ATR: Contaminated H2O in Kansas, RFID Debate Rages on & Hopes/Fears of RFK with @YPClayConry

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] The Ag Tribes 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 video service that captures people as they really are, so the future knows who they really were. Here's Legacy Interviews customer, Dave Helen, on how the experience impacted his father.

Guest [00:00:31] My dad struggled through his life thinking he wasn't successful. As he was telling his story, he realized he had this extraordinary success. It all made sense now all because they spent a few hours talking about their lives with you.

Vance Crowe [00:00:49] Welcome to

Guest [00:00:50] The Ag Tribe's report,

Vance Crowe [00:00:52] 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 new co-host that represents the one of many ag tribes that are out in the world of US and Canadian agriculture. This week I have invited Clay Connery. Clay is a pastor, a rancher, and a podcast host with a focus on regenerative agriculture and spiritual guidance. Through his podcast working cows, he shares insights on sustainable farming while leading his community with Christian values. I can say that I was a little bit skeptical of Clay before I met him. We did a full on podcast and I am a big fan of him. I've been trying to get him on since before the Ag Tribes report began. I'm so glad to have him. Clay, welcome to the podcast Vance. Thanks so much for

Guest [00:01:51] The opportunity.

Vance Crowe [00:01:51] Really looking

Guest [00:01:52] Forward to this

Vance Crowe [00:01:53] Conversation. So this week has been really quite intense. If you're watching the presidential election, you know that we have to talk about RFKs potential influence on ag. We're gonna talk about RFID chips because I know this is something important to Clay. And we're also gonna talk first about the water situation in a small town in Kansas that has had so much contamination they've had to shut off some of their wells. So this is a developing story. We're gonna do that and we're gonna talk about Clay's Bitcoin land price report, his Peter Teel paradox, and of course his worthy adversary. We're gonna do all of that in just 30 minutes. And if you are watching online, you now know that I am in my old studio. I've had all kinds of family challenges. Go on. So the show must go on. It is Halloween. We're doing it a little bit early. Let's jump right in with the first story. So this is from NPR in Kansas. Pratt, the town of Pratt, about 6,000 people, is the latest Kansas town facing nitrate pollution. One quarter of its water supply is now shut off. Nitrate pollution has forced this central Kansas town to shut off its wells and because nitrates has reached the waterways, and that is supposed to come from things like feedlots, farm fertilizers and leak de septic tanks in South central Kansas, according to NPR, scientists from K State University are sampling private wells across 10 county and say that most of the nitrate they found comes from chemical and crop fertilizer.

Vance Crowe [00:03:24] But the Pratt City Farm manager, Regina Goff, says, it's not only agriculture. Agriculture often gets stamped as the bad guy, but it's runoff. We put this on our grass and citizens use an excess of fertilizer as a concern. This is of particular importance because in the state of Kansas, a lot of their ground, their drinking water is close to the surface and it's a very sandy soil that stuff like this permeates it. Clay, why is your tribe watching this story so closely? What made you bring it up today?

Guest [00:03:55] Yeah, I think that it's something that is con of a concern. Anytime agriculture has a a bad headline like this, and like you said, agriculture tends to be the first, you know, pinata that gets whacked when these kinds of things come out. But it's also, as you mentioned, our city cousins as, as one guy I've talked to would say our city cousins who are not really concerned about profitability, they're just concerned that their yard is a couple of shades darker green than the one next to it or whatever that might be, you know? So I think there's a lot going on here. There always is, and you know, we need to take a a good look at it. But, but as far as my tribe and the regenerative agriculture tribe specifically, I think their goal, the goal of most of the people that are influential within that tribe is to reduce the inputs that we are using and to, the main reason for that is increasing profitability. We want to increase profitability. And if you look at a, a graph of agricultural profitability over the last 40 years, the ag business has gobbled up the majority of that profitability. And most of agriculture these days has become a break even business at best. And so that's not sustainable. That's something that is going to become a major challenge for people going forward as far as being able to pass the operation, the farm, the ranch onto the next generation. And so I think if we can find ways to do with less, we can answer that question from the culture.

Guest [00:05:34] We can say we're, we're doing, we're using less than we used to. And it's also a profitability issue where we are able to, you know, have healthy soil that actually is capable of sequestering its own carbon, capable of fixing its own nitrogen. There are approximately 32,000 tons of atmospheric nitrogen above every acre of, of land in America. And there are these wonderful bacteria in the soil called Otto Backer. And if they're healthy and they've got everything they need, they can pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere and make it available to the plant roots. So, I mean, as I understand it, God designed a great system and it works really well if we pay attention to how it works best and try to match our management with that, with that kind of, with that design that was there from the beginning.

Vance Crowe [00:06:28] Yeah, there's always this constant tension between wanting to be able to have small, decentralized cattle operations, really farm operations in whole, and then the unrelenting pressure for lower grocery prices. And of course, if you pack a bunch of cattle in, you don't have to leave them on pasture. You just feed them to be able to grow as quickly as they can. You're gonna be able to bring meat, protein, high quality protein even to the masses. But feedlots have some challenges. You're concentrating a huge amount of manure in one spot. And even if this specific issue is not to do with Pratt, you have to admit like the, the you're, you're concentrating something that's really powerful that used to be spread over hundreds of thousands of acres and is now put in a very small zone.

Guest [00:07:14] Well, and there's, there's examples of people doing a great job with that. Our, our mutual friend Brian Moss does a great job of capturing that in, in areas on their operation, capturing the manure and getting it back out onto the landscape. And it has been part of their strategy for reducing their need for exterior input. So, I mean, there's definitely ways to do it. Well, in all in all, you know, I'm, I'm not opposed to anybody ranching or, or operating in the way that they find best for them. I just think that they also should be aware of the fact that there are other ways to do this that aren't so reliant on that guy that drives that little white pickup down your driveway and drives away with a certain number of a check that's equivalent to a certain number of acres of production off of your place every time he drives out.

Vance Crowe [00:08:05] Alright, we're gonna keep going. Next up we're gonna talk a little bit about the RFK Junior and his statements about how much he is going to change agriculture if he gets elected. This comes from DT N'S ag policy editor Chris Clayton Kennedy targets farm policy and he has big plans Kennedy vows to rewrite rules for agriculture by banning more crop protection tools and rewriting the country's dietary guidelines. According to RFK, current ag policy is destroying America's health on every level. And this his push to make America healthy again, has been cheered on by Donald Trump. Kennedy goes on to say, when Donald Trump gets me inside of the USDA, it won't be this way anymore. American agriculture will become roaring back and so will Americans Health. We can talk more about specifically what he said, but you gotta admit, when you look around at the young kids today, when you look around at just, you know, my own health, you start saying, something seems off with the way we're eating. So on the one hand, you do wanna make America healthy again. What do you think is RF K's strategy to come in and radically change the U-S-D-A-A-A good thing?

Guest [00:09:18] You know, I'll admit, I'm, I'm, I'm a little nervous with every, as along with everybody else, you know, about just what that might end up looking like. And, and I am probably the the last guy who's gonna say, I want the government to come in and tell me how I can farm and how I can't farm. You know, again, I want, I want people to be able to make their own decisions and those things, but, you know, he's an interesting guy. He's thrown around the word regenerative agriculture on the campaign trail. Casey and Kelly means have been on Joe Rogan's podcast. They've thrown that term around as well. And there's just a, there is an educated consumer, a consumer that's been educating themselves recently, and they are willing to pay top dollar for groceries. And when they do that, it, a lot of that usually ends up right directly into the farmer's pocket. You know, people that are selling direct to consumer through, whether they're shipping frozen, frozen beef or, or they're selling produce at a farmer's market or, or beef at a farmer's market. You know, I, I think the return back to the producer in those scenarios is a lot higher. And so I think we should be prepared for a much more educated public and we should try to meet the demand of that. You know, that's ultimately, again, we're business people and we have to be able to meet their demands. We, we, we can't say I'm gonna sell the product I wish you wanted. We have to be willing to sell them the product they're asking for.

Vance Crowe [00:10:44] Oh, I think that's absolutely right. I think for me, there's a couple of things that strike me about RFK coming in and, and wanting to make big changes. First of all, I think that within a giant bureaucracy, the only way to make change is big change. So I understand why he wants to come in and do that, but I also would say that even if you don't like the system that we have, even if you look around and say, I don't like glyphosate or I don't like GMOs, the infrastructure

Guest [00:11:09] Is

Vance Crowe [00:11:09] Set up for all of that. So if you just go wipe it out, we don't have

Guest [00:11:13] A

Vance Crowe [00:11:14] Huge labor force out there that can just, you know, go into the fields and all of a sudden be able to produce the crops. And so my big fear is that one of the big dangers that's happened in societies over and over and

Guest [00:11:25] Over again

Vance Crowe [00:11:25] Is that the people get riled up. They get afraid of their food, they get angry about how it's being grown and instead of building another system in parallel and then jumping over to it, they decide they're just gonna go rip it out. And then you have the potential for mass starvation, huge famine problems. And I think it's easy for RFKs position the other people that Cali means of the world to be like, no, we're gonna be able to figure it out. But time and time again in history, it's been proven that you can make people make decisions that'll cause famines.

Guest [00:11:57] Yeah, for sure. Well, I guess maybe the only comfort here then is that typically nothing happens quickly in government and we'll just have to hope that that's the same here again.

Vance Crowe [00:12:07] Yeah, I think one of the most interesting things about this, and it kind of makes the the Trump vote a little bit of a bitter pill for people to swallow, which I think in politics is something you always have to say. It's like no matter who you choose, they're gonna bring along with them some ideas that you might not like. And I think there are a lot of farmers there sitting there saying, well, I don't wanna vote for Kamala Harris, but man, this, I may be voting for some big change in my operation.

Guest [00:12:33] Well just just do a thought experiment. How many times do you suppose RFK junior's name has been mentioned positively inside the boardroom of any State Farm Bureau. And how many times do you suppose Donald Trump's name has been mentioned po positively inside the boardroom of any State Farm Bureau and now you're, now you have both of them together and they're committed to working together after the election as well and it's like, oh, well now what do we do?

Vance Crowe [00:13:00] Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great tension, right? That's, that, that that is probably better than everybody is excited about everything. 'cause you know, that tension is gonna cause some, some stress there. One other thought that I have is, in the past when there started to be public sentiment against things like GMOs and pesticide use, Monsanto came riding over the hill 'cause they were like, we're in big trouble. Well, there is no Monsanto coming anymore. The the ag companies that are out there are not gonna take this fight on. So if there does become giant consumer will about this, if farmers want to keep that, they've gotta find totally new allies. 'cause they're old allies. The conservative party or the crop protection companies, they're not gonna be there in the same way that they were, I don't think

Guest [00:13:46] Is what facilitated that change is it, is it the lawsuits that they've had to face recently

Vance Crowe [00:13:52] Regarding that or, well, I think Monsanto really had like a, a disposition for the fight. That was kind of the way they were set up. But I think the remaining companies that have come together as a, as a result of mergers, you have only one American company, Corteva. I don't think they really have the fight in them. I think they focus on other things. I think the farm implement companies that are American aren't gonna do it. And then the other companies, Syngenta bear, I I think that that fight is not in them because of their, the disposition of their ownership.

Guest [00:14:21] Hmm. Interesting.

Vance Crowe [00:14:23] All right. Moving on. You mentioned a, an event that happened with RFID tags up in, I believe it was Montana. What is, what's going on with RFID tags? That hasn't already been said.

Guest [00:14:35] Yeah, well I think that they're, I mean the mandate is coming through, the timeline is right around the corner as far as any, any animals that are going to make it into the breeding herd are going to have to have this RFID chip in by November 5th or whatever the date is, right around the corner. And so I think that's just facilitated a lot of people standing up and saying, Hey, we gotta do something about this. And, and what I'm hearing from, from certain people is noncompliance is one strategy. We'll see how far that goes and, and how successful that is and, and how many people are willing to stay on their ground when the vet comes to bangs, vaccinate replacement heifers and, and are they gonna say, no, you can't put that in and are they gonna find a vet who's willing to do something else? You know? So I mean those are, those are some of the questions that we've got. But yeah, the, the, the rally for freedom I think Drew 400 and some attendees down in Rapid City, South Dakota, and there's another one happening down in Texas here in just a couple of days. And so yeah, there's lots of people getting together and, and trying to talk about how they managed this going forward because they were opposed to it and they're, they're not going to go silently into the night, I guess.

Vance Crowe [00:15:53] Yeah. I, a few months ago was with a whole bunch of cattle people in a state that doesn't have very many veterinarians, so I don't want to get this person singled out. He basically told me as a vet, he will have his license yanked. He said that they're, they've already communicated to us that if we don't do the RFID trips and we are helping farmers do something that's not gonna make it. So these, the young cattle that are going to clearly cross state lines, if we don't put those tags in them, they're gonna yank our own tags. It's gonna be trouble for us. So I think finding those veterinarians that are gonna want to participate in this civil disobedience is gonna be tough because they're putting their livelihoods on the line.

Guest [00:16:32] Yeah, absolutely. And it always

Vance Crowe [00:16:34] Is that way,

Guest [00:16:34] Right? I think what you need is enough of them to do it so that they can't enforce it. You know, they can't go after all of them, but that's a, that's a tough, tough way to go when we're competing with things like the NFL on Sunday and the World Series that just wrapped up and everybody's thankful that the Yankees lost again. So, you know, whatever. But we're all, we're all distracted by so many other things that we don't really have time to be citizens and stand up and say, Nope, we're not gonna do that here. And so I think that that's kind of why we're where we're at, I think in a lot of ways.

Vance Crowe [00:17:09] Yeah, I agree. You know, there's no thing that happens in this world where it's of real value that doesn't require sacrifice. I think that's one of the life lessons I've learned. I've heard it hundreds of times during Legacy Interviews that, you know, nothing comes easy. If it's really valuable it's gonna cost you something.

Guest [00:17:25] Yeah, I've done a little bit of that work, I really appreciate the work that you're doing in that regard. And one of the common themes, they may maybe don't phrase it this way, but a lot of times success is just being too dumb to quit. You know, that you just refuse to quit and, and a lot of times that presents opportunities when other people who are close to you did quit. You can acquire their land for pennies on the dollar and continue to expand your own operation. So I think that's a, that's a one of the principles as well

Vance Crowe [00:17:55] That rings true. Okay. Just a little quick moment. I wanted to mention Brian Scott of the farmer's life sent me a, a couple of tweets. One he posted just about how early harvested finished where he's at. He said he's farmed since 2009 and looking back at the harvest data, he finished earlier than he's only finished earlier one time and that was in 2010 and he started a little earlier, other than that October finish, he's also the 30th was the only time he'd finished by the 30th was the 2020, the 2012 drought. And that was, the yields were quite different for him. So are you seeing this too, clay, people getting done with harvest a lot earlier than normal?

Guest [00:18:37] Yeah, there's not much harvest in my neighborhood to be honest with you. There's a little bit of irrigated ground just just west of me, but I'm kind of right in this grass belt in, in Western South Dakota where it's may mostly just cows. But yeah, we

Vance Crowe [00:18:50] Were really

Guest [00:18:50] Dry here so I don't know if that was similar. I mean, if they were just had a drier fall than normal. I know a lot of times when harvest is happening, it typically is slowed down by moisture if as much as anything. And so I'm not sure if that was the same thing happening in, in those neighborhoods or not, but man, we, this is the driest August and September, I remember in the six years we've been living in this neighborhood for sure.

Vance Crowe [00:19:13] Yeah, it's absolutely the driest, I've seen it in St. Louis. There was one other note. Brian sent me a TikTok video, I was gonna play it today. Ran outta time and it was basically a farmer saying, Hey farmers, just because you finished early and now you don't have anything to do, that doesn't mean you should go out and spray anhydrous. It's too warm out, there's just not the right conditions. Knock it off. I don't know if that's going on very much, but that's the second time I heard it though, so I thought I'd mention it here. Alright, wrapping up, if you have news that you think we should report on the Ag tribes report, send it to me on X at Vance Crowe. Alright, now we're gonna move on to the Bitcoin land price report. This is where we talk about how much does an acre of land cost in terms of Bitcoin where our co-host is at. So Clay, first, where do you live and how much does an acre of good farm ground cost there?

Guest [00:20:05] Yeah, I think the easiest way to explain to people where I'm at is I'm, I'm about a hundred miles north of Rapid City, South Dakota. So if you know Mount Rushmore and all that in, in western South Dakota, I'm, I'm north of there. And so I,

Vance Crowe [00:20:18] I would say

Guest [00:20:19] In my

Vance Crowe [00:20:20] Neighborhood

Guest [00:20:20] Pasture land is gonna sell somewhere in that $800 an acre realm. And that sounds low I'm sure, but we can run a cow calf pair here on about 30 acres. It takes about 30 acres to run a cow calf pair for a year. You get just into Eastern South Dakota. I know guys who are doing it on three. So that just

Vance Crowe [00:20:41] Put the productivity

Guest [00:20:42] Of this land into perspective.

Vance Crowe [00:20:44] Wow. I I knew it was big. I remember when I was up there meeting with Brian Mos got to really get a great tour of South Dakota, but that, those kind of numbers are staggering. If you have a big herd, that means the amount of land you gotta have is pretty big. So if we take that $800 per acre, that means it is a little less than 0.011 Bitcoins per acre. Actually, I should mention Bitcoin went on a tear in the last week. It was right at press time it was $70,100. And so in other words, one Bitcoin would get

Guest [00:21:16] You

Vance Crowe [00:21:16] About 87 acres of farmland in Mead County. So how does that sit with you, clay?

Guest [00:21:22] Yeah, I wish I would've bought Bitcoin earlier. You know, that's, that's how that sits with me.

Vance Crowe [00:21:27] Well, one thing I wanted to mention about Bitcoin that I think is worth thinking about is that there's all this trapped energy, particularly up in places like North Dakota where you have to flare off natural gas in order to get to the, the oil that you wanna frack. And a lot of people are going by and putting generators there and instead of just burning off that natural gas, they're, they're turning that energy into Bitcoin mining. And I think there's all kinds of places where there's trapped energy and it's good that Bitcoin can do that and maybe bring the, increase the value of people's land in their operations in that way.

Guest [00:22:00] How far have we come from people heating apartments in New York City with their Bitcoin, the fans off their computer mining Bitcoin to now we're, we're mining Bitcoin with generators. That's good.

Vance Crowe [00:22:11] Oh, oh yeah, it's, it's fantastically sophisticated. Alright, now we're gonna move on to probably my favorite part of the show. This is when I ask Clay, clay, what is one thing that you believe that almost everybody in your tribe disagrees with you on?

Guest [00:22:27] It's

Vance Crowe [00:22:27] Worth

Guest [00:22:27] Being a member of Farm Bureau.

Vance Crowe [00:22:31] Okay. Wow. That's okay. Say more.

Guest [00:22:34] I think I, in my neighborhood especially Farm Bureau gets a really bad rap, but I think that they do a lot of good work as far as defending the right to do what we're doing. You know, just a couple of years ago we were under the waters of the US Act from the Obama administration, basically put every acre of land in America under the jurisdiction of the EPA Farm Bureau. Did a lot of work in getting that repealed. And so I think tho that's one example of if you don't want your land under the jurisdiction of the EPA Farm Bureau is a good, good organization as far as getting some stuff like that pushed back against.

Vance Crowe [00:23:12] Well I think it's probably worth saying that people in your tribe, because there are a lot of people, farm Bureau is an incredibly popular organization. I've been around Farm Bureau for years and years and I have seen how they can help a very small group of people have outsized influence by being organized, by teaching people, by training 'em up, by, by allowing them to get together and argue. And I have seen some arguments on the floor of Farm Bureau when they're making policy. And so I think it's, it's worth saying that the broader farmers that's, that's usually like, yeah, farm Bureau, great thing. But when you're in some of these groups, regenerative ag, some of the more decentralized groups, they say no, you should not be a part of that. That's the opposite. I think the only reason I bring that up is for people that aren't a part of your regenerative ag tribe, they might not understand that. Right.

Guest [00:24:01] And I think that the, you know, like our calf hosts their convention in Western South Dakota most of the most years and that's because there is a huge contingent of r calf people here in this neighborhood. And it's a great place to come to, you know, not, not saying that it's not true as well, but Deadwood and Rapid City host a lot of our calf conventions and that's just my neighborhood When I talk to people, you know, I kind of whisper about being involved in Farm Bureau so,

Vance Crowe [00:24:31] Well I think you deserve a six seven, that's a clever one and I think it's probably valuable for you to say it and you're gonna take a little heck for it. So good for

Guest [00:24:39] You.

Vance Crowe [00:24:39] Alright, now moving on to the Worthy Adversaries. Earlier this week I published a little bit of a post on the value of having worthy adversaries. These are the people that are out in the world that you don't necessarily

Guest [00:24:51] Agree with,

Vance Crowe [00:24:52] But they have ideas that are worth grappling with. You can really, and what ultimately is, is oftentimes we, the people we disagree with, we push 'em out of our tribe. We say, Hey, this isn't really an idea I want to grapple with, but when you stop and think about it, where is there a person that believes something that I completely disagree with, but they have their head on straight,

Guest [00:25:13] They're,

Vance Crowe [00:25:14] They're able bodied, they're, they're strong in their thinking. That's where you find the best things to grapple with. So Clay, who is your worthy adversary?

Guest [00:25:24] I, sorry, I wasn't as prepared for this one, but I would say probably the people who say you shouldn't be involved in Farm Bureau, those are the ones that I, I really do agree with a lot of what they say, but I think that there are definitely reasons. I think that there's reasons to be involved in all of these organizations. I think there are lanes that they are in and I think if they would stay in their lane, it would probably, they, they do good work in their lane and we'll do good work in our lane. We don't all have to just continue to fight. And there's opportunities, there's, there's instances where they do come together and you know, it's a big issue when you get Farm Bureau Farmers Union Stock Growers Association, the NCBA, all of them to say the same thing. Those are, those are big issues. And that happens once in a while. But that is, that is the one that I, that came to mind when you, when you asked the question.

Vance Crowe [00:26:20] Yeah. Early after I posted this blog that actually was stimulated from a conversation you and I had been having, I had a good friend of mine, Phil Luce send me a note and he said, I think you're my worthy adversary. And he went on to say some things that at first kind of hurt my feelings, but as I thought about it, I was like, actually that's great. And to find somebody that is your opposite, that views the world differently and you clash together, I think it at first hurt my feelings and then all of a sudden made me be like, Hey man, Phil, Phil Loose is an animal. If I can be his worthy adversary, I'm gonna take that as a compliment.

Guest [00:26:54] Yeah. It's sharpening the X, right? We're we're making each other better. We're making each other really examine what we think and what we believe and be able to defend it. How many people only know what they believe because they read a headline and they can't give you any reasons why. They just know that the influencer who posted the headline is that's what he believes. So that's what I believe, where as if we have these adversarial conversations, we really have to think about what we're saying and be able to defend it.

Vance Crowe [00:27:27] Absolutely. Well Clay, thank you so much for coming on. I have been dying to do this 'cause I think you always bring an interesting perspective. If people were gonna tune into your podcast and check out what you're doing, where would you send them?

Guest [00:27:40] Ranching podcast.com. Every episode I've released in the last seven years is up there.

Vance Crowe [00:27:47] Alright, so thank you to Clay Conroy Cony for coming on. I really appreciate you taking the time. I also want to thank our sponsors Farm test.ag, where you can test out your inputs using scientifically verifiable tests. This is an incredible program and I think it offers a sense of freedom from just be only having the marketing in front of you and then also Legacy Interviews where we sit down to have your loved ones tell their life stories so that future generations can know who they were. And you get to capture that spark, get to see their laughter. We really take pride in helping people to completely relax. Forget that the cameras are there and be the person that we wanna remember them as. So if you're interested in doing a legacy interview, it always starts with a phone call with me. We sit down and talk about what you're hoping to capture, how it could work, and you can find out more by going to Legacy Interviews dot com. Alright, we're gonna head out now. Next week I'll be doing a remote ag tribes report. So look for me up in Oregon, Illinois. Until then, you should feel free to disagree. Ah.