ATR: Canadian Elections, Tariffs, and Farmer payments/bribes? with @QuickDickMcDick

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 this Mother's Day. Honor your parents with the opportunity to tell their stories and share the wisdom they've learned along the way. Here is Legacy Interviews guest Patricia Showalter on the fun she had, reflecting on her life as an individual, a mother, and a grandmother. I really didn't know what to expect. Were you nervous about it before? Or how did you feel about it before? No, I just wondered what the heck was going to happen if somebody was on the fence, what would you tell them? Yeah, I'd tell somebody to do it. Just go and have fun. I've had fun. You're only here for a short time. My grandkids are going to say, oh my cow. Can we believe this stuff? 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 on a co-host that represents the perspectives of one of the many ag tribes that make up US and Canadian agriculture. And today we have a great guest, Quick Dick McDick, for those of you that don't know Quick, is one of YouTube's biggest stars in agriculture.

Vance Crowe [00:01:34] He comments on what's going on in the world, has hilarious characters in it, and I have gotten to know quick over several years, both having him as a guest on the podcast and being on stage with him, with Sean Newman presents. So quick. It is my great honor to welcome you to the Ag Tribes Report.

Quick Dick McDick [00:01:52] Hey, Vance, thanks for having me, man. It's always, always a pleasure to talk to you, man. Always.

Vance Crowe [00:01:57] So this, this week we have a lot going on there is, I actually just got back from Canada. I was up in Ontario with the Grain Farmers of Ontario and had a total like culture shock. Got a lot of good experiences hearing what people were talking about, but what was really crazy was the number of people that I'd be like, yeah, I'm gonna have Quick Dick McDick on. And they'd be like, really? You know, that guy, everybody knew him. Everybody knows you in Canada. It was like, that's not an exaggeration.

Quick Dick McDick [00:02:26] It's, yeah, it seemed every would've told me that this was gonna happen, that that, that this many people wind up, you know, watching, watching the channel and everything. And you know, I don't always do political stuff. I do farming stuff sometimes just do small towns, iCal, humor stuff, and I don't know, I guess it's kind of the quick tick variety show. And yeah, we might talk about some serious stuff that goes on in the world, but then you gotta talk about some goofy stuff that happens too, right? So I'm just, I'm honored to have so many people watch and tune in and, and just thanks everybody for following along. It's been quite the ride and this slowly turning into a standup comedy career, never been anything that was on my spectrum, but, but here we are, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:03:05] Yeah, man, that's actually one of the things people told me, like, oh, I drove four hours to go see him up in this pool hall or this rink, or this bar or this whatever. Everybody has a story. And that's the crazy thing about Canadian farmers is a four hour drive seems like what I would consider about the drive across the street.

Quick Dick McDick [00:03:22] Yeah, exactly. It's, but it's, it's Canada, right? There's, you know, we're the second largest landmass on the planet and we've only got 41 million people here, right? So we're, we're very, we're very sparsely populated. So when you're just driving down the block, I think our, I even think our blocks in talent are longer than your guys' in the us.

Vance Crowe [00:03:41] Well, we better jump right in On tonight's ag report, we're gonna talk about Mark Carney's rise to Prime Minister in Canada, and how he has an imminent call for elections while Trump is saying that he actually favors liberals over conservatives. Meanwhile, trump's 25% tariffs on Canadian goods since March 4th have been dominating farmer talk up north. Everybody was talking about it, the Green Farmers of Ontario, whereas in the US it is not nearly as big a news. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that. We're also gonna talk about the checks that the USDA is sending out to farmers just for the very fact that they are farmers. And finally, we're gonna talk about a tweet that went viral on X from Adam Lesch about the aging population of farmers in the United States, and what, that's the kind of tidal wave that's coming. With that, we're gonna do all of that. We're gonna talk about quick's Peter Thiel paradox, find out who his worthy adversary is and the Bitcoin land price report. We're gonna try and do that all in just 30 minutes. So let's get started. Canada is very close to calling elections. Okay, so quick, your prime minister is usually the majority party leader, but recently your party leader, Justin Trudeau, stepped down and he appointed Mark Carney, who is actually not a member of your parliament. And now they're saying, all right, he's gotten a lot of pressure, he's gonna call elections for a new parliament, and then whoever becomes the majority leader, this is my understanding, then selects their prime minister, which if the liberals win, it'll be Mark Carney, an economist that went to Harvard and then worked for Goldman Sachs and the Bank of England.

Vance Crowe [00:05:22] Or he'll be competing against conservative Pierre Poll. Did I get all that right?

Quick Dick McDick [00:05:27] It's you're close man. Yeah, it's, so Carney wasn't actually appointed Prime Minister. What they wound up doing is Justin Trudeau was completely tanking in the polls and, and taking his liberal party with him. This has been happening for quite some time. What he wound up doing was he pro robed parliament, which is basically, you know, it's, it's our sitting of government and he roed it by doing this, by use of the Governor General, which is by way an extension of, of the King of England here in Canada. We still have something to do with the monarchy. I, I guess because we used to be a colony of, of Britain, right? So what wound up going on is they Prorogue parliament, which stopped all parliamentary processes here in Canada, and they stopped that to run a leadership race within the liberal party. And that took some of the front running candidates that had to front $350,000 to run in the liberal party of Canada leadership race. So Justin Trudeau stayed on as the prime minister while the liberal party was running this, this leaders race. And Mark Carney was the winner of it. I mean, we could get a long ways into some of the stuff that happened in this, in this leader's race. Essentially started off with quite a few candidates. There was a big wap of conservatives that tried signing up as liberal party members because you could do it for free. All you needed to be was 14 years old and have an internet connection. And there's issues with that too. And a few of the candidates were disqualified from some different irregularities that the liberal party came up with that was happening. And essentially, a lot of people say that this was an installation of Mark Carney and they're just trying to use the optics of a, of a leadership race to make it happen.

Quick Dick McDick [00:07:02] Whichever tube you wanna jump down. At the end of the day, Mark Carney got 85%, I believe, of the, of the leadership folks from the liberal party in Canada, which was just over a hundred and some thousand people. And he actually is the pri the sitting prime minister of Canada now. So when you become the leader, just like it did happened with Danielle Smith in Alberta, when you become the leader of the governing party, you, you are instantaneously, instantaneously become like the premier or prime minister in the case of Mark Carney. And so we now,

Vance Crowe [00:07:33] And so now a new election is coming up though, right? And, and so what, what's going on with this? Just a quick summary of that.

Quick Dick McDick [00:07:41] Yeah, so it's rumors are that it's gonna be Sunday here that Mark Carney is gonna drop the writ and we'll go to an election. Now all of a sudden, since Mark Carney's taken over, a lot of the polling agencies in Canada are shown the liberals polling back into a majority government territory, which before it was a conservative super majority. So I guess it just depends on what polling means to you. I don't think it meant a lot in the US and the last election, but we, we will be going and they're gonna, and the the liberals are gonna try and run as absolute short of an election cycle as they possibly can because they're gonna try and take advantage of the high polling numbers. And I vance, I really hope that we don't wind up having a another liberal government here in Canada.

Vance Crowe [00:08:19] Yeah. So on the morning, yesterday morning I was in Ontario and I was sitting around with a group of farmers and the very first thing the guy said that we sat down was like, Hey, did you hear that Trump said he actually prefers a liberal in the prime Minister spot. This seems to me to be reverse psychology that Trump is trying to play because the, the liberals have really been making a lot that Pierre Poll is just maga and we don't want that in Canada. What's

Quick Dick McDick [00:08:44] Your take, maple, mega Tim bit Trump, all the good stuff there. Yeah, it's the liberals are, are using the, the Donald Trump situation with the US as, as the gas, the dump on their fire to try and, and come through the polls. They want to use, they wanna use fear. It's what they always do. They try and drive a big wedge in between Canada, usually east west, and now they're gonna use people's fear of Donald Trump to try and get reelected. And it was just really interesting. They've called Polly of mini Trump for, I don't know how long it's been. Their whole basically platform to try and get themselves back on the polls to try and make Polly of appear as a Trump, because apparently Canadians are all afraid of Trump, which is the case. And, and, and with with Trump, with Trump coming out and actually saying that he wouldn't wanna see Polly of as the prime minister of Canada, I think all of a sudden now they're kind of a little bit of a deer in the headlights situation because this is the whole narrative that they're using against everybody to be like, oh, you know, Trump wants poly polyon Trump. And then Trump says, actually I don't want poly. Now whether it's reverse psychology with Trump or what it is, I don't know, but I am never, it never ceases to entertain me whenever I open up X lately and see what's happening in the world. So,

Vance Crowe [00:09:55] Well, speaking of what's happening in the world when you go up to Canada, it is tariffs, tariffs, tariffs with the grain farmers of Ontario, they were very much concerned about what's going on with that. And they were telling me that this is the talk all throughout Ag Canada, but if you come to the United States, this is not the case. Canadians seem to be talking a lot more about tariffs because I think that is what's driving things forward. But here in the United States, yeah, you hear a little bit about tariffs, but you're also hearing about the Department of Education being put to death. You're talking about U-S-A-I-D being slashed the president of the u US Institute of Peace, locking himself in his office, all kinds of other conflict. So what do you think quick, are tariffs actually impacting you or is it just that it's slow news going on in Canada right now and that's why it's hit the top of the radar there?

Quick Dick McDick [00:10:46] No, there's, there's definitely an impact on it. Two parts to this advances. I was just recently in, in February, I was down in Louisville, Kentucky at the National Farm Machinery Show. And I really expect to talk tariffs a lot more with, with Americans down there. And a lot of people were like you say, were just like, what, what are you talking about? And there's a few guys that would come up to me and be like, yeah, it sucks. You guys are gonna have to pay those tariffs. And I was like, but, but you guys realize that you pay them when you import our products into, into the us. Like we don't pay them. I mean, it's just, it, it's, it turns out as a market disadvantage to us. I'm, I'm curious to see where things are gonna go with the tariffs for the simple fact that there's a lot of, a lot of different stocks that people can't outsource anywhere else other than Canada. And it's still by far cheaper, even with the tariffs to do it through Canada than it would be somewhere else. And I think our dollars got a lot to do with that. And I think a lot of this might turn out in the wash with these tariffs as far as US companies importing from Canada for the simple fact that if it continues to drive our dollar into the ground, it's, it's kind of gonna be a wash on that exchange rate that you get as Americans. Whether it's hurting us or not, you wouldn't need to look much farther than our canola markets here recently there's been a, a, a huge dive in the canola markets and a lot of it o obviously a lot of it's on speculation and, and it's not just the US that's fueling that, it's what's happening with us with China here now too. With their recent announcement of a hundred percent tariffs on canola oil, canola meal peas is another one that they're doing a hundred percent tariff on. And this is all in, in response to retaliation to, to an EV tariff that we put on in Canada, a hundred percent EV tariff for anything coming in from China.

Quick Dick McDick [00:12:20] Which the crazy part about that is that was actually a protectionist move to help the US ev market to be protected from China. And then we got the tariffs reciprocated on any of the products that the US was bringing in from, from here. So we're, we're really getting it from a lot of different ends here right now, you know, but I mean, we, we export, we aren't an export country. I mean, over 75, 70 5% of what we produce here in Canada is exported just because we're a, we're a a very natural resource, rich resource rich country with a very small population. And I mean, that's what countries like us do. It's just we have a, a, a terrible mismanagement problem with our federal government and we're, we're, we're just not the superpower that we should be on a world stage given the natural resources that we have. But Vance, you even just look at Saskatchewan exporting to the US alone. I mean, 60% of our ag exports are to the us. I mean, when we're looking at canola, it's, I think it's around 13 billion, or sorry, crude oil's around $13 billion po like potash. We're, we're one of the, the leading potash provider in the world and I think we're somewhere around 85 to 90% of the potash that that is brought into the US comes right from here in Saskatchewan. And I believe they, I think they scaled back the tariff to 10% on that. But still, I was just baffled that, that your federal government would put a tariff on, on fertilizer that's basically supplied from one fertilizer stock in the world, which is Saskatchewan. You guys produced a tiny bit, a little bit of it comes from Russia, Belarus, I mean the rest of it comes from right here in Saskatchewan.

Quick Dick McDick [00:13:52] Just seemed like a very punitive thing for your federal government to do to the, to the agriculture community in the us

Vance Crowe [00:13:57] Yeah, because the, the GFO was, they were talking different commodities. There were a whole bunch of suppliers and I talked to some guys that were selling fertilizer and they said they have been telling all their US customers who they sell, I think probably half of their product to, Hey, make way clear space 'cause we are gonna send it down there and if you don't get it before these tariffs come on, then even though you've prepaid, we're gonna have to give you that, we're gonna have to have that tariff go to you. Yeah. And you see that this is making movement happen. Who knows if this is all just a game. My sense is that Trump doesn't actually want these tariffs on there, but the threat of those is allowing him to have a world stage. Everybody's paying attention to him and he doesn't have to beat to war drum. He can beat an economic drums. So I, I don't think that these are real, but I could be totally wrong. They're talking about trying to get rid of income tax and they gotta replace it with something.

Quick Dick McDick [00:14:47] Yeah, I'm, I'm curious to, but like, that's, that's the puzzling part to me. It's just a, it's just a redistribution of taxes essentially because it's, it's an Im, it's an import tax on bringing something in into your country. So e essentially if you're replacing income tax with the tax somewhere else, I mean, somebody somewhere is still paying that tax's just a matter of who's doing it, what's happening, and how does it trickle down through the economy. It's the same thing of what was happening, the carbon tax here in Canada that was just recently quote unquote paused. It, it's just that everyone's like, oh, well you, you don't pay it. Mark Carney said rate to right to a CTV reporter. He is like, well, you know, we're, we're gonna work on an industrial carbon tax on our steel industry here. And they said, well, wouldn't that be a trickle down effect onto the consumers? And this guy, that's the, that's the genius behind this, looks at him and says, well, when was the last time you bought steel? Well, I don't know if you look around in the car that you drive and the trains that ship anything anywhere, some of the stuff that products in our houses are built out of aluminum and your cars, they didn't think that the world is built on steel. Everybody buys steel, you know, so it, it's really, it's frustrating to see everybody just trying to shuffle the amount of dollars around of where we pay it and who sees it and what the perception of it is, I think is one of the biggest challenges that we face as a, as a society is just the perception of, of money and who's paying what. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:16:03] Well, speaking of perception, go moving on to headline number three. While Doge is making huge cuts to federal spending, farmers are getting a little taste of the green stuff. The USDA is expediting $10 billion in direct economic assistance to agricultural producers. The commodities that I'm gonna list here in just a second are eligible for per acre payment rates. Wheat, $30 per acre, corn, 42, almost $43 per acre, canola, $32 per acre soybeans, they're almost $30 per acre. I could go on, but you're seeing farmers getting big payments for the amount of land that they were farming before. It's not going to the land owner, it's going to the farmer that was on those acreage. I went to X and said something like, Hey, what do you call these? Is this a bribe? Is this what what you're doing to get the farmer vote? Man, that kicked a hornet's nest. There were some people that were pretty pissed off at me asking, you know, what was the quid pro quo there? What are the farmers getting? And other people, fair enough, were saying like Jolene strain said, you know, while farmer, while plumbers and servers can pass the rise or on input costs onto consumers, farmers can't, not sure about the us but Canadian farmers could seriously use this. Right now market manipulations by China and our communities crash along with us, and the input prices keep rising So quick. Canadian farmers, do they need a direct payment from your government?

Vance Crowe [00:17:34] How do you feel about these sorts of direct payments?

Quick Dick McDick [00:17:37] I think what Canadian farmers need from our government is representation in, in our infrastructure. One of the biggest challenges that we face in Canada is, is we're, we're plagued by, by unionized labor forces. That that is our only option to get our product to port. And as I said before, like we're an export country, we're an export province, an export country, and every day when you turn around on the news, if you have a national rail on that's on strike, or if you have port workers that are on strike and we have customers like for, for example, India that are expecting a, a massive amount of commodity from us and we're just that redheaded stepchild that can't seem to get it across our country and shipped out at port. I think that's one of the bigger problems that we had. It, it, not direct answer to question, but I know one of the, one of the numbers that I, I had that link sent to me right away when that came live of, of the subsidy coming down in the US was, I think it was $77 per acre on oats. I was absolutely shocked. And I, I think anyone that follows the oat market close would, would know that that that bigger reason for that. And a lot of the reason that, that the government would wanna get more people in the US growing oats with that number is because you get, don't grow any, right. Most of the oats that you guys import come, come straight outta Canada. And so I like, I I get that and but when you see that coming, like part of me says this is, this is like the first step to communism is, is the government being like, Hey, you know, we're gonna pay you this much to grow this kind of thing.

Quick Dick McDick [00:19:11] It it, it goes back to like even supply management. When you look at how that works here in Canada, I mean, all of a sudden you have quotas and the government regulates how much you can do and then they set the price for it. And it doesn't change the fact that we still pay an arm and a leg for milk, eggs, cheese at the grocery store. I I, I do not get excited anytime the government gets involved with anything. And the biggest thing they need to do is just cut red tape and get out of our way, do their job, and make sure that we can get approvals on products that we need to grow sustainable crops in, in some drier conditions or different, you know, pressures that we see from, from different pests that we have within our, in our crops and right down to, to our cri critical infrastructure. We, we need to be able to move this product back and forth east and west, north and south. And we just keep getting railroaded, quote unquote every time. I mean, if, if you live close to the rail line, it's a half mile away from the feedlot to where we're calving right now. I look out there and I watch five trains of crude oil go by there a day in a country that refuses to build a pipeline east and west saying that there's no business case for any of these products. And meanwhile our potash and, and all of our crops are sitting on side rails making way for this important commodity that the world needs to keep moving. It just, it's really frustrating to see it that most of the time we don't need more money thrown at us from the government to try and make work what we're making work. We just need them to do their job and let us do our job.

Vance Crowe [00:20:36] Yeah, and I mean, from the US perspective, you see all this stuff going on with Doge way, we're cutting out billions of dollars or we found a hundred million dollars here or a hundred million dollars there. Well if right out of the back of the of Doge you're pumping $10 billion into the economy, which ostensibly is going straight up to the banks to make payments and different input suppliers and, you know, farm implements. So it's one of those things where it's like, are you really actually stopping runaway government spending or are you just continuing it? You're just paying different groups of people than what the, the previous administration was doing.

Quick Dick McDick [00:21:12] Yeah, absolutely. And like I think there's room in every government that exists in the world, especially Canada, to, to trim some of the back on, I mean the, the government of Canada has grown exponentially over the last 10 years under the liberal, under the liberal regime that's existed here in Canada. And we, we just keep getting more bloated as, as a, as a federal government and we just get no more productivity out of it whatsoever. I mean we need, we need a doge happening here in Canada. I'm not sure what we would call it, but, and I, I maybe need to save the rest of my answer when it comes down to, to, you know, how, how many farmers do need what for financial support right now, because there's a lot of larger scale farmers that I see in a lot of places up here and down in the US that really don't need that subsidy. So how close are we looking at that, right? Like when we look at subsidies here in Canada, we don't see, we see a lot of it on the crop insurance side of things, how things work with crop insurance in Canada. But when you look at different industries in Canada, you need to look no farther than than the green industries and ev things that are happening here in Canada right now. I mean we've got four for four and a half billion dollars I think that went to STIs here. No, that was North volt. North Volt was four and a half billion dollars. And then Stellantis is just over $15 billion in, in performance incentives. That's all coming from provincial and federal governments for ev battery manufacturing plants that don't even exist yet. And now North Bolt was declaring bankruptcy in Sweden while this is all happening, well, does that mean we ever see that $5 billion again back that our government put into something that was just to make jobs in Eastern Canada?

Quick Dick McDick [00:22:49] I, I, I don't know, it's, it's a very backward situation.

Vance Crowe [00:22:52] I had a chance outside of London, Ontario to go see one of my friend's farms and outside of that farm was a huge battery factory where the government had come in and basically forced these people to sell their farms and they told 'em, Hey, you better take this price otherwise you're not gonna get as good of a price. And, and they started building these giant EV batteries and now you know, there's talk like, hey, with all the Trump cuts and different changes to the economy, maybe that battery factory won't even be built. So you've taken legacy farms, things that have been in people's farms, families for generations and made that happen. We're gonna leave it there 'cause we gotta go to headline number four, the last

Quick Dick McDick [00:23:31] Story. Yep.

Vance Crowe [00:23:32] Which is Adam Lash pokes the geriatric bear. So this week on Twitter, actually just yesterday, Adam Lash posted a meme of a little seaside village about to be hit by an increasingly large set of tsunami waves. The town is labeled young people dreaming of a career in agriculture. And the first wave, which is large enough to crush the village says 1.1 million farmers below the age of 54 trying to survive the next decade. The second wave, which dwarfs the first wave, says 840,000 farmers between 55 to 65 hoping they don't get washed out before retirement. And the third wave says 1.2 million farmers over the age of 65 hoping to farm through retirement. This made a huge splash on X with lash adding 1.2 million old guys over the age of 65 are driving down returns because we have a stagnant boomer driven ag policy in the us I gotta say the demographics are looking rough in the US for ag and that the only people that can afford to farm are the older people that are, you know, well entrenched and getting these kinds of payments. Would a, would a meme like this make sense in in Canada

Quick Dick McDick [00:24:46] To, to a certain extent. I think that's in regards to, to the, to the aging population though, when you get six five, I know we're working through retirement. I think that's one thing that's really changing drastically here in Canada. I'm gonna say, especially in the beef industry. Just to, to take it off. 'cause we always talk about grain. I'll just switch gears over the beef industry a little bit here. We, we've seen some really attractive prices in the, in the live cattle market here over the last year, year and a half to record highs. And I think there's a lot of guys that were hanging on because they had to and, and didn't really know when a good time was gonna be to get out. And then all of a sudden we see, you know, a a herd shortage existing on the North American continent here, the lowest it's ever been since the mid sixties, I believe it is. Record high prices, obviously 'cause of supply and demand. And this has given a lot of guys that have faced a couple of tougher years of drought. There's 21 and, and some different times where it was not easy being in the cattle business guys feeding year round. Finally you see a commodity price right now where I think there's a lot of guys that are taking this opportunity to get out because they finally see the chance to get some kind of a return on their investment in their herd of livestock. And now they don't have to be up in the middle of the night cabin cows out. It's a young man's game, we're doing it right now and it it wears on you. And then I think a lot of 'em have seen the opportunity to either turn their marginal grays land with the innovations that we've seen in in, in modern agriculture for grain farming. A lot of land that we've deemed on farmable years ago is now actually farmable. And a lot of guys are either taking that opportunity to rent that out or selling that off at a, at a, at a price where it's, it's pretty attractive for what they paid for for pasture land.

Quick Dick McDick [00:26:21] So that retirement side, i i I don't really see the comparison there, but when it comes down to people trying to get it to egg right now, it's, it's essentially a possible, you need a lot of money, a lot of capital, and you need a lot of land to make it all work. Even if you just wanna run 50, a 50 head cow cap operation. I mean you need land to make feed, you need land to graze 'em on for the winter. You need a feedlot and you need services and natural gas and power and water wells and whatnot drilled and you need to build a barn and none of this stuff is getting any cheaper. And the commodity price as good as it is right now, isn't even to the point where it'd be able to facilitate. You'd be like, Hey, you're gonna go to a bank and say, I can get a loan to, to actually do this. It'd be very hard to, for you to make those numbers pencil unless you've got a lot of capital on your side.

Vance Crowe [00:27:07] Yeah, my experience with Legacy Interviews tells me that it's never been easy to get into farming. You know, if you tried to get into farming in the seventies and the eighties, it wasn't easy at different times. I was over in Europe one time and heard people talking about wanting to farm there and how little opportunity there was. I do think we had a very rare golden opportunity right after World War II when people came back. They were fit and healthy, the government was giving 'em money, there was mechanization and industrialization and you could find ways to maximize your labor in a way that you just can't now because now you've gotta make these capital improvements. But it does seem like one of the things that's driven our American or western economies is the dream of being able to do things like get into farming, make a million dollars and it feels like people's dreams like that are really shrinking or being in a dark spot because if you have to take on, you know, $10 million worth of loans in order to be able to compete for land, it seems like, are you doing something dangerous? A lot of people, they were talking this week about, about it being us Ag appreciation day and people being like, how can I appreciate this when you've gotta work two jobs in town in order to just have your dream of farming, you know, on the side. So there's a lot of cynicism going on there right now.

Quick Dick McDick [00:28:25] Yeah. It's, you know, it's, it's a tough business and, and you're, you're relying on the weather to, to make it all work. I think 'cause the be all and end all of it. If you're running a business, you can do different kinds of advertising change kind of products. So what you're running, there's a lot of different ways that you can adapt when you're in this business. You know, you're, whether you like it or not, you are subject to global markets and you are subject to the weather and those are two things that are gonna dictate how you do throughout the course of the year. You don't get to set the price for equipment, you don't get to set the price for your, for your commodity. The only thing that you get to do is, is determine how you're gonna flow that cash and, and try and make some money off of it. Right? There's a lot of things that are completely outta your control. So take away the price of land, the price of everything, and just have that in your mind that you can have the best laid plan you can possibly have and a couple of bad years of weather can, can ruin that really fast. Right? So it, it's, it's a lot of risk and if, if you can make it through some people, no matter how hard you work, it's not, it's not gonna work out for you. And, and some people are able to find that balance and make it work so

Vance Crowe [00:29:25] Well. For anybody right now that wants to hear this topic explored in a deeper way, Adam Lesh, who was last week's Ag Tribes report guest went on Damien Mason's podcast, the Business of Agriculture. I only got a chance to listen to part of it and it was lit. It was very good. I thought they did a great job of exploring the depth of this, of this challenge, which isn't to say, Hey, if you're older, you shouldn't be farming. That's not the case. They're exploring it from a what is this gonna do to our economy, how is this playing out? So it's an excellent episode. All right. That's gonna do it for the headlines. If you have headlines you think we should cover, make sure you send them to Vance at Legacy Interviews dot com or you can always send them via DM on X at Vance Crowe. Now we're gonna move on to the Bitcoin land price report. Now quick and I didn't have a chance to set up before the show, but, so we're gonna fly by the seat of our pants here. My

Quick Dick McDick [00:30:15] Favorite way to fly

Vance Crowe [00:30:16] Quick, how much is an acre of land down there in, in Saskatchewan where you're at?

Quick Dick McDick [00:30:22] If, if you're looking at, at like a, like a prime arable land that that's, that's been farmed for a few years here you're looking somewhere around the ballpark of, you know, four, between four to $5,000 an acre,

Vance Crowe [00:30:34] Four to $5,000 an acre. And I guess it's probably lower in that way because are you, is it mostly pasture land?

Quick Dick McDick [00:30:41] No, like that would be, that would be arable farming land. The guys are growing, you know, canola on canola peas, wheat, barley, you name it kind of thing. It's, we, we've got a lot of land here and it's, it's a very, very wide open province. I mean, our population here in Saskatchewan is 1.2 million, right? So we don't have a lot of people here and we have a short growing season too, right? So you gotta be dialed in, you gotta have, you gotta have your, your operation dialed in and ready to go. But it doesn't, you don't have to go far away from here to see a lot of different prices. You get into some of the areas of, of, of Western to eastern Manitoba, some places down in Southern Alberta. I mean, land prices changed drastically just here in the Parkland region. That's like, that's the ballpark of what you're looking at, but you better own a good rock picker if you're gonna farm here.

Vance Crowe [00:31:26] And so that means that Bitcoin 0.037 Bitcoin would buy an acre of land. How does that sit with you?

Quick Dick McDick [00:31:36] Hey, you know what, I, I, I wouldn't sell land in Bitcoin because I still dunno enough about it, but Bitcoin if, if it's 0.37, I just, I like the sounds of that 'cause it sounds low, you know, sounds like it's cheap to get into. But I guess that's coming from a guy that deals in Canadian dollars, which is seemed pretty cheap to you guys too. So

Vance Crowe [00:31:57] Yeah, that took me a little adjusting. It was almost, you know, if I wanted to do quick math, I would just say it's a, you know, 150% my dollar buy so much more in Canada. That was a little weird being up there compared to even just a few years ago.

Quick Dick McDick [00:32:10] Yeah, I actually will, whenever I come down to the states, I, I used to bring cash down with me and now I just tap a card 'cause I just don't wanna know anymore. You know, I'll just tap and go and do what I need to do. Yeah, it's, it's, it's very close. I think it's, I think it's like 143% rate now. Maybe I might be is at 150. It might even be 150. I haven't checked lately.

Vance Crowe [00:32:28] I think it's a, it's a, it's 144 or something like that. But if you're just doing math off the top of your head, you can, you know, make it easy to do. Yeah,

Quick Dick McDick [00:32:34] Yeah. And that's with the whole thing that I was talking earlier about tariffs, like that is one of the things there when you, you see a 25% tariff on something coming into the us when you look at what you actually buy it for with an American dollar, it, it, you know, it it, it can come out in the wash pretty fast. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:32:48] So you and I have had a chance to meet with people like Steve Barber and talk a lot about Bitcoin. One of the things I like to do is talk a little bit about things that people maybe have heard about about Bitcoin but don't really know very much about it. And I wanted to talk about the difference between a hot wallet and a cold wallet. Do those terms mean anything to you quick?

Quick Dick McDick [00:33:06] Yeah, mine's usually cold 'cause there's nothing but ice in it, you know what I mean? But no, no, you're gonna have to explain this one to me. So

Vance Crowe [00:33:13] A hot wallet is like if I kept Bitcoin on my phone, so I wanted to send it and I already have the password on my phone, that's a hot wallet. And the reason they call it a hot wallet is 'cause you can steal it, right? It's like it's something that's, you shouldn't put very much money in a wallet that's hot, that's touched the internet. But there's another way, which is a cold wallet, which is what you do is you make a transaction essentially to make it really simple, I basically write up a transaction and say, I wanna send money from my wallet to your wallet. And then I, I take a disc and put it in my computer, get that transaction, put it in my cold wallet and sign it with the password, take the disc out, put it in my computer and it says, ah, this is signed and it can send, which means there's a way to hold Bitcoin so that it never touches the internet. There's no way to hack it because there's nothing that's ever been connected to the internet to hack. And I think when you start getting your mind around that, you're like, wow, that's a level of security i I don't even have with my own bank account, right? Like my, my bank is almost always a hot wallet.

Quick Dick McDick [00:34:14] I'm actually shocked that you used the word disc. Like

Vance Crowe [00:34:18] Yeah,

Quick Dick McDick [00:34:18] Well like I, that leads me right back to like school when you had the floppy disc that you were throwing in the computer. Right? Well

Vance Crowe [00:34:25] That's a good point. I'm talking about a micro SD card, right? One of these little teeny tiny things, but I, to make it simple, I said disc, but you're right. They, it is funny that you have that, right. You have to have some physical thing that goes between them.

Quick Dick McDick [00:34:38] Yeah, that's, that's interesting. You know, and I think that's something we, we really need to keep our heads wrapped around as a society is, is keeping physic like things physically a part of our lives. You know, I, I'm not a a guy that's, that jumps off the deep end of anything, but I mean, could you imagine a if a day where the internet all of a sudden didn't exist for a couple days or a couple of weeks or a couple of months? Like there's a lot of people that have a lot of assets tied up digitally and, and it's just something that you physically do not hold. You know?

Vance Crowe [00:35:07] Oh man, I was in, I was out in Arizona when all those ATMs went down and all the credit cards went down and I was flying with a guy and he said, how much money do you carry on you when you fly? And I was kind of looking at him suspiciously and he was like, well, I was in Texas and all the ATMs and everything were shut down for two days. What would you do? How would you get home? And I was like, I don't know. So now whenever I travel, I take enough cash that if I had to move from one place to another, if I had to get get back home, I could do it. Which is a weird thing, you know, you think in this digital age you wouldn't need it, but what happens if you get stuck somewhere?

Quick Dick McDick [00:35:43] The same thing happened here. Yeah. It was like a, a big outage of, there was three different major credit cards, there was a big outage and there was a lot of people, their, their lives just completely stopped. Right. And yeah, like I do the same thing when I travel. Like even I, like, I keep, I, I keep myself a little bit of, I call it get outta jail money, but not that I'm in jail, but I mean, you're on the side of the road somewhere and you just need somebody to give you a hand. Most people are gonna give you a hand and not ask for anything in return, but it's nice to have a couple of, you know, a couple hundred bucks that you might be able to, to slough off their way. Or maybe you need to buy something here, like say buy a ticket to get somewhere. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:36:16] It's a funny thing. I actually carry my, my, I carry some Bitcoin with me too, thinking that it'll probably help me, but who knows. Hey, fair

Quick Dick McDick [00:36:22] Enough man. Yeah, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:36:24] All right, moving right along. Let's do the Peter Teel paradox. This is where I'm gonna ask quick Dick, what is one thing that you believe that almost nobody in your tribe agrees with you on?

Quick Dick McDick [00:36:34] So like I touched on it earlier, and that's like government, government backstops specifically like the crop insurance world that we live in here in Canada, crop insurance, agri stability, a lot of things. It's, it's, it's it's federal backstops that, that, that protect us as producers from, you know, if you wanna call it forest ma mature or whatever, but some bad droughts or, or things that can happen. You know, I buy hail insurance. There's different, you can buy price insurance on cattle. There's lots of different things that you can buy for insurance. I don't think, I don't think the government belongs in insurance whatsoever. I don't think crop insurance i is one of, is one of the best ways how it's structured right now to work. 'cause unfortunately you find too many bad actors that actually do wind up farming for crop insurance. And it takes a system that was meant to, to protect a producer and, and it, it, it, it, it makes people dishonest with it. And when that starts happening, I, I have a big issue when people are paying tax dollars here in Canada for healthcare, a few other different things and, and the system gets abused and mismanaged and I don't think that we should be part of it on our end in agriculture either. So I'm not a very big believer in crop insurance and people hate me for that.

Vance Crowe [00:37:45] Well, I am going to give you a zero for your answer because I 100% agree with you. What, and, and I'm I'm totally with you, but I also understand why you said it because when I was up in Canada in this last week, I would talk with people about you do government backstops and what needs to happen. And you are right. The Canadian farmers have a very different perspective about this. You know, I thought supply management would have people being very gruff about it. And of course you'd find some people, but no, there are a lot of people that said this is the backbone of our economy and you

Quick Dick McDick [00:38:17] Yeah. Don't agree with that at all. Yeah, I don't agree with supply management at all whatsoever.

Vance Crowe [00:38:20] And so, you know, I understand exactly why you said this, but I'm, I'm with you. I believe that farm insurance, what it does is it makes it so you don't take risks and you don't take those types of chances and choices to try new things and to move the market forward. And instead we have a stagnant system that says, as long as I keep doing what I did the last five years, then I know I can't lose the farm. I know I can't mess anything up and you're having this insurance subsidized by the government and anytime you do that, you're having a bubble. You're having people do things that they wouldn't do if they had to be in a free market. That I think, you know, loosens it up and makes the, the entire eco e system better.

Quick Dick McDick [00:38:57] Yeah, absolutely. I mean you, there's a lot of examples of where guys are like, you know, well I've grown, I've grown, you know, four bushel lentils for the last three years or four years kind of thing or whatever. Well what are you doing different this year? Oh, nothing. I'm doing it again. Crop insurance paid well, okay. Like eventually that, that, that theory doesn't work anymore. You know, and I think that's something we really need to be mindful of and be careful with.

Vance Crowe [00:39:20] Alright, on to the worthy adversary quick, who is one person that you respect but strongly disagree with?

Quick Dick McDick [00:39:28] So I wouldn't say strongly disagree, but in, in many times disagree with. And he is a, he is a popular talk show host in in Edmonton, Alberta. His name's Ryan Jesperson. And i, I, I try and get on a show with him as much as I can. It just, it's not so much Ryan himself that I disagree with, but there's a lot of guests that he gets on the show's called Real, real Talk, which is what it is. And I've, I've made a point of trying to listen to it all the time because it's a real healthy thing for you to do, to get outta your silo and listen to people that you will disagree with and, and look inside yourself and, and say, hey, like why do I disagree with this? And start making that internal argument with yourself. 'cause a a a real easy thing for us to do nowadays when you hear somebody saying something that you don't like, we just shut it off and go find something that we wanna hear. Whereas what Ryan does is, is he brings guests on that will, will typically disagree with each other kind of thing. And it's, it's, it's just, it's, it's a healthy environment to be in. And I think I've looked at the world a little bit better. There's lots of things that Ryan says that I'll disagree with and then there's lots of things that he says that I will agree with kind of thing. And it's the, it's, it's those kind of, of of relationship building things that you do that will make you a, a better, better informed about, about what you believe in and it'll maybe give you a better opportunity to understand where somebody else is coming from.

Vance Crowe [00:40:42] Yeah. There is no person I know better than you that represents this kind of worthy adversary. You are always open to taking ideas, taking the other side of issues. I've heard you stand up in front of an entire group room of people and tell 'em something that you were like, I don't think they're gonna like this. And I think that's been the power of comedy, right? You have the ability to say, well you think that the world works this way and let me give you a different way to think about it. And when you make 'em laugh, it opens their minds and I think it's an incredibly important force.

Quick Dick McDick [00:41:12] I appreciate that man. And then obviously Vance, like, you do a great job here too. And it's just the, the more conversations we can have, the the better, the better the world's gonna be, the better we're gonna understand each other anyways. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:41:23] Well quick, I am so glad you were willing to come on. We, we ran long because you're this, I really enjoyed this, but before we go, we are just seven weeks away from Mother's Day, so I'm asking guests questions about their moms. Is there, I there's always something about a turn, a phrase that a mom can have that just kind of sticks with you. Are there any turns of phrases that your mom had growing up that stick with you?

Quick Dick McDick [00:41:47] So no, like, not one liners specifically, but one thing I love sharing about my mom is you would never tell it from me or watching any of my productions or seeing any of my live comedy, but my mom was very much against swearing and, but she had this habit that she, like part of her is Irish, so she's like naturally gonna swear and, and get mad. It would only come up when she's mad. But she had this way of, of fumbling into different words instead of using cuss words. And so two of her favorites that I always remember, like, and I will always remember forever is she would go, oh, sugar plum and oh fiddlesticks those. And she would always catch yourself unless you had her completely off the deep end with the dumb thing that you had done. And she was so mad if mom was swearing you needed to get out of her way. So

Vance Crowe [00:42:34] That's great. My mom, you know, Sunday school teacher just, you know, a very gregarious, happy person. But if, you know, she's raised seven kids and, and a couple ornery boys and if you were complaining and you really wanted something, she would hit you with a well, people in hell want water, you just are just

Quick Dick McDick [00:42:52] Shocked. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah, exactly. It's, it's funny, what can shock you as a kid when you hear your parents say it right?

Vance Crowe [00:42:59] This is one of those things we ask in Legacy Interviews. So if you're thinking about getting your mom a present for LA for Mother's Day, consider going to Legacy Interviews dot com and finding out more. Alright quick, if people wanted to see more of your comedy, if they wanted to catch a show, where should they go to find out more?

Quick Dick McDick [00:43:17] I'm gonna be posting my next tour schedule here shortly at Quick Dick McDick dot ca or Quick Dick McDick dot com. You can catch the YouTube channel, it's at Quick. Dick McDick X at Quick, Dick McDick, Facebook TikTok, and then QD mcd dick on Instagram. And we got a real fun episode coming up. I actually recorded a comedy show at the European Theater in Esteban here a little while ago. And we're gonna get that live on the, on the internet, do a little fundraiser for for society here in Saskatchewan and get people laughing at the same time. So keep your eyes peeled for that. If you ever wanna see live comment and you can't make it to a show here in Canada, we'll have it on the interweb for you.

Vance Crowe [00:43:52] Oh, that is absolutely great. All right and one last plug, if you're interested in buying Bitcoin river.com has been sponsoring the show and I will conclude a link to River in the show notes. And if you buy it through that link, this is actually for my American people because you can't do it in Canada. If you use that link then both you and the show will get a few extra Bitcoin and that's great. So, alright, that'll do it for this week. We'll be back next week and make sure you always feel free to disagree.