ATR Beef Checkoff Steps in it & Supply Management may end Canada @RadkeAmanda

About this episode

Vance's co-host this week is Amanda Radke (@RadkeAmanda), a South Dakota rancher and founder of Bid On Beef, a direct-to-consumer marketing platform she built as a response to concentration in the beef packing industry — she cites the familiar statistic that 85% of US beef supply runs through four major players, two of them foreign-owned, while family ranches keep going under. The two headline through-lines are the Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline fight, which Radke has organized against for over three years on behalf of elderly landowners in South Dakota targeted by aggressive easement agents, and the fallout from RFK Jr.'s confirmation as HHS Secretary and what it signals for MAHA's influence over agricultural policy. Radke's framing of the pipeline as "a green new deal scam" that buries usable plant food underground rather than valuing it lands as the episode's sharpest institutional critique — a private, foreign-backed infrastructure project riding on eminent-domain-adjacent land-agent pressure tactics against vulnerable rural landowners. On the Peter Thiel paradox, Radke's answer that "I believe in entrepreneurship in the free market" as something oddly controversial to say out loud draws a lower score from Vance, who notes her carbon-as-plant-food framing was the more provocative, higher-scoring take. The episode continues the show's steady thread of skepticism toward concentrated agricultural power, whether packer concentration or carbon-pipeline land grabs, paired with the recurring Bitcoin segment (River referral, 500 sat onboarding offer) that has become a fixture of the ATR format.

“85% of our beef supply is held captive by four major players, two that are foreign owned, and we're seeing thousands and thousands of family farms and ranches go out of business each and every year... there's gotta be a way to bring money back to rural America to get America's cattle ranchers paid to do what they do well.”

“Three and a half years ago, I started getting calls from elderly ladies and widows and people who had been really bullied by land agents pushing for a private out of state foreign backed pipeline to come into the state of South Dakota... this is an absolute boondoggle. It's a green new deal scam. It's literally burying plant food in the ground.”

“Carbon is plant food and shouldn't be buried in the ground. It felt very racy to say that in the beginning, but now, now I got a whole bunch of people on board.”

Key moments

• Radke's packer-concentration framing for why she built Bid On Beef.
• Radke's origin story fighting the Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline on behalf of elderly South Dakota landowners.
• Radke's Peter Thiel paradox answer on carbon as undervalued plant food.