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ATR: Harvesting Dry Soybeans, Meat Recalls, and Skyrocketing Egg Prices @TheChadColby

October 18, 2024 · The Vance Crowe Podcast

Bitcoin, money, and AIWinning the story wars

About this episode

A standard Ag Tribes Report format episode with Chad Colby, an agricultural technology consultant and This Week in Agribusiness host, covering three headline stories: historic drought conditions leaving Midwest soybeans and corn harvesting at abnormally low moisture levels (with fire risk from dry crop residue), a 12-million-pound listeria-related meat/poultry recall touching major retailers, and avian-flu-driven egg price spikes (up 8.4% month-over-month) compounded by holiday demand. The recall segment produces a genuine disagreement — Vance pushes back on Chad's USDA-credit framing, instead attributing food-safety risk to consumer unwillingness to pay for higher-cost, better-staffed meat production, both converging on praise for growing local/direct-to-consumer meat markets since COVID. The show's recurring "Bitcoin land price report" segment continues Vance's thesis that pricing farmland in Bitcoin (rather than dollars) reveals land's true scarcity-driven utility value and could ease generational farm transitions, with Chad conceding the land-transition problem is real but staying "on the fence" about Bitcoin itself. In the Peter Thiel Paradox segment, Chad argues farmers under-invest in smartphone technology relative to their equipment spending, drawing a mixed 4.9/10 score from Vance; the Worthy Adversary segment produces a notably weak, hedged answer about respecting-but-disagreeing-with long-tenured politicians, which Vance calls out as a "cop-out" before redirecting listeners to the Red Scare Podcast instead.

“Missouri right now is the driest October on record... the soil just turned to powder.”
“Well I completely disagree with you on the USDA is the thing that keeps us so safe. I think that meat producers wanna produce a safe product and they make mistakes... we're paying people so cheap because we consumers are so unwilling to pay high prices for meat that we produce it cheaply.”
“One acre of farm ground would cost you about 0.26 Bitcoin per acre... one Bitcoin in Woodford County would buy you 3.86 acres of farmland.”

Key moments

Notable quotes

“I completely disagree with you on the USDA is the thing that keeps us so safe.”
“One Bitcoin in Woodford County would buy you 3.86 acres of farmland.”
“I can't afford to lose a combine or a tractor... they brought a water wagon out to the field.”
“That's like a cop out answer.”

Full transcript

Read the full transcript (word-for-word, with timestamps)

Ad read / show intro [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 service that video records individuals and couples telling their life stories so that future generations have the opportunity to know their family history. Here's Legacy Interviews guest John Werner detailing how the experience allowed him time to reflect and connect more deeply with his family. So what is it like to do a legacy interview? It made me think about things that I would probably never think about on my own. And it's certainly things that I may have said that when my family sees this, that I wouldn't, that we wouldn't have the occasion for me to say them to them. But it's incredibly important that they do hear it. What did you do to get ready for the interview? I did exactly what you said in your pamphlet. I, when I first got it, I read it and then I read it last night. It's different for everybody, but I, I can certainly see how you, you could over prepare for this and that would not come out like I would think you would like it to if you just waiting for the questions. You know, if somebody's like nervous Or They don't really know what the value of this would be, what would you tell them? Get in here. Get in here and do it. What do you got to lose? It's a chance that you will never take again. Probably good, bad, or indifferent. I don't see any bad or indifferent on this. It's just all good 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.

Vance Crowe [00:01:55] Welcome to the Ag Tribes report. I'm your host, Vance Crowe. Each week I bring a co-host to represent the perspectives of one of the many ag tribes that collectively make up US agriculture. This week I am joined by Chad Colby. Colby is a recognized as a pioneer in agricultural technology, serving as the founder and principle of Colby AgTech, where he provides insights into emerging technologies for agriculture. He's originally from central Illinois, just like me and he has a farming background. He is speaks at conferences worldwide and he hostess segment on this week in agribusiness, focusing on the latest in farm technology chat. Welcome to the Ag tribes report.

Chad Colby [00:02:39] It's great to be here, Vance. It's a little different than our normal, how we usually meet at a conference, but looking forward to it my friend.

Vance Crowe [00:02:46] In this episode of the Ag tribes report, we are gonna delve into the drought conditions affecting soybeans across the Midwest. The moisture levels are way down. We're gonna explore how this is gonna impact farmers. We're also gonna discuss the massive recall of 12 million pounds of meat and poultry potentially contaminated with listeria. And then we're gonna talk about the soaring prices of things like eggs due to the avian flu outbreaks and the hurricane. So after that we're gonna jump into the Bitcoin price report. We're gonna talk about Chad's Peter Thiel paradox and of course figure out who his worthy adversary. So since we're gonna do it in just 30 minutes, we better get started. Right now this is coming straight from X. The beans are dry. Farmers from across the Midwest are bringing in beans well below 13%. And this is everybody from private messages to text. Messages I'm getting are talking about how growers are gonna take a pretty big hit. They don't get docked necessarily for low moisture if it's above 11%, but what happens is normally soybeans, you want 'em to be at about 13%. When you go below that, you start losing the amount of weight that you would get. And so farmers are actually bringing in the huge amount of bushels off their acreage, but because they're weighing less, they're not doing as well. Chad, what do you think? Are things looking pretty rough in, in near Goodfield, Illinois, where you're at?

Vance Crowe [00:04:18] Or are they doing okay for moisture?

Chad Colby [00:04:20] No, you're a hundred percent right. There's some pockets of places where the yields have been really good and they were able to get 'em out early. But lo and behold, most of this, it's been really dry. I've been in some combines here the last week and a half and I can tell you a frustration Vance, you know, when guys have to cut the beans 'cause it's time, but the moisture is seven 8%, that's a, that's a problem. And they know they're losing there. There's no two ways around it. Now, we did have frost here recently. That was a concern a couple weeks ago. It was so warm here in the Midwest, if you remember, we had 80 and 85 degree temperatures, but there were still a lot of big green stems, a lot of the other issues in the field 'cause we hadn't had a frost yet. So they were, not only were they hard to combine, okay, because of that they were also super dry. And I know several, several producers that forgo and said, we're just gonna wait, there's no reason to. And now they're back into beans now because obviously when you get frosty mornings they'll pick up some moisture and so forth. But it's been a, it's been a real thing. This year is really dry soybeans and it's pretty well everywhere.

Vance Crowe [00:05:21] Yeah. This morning I woke up and I was checking a report and it said Missouri right now is the driest October on record. And I had planted several trees in my backyard. I'd love to plant 'em in fall. And man digging out there, the, the soil just turned to powder. Yeah, same, same up there.

Chad Colby [00:05:40] Yeah, absolutely. Actually I was north of where you grew up just a little bit ago north of Eureka, which is right between Bloomington and Peoria. And there was a fill of chisel plowing and I swear to goodness he was making as much dust as spring tillage out in a field. And that is so rare in the fall that powdery dust, kind of the dust cloud with a chisel in the field and that we don't, we don't ever see that it's super dry here as well.

Vance Crowe [00:06:03] I, I gotta say, I don't even know what a chisel plow is. What is that?

Chad Colby [00:06:07] It's doing deep tillage after harvest. So big heavy tillage where you're in the ground, you know, it could be eight to 10 inches deep. Typically there's blades on the front, but real heavy tillage. And normally in the fall there's plenty of moisture still in the ground. And this time of year because it's so dry, I talked to one other fellow who is prematurely getting a lot of wear on his chisel plow because the ground is so dry, it's so abrasive. I mean there's just, there's a lot of challenges with that. I know everybody that I talk to can't wait for a good rain. I don't mean a quarter inch or half inch, I mean a couple three inches. That's, and if you look at the drop map, like you mentioned, there's a lot of places quickly getting to that severe area where it, we really need some moisture. So hopefully it looks like the winter forecast is pretty good. Vance, I'm sure you've seen it. You know, obviously moisture, whether it comes in snow or not, doesn't matter. We just need moisture.

Vance Crowe [00:06:57] Yeah, Phil Lu of white commercial tweeted out, he said a bushel of soybeans is 60 pounds, so it takes more beans to make a bushel when they have less water in them. And I was hearing numbers like 11%, 10%. And then just like you said, 8%, it seems like at that point you could start having beans shatter. You could start getting docked for, for them not being high quality.

Chad Colby [00:07:18] And the next conversation you're gonna have is corn moisture. Because corn moisture is, is in the exact same boat where guys got in the field early, wanted to pick some corn because they have drying, you know, facilities, you know, they start typically around 30%, 25% wherever, wherever your happy spot is. And guess what, they go play with beans for a little bit, come back because of the weather that you and I talked about a lot of guys, I heard of some 10% moisture corn out of the field, which is absolutely unheard of. And it's the same scenario in corn too. So this, this, this, what

Vance Crowe [00:07:51] Moisture should corn be?

Chad Colby [00:07:52] 15 fifteen's the number.

Vance Crowe [00:07:54] Oh wow. Okay.

Chad Colby [00:07:55] So same thing. And a lot of guys are using their facility. So what they're doing is they're putting their, their corn in the in bends, even though it's a little dry, they'll turn the fans on at night to dry in some moisture so they can get the moisture up in corn. But a lot of producers also don't have that ability and they've gotta take it to the, to the elevator. So there's a fine line there. Certainly it is a challenge right now, I'll tell you that. And anybody listening tonight in a combine, we hear you of frustration 'cause it's, it's a real thing right now. And, and harvest is gonna come out lightning fast. We are already seeing the numbers crazy. Most of my friends are just burning through harvest because it's been rain delays. Nonstops. Yeah, no rain delays, no nothing

Vance Crowe [00:08:35] You say burning through the fields. I was actually just talking with Zach Smith up in northern Iowa and he was saying they've actually had to shut down a little bit because the stuff is so dry they're worried about fires.

Chad Colby [00:08:44] Oh yeah, that's a, this

Vance Crowe [00:08:45] Has been,

Chad Colby [00:08:45] That's a real thing. Yeah, for a good friend of mine the other day called me, he's like, is this crazy? But I brought a water wagon out to the field because at least if there's a fire, he goes, I can't, can't afford to lose a combine or a tractor and I don't want the neighbor's field to go up. He's like, they got a water wagon. They actually brought something out because the fire departments have been really busy and if you're on X looking around, it's not hard to find a combine or a cotton harvester or whatever it is catching on fire this time of year just because it's so dry right now. So you're a hundred percent right Vance.

Vance Crowe [00:09:15] Well, harvest has always got its quirks, you know, if you can't get into the fields 'cause of rain and this year it's too dry and, and so it's always like that. All right. On to headline number two, this comes from PBS. I saw this when people were talking about meat production in the United States and pointed out that just yesterday 12 million pounds of meat and poultry were recalled over possible listeria contamination. A nationwide recall of meat and poultry products potentially contaminated with listeria has expanded to nearly 12 million pounds and now includes ready to eat meals sent to US schools, restaurants, and major retailers. The updated recall includes prepared salads, burritos, other foods sold at places like Costco, trader Joe's, target, Walmart, Kroger. And the meat used in these products were processed at one facility in Durant, Oklahoma. And while no illnesses have been confirmed in connection with this, recall about 1600 people are infected every year with listeria and frankly 260 people die each year according to the CDC. Chad, had you heard about this food recall and do you shop at any of the places that are saying they might have that food?

Chad Colby [00:10:29] Yeah, I actually had heard about it and then you and I were kind of talking off air a little bit, coincidentally yesterday. I was at one of the enlisted retailers here yesterday and there were plenty of eggs in the, in the, in the counter there if you would for sale. But certainly, you know, one of the things that, and I've seen it in my lifetime, that we all take for granted for is the safety of our food. The USDA. We can't talk high enough about what they do in, in, in regards of keeping our food supply safe. It's only until you see issues like this that you realize that that's happening out there in the background. And thank goodness it is Vance.

Vance Crowe [00:11:07] Well I completely disagree with you on the USDA is the thing that keeps us so safe. I think. I think that meat producers wanna produce a safe product and they make mistakes. And I think that oftentimes a big thing that's going on, and this was a conversation going on on X, was we're paying people so cheap because we, consumers are so unwilling to pay high prices for meat that we produce it cheaply. And then you have all these circumstances where you have people that are maybe not the most skilled or you're making work too long or they're not doing the cleanup that they have to do. So I, when I look at a huge recall like this, I think of when I was living in Africa and everybody was worried that their corn had been contaminated with aflatoxin and I remember how scary that was because they were like, you can't see it, you can't smell it, you can't cook it away, there's nothing you can do and if you get it, it's gonna mess you up. It may even kill you. And that made me like realize that if you don't trust your food to your, to your point about having safe food, it is a scary thing and it can make you do all kinds of weird things When you're wondering is there something hidden in here? Is there something I should be afraid of?

Chad Colby [00:12:18] Well, one thing's for sure that I've seen a lot here, maybe in the last 10 years, kind of maybe a little more to your point is there's a lot of really good local, you know, places that you can go and buy your meats that are not in big box retailers. And those businesses are thriving big time across the Midwest. Several of my friends that I know, one in particular, all his cattle goes to himself, he sells 'em privately and there's a ton of that that goes on now way more than it was when maybe you and I were, were young. I mean, I don't know how it was for you, but when we grew up on our farm as a kid, you know what, we butchered our own hawks and my dad would send them to the local butcher and we would eat livestock that we raised. Well now you, you're not doing that 'cause it's too easy at Target or Walmart or Costco or wherever to just go put it in your cart. But the reality is, especially since COVID, there's a lot of, there's a lot of farmers that have said, you know what, I don't care. They're gonna pay for advance if they want it and we're gonna sell it to 'em. And I think that's one of the things that's really been nice locally. I know here locally there's two or three of 'em. I know that you can go to the local Berkshire shop and I tell my wife that all the time. Their stuff is fantastic and it's all local so there's, there's

Vance Crowe [00:13:33] A good,

Chad Colby [00:13:33] Good pain there. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:13:34] One of the best things to come outta COVID was when people saw, oh hey the supply chains can actually get wrecked. And then they went out and found people. I know for us we started getting a regular supply of beef and we had one of chicken, I'm actually open to one now. So if anybody is in the St. Louis area and and has their own pasture raised chicken, I'd be into that. But it is a, it is a fantastic component and the more we can get regulations out of the way to make it as easy as possible, because I believe if you're a producer, if you're a butcher, your name is on that, on that sign and so you're gonna take care of it way more than if we rely on on huge high volume packing houses and being sold through big box stores.

Chad Colby [00:14:15] Well and a lot of thing too, it's regionalized, right? It's where you are in the country. I know good farmer friend of mine in central California, I visit them two or three times a year and I'll never forget, this was probably five or six years ago, Vance, their doorbell rang and I went and there was nobody there but there was a box and in the box was their local was their local produce for the week. I mean it was, and I'm like, well we can't get that in Illinois and we're laughing about it because we don't, we don't have those crops right here Vance, right? I mean, you know, you're a Midwest guy, but listen, in central California, that's what they do. They don't go to the store and get vegetables. It's on their Porsche every week fresh. And he's like, we've been doing that for years Chad. And I'm like, that's the coolest thing ever. You know,

Vance Crowe [00:14:57] It's a great thing. And you know, everybody wins in that circumstance. The farmer gets paid a lot closer to what it's worth and the consumer gets to have high quality stuff that they didn't have to wait for. Yeah,

Chad Colby [00:15:07] That's

Vance Crowe [00:15:08] Okay. Moving on to our final headline. This was actually brought to my attention by a, a previous podcast guest, which is Christina Hudson Kohler who said, Hey, watch out. There is a whole lot of egg laying hens that are, that are dying right now. Avian flu just hit a flock in Utah and I think we're gonna see prices continue to spike. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the index for eggs was up 8.4% from August to September on a seasonally adjusted basis. After climbing 4.8% from July to August, the agency says the average price of a dozen large eggs in the US was $3 and 82 cents in September, up from $2 and 7 cents in September of 2023. This is something that people really feel quite acutely because eggs are something you buy regularly, you start to get a pace for it. I know that, that when you see those prices go up, you can tell, hey, the whole CPI is going up. And part of the reason that this is going on is because there's now this highly pathogenic avian flu that's been confirmed in Cash County, Utah. And then also we lost a huge number of egg lang hens in places like Georgia and North Carolina. So more than 20 million in egg laying hens are out of commission. Chad, with all this news, are you seeing the prices of eggs go up where you're at?

Chad Colby [00:16:37] You know, it's vance it, it must be a sign of the times because yesterday in fact we stopped at a store and I needed to get eggs and milk and bread. So when we were talking about this off air, I went, well I just did it yesterday. So the, the counter that I saw, they were probably two thirds full price, looked really normal to me of what they'd, what they had been. So maybe not quite yet, but certainly, you know, when you look at the numbers it, it should be alarming to everybody to keep this on your radar. You know, you mentioned it when we were talking about about even beef production. There are a lot of local egg suppliers around here. Quite a few farms that do that. Obviously they're not gonna keep up with with the huge demand, especially what about the holidays? Vance, you got a major, major holiday push here over the next six, seven weeks. That's, that's a major concern for a lot of people.

Vance Crowe [00:17:28] Yeah, that's a great point. You know, I was at the grocery store and all of the large amounts of eggs where you could buy 'em in 18 or 24, that was all sold out. And in fact, really the only eggs you could get the in a large volume, which I need 'cause I got all these little kids at home, is that I was paying about four 50 for a, for a dozen eggs and I, it was the first time I've probably ever paid that amount. It was pretty shocking to me. And I think if, if eggs are a core part, a core staple of your diet, you are gonna be feeling that on the bottom line of your budget.

Chad Colby [00:18:03] Yeah, there's no question. I wanna say the, the eggs I bought yesterday, you can only buy 'em in an 18 pack and don't quote me, but it was in the high threes, it wasn't four, it was three something. But certainly I kind of did my homework too. It's, this has been a growing thing here the last year is looking at that egg price and you know, you don't really notice it when it just goes up a little bit. But when you hear these issues that are coming, it's, it's probably watchful to think that it's gonna keep going and maybe a little quicker than you're used to.

Vance Crowe [00:18:29] Yeah, with little kids. I know we eat somewhere between six to eight eggs every single morning. So that's like you, you just see it immediately.

Chad Colby [00:18:37] Yeah, that's right, us too. My wife's a she, she cooks amazing eggs and we go through a ton here as well. That's right.

Vance Crowe [00:18:44] Alright, well we'll keep an eye on that and thank you to Christina Hudson Kohler for sending that story. If you have news that you think we should be reporting on the ag tribes report, you can always send it to me on X at Vance Crowe. It is really helpful to me. I know that all of my friends in ag on Thursday morning or Wednesday night start getting poked by me to say like, Hey, what's the big story? What's the big story? So thank you to Christina and ROI Farmer for bringing up some of the other cases, other stories we talked about here. Alright, now onto the Bitcoin land price report. So Chad, where do you live in this here United States. And how much does an acre of high quality farm ground go for?

Chad Colby [00:19:24] You know, we're kind of in the mid-teens is is pretty typical. You gotta remember we're close enough to enough big cities that it, a lot of it depends on location, location where things can get crazy, but, you know, good flat land here, Woodford County, you know, you're in that 17 arena somewhere like that. I think the interesting part is, is certainly it seems like there's less farms for sale. That's been a, that's been a trend that's been going around as well. And I don't know if it's gonna stay that way. Obviously estate sales always kind of seem to be the driver of that right? When somebody's retiring or it's getting passed on where a lot of the, a lot of the ground around us as you know, growing up here, it stays in the family for generations and generation and never comes available. Right. So we have a lot of that right now too.

Vance Crowe [00:20:11] Yeah, it's fun to talk to somebody from Woodford County where I grew up because now if we're saying that the, the price of land is 17,000, we'll say 17 five is what we kind of talked about before. And when I was growing up, I remember when a, an acre of ground sold for $9,000 and people were like absolutely floored by this. This was like, this is absolutely absurd that it's going for so much and now you're seeing almost double that. If we compare this to the price of Bitcoin, today's price when I checked was 67,500. So one acre of farm ground would cost you about 0.26 Bitcoin per acre. And in other words, one Bitcoin in Woodford County would buy you 3.86 acres of farmland in Woodford County. Chad, how does that sit with you pricing land in Bitcoin?

Chad Colby [00:21:02] You know, i, I think it's safe to say, and we, you and I kinda laughed about it before the show is I'm one of those guys that's just totally on the fence with Bitcoin. You know, certainly there's a lot of people that have capitalized in that market. Well, and, and I think it's, it's probably getting to the point where it's gonna stay. There's been some bumps in the, in the road over the years with that product and, and what it all means for agriculture. But I think, I think it's obviously it's got its place and you know, when you talked about what the land price was when you were a kid, I remember having those common in my early fifties and I remember when 3,500 acres was a ton of money for land and you know, now it's not uncommon if land's in the right place for it to bring north of 20. I mean it happens all the time. So it's just a different animal. And the reality is, is guys are buying land for different reasons, right? And what I mean by that they're not necessarily buying it because they need a return on the, on that farm ground for the cash rent. That's not what they're doing. And I think that's been the interesting part about farm ground for the last, well forever is there's always peaks and valleys in that. And I remember being in college and you know, my dad was fortunate enough when he farmed to not buy land at those peaks before the fall. And I remember some good friends of mine that bought some land and they told me, you know, it nearly took us out because they leveraged the acres, they had to buy that and now guess what it's worth, you know, 60% less than they paid and oh no, what are we going to do? And that was a real deal and I don't think we're gonna be back to that. But, you know, interest rates were high.

Chad Colby [00:22:33] I mean, everything was a perfect storm when that happened, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:22:36] Well you made the perfect case for me for why ag and Bitcoin should be going hand in hand because one of the big reasons that people buy land is because it's scarce and they know that their dollars can be printed away, but if they put those dollars into land, you can't just go out and print more land and just like that, just like land Bitcoin, you can't go print more of. And so it is a finite resource. And so people that are trying to park their money in land in order to be able to preserve its value, have the opportunity to buy it in Bitcoin, and then it's a lot more liquid of an investment. You can trade it, you can sell it, you can do it much faster. And that brings land prices way closer to the utility value. So that it's, we want the land to be as close to the utility value as possible because then it makes it easier for farms to get passed down. It makes it so people that are living on those farms are the ones working that land as opposed to farming it out to somebody else. Have you ever heard Bitcoin explained as a way of getting land prices back to a sane place?

Chad Colby [00:23:38] No, I haven't, but I'll tell you this and I know you're in that space heavily. You know, the challenge of of getting farms to the next generation is a, is a, it's a monumental effort that we, it had, I would tell you it hasn't improved the last 10 or 15 years at all. There's still a lot of people that struggle with that transition Vance. And, and you're in that space. You, you, you know the stories and I think whatever the tool is, it takes you to get from point A to B, which I mean through a generation change man, all hands on deck. To get that done successfully takes a lot of, a lot of expertise.

Vance Crowe [00:24:12] Well, all right, now let's move on to the Peter Thiel paradox. This is where I'm gonna ask Chad, what is one thing that you believe that almost nobody you know in your ag tribe agrees with you on?

Chad Colby [00:24:24] See this thing right here. Go upgrade your phone. It drives Vance, it drives me out of my mind when I jump in a cab and talk to a farmer and they got a button on their smartphone still. It's, look, it's one of those tools that you have that you think, I don't, I don't need to upgrade it 'cause the one I have still works. Well that's wonderful that it still works. They're not work boots. You don't wear out the soles in 'em and then get a new pair. What you have to understand is the new technology in these devices is monumental, especially, you know, I'm a bad example 'cause I'm gonna get a new phone every year. I have since the first iPhone, I think I'm a number 23 or 24, whatever it is. I'm not saying you need to go to hyper speed, but by all means, if your device is more than two years old, call Verizon tomorrow, go online and get yourself a new phone and thank me later because that $500 is very well spent and it drives me crazy that people don't do that. It's, it makes no sense to me, man. None.

Vance Crowe [00:25:25] So you say it's well spent. What, what are they gonna get for that upgrade? What's holding them back by having these old phones?

Chad Colby [00:25:31] Well, I think the thing is, is it's all the things that people get frustrated with their phones with, whether it's battery life connectivity, the screen you can't see in bright light. Even the speakers, everything gets so much better, especially if you're jumping two or three generations. It's not like it's just a little change. It's a massive change. The analogy I always give when I speak is if I told you tomorrow that Chevrolet is coming out with a new diesel pickup that has two thou that has, you know, 1500 horsepower, gets 60 miles of the gallon and costs the same amount of money, you guys would all go buy it tomorrow. You would drive to the Chevy dealer and go, I'll take one of those. Oh, twice the fuel economy and twice the horsepower. It's still a hundred, I'll buy one. But on a smartphone they'll use a 5-year-old one.

Vance Crowe [00:26:13] Okay?

Chad Colby [00:26:14] Because it still works. While they're in their $90,000 pickup buying their next 160 acre farm, they got a five-year-old phone next to 'em. And I, it baffles me, sorry, I'll get off the soapbox, but it well

Vance Crowe [00:26:25] Iaff say you, you converted me in a way when you first started off with this, I was, I was gonna tank your score, you were gonna get like a two or something because I figure basically everybody's wife already agrees with you. Like yes, finally get a new phone so I can get ahold of you. But you have convinced me of one thing is that there lar likely are a lot of people out there that don't see that it is a worthwhile investment and it would change the way they're doing things. So I'm, I'm gonna go ahead and give you a four nine for, for your Peter Thiel paradox.

Chad Colby [00:26:56] That's, that's, well listen, it's one of those things when I, when I do presentations and I, and I explain to them gently on why three or four slides, talk about the performance, show 'em about it, you know, one of the best things Vance, and I know you've gotten this when you speak, is the replies you get from people after when it's three days later or a week later and I get a text and I say, Hey, no problem, you're welcome. And the text is, Hey, I just left a cell phone store, I got a new phone And I've had it for, I've Had it for two days, Chad. And you know what, you were right, thank you. And, and I think,

Vance Crowe [00:27:31] Well, I gotta give you credit. That's, that's if people will go out and spend money based on something you said that's, that's, that's respecting.

Vance Crowe [00:27:38] All Right, we gotta keep moving if we're gonna stay on time because now we're moving to the worthy adversary. This is where I asked Chad, who is one person that you respect but you strongly disagree with.

Chad Colby [00:27:51] You know, you and I talked off air about this, you know, when I grew up, my mom says, if you can't say something nice about something, you don't say anything at all. And you know, I know this is a blanket statement. I warned you, I was gonna say it is, you know, I have a lot of respect for politicians. I don't care what side of the aisle you're on, I don't care what you do because you're, you're taking upon yourself to invest your time and energy to go make a difference. Okay? In that same breath, I get beyond frustrated with, you know, you've been there for 20 years or 30 years and now it's time to, to get some different people in to do some different things. And it's just frustrating for me because, you know, I'm not 35 years old anymore. I'm like you, I'm, you know, I've got kids and I, you think about their futures and what they're doing. That's, that's, that's frustrating for me that that's a probably a pretty lame, pretty lame

Vance Crowe [00:28:48] Definition that yeah, I mean, you definitely get a tank for that one. That's like a cop out answer, but I also think that is who you are, right? Yeah. And that's exactly what this is designed to do. Yeah.

Chad Colby [00:28:57] And

Vance Crowe [00:28:57] That's the way you think. So I'm gonna throw something out there, there is a podcast out there called the Red Scare Podcast. I often refer to this as, imagine if you stumbled upon a, a, a a group of off work strippers, right? And they're smoking cigarettes and they're gossiping. You know, you would, you would like sit there and say, what, what would they have that's interesting to say? And then all of a sudden you realize they're talking about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and modern culture. So if you wanna find something that will rock your world, you will not anticipate what you're about to hear. Go check out the Red Scare podcast. I did that because Chads was lame, but this one will blow your hair back a little bit. So

Chad Colby [00:29:38] Thanks,

Vance Crowe [00:29:39] That's awesome for letting me have a good reason for that. All right. That is our it for the where the adversaries. There is a list of where the adversaries on my XI hope you go check it out. Chad, I wanna thank you so much for coming on. If people wanted to know more about your work, your marketing work, where should they go to find out more?

Chad Colby [00:29:59] You can go to colbyagtech.com. You can certainly enjoy us every week. On this week in agribusiness, we talk about the latest. This week we're talking about the new combine from Case IH and some of the cool automation with that, which will be a lot of fun. We talk about everything under the sun there. And a lot of those episodes now, I think we've done, I don't know, north of 300 of 'em, most of them you can find on YouTube and a lot of people have questions about stuff. If you've got any questions, don't hesitate to reach out. I'm pretty easy to find. But yeah, if you go to colbyagtech.com, you can learn more.

Vance Crowe [00:30:29] And I also wanna thank our sponsors Farm test.ag that allows you to test products and that that marketers are selling to you. You can find out, hey, is this a scientifically valid way? Is this really gonna produce the type of product that I expect that it's going to? And Legacy Interviews. If you are interested in getting your loved ones to record their life stories so that you can capture who they really are and be able to share that with your kids and grandkids in the future, go to the Legacy Interviews dot com website and join the wait list. We are now really backing up as the holidays are approaching. And if you have been thinking about doing this, I implore you don't wait any longer. Go to Legacy Interviews dot com. All right, thank you for coming to this week's Ag Tribes report. We'll be back next week and as always, feel free to disagree.

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