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

About this episode

Recorded on Halloween just before the 2024 election, this Ag Tribes Report brings on Clay Conry — a pastor, rancher, and host of the Ranching Podcast focused on regenerative agriculture — for a fast-paced rundown of contamination, politics, and land economics. The lead story is nitrate contamination shutting off wells in Pratt, Kansas, which Conry uses to argue for regenerative practices (leaning on native soil bacteria to fix nitrogen) as both an ecological and profitability answer to agribusiness's capture of farm profit margins over the last 40 years. The conversation's spine is RFK Jr.'s promised USDA shakeup: Vance repeatedly voices the episode's central worry — that abruptly ripping out glyphosate/GMO infrastructure without a parallel system risks mass starvation, a warning grounded in historical famines caused by mob-driven policy change. Vance also flags a structural shift: with Monsanto gone and its successor companies (Corteva, Syngenta, Bayer) lacking "the fight" to defend ag-chem publicly, farmers who want to keep current tools will need new political allies since old ones (conservative party, crop-protection companies) won't show up the same way. A second major thread covers RFID cattle-tag mandates and rising rancher civil disobedience, including a firsthand account of a vet threatened with license revocation for refusing to comply — illustrating how compliance pressure cascades down to individuals with the least power to resist. The show closes on its signature segments: the Bitcoin land-price report (Bitcoin near $70,100, buying ~87 acres of Meade County pastureland per coin) and Conry's "worthy adversary" pick — critics of Farm Bureau membership, whom he ultimately defends as doing good work "in their lane" despite his stated contrarian view.

“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 positively inside the boardroom of any State Farm Bureau and 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?”

“One of the big dangers that's happened in societies over and over and over again 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.”

“If you look at 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.”

Key moments

• Conry's profitability argument for regenerative agriculture — ag business has captured most farm profit growth over 40 years, making farming a "break even business at best."
• Vance's mass-starvation warning about abruptly removing glyphosate/GMO infrastructure via mob-driven policy change rather than building a parallel system first.
• Vance's structural read that ag-chem successor companies (Corteva, Syngenta, Bayer) lack Monsanto's willingness to fight publicly, leaving farmers without traditional allies if consumer backlash grows.
• A vet's account of being threatened with license revocation for refusing to implant RFID chips, illustrating enforcement pressure on individuals.
• ~60%: The Bitcoin land-price report converting South Dakota pastureland into Bitcoin terms.