ATR H2A Pay Debate, USDA Cuts $1B, EPA Deregulates, China Slaps Tariff on Canadians with @AdamLasch1

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. Here is Legacy Interviews guest Carol Hensley, discussing the opportunity for a quiet person to speak their mind. How was it for you? The experience?

Guest [00:00:19] Very comfortable. Tried to sit down every morning for a week or two and reflect on my life. And I'm recalling well over 70 years. I may not talk very much, but I think a lot and I listen to other people. If they don't talk a lot, they're surely thinking. And if you ask them their opinion, they may share it with you. You've asked for my opinion. I don't mind sharing that. I think I probably talked more than I should have.

Vance Crowe [00:00:45] No, not at all. 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 collectively make up us and agriculture. This week I have Adam Les Adam and his wife. Betsy founded a diverse dairy and beef operation in 2011 near Lake Geneva in southeastern Wisconsin. As a first generation farmer, he oversaw hundreds of acres of mostly leased land and what began as a need for more forage drove him to adopt cover crops and conservative practices revealing the soil health beneath the no-till and extended rotations. Adam is a most intriguing character on X. I've come to be friends with him. We even spoke on the phone a couple weeks ago and I'm proud to invite him on. Adam, welcome to the podcast. Thanks

Guest [00:01:53] A lot, Vance. I'm glad to be here.

Vance Crowe [00:01:56] So what have you been paying attention to lately?

Guest [00:01:58] Oh, there's lots of stuff on Twitter. A lot, a lot of discussion this week especially. So

Vance Crowe [00:02:05] Yeah, this has been a wild, wild week. It was actually kind of hard to pick out what we were gonna talk about. We started throwing stories up on Monday and it has just not stopped. It has been unrelenting. And we got tons of feedback from people about different stories to include. So this week what we're gonna cover is the H two A workers that are beginning to arrive in the US and quite a debate started on X regarding America's willingness to do the work and the pay level that farmers can pay. The USDA is is cutting over a billion dollars of money designated to small farms to get local food to schools. And we're gonna talk about the EPA announcing what they say is the largest deregulation in the nation's history. We'll also talk about China slapping a 100% tariff on Canadian canola. We'll also explore the Bitcoin land price report here. Adam's take on the Peter Thiel paradox and we'll learn about his worthy adversary. And we're gonna do that all in just 30 minutes. So let's get started. We're gonna kick it off with a story about H two A workers this year. They are just about ready to get started. A tweet from Carl Schlegel began quite the back and forth quote. Today is day one of our contractors for our H two A guys for the 20th consecutive year. We advertised the job for Americans and no one applied. There is a consistent need for these foreign born workers in agriculture. And there is no domestic workforce. It's not about the pay, it's about the work. Now, while many people jumped in on this, I thought it was only fair for me to say what I put out there.

Vance Crowe [00:03:39] I wrote, I doubt, I don't doubt your experience, but it doesn't compute for me that there is a pay level that, that you couldn't get qualified people to do the work. What does the price of this may make the price of food go radically higher, but the H two A guys work for money, not 'cause they love the work. And a huge back and forth ensued people with really wide opinions on is it that Americans are not prepared for this work? Is it that they're not willing to do it? Is it that farmers can't pay that because the prices they charge at the store won't be able to be recouped that cost? So Adam, I guess I'd turn it over to you. Do you, do you think farmers are are right? Or is there anybody in America that would be willing to do this work?

Guest [00:04:21] Oh, I'm sure there would, but it's, if you have to look under the system that we're operating under, it's highly seasonable seasonal work. So you need a lot of, a lot of people in a short amount of time. And if you don't get the work done timely, you're screwed. So I can understand the farmer's perspective totally because I can see that we're there and as margins have gotten cheaper or thinner, it's hard to justify keeping a full-time guy most of the year to only need them, you know, say six or eight weeks in the spring and six or eight weeks in the fall. So I, I get that, that time crunch, but that actually is more of an indictment on ag in general. I think that it's easier to bring guys in from overseas than it is to hire local people. And part of that's demographic. I mean, we're there. So

Vance Crowe [00:05:05] Yeah, I mean one of the things that used to happen in the United States was that we used to have an actual migrant population. I've had people come in and and talk about their apple farms in Michigan and they, those people would swap out and go do grain farming across the northern plains after they got done with apple harvest. They'd keep moving west, go to California and there's basically like a large circuit that would happen. And over time that stopped happening and people have had all different kinds of reasons. Pay was a big part of this conversation. Do you think it's that farmers cannot pay American workers enough to be able to get 'em to go out there and do that brutally difficult work? So

Guest [00:05:44] I know that there's some serious issues with, as far as how to bring the H two A P workers in. You have to provide 'em with housing that has to be up to a certain standard and then there is a minimum wage that they have to get paid. It is not a cheap program at all. So is it easier to go that route for the farmer because the workers are more tailored to the work that you're doing rather than trying to train somebody? Because I mean, a lot of the H two A workers are South Africans. There's a lot of issues there. I'm, it's a tough, tough deal. 'cause if you paid a guy enough, you could find the help you would think, but then your margins are shot. So I, I can see both sides. It's a tough deal.

Vance Crowe [00:06:26] Yeah, I mean, and it seems to me like when people made a great point that if you're sending your money home, whether you're from South Africa or you're Mexico, you, you're able to really have a, have a dollar that's valued much higher than the Yeah. Than the other currencies. And so you're sending money home and maybe five years worth of work here in the United States is worth, some people said it was 18 times as much, and I don't know if they were just being hyperbolic, but it's really hard for an American worker to compete with that when, when the standard of living what you're able to purchase back home with that money is so much higher.

Guest [00:07:01] Well, and think about it, we the dollar touched what a buck 1 0 9 here on the Dixie a few months, a week, a few weeks ago or whatever, and now it's down to 1 0 3. So yeah, think about the, the currency exchange rate there. It's pretty wild.

Vance Crowe [00:07:14] Yeah, I think the conversation was good because this is something we need to talk about. I personally believe that the biggest challenge to being able to keep American workers going on ag land is that inflation just keeps going. The value of what you can buy within the United States with the wages that people are earning just keeps going down and down and down. And when you compare that to what they could make in their home country, and until we fix the money, we will not have a stable American agricultural migrant workforce.

Guest [00:07:41] When you have the re world's reserve currency, your number one export is dollars. I mean, that's just the way it is.

Vance Crowe [00:07:48] On to headline number two, the USDA cuts more than $1 billion in purchasing for local food this week. The USDA slash two major programs cutting over $1 billion in annual funding. The local food for school program worth over 660 million helps schools and childcare centers by buying fresh local food for kids that's now gone. And the local Food Pro purchase assistance program, a $500 million program, supported food banks in underserved areas. The cuts confirmed on Tuesday followed a 60 day wind down with no new funding for 2025. The USDA says these Biden area initiatives don't fit agency goals under the Trump administration's push to trim the federal spending. I had a chance to speak with Steve Stra Heim, who we had on the show a few weeks ago, and he said he had looked into doing the program, but the money was allocated in October long after his crops had been grown. And he felt like the program wasn't thought through enough. There were a lot of details that just were too shaky for him to get into. And he also said there was that while this really worked for a lot of direct to consumer farmers, so they were able to now sell vegetables and meat directly to schools, those schools bought a bunch of equipment and now that, because they weren't serving fresh vegetables before, so they've made investments farmers that were relying on this money made investments that's all gone. And people complain about that, but at the same time, they've gotta make cuts somewhere and it, it didn't fit the initiatives, Adam, is the US doing the right thing?

Vance Crowe [00:09:25] Is are they cutting out waste and fraud by cutting these programs or are kids gonna go hungry?

Guest [00:09:31] I'm not so sure it's waste in fraud or just poor allocation and mal investment. So there was a lot of issues with that program, a lot of stipulations. So Steve is right on that. I actually listened to a webinar about it and it was started in like December and March of 2022, so right after the pandemic. So it was a, a response to the pandemic's breakdown in supply chains. So we don't really have those as much anymore. And then some of the issues with the, the machines and stuff being bought, it stipulated in there it that the only thing they could buy was minimally processed food and or from underserved and underserved producers or type of deal. So it, it was all, there was a lot of administration things too. It it, it was a convoluted program that served its purpose, I think and should be good done away with going forward.

Vance Crowe [00:10:25] Yeah, I mean it's an interesting thing because I really expected the USDA for as much as they could cut within not only these programs, but SNAP programs. I thought, man, this is close to the third rail because the other side is gonna be able to point at you and say, look at all the waste and stuff that's out there and you're choosing to do programs that are helping out or the hungry and helping out kids. Why these programs of all, but you know, it's, it's one of those things where when Steve was talking about it, there was definitely a middleman there. They were asking him to drive, I, I think he said something like 75 miles in order to be able to deliver. So it wasn't super local. It seems like they're doing the hard work of making cuts that are gonna be pretty uncomfortable and maybe kind of unpalatable to the rest of the society.

Guest [00:11:14] It it, there was a lot of convoluted, they, they defined local as within 400 miles and across state lines. You could, there was certain jurisdictions, like if, if you were within the state and it was over 400 miles, they would eliminate that. But then how the program got administered there, it was up to the state. So they would put a block of money in a state and then they actually had stipulations on if two or more entities wanted to administer within the state, they had to work together. So there was just a lot of bureaucratic back and forth and it, it was not an efficient way to administer the program, I would think. And the question I have is what's stopping schools from buying local now?

Vance Crowe [00:11:54] Yeah, I mean I think one of the biggest things is they are not set up to do any kind of cooking. The labor that they have in there, the equipment they have in there, they are really just doing reheated of highly processed foods.

Guest [00:12:05] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:12:06] And so I don't think anybody's against helping kids get more healthy, more minimally processed foods, but how it gets done is gonna be difficult. And in an era where we're trying to cut down waste and it's hard to find labor, I think this is gonna be a hard not to untie.

Guest [00:12:21] There's a lot of inefficiencies in our food system.

Vance Crowe [00:12:25] Paul Anderson says that the reason that there is not the American workforce is because the problem is modern feminism employees wanna get work life balance and guys start to work and they get a girlfriend or wife and kids and the wife has a happy hairdresser, friends with a husband that wants a 40 hour a week job. So th thanks Paul for that. That's definitely some kind of a perspective on it. I mean I, I definitely can empathize with the fact that there is, the modern culture does say 40 hours a week. Dad is home helping with the kids mom's there and that is just not feasible in a migrant worker situation.

Guest [00:13:00] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:13:00] Alright, let's keep heading on to headline number three. The EPA rolls back more than 31 environmental rules so far. We don't really know a lot about what the EPA is rolling back, but it looks like truck manufacturing isn't going to have the same EPA regulations. I know that I personally deal with a stupid eco boost that's ruining the transmission and turbos on my truck and waters of the US may be rolled back. We don't have a ton of details, but the EPA in the most boring announcement ever on the, what I think is perhaps the most exciting topic ever, which is deregulation so people can get work done. Not a lot of details, but they're rolling things back. Adam, are you afraid of rolling back environmental regulations?

Guest [00:13:46] No, not at all. Let's, let's inject some sanity back into this. If I, I know a big play on the farmers thing. I don't have any tractors that run on def, but def seems to be for emissions one of the big things or the, the cataly burn, you know, EGR valves and stuff on, on all of that. So yes, I you got expensive equipment sitting in a field because it has to run through its little cycle. I can see a lot of frustration there.

Vance Crowe [00:14:14] Yeah, I just recently on my truck figured out that you could shut off this automatic turn off thing, so you'd pull up to a stoplight and the truck would literally turn off and then when it would turn back on, you know, then it's like jumping into first and it, it's like, it's terrible for the transmission and this was all supposed to be done for the, you know, the environmental, but like it can't possibly be more healthy for the environment if you have to throw away a transmission after five years of using the truck

Guest [00:14:39] Or overdo a starter a few times. I mean I just, I, some of this stuff makes no sense. So yes, let's, let's let's get to the basics of what actually is necessary.

Vance Crowe [00:14:49] It'll be fascinating to see what happens with, with the EPA and pesticide regulations. I did see some people out there talking about how they wanted to see a clear path to pesticide regulation. Now there is almost no new pesticides coming to market. And if you can make glyphosate turn into a multi-billion dollar liability, it is unlikely that people are gonna want to put more crops, more crop pesticides out in the world. But we're running out of them, right? We are. We like the path to get something deregulated and put into the market is incredibly hard. In fact, when I was at Monsanto then became bear, there was a lot of talk that what Bear was buying was not the innovation corridor that Monsanto had built, but instead the regulatory corridor, like their ability to work with the EPA. And that's because it's such a convoluted moat building process.

Guest [00:15:38] Well, and I just read that the, is it the Europeans approved glyphosate for the next thir till 2033 in their regulatory?

Vance Crowe [00:15:46] Oh, I didn't see that.

Guest [00:15:47] I didn't know that. Yeah, so that, I I think it'll be around, I don't think they're gonna get rid of it here if the Europeans are keeping it. I can't imagine us getting rid of it.

Vance Crowe [00:15:55] Well my belief is that if they're gonna get the easiest way to attack glyphosate and RFK is a part of a group of people that are very, very savvy, they're not gonna go after it on the EPA route and maybe not even the USDA route. What I think they're gonna do is say, ah, look, if you have parts per trillion of glyphosate inside of your Wheaties or inside of your Cheerios, then you're not allowed to sell these in an American grocery store or you're not allowed to package 'em. And that would make it so nobody north of the Mason Dixon line is gonna be able to grow glyphosate because, or no, not gonna be able to grow wheat because they use so much of it for burn down. You won't be able to use any corn soy and it'll effectively ban it if people want to have food grade products sold into the commodity market,

Guest [00:16:37] That would upend ag in a real interesting way. Not necessarily in a good way. I don't know. I That's a tough, that's a tough one. I am, I would when I would wait.

Vance Crowe [00:16:49] Yeah, I don't think, I don't think it's right on the docket right now. It seems like they're doing stuff with, with food dyes that I think, you know Yeah, everybody's a little bit like, hey, I mean I don't need food dies in my food. Let's, let's clean 'em out as best we can. Alright, finally headline number four, China puts a 100% tariff on Canadian canola oil. China recently imposed significant tariffs on Canadian canola products, escalating trade tensions between the two countries. On March 20th, China will implement a 100% tariff on Canadian canola and canola meal as well as peas alongside a 25% tariff on pork and aquatic products. This move is in retaliatory response to Canada's earlier decision in August of 24 to place a 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles and a 25% tariff on Chinese steel and aluminum for Canadian canola farmers. This is a major blow. China is Canada's second largest market for canola after the US and with exports being nearly $5 billion annually. So this is an interesting time for Canada because they are in already embroiled in a really pretty vicious trade war with the United States wondering what's gonna go on with tariffs. And it seems like the floor just dropped out for canola farmers. Adam, what do you know about this and what do you think Canada's chances are of navigating this incredible tariff war with multiple countries?

Guest [00:18:20] Not to pick on our, our neighbors to the north, but man they seem to be playing a lot of geopolitical games poorly this lately, this last several years. I mean there was that, that incident with the Huawei CEO where they locked her up for a while. I wonder if this isn't China trying to just flex a little muscle on, on Canada and inject some uncertainty and some pain into a few spots to try and leverage some of their geopolitical hef. I don't know they're gonna play the game.

Vance Crowe [00:18:50] Yeah. To me this is China having played very smartly by waiting until Canada was incredibly vulnerable and then poking them back, you know, in a lot of ways, I think the Huawei guy that was held up by Canadians, I think this was largely at the behest of the United States. Yeah. I think they were doing things that the United States wanted and Canada is now stuck in the middle. And if China's playing the game really well, they're figuring out, hey, if, if your enemy is, is up a creek, you know, irritate him, make it worse. And, and that is exactly what they're doing.

Guest [00:19:24] Well and Canada seems politically weak right now. They just, I mean they're a confederation of states and, and I'm probably gonna catch some heck for this, but they, they really shouldn't even be a country. If you look at the way they, they interact with each other, you know, more of the stuff comes out of Alberta and, and Saskatchewan comes to us, then goes to other parts of Canada. So when you're a resource rich country that it depends on exports, you are incredibly vulnerable to these types of shocks.

Vance Crowe [00:19:49] Yeah, I mean I, I think I disagree with you. I think Canada's a full country, they probably need to break free from the United States if they wanna be a full country, they really need to break free of United States control. So I'm in agreement with you. You know, one time I was out in Lloydminster at a special ag conference and the, the leaders from both Saskatchewan and Alberta told me that when they were building the train lines in Canada, they basically told the west, Hey we will build you these train lines, we're gonna get 'em all set up for you. But when we do that you are gonna have to ship all of your raw materials to us. You're not allowed to have mills out here. Yeah. And if you build a mill out here, then we are gonna take away your train lines. And it really has, it's really kept to the west, totally beholden to the east. And I, I think that when we see these people booing the US National Anthem and we see Canada, you know, pushing back on this, I think that's a lot more in the east than it is in the west. I personally have heard people at an, at a cattle conference in Canada cheer when the idea of the 51st state was proposed. So I think there is not all that meets the eye there.

Guest [00:20:53] Well I mean they have tariffs between their provinces on certain products. So I mean that would be like us charging Illinois for beer or something like that and putting a tariff at the border that, you know, that doesn't make you a cohesive area. You know, that doesn't help foster brotherly love, you know.

Vance Crowe [00:21:09] Yeah. And I think that the West has seen how much places like Quebec have been able to extort from other provinces and been able to make themselves strong while weakening the other provinces. So I do not think Canada's political problems are anywhere close to over.

Guest [00:21:25] No.

Vance Crowe [00:21:25] Alright, that is gonna do it for the headlines this week. If you have any headlines you think we should cover, you can always send them to me on x. I love getting those. They started rolling in on Wednesday and I was overwhelmed, so if I didn't get back to you, I'm sorry I read all of them and try and get 'em in. You can also send them to me at Vance at Legacy Interviews. Alright, now on to the Bitcoin land price report. Woo. We are having a Bitcoin sale.

Guest [00:21:52] Last

Vance Crowe [00:21:52] Week Bitcoin was at $89,295 and today we are sitting at a cool, cool 80,800, which is down 10% from last week. So Adam, how much is an acre of high quality farm ground in your county?

Guest [00:22:09] About 11 five, 11,500 bucks an acre.

Vance Crowe [00:22:13] Alright, so if we put that up against an $80,000 Bitcoin, that means that you 0.144 Bitcoin would get you an acre of land. This is just outside of Lake Geneva.

Guest [00:22:25] Yeah. And if it's farm ground, you know, big chunks.

Vance Crowe [00:22:29] And so one Bitcoin right now would buy you seven acres of of land up there. How does that sit with you?

Guest [00:22:37] Would you trade the Bitcoin or have the land? Which one would you rather have? I don't know. I mean at 80,000, is it gonna go to 50 or is it gonna go to a hundred? I don't know. You know,

Vance Crowe [00:22:45] Are you a Bitcoin?

Guest [00:22:47] I am, I am a Bitcoin skeptic. I would say.

Vance Crowe [00:22:52] Tell me more.

Guest [00:22:53] So I, I've seen charts and stuff of the Bitcoin price to the Nasdaq and it's basically a function of liquidity. And when, when liquidity got pumped into the global economy, it had to find somewhere to go and some enterprising guys came up with Bitcoin. I am okay with the store value aspect of it, but I don't know how it becomes a unit of account and trade.

Vance Crowe [00:23:20] What do you mean a unit of account and trade? What,

Guest [00:23:22] What? What's

Vance Crowe [00:23:22] Well

Guest [00:23:22] Or to be a real currency. It needs to be used, it has to be used and nobody can care about the value. And right now everybody cares about the value but nobody cares about using it. It's a buy and hold, you know, so how do you, so basically it is applicable to gold, digital gold. I'm also not wild about the whole Michael Sailor, MSTR buying, issuing shares, turning around buying Bitcoin and raising the price of Bitcoin to buy more shares to issue more shares. I think that's an infinite money loop. I don't, I don't know about that one either.

Vance Crowe [00:23:52] Yeah, I don't really understand the game that he's playing. I think that Bitcoin is quite a bit bigger than MSTR, but I'm, I'm, you know, I'm interested in what he is doing out there. I think one thing, somebody was talking with me today and they were saying I just don't understand why is Bitcoin so volatile? And I would say to your point, Bitcoin is so volatile because it is so liquid. Yeah. You know, if you are watching the stock market go down, you gotta cover some shorts, you gotta cover a position, you gotta wait for your bank to open up between the hours of 9:00 AM to, you know, 4:00 PM you can only sell stocks between 9:00 AM and 3:00 PM you know, you can't sell your house very quickly, but if you need money right now, you can liquidate Bitcoin 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And so it is always gonna be the first place where people demanding liquidity are gonna grab it out and that's gonna make the price go up and down. And for long termers, this is great. Right. To me Bitcoin is just on sale right now and I'm loving it.

Guest [00:24:48] Yeah. I'm long cattle so I'm gonna stick with our friend Jared McDaniel there and I'm gonna be long cattle and walk, walk it, you know, off the farm right now.

Vance Crowe [00:24:57] Well if you are interested in purchasing Bitcoin, I recommend River who's been a great sponsor of the show. I will include a link to River in my show notes and if you buy Bitcoin there, we will both benefit, you'll be helping the show out and, and I think you'll get a little bit of Bitcoin too. They're a great place to work with and they also have lightning wallets and if you send me a lightning address, I will send you 125 Satoshis. Alright, now moving on to the Peter Teel paradox. This is where I'm gonna ask Adam, what is one thing that you believe that almost nobody in your tribe agrees with you on?

Guest [00:25:35] Okay, so nobody agrees with me on this. We're gonna go with this. I think the future model for the, for the dairy industry is going to be more family farms. It's going to be a sixty, a hundred twenty, two hundred forty cows and robots to do the milking. It's gonna be size that goes back to what one family unit can operate with maybe some outside help because as labor gets shorter, more hard to come by and the markets are where they're at, technology is taking over. And I believe that the, I would say the area of the large dairies, they've kind of maxed out. They were created with cheap and cheap capital, cheap feed, cheap labor from immigrants and a willingness for to empire build. We don't have that same set of puzzle pieces. So it we're in this transition period, but I believe down the road you will go back to a smaller type dairy setup.

Vance Crowe [00:26:30] I I love what you're saying. I'm, tell me why does it intuitively make sense that it would go back down to smaller rather than just huge but robotic dairies?

Guest [00:26:40] So there was talk like 10 years ago that we're only gonna need 9 million milk cows, which is kind of where we're, we've stayed around and that'd be 3000, 3000 cow dairies. The problem is you look at the environmental impacts and the, the dairies that have been in our area, we're a big dairy area. They've saturated their local zones with manure to the point where now they're going further. Well all of a sudden we have dis economies of scale because you have to haul more feed, haul more manure out, you know, the processing is getting more. So I think you're gonna stay in some sort of a, maybe it is a tanker loaded or ha every other day or whatever, but I, we've gotten to the point where it, it's not scaling like the way they want it. The, the building costs are too high, everything is getting worse and we're go, the the model's gonna have to change.

Vance Crowe [00:27:28] Yeah, I mean I, I think I love in intuitively hearing about it and actually after having seen some of the gigantic dairies in California where you drive four miles and it is, it, it, it's not just a feedlot, it's a feedlot of Holstein cows and it, it's like I, I don't know, something between mesmerizing and horrifying, but you're right, there's no possible way they're able to haul that manure off and use it effectively in the system. So that's all getting shifted out. So I love what you're saying and I think you're right. There's not very many people that think that is is true right now. So I'm gonna give you a, a nine one on this one. Yeah,

Guest [00:28:05] I think

Vance Crowe [00:28:05] You did very well there.

Guest [00:28:06] Yes, thank you.

Vance Crowe [00:28:08] Alright, moving on. Now we're gonna talk about Adams, we're the adversary. We do this because it is so good to get out of our little echo chamber bubbles. I know that when I started the worthy adversary list on x, I just kind of thought it was like I'll put 'em all here. But now that is my go-to list because it is filled with people that I, I I hear and encounter ideas that I do not already agree with. So Adam, who comes to mind when I ask you who is one person that you respect but you disagree with?

Guest [00:28:41] So I have a guy, there's a guy named Kelly Newhouse on Twitter and I've not interacted with him much, but he has a fantastic story about how he got started farming. He's got a whole, his pin tweet is all of that and I love that, I really respect him. But he is from Iowa and big time on the biofuels, ethanol Corn Growers Association. And I just fundamentally disagree with a lot of that. What, what the corn growers and such are pushing. I see, I understand they're a trade group, they have to do that. But you start to look around the landscape and you go, is it really working? Is it really helping us? I mean the ag population's just getting older and we're kind of hollowing out parts of rural America in ways that like there's no, not much is not as much opportunity. So can we look around at some point and go, maybe this isn't working instead of just keep pushing harder and harder and harder on SAF and carbon capture and all of those type programs.

Vance Crowe [00:29:38] I mean, it's good to be asking those and pushing on him. I know that one of my good friends, Keaton Krueger, who's involved in some of these organizations always says you can criticize him, but if you show up and you start voicing your opinion, they have to respond to what you're saying. And so his pushback on anytime somebody is critical of, of corn growers is saying, have you shown up to a meeting? So I guess I would throw that out to you. Have you?

Guest [00:30:03] I have not, but I am, I am involved in the dairy side so 'cause I agree with that. You have to do something. So staying involved in the dairy and, and I don't grow that much corn, you know, we're more forge based. So,

Vance Crowe [00:30:15] Well speaking of the sustainable aviation flu or fuel, there was a, there's a guy on X that goes by theta farmer. Well I'm assuming it's a guy I don't know. And I would say he is probably my most recent worthy adversary. I I see a lot of his stuff, people interact with it. But grain stats put out a tweet about the Chuck Grassley talking about how hey, I'm meeting with all these guys that are, that are gonna make sure that sustainable aviation fuel keeps going out there. And what they're really saying is we're gonna create a mandate that makes it so everybody that flies has to use sustainable aviation fuel. Yeah. And then Theta farmer was saying, Hey, you may, if you're a corn farmer and you don't support this, you are making it, you're, you're, you're shooting yourself in the foot essentially as he is saying, you know, we, we, the, the prices won't keep up and, and we need that demand. And I fundamentally disagree with that. Right. But I think that theta farmer has a lot of interesting things to say on other topics.

Guest [00:31:12] I think guys get locked into their model and then that's all that they can see. They get tunnel vision now. And I understand if you're only locked into growing corn and soybeans, you're scared right now because the margins aren't there. And then suddenly a tariff gets slapped on and you lose a dollar a bushel and that's big dollar. So I can understand where the fear comes from. I guess I've been in the dairy industry, we've been so at the whims of the wind and the markets and I mean the PPD thing and, and the COVID thing and everything, it bring it on. I can, I can survive this. We'll figure it out as we go and embrace the volatility. But I can understand if you were really locked in each situation's different, it could be a little scary out there.

Vance Crowe [00:31:50] Yeah. And I was reminded by a couple of my friends when I was pointing out, man, people seem to really be getting hot on X and they're like, yeah, well I mean with corn prices where they are with the volatility, with tariffs coming, you know, somebody might be able to already have their seed paid for, they might already have their equipment, you know, all lined up. But going into the banker and talking with them about an operating line is gonna be tougher with $4 corn and with the, the volatility in the market. So I I believe like we'll probably see some steam be blown off is probably a good time to, to be really gracious in, in talking with people as they have strong opinions.

Guest [00:32:26] I, I feel like we're at the end of this model. So if SAF is the only way we're gonna increase corn acres and push that model further because what do guys do? They grow corn, they try and increase every bushel they can. Where does it end? Like where are we, where's the end game here? And I think that's what a lot of us on Twitter are starting to figure out. It's like, okay, what's the end game more SAF and more corn and more big farms. Like what, what's the end game here? Where, where are we going?

Vance Crowe [00:32:53] Yeah. And it does, it seems like if it can only be propped up by, by making it so other people must pay for your stuff because through their gas it doesn't seem like something grain stats is is pointing out lately. How long do you think the public will support you and say, oh we've gotta support the farmers if every time they turn around they're getting taxed on the fuel that they're using and the flights that they have.

Guest [00:33:13] Well, and, and yeah. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:33:17] Well that is gonna do it for tonight's show, Adam. If people wanted to interact with you, learn more about you, where would you recommend they go?

Guest [00:33:25] Twitter at Adam Lash one. And you'll find me, I'm not shy about voice and opinions and I welcome the, the, I welcome the interaction because there's three tweets. You, you put out the one you thought of, the one you wrote down and the one people read and there's, that's, that's what leads to Twitter, making Twitter such a good place.

Vance Crowe [00:33:45] I, I agree. I mean and even when you get in the tussle, like the tussle I had about H twos, like you learn stuff. You hear stuff you hadn't thought of your, your arguments. At a minimum, your own argument is going to get better. Yep. 'cause you're hearing people disagree with you and that's what makes it a great place to be. Alright, well that's gonna do it for the show. If you have been thinking about doing a legacy interview, we did just a spectacular one with a woman whose memories weren't all that clear. She had to, you know, really reflect today. But her advice for future generations, what she has learned along the way was truly profound. And I have to imagine that her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will be so much better off because they were able to capture some of that wisdom that I know the people that were over listening in the other room told us. Like, that's stuff I'd never heard before and I'm so glad we got it captured. If you're interested in having me sit down with one of your loved ones, go to Legacy Interviews dot com and hit the contact form. You and I can have a conversation about what you wanna capture and how we could do it. And it's a great experience. Also on the show notes, I'm gonna throw in a link to River where you can buy your Bitcoin. That's gonna do it for the show. Thank you so much Adam for coming on and as always, feel free to disagree.