealth that he felt that he should have. And then as he was telling his story, talking about his family and his life as a whole, he realized that he had this extraordinary success, but he never really thought of it as success.

Vance Crowe [00:01:41] It was this moment where his whole life like it all made sense now. And here's a man that just turned 80 and it's all because they just sat down and spent a few hours talking about their lives with you. My mom was so grateful to have this on video, to really see their thoughts of their own life from start to finish, and we've got that forever. Welcome to the Ag Tribes report, a breakdown of the top stories affecting the culture of agriculture with your host Vance Crowe. The report begins in 3, 2, 1. Let's begin. Welcome to the Ag Tribes report. I'm your host, Vance Crowe. Each week I bring you a representative of one of the many ag tribes that collectively make up US agriculture. And this week I am joined by my good friend Christina Hudson Kohler of Hudson Egg Farms. Christina has been the president of her New York Farm Bureau Young Farmers and Ranchers program, and is currently serves on the American Egg Board. Christina, welcome to the Ag Tribes report. Thanks for having me tonight,

Guest [00:02:51] Vance. Let's dive right in.

Vance Crowe [00:02:53] Yeah, well we've only got 30 minutes, so we're going to cover the headlines and then head into your perspectives on some things we have to break in with some breaking news. There have been some big stories happening and the biggest breaking news, I think of all is that a DM has halted their carbon dioxide injection at their Decatur capture carbon capture facility. So on September 24th, a DM detected potential movement of brine between different formations. This is a quote from from their own letter that they sent to the EPA and they had a spokesperson. Jackie Anderson said that the incident presents no risk to surface or groundwater or to public health. But I gotta tell you that people around Decatur, Illinois are freaked out about it because there is a huge water reservoir right near where they put that injection site. And in the past when pipeline leaks have happened, like in places like Saria, Mississippi people, it causes people to pass out while they're driving. It made ki kids have seizures and when it spills into water, it can, it can form into carbonic acid, which can alter the PhD of water, making it more acidic. So as I'm saying, all this sounds terrifying. Everybody that's an activist was saying, see Exactly. This is a bad idea. Christina, what do you think is, what do you make for this push for the CO2 pipelines and and injection sites?

Guest [00:04:18] So, CO2 pipelines have been around for 50 years, which I found surprising to, to know and learn. And we have 5,000 miles of pipelines, but that is projected to be much greater here in the future with investments for carbon capture. And so I, I understand the concern of clean water and the the hazards that are coming along with this.

Vance Crowe [00:04:44] Yeah. To me it's like hilarious in a way, right? It's like people automatically assume that if you're doing green technology, it's always good, right? You put in solar panels, you don't have to think about mining the metal, all the energy to put it in the concrete. You have to pour. When it comes to carbon pipelines, I always just thought like, oh, this is kind of a, a, a scammy way to be able to give industry work. But then when you go look at what's possible with the CO2 pipeline, apparently when they get a little crack in them, they can zip unzip like a zipper on that pipeline and really start pouring CO2 out there. So it just goes to show you that like, just 'cause it's a green technology doesn't mean that it's automatically good or safe.

Guest [00:05:24] Yeah. And the number one thing I looked at was to see if they were up here in the northeast here in New York, but I see it's more down near Texas and the New Mexico region. So I would found that interesting.

Vance Crowe [00:05:35] Yeah, I think this is gonna be a big move in the, in the world of carbon capture because a DM has been one of the big leaders. They're considered to be the forefront of it. And if they have to stop because they've had two leaks in the last, I don't, I don't know how long. It definitely means that something's up. Alright, well we can't stay on that breaking news because we have a huge amount of other news going on, not least of which is everybody knows that the hurricane, if you've been watching anything going on in North Carolina, you've seen the destruction in Georgia. But what you may not know, and this is from wat ag.net that US poultry industry has been really harshly hit by Hurricane Helen. Almost half of more the, of the more than 9 billion chickens farmed for meat in the US broiler chickens are raised and slaughtered in this region. Georgia is the nation's top chicken producer processing over 1.3 billion chickens annually. And just this weekend the governor was saying we've had 170 poultry facilities damaged or totally destroyed. Dairies are destroyed, all kinds of other facilities. So this is a real catastrophe. I, it's actually one of the big reasons I wanted to have you on. You know a lot about poultry. If you are in the situation where electricity has gone out, you don't have roads, what are you as a poultry farmer doing? Presuming you still have barns left?

Guest [00:06:58] Yeah, the first thing that we're gonna check is to see if we still have the capability to use our onsite generator to produce power. And then once we have determined if we have that or not, we're gonna think about things like airflow in the barns. We, our number one priority is keeping hens em broilers, healthy and safe for as long as possible. How we will get chicken feed to them and their access to water. So those are the things that come to me first, first and foremost when it comes to chickens.

Vance Crowe [00:07:28] Yeah, what a wild time I've been seeing this stuff on, on X that people are posting these videos and you see this destruction and is absolutely catastrophic. And now when I was looking into this poultry issue, I mean people are talking about this really impacting the supply chain prices going up when you cut that much outta the market, not just the chickens that died, but just their production capacity that's taken offline.

Guest [00:07:53] One report that I did read coming off of Q3 here was that we did have a lot of turkeys in cold storage from last year. So I'm not sure if we'll be as concerned about this year's Thanksgiving, Turkey, but it's just definitely something to monitor as the story unfolds and where our numbers come in because this has been catastrophic to that region. And my thoughts go out to the families and I hope they get the resources that they need.

Vance Crowe [00:08:19] Well when, when you are planning, you have a big farming facility, you have to have emergency plans, what type of planning can you do for such a, a big catastrophe?

Guest [00:08:30] So one thing that's available is actually like a disaster response certification program. And there's one coming up through Cornell Cooperative Extension here or in the next couple of weeks is it's a two night, six hour course that can help you think through the things that you would need to think about, about how to communicate. We have radios here, but it's, it's beyond that. It's, it's so much more. And having that emergency service plan, I was thinking about that, that we're working on that here in Onondaga County to, to have an inventory of our resources that are available and what the, what the actual plan is. Because if you don't talk about the plans, how will you know what you're going to do? So have those conversations.

Vance Crowe [00:09:12] Yeah, I used to work in, in public radio and when I came in there, they didn't really have disaster management plans. They just would be like, Hey, there's a fire we're gonna report on it. But just the very act of sitting down and being like, what could happen? How would we handle it? Starts to get the ball rolling. So if it can happen where a hurricane can impact people way up in the mountains of, of North Carolina, it can happen anywhere. Alright, we're gonna keep moving because there continues to be big news. The port strike couldn't come at a worst time for farmers. This is from farm futures. Currently there are 45,000 dock workers at 36 ports across the United States. Six of these ports are in the 10 busiest ports in the US and some of the goods that aren't moving, they're not grain 'cause that moves in a different way. But many of the items are things like medical supplies, perishable foods, toys, automobiles and raw materials. And we're already seeing about 62 container ships have scrambled, said, Hey, if we can't unload here, we're gonna try and find somewhere else, whether that's another country, another port, or just coming to anchor. And the big thing is everybody's talking about the 77% salary increase, but really what the ILA is talking about is a total ban on the automation of cranes, gates and container moving trucks. This is a big deal. If you look at any of the Chinese ports, there are no people around there. They're all just moving on trucks. And so you can understand why if your job was, you know, doing this work, you would wanna keep it.

Vance Crowe [00:10:45] But you know, also automation allows our goods to be much cheaper. I want to throw out that right before we came on grain stats, one of the great follows on x posted a an article from CNN that said that, that apparently the union has found a deal and we'll be going back to work on Friday. So this is breaking news. That was, I didn't have time to corroborate it, but let's talk about it from your perspective, Christina, A big strike breaks out. Is it impacting you with New York farming?

Guest [00:11:19] Absolutely. I, well, well the thing with New York is that we have New York City that needs to eat. And a lot of food goes through Hunts Point. And I think about also the other industries that rely on the ports to either ship scrap metal. But here in Syracuse, we're not too far from the Port of Oswego that is actually still open because they negotiated a trade or an agreement back last month that is good through 2028 and they have the capacity to move grain, but they don't have the ability to move containers. But I can't think of any other industry that would be able to say no to automation if I said no to automation here in ag. Like that was like, the mind blowing thing is like, I want more automation, I want more technology to assist me in my job. So I guess that was one thing that I struggled with understanding.

Vance Crowe [00:12:08] Yeah, I mean the longshoreman was one of the early experiences I had with unionized workers. I had experienced it a little bit when I lived in Wisconsin and I was building roads, but then when I got out to working on a ship as a deckhand, you would encounter these long shoremen that had these rules and we were a small passenger ship. So if somebody didn't come in the window that, that you had for you to set your, their luggage out and then a longshoreman would walk it from the dock over to you and then you would carry it up the gangway. So they were basically just strolling luggage and you had to pay them tens of thousands of dollars to do this. And if a little old lady came, you know, outside of that window by even one minute, they would not allow any of us to help her. She had to go and carry it herself. She had to move it. And you would just see how they had all this power because if they caught a cell phone photo of you doing any little bit of work that was considered their work, they would fine you the amount that it would take an entire team of longshoremen to do a work for an eight hour shift. This kind of thinking, I, I don't know when it was valuable, but I know right now it is impeding people when they need prices to go down the most.

Guest [00:13:18] Yeah. And I know the number one thing that I'm hearing on my end is like mom saying, how will I explain to my toddler that they're not going to have bananas in the grocery store because of these shutdowns at the port? So it it's far reaching the waves and ripples of of these, of the strike.

Vance Crowe [00:13:35] Yeah, I mean, and you can see right before the show, before I read from grain stats that they may be going back now that's unconfirmed, but the Florida National Guard and the Florida State Guard were being deployed by Governor DeSantis who said, look, we, we have some of the most important ports in the entire world and we can't be shut down by this. So whereas the federal government who normally steps in in these situations didn't step in said, we're gonna let 'em work it out. The state of Florida said, Hey, we're gonna step in here and, and start, you know, making these ports move

Guest [00:14:10] And we need things to move, especially with the hurricane he, Helen, we have families that need these resources and the, the goods that are available to rebuild. And I don't though that impact is, is going to be huge. So this combination of strike and hurricane is not a great time.

Vance Crowe [00:14:36] All right. Well I, we're gonna move on to the final headline. All are Gods are Dead. The Libertarian representative Thomas Massey gives a huge shout out to Vni Harri, AKA the Food Babe. Late last week, the representative reposted a tweet Ivanni harri testifying before Congress about ingredients in US food that are considered to be toxic in Europe. And so I have a, like a, a personal knowledge of this for about the last five years, ags been able to shift their focus away from tell your story. These are the reasons you need to have GMOs. These are the reasons we use pesticides. Because the activists went away. The GMO fight calmed down for a while. A lot of the attention went to the glyphosate lawsuits. Well now activists are coming back up and once RFK joined forces with Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson started having some of these people on that are saying, the reason the obesity crisis is happening, the reason that we're having such poor health outcomes is because of the things that are being sprayed on your crops. And, you know, we, we should consider all things. There's nothing, there's no such thing as settled science, right? If somebody knows something we don't know, then we want to know that. But I can say that a lot of the tactics that Vanni Hari is using is taking words that sound really scary, putting them up on a, on a, on a giant board and saying, this is in your kids' Skittles instead of worrying about all of the processed sugar, you know, just the huge amount of sugar that you're getting for it.

Vance Crowe [00:16:13] So I think that ag is gonna be in a position where their former political home, which was the right and the libertarian saying, Hey, give ag the ability to do their work with the technologies they need. I think that's gonna go away. And ag is gonna be in a very, very difficult fight for technologies. Christina, are you seeing this Flipp where, where ag is not gonna have the same political home it had in the past?

Guest [00:16:40] Well, I am seeing these discussions about what is healthy food and what is nourishing to our bodies. And I think that's where the conversation actually starts, is to think about what you are fueling your body with and how you are feeding your families. We all have choices and you mentioned sugar and it's in everything and it is addicting. And when I think about my personal sugar intake, it is high. And so I'm making choices, but I everyone should be reading the ingredients on their food and understanding how to nourish and fuel their bodies.

Vance Crowe [00:17:16] Yeah, I think that this is the big story in ag. If I am in a farm bureau group anywhere in the United States, I'm paying attention to this issue because the, the, when I was in the, the kind of pushback about the reason that you wanna have GMOs or the value of them, that was one thing. GMOs are, they're very complicated science, but they're easy to discuss when you start talking about chemistry that you're using to do crop protection. This is much, much more complicated. It is very specific. Toxicology is very difficult parts per million parts per billion. This is very difficult. So if I were a group charged with making sure to preserve technology, I would be watching what's going on and I would be trying to get into this conversation, not sitting back thinking it's gonna go away. Like the GMO fight did any last words on that?

Guest [00:18:08] Well, one thing that comes to mind is actually the shelf life of food and our access to food and, and what, what, how do you balance those? All those things that we rely on for our fast-paced society.

Vance Crowe [00:18:23] Yeah, I mean, as a father, I know I, I get bread from the grocery store and we had buns that we got and I realized the bread that I got that was made just that day, it molded after about four days. And the buns that I had, they were no mold after three weeks and I threw 'em out. 'cause I was like, something's not, isn't

Guest [00:18:40] Right about this isn.

Vance Crowe [00:18:40] Yeah.

Guest [00:18:41] Isn't that weird? Yeah, exactly. So I think that's just one thing to pay attention to. You can use your observation skills and make choices for your family.

Vance Crowe [00:18:50] Well I wanna thank everybody that sent me headlines. Christina did a great job, but also grain stats as posting great stuff on X. If you have stories that you think we should be covering on the AG tribes report, go ahead and DM them to me on X at Vance Crowe. All right. Now moving on to the Bitcoin land price report. Christina, you said you live in Onaga County in New York. What's an acre of land cost out in US dollars in Onaga County?

Guest [00:19:20] So for prime tillable soil would run you about $6,000 an acre.

Vance Crowe [00:19:26] And this week's Bitcoin price is down a little bit from the last few, it's $60,753 per Bitcoin. So it turns out that 0.1 Bitcoin would buy you an acre of ground in Onondaga County, and that means that if you had one Bitcoin, it would be worth about 10.1 acres of prime farmland in Onondaga County. How does that sit with you, Christina?

Guest [00:19:52] It was actually surprising. We are seeing some changes here in our land prices with micron of the proposed to come. And we are the second highest real estate market or hottest real estate market in the us but I am open to the option of of buying resources with Bitcoin. And also fun fact are food bank for they accept Bitcoin too as a donation. And so it it's in our food system, it's in our food supply and I think the wave of Bitcoin is coming, so it's good to be talking about it.

Vance Crowe [00:20:28] Ah, you are one of the first guests to be like on board. I guess there was Zach Smith and maybe a few others, but you're the first one to be like, it's coming. I think that every, again, I think every ag group should be talking about this farm credit should be talking about this. Bitcoin is going to have a huge impact on ag even if it hasn't just yet. All right, now we move on to the Peter Teel paradox. This is where I ask my guest. Christina, what is one thing that you believe that almost no one you know agrees with you? On

Guest [00:21:00] My Peter Teel paradox is I believe that our food here in the United States is actually too safe. And that is why we're seeing issues with gut health, digestion, metabolism. And I just wonder what these food safety regulations are doing to our digestive system.

Vance Crowe [00:21:20] So what do you mean by that? How do you think the the health food system or the the safe food system is hurting our, our microbiome?

Guest [00:21:28] Well, I see the push to introduce probiotics and prebiotics into your, your diet and your, your regimen with your multivitamins. And I don't know if that's actually a push because they're just trying to market the next product and the next wave of what healthy is. Or are we missing things because our food is so safe that maybe in the past we would've been exposed to other microbial things that would aid or help our digestive system that because things are so clean and so pure, we need assistance now. And that's my question.

Vance Crowe [00:22:10] Yeah, I mean, I think that it seems to me that the hygiene hypothesis is real. The the people that are have dogs and cats in their homes tend to have far less allergies. I would guess that people that are living on farms similarly have these types of things. I was thinking when you were describing that the the food system may be too safe, is that just the amount of regulations isn't actually making our food any safer. It's just the, it's the, it's the un unending bureaucracy that makes you have to jump through hoops that isn't actually getting us any closer to safe food. It's just, it's trying to solve, you know, one crisis happens and then in order to resolve that problem, they come up with rules. But those rules stay in. So maybe if you were on a dairy farm, maybe the hygienic conditions weren't that good before. And now their rules on the level of pasteurization what you have to do to, to meet all these, check all these boxes are are outdated and, and maybe keeping us from having a healthier food system.

Guest [00:23:11] I can feel the pitchforks coming for me now Vance. So, but no, I think there are a lot of regulations that do make it burdensome to produce food and also it's just time. And we can be pulled in so many different directions and maybe it's just virtue signaling.

Vance Crowe [00:23:29] Yeah, and I mean, just you said about the pitchforks, I mean this is very real in agriculture that in, in there are institutions and there are people inside of those institutions that for really good reasons are saying, no, no, we need these rules. Look, I knew somebody that got sick in this way, this is really dangerous. But what they ha really happens is you can't have a robust dialogue. It's very difficult to talk about what's really going on. What could we do to make things better? Because people are like, no, we know what's right. We know what the right thing is. And a lot of the checkoff dollars and the money that's used to promote things also puts restraints on what people can and can't say. And I think it's really stifling important conversations about food safety and food health.

Guest [00:24:11] Yeah. So I am glad to be part of the conversation and maybe this will spur others to just think critically about the choices and the regulations and the world and environment that we live in.

Vance Crowe [00:24:23] Well, I am going to go out and say, you get an 8.9 for yours. This is quite good, I think largely because you're going out on a limb and saying something that a lot of large groups don't want you to say. So good luck with the pitchforks in the next, in the coming days and weeks. All right, finally on to the worthy adversary. This is where we spotlight people that we respect and yet disagree with. And we do this in order to get out of our ideological echo chambers. I keep a list of worthy adversaries on X so that anybody that's saying, Hey, I wanna listen to these people, find out what they're all about. So Christina, let's turn to you. Who is somebody that you respect but strongly disagree with on social media?

Guest [00:25:10] The number one person that came to mind to me was New York Farmer. I, I do enjoy reading her content and engaging with her posts, but there's some times that I'm like, oh, that wasn't it. Or, Ooh, you're gonna catch, you know, more, you know, flies than, you know, using honey. And so some of her approaches are a little gruff for me, but, you know, she's been in the industry longer than I have. And as the small farmer, the medium sized farmer, I think she has a, a very critical story to tell about where US ag is and consolidation and the rural American story and the challenges that they face. So I appreciate her insight, I appreciate her feedback, but there are times that I, that that would be mine. So

Vance Crowe [00:26:03] I think that's a great answer. You know, I've, I've definitely seen that gruffness and some, some really coarse words zinging past on, on X or back when I saw New York farmer a lot more on, on Twitter. But I think that this is a really important voice. I went to her feed today, saw that she's talking a bunch about how to help farmers that are being affected by the hurricane. And you see this like old school kind of dairy that used to, you know, speckle all of Pennsylvania and New York, and those things are going away. So she's fighting the good fight out there. All right. She will get added to the worthy adversaries. That was a fantastic one. I really appreciate that. So we are going to wrap this up for tonight. I want to thank our sponsors Farm test.ag, where you can use the system to scientifically test what products you are putting on your field to determine if they are working the way that their marketing materials are suggesting. And from Legacy Interviews where you can sit down and have your loved ones record their life stories so that future generations have the opportunity to know their family story. And as we heard in the advertisement in the beginning, we oftentimes when people tell their stories, they get to look back and recontextualize so much of what they thought about their lives. So if you are interested to learn more, go to Legacy Interviews dot com. Christina, thank you so much for coming on. If people wanted to get ahold of you to aim pitchforks your way, where would they, where would they do that?

Guest [00:27:34] At Girl Hudson, on Twitter and also on TikTok. And I'm private on Instagram, but come find me and I'd love to have a chat and learn. And I, I'm very curious. So, so thanks.

Vance Crowe [00:27:53] Well this was a great AG Tribes report. Thanks so much for coming on. Join us next week for another AG Tribes report with guest co-host Bill Bullard of our calf. That's gonna be a wild one.

Guest [00:28:06] Ooh. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:28:07] And so as always, feel free to disagree.