Polyculture Farming Survives Floods That Destroy Monocrops: Jason Mauck on Farm Resilience

Jason Mauck [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. Bring the wisdom of Legacy Interviews to your next agricultural conference with a keynote by Vance Crowe. Listen on for a preview of one of Vance's most popular offerings, my grandfather's acts.

Vance Crowe [00:00:21] Someone once told me the greatest threat to our civilization is our inability to pass down our institutions. That's exactly what's happening to agriculture firm led organizations. Even the farms themselves are struggling to keep young people engaged and those that can't end up faltering even going away. So many conversations about succession focus on the legal or accounting side of it, but in my grandfather's acts, I offer principles for starting conversations that will help your organization or farm survive the test of time. I give audiences tangible ways to discover the motivations of others to delegate power so new leaders can emerge and to identify a path to succession, even if one isn't obvious. This talk will empower your audience to begin some of the most important conversations of their lives, so that what they've built can be passed on and we can preserve the culture of agriculture.

Jason Mauck [00:01:18] 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 [00:01:32] Welcome to the Ag Tribes report. I'm your host, Vance Crowe. Each week I bring on a co-host to represent the perspectives of one of the many ag tribes that collectively make up US and Canadian agriculture. This week we have Jason Mock, a US farmer and data-driven innovator reshaping agriculture through regenerative practices and polyculture systems under his farm. Weird philosophy. As founder of Constant Canopy, he pioneers diverse crop systems to optimize yields and resilience while sharing insights on agricultural innovations through his social media presence. Jason, welcome to the Ag Tribes report.

Jason Mauck [00:02:10] Thanks for having me on here, Vance.

Vance Crowe [00:02:13] So what is going on? How are, how are your crops growing in this farm weird system in Indiana right now?

Jason Mauck [00:02:20] Well, it's been, they're actually fantastic. You know, we lost maybe 60, 80 acres of drowned out on our 3000 this week. We got about eight to nine inches of rain in a hurry. We got six one night. I think that storm Friday dropped four and maybe an hour. I mean, it was just epic. And then yesterday we had sustained winds 70 mile an hour for probably 10 minutes. I've never seen a blow like that, so I don't know who's pissed, but something's going on right now, needs to stop. So,

Vance Crowe [00:02:55] And is your, yeah, so for people that don't know about your kind of farm weird practices, what's your like 32nd, this is how we do it differently here.

Jason Mauck [00:03:05] So, you know, stole grain out of a sandbox when I was two, then I was a landscape contractor, then my dad passed, and I, I came to the farm and I have a completely different lens. So other people are comfortable with scorched earth and this, this like, let's make one thing grow to this maximum. Like this is so wasteful. If we could let everything live, let's do the mathematics behind it. And when you do that, you can actually get a lot more value out of each plant and sequence them prime things. And it's just a lot more complex way of farming, but it's actually a takes on weather and it and, and it, you can create a lot more profit with it.

Vance Crowe [00:03:46] Well, for anybody that is not been a long time listening to the podcast, Jason's been on several times. He is a good friend of mine and he's what I call a chaos, which is one of these people that goes out into the chaos and they can see things that look crazy to everybody else. But every once in a while they'll able to take some of these ideas and bring 'em back. And it is fascinating to watch Jason and his approach to agriculture. So hopefully he can bring some of that to farm. Weird to this week's Ag tribes report. So, jumping right in, we're gonna talk about Trump's policy, whiplash on the ice raids that are gonna hit farms, the EPAs record breaking biofuels mandate that have agriculture and oil at odds. Cattle market reaching astronomical highs that could reshape the industry. And if we have time, we're gonna talk about the USDA's plan to unleash sterile flies against an ancient enemy. We're also gonna explore the Bitcoin land price report here. Jason's take on the Peter Thiel paradox and learn about his worthy adversary. And we're gonna try to do it in just 30 minutes. So let's get started. Headline number one, Trump reverses ice raid and pauses on farm. The policy whiplash is hitting agriculture. On June 16th, the Trump administration reversed a brief pause on ice raids targeting agricultural businesses after just four days of conflicting directives. The policy flip-flop began on June 12th when Trump announced on truth social that raids were harming very good longtime workers in agriculture, following pressures from agricultural secretary Brooke Rollins, who warned labor shortages with 25 to 45% of places like Ventura County farm workers skipping work due to fear.

Vance Crowe [00:05:28] But after the pushback from hardline advisor, Steven Miller, DHS reversed the pause on June 16th instructing ice to resume raids and meet Miller's target of 3000 daily arrests. The reversal came after major operations, including over 70 arrests at a Nebraska meat packing plant and multiple detentions at California farms with farm workers hiding in fields and harvest disrupted actual deportations of agricultural workers remain difficult to quantify, but farm industry advocates report that the psychological impact has been more severe than actual removals with absenteeism ranking all the way up to 45% in some regions. So Jason Ag is deeply conflicted over this. Some people think if it doesn't matter how much you pay American workers, you're not gonna find any, anybody to come out and do this work. And others say the reason Americans won't do the work is because you've got cheap farm labor to come in and fill the gap. Where are you at on this?

Jason Mauck [00:06:29] Well, you can be really disruptive in a, in a hurry, but you know, it really comes down to putting in the work and finding the people. I think you can, I think you can. What now? Now there is scale beyond to what you can find locally, but if you just need a couple, couple people, you know, if you're active in the community, you're gonna find those people. But we, you know, we've got 12,000 hogs Wilmer, he's a legal citizen, but he's from Honduras and he's got a a a bunch of friends that come out that are legal. And so we, we use him, we have a good relationship, but we've been working with him for 10 years now or something like that. So I don't know, you know, at the end of the day you gotta be, you gotta be legal.

Vance Crowe [00:07:14] Yeah. When I talk to farmers in all different situations, there are people that are like, you know, doing apple harvest where they're like, Hey, our window to get all this done is two weeks and there are not a bunch of people that we can go in town and go get these laborers. So from their perspective, they're saying we can't do this. The flip side is how are you ever gonna do this? If, if you, if the wages are always depressed by people willing to pay, get paid less because they're sending their US dollars home, where those US dollars buy a lot more, is there any way out of this situation or is this an inevitable casualty of, of being at the top of the, of the pyramid in terms of countries?

Jason Mauck [00:07:52] I mean, technology's gonna come in and, and I think we're gonna be able to automate a lot of things, but some things you can't get around. But, you know, if you're, if you're racing to the bottom really throwing the product out there and you need the cheap labor, then until that comes, then that's pretty much your option. Yeah. You know, the other thing is more retail or you pick or something like that. But you know, that's not realistic solution for everything.

Vance Crowe [00:08:18] To me, this is, people look at the immigration issue and they don't realize it is never gonna get solved until we stop inflating our currency. And the US we have inflation here, we can see that, but every single other country has it way worse. So there is such a strong incentive for people to come into this country and be way more willing to work here than other people for lower rates. 'cause they can send that money home and it buys so much more. I don't think we solve this problem until we get hard money.

Jason Mauck [00:08:45] Yeah. And I don't wanna sound like a, a cross the old guy or whatever, but you know, it work, you can get way more work out of someone that that's motivated to work. I mean, and sometimes it might be five or 10 times more and that's just simple economics.

Vance Crowe [00:09:05] All right, moving

Jason Mauck [00:09:06] On. I was on the phone right.

Vance Crowe [00:09:08] Headline number two EPA proposes record, high biofuels mandate on June 13th. The EPA proposed record high biofuel blending volumes under the renewable fuel standards for 2026 and 2027, up from 22.33 billion in 2025. The plan emphasizes biomass based diesel and reduces RI ns for imported biofuels to prioritize domestic production. S are renewable identification numbers are tradable credits in the US biofuel systems under the RFS standards. Rising RIN prices indicate that market expects increased demand for biofuels, making those credits more valuable. The proposal to reduce, I'm gonna just say RINs for imported biofuels, could make domestic RINs more valuable by limiting foreign competition. Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins and Iowa officials praise the increased demand for corn and soybeans supporting farmers and rural economies. Biofuel producers like Green Plains saw stock gains with RIN prices rising, however small refiners face high compliance costs risk enclosures, while critics highlight the environmental trade-offs including unsustainable land and water use for biofuel crops. Jason, what's your take on the massive biofuel mandates?

Jason Mauck [00:10:28] I don't know. I don't think I really have a big take here. I think, I think there's gotta be something, but it's, you know, it just seems like it never actually filters down to the farmer. It's just a bunch of schemes for the, for the men in suits.

Vance Crowe [00:10:45] Oh, so you're saying even though they're increasing demand by in doing this, it's not actually making the farmers better, it's somebody else in the chain is is making that money.

Jason Mauck [00:10:55] Yeah, but you know, that's just, that's just the way ag works. It doesn't matter what the price is. Everyone's, you know, a man is only as faithful as his option. So set the bar and everyone will get their piece a little bit more.

Vance Crowe [00:11:09] I would've thought that you'd have had a harder hard line on, on biofuels that, that any of these mandates is increasing the, the desire to do monocropping as opposed to doing more complex, sophisticated things.

Jason Mauck [00:11:21] Yeah, yeah. I mean at the, yeah, I mean we need diversity more than anything. We need processing American needs to make things instead of just come up with something on paper that, that looks better.

Vance Crowe [00:11:33] Yeah. And somebody on somewhere down the line is paying for this, right. That just because they increase the mandate, it means like, you know, when you start mandating ethanol, go into gasoline that people put in their cars that money isn't coming from, from thin air. It just means that anybody that drives a vehicle is paying for that. And, and it's, I guess it's one way to make sure that you have the farm system stay exactly the way that it is.

Jason Mauck [00:11:57] Yeah, we're just buying time on this corn man. I, you know, we just keep on inventing things, you know, because it's just more units for, for the, for the industry that supports it. So, you know, I don't know,

Vance Crowe [00:12:12] Cattle markets hit astronomical highs, $248 and 75 cents per a hundred weight at the Yankton cattle market with steers selling for this huge price in Yankton and South Dakota. A stark example of the extreme volatility hitting the industry US cattle herd is a more than six decade was in a six decade low due to years of droughts, higher input costs and profitability challenges. But when I heard that these high prices were going up, there were all these people out there saying, this is a terrible thing. This is gonna cause consolidation. And I didn't get it. So I looked into it a little bit. And one of the reasons that small producers suffer despite high prices is that small producers often can't capture these peak prices due to the cashflow pressures that force them to sell when they need money for loan payments or feed bills. Not when the market prices peak large operations can afford to hold cattle for longer waiting for optimal pricing. While small ranchers have, they lack the capital to feed their animals through all these dips. Kate, the meat lady who on x warns that long-term consequences. The packers don't just get to pass on those costs, that's not the way it works. Your processor will start importing more and more as we're seeing from grinding meat to higher quality beef from Australia and US will lose market share. Your smaller regions will close doors, big packers will close inefficient plants, and in three to five years there will be a flood of the same guys beating their chest about the cattlemen making money and, and, and f the packers right now who will be on there crying that they were not able to make it when the margins flips.

Vance Crowe [00:13:50] So there's a lot of people out here that even though the price of cattle is going way up, they seem to be pretty concerned about, about what that means for, for the long-term viability of the cattle market. Jason, you've been in a world where, where hogs is now a is a vertically integrated thing. What do you think about these cattle prices and and what's gonna happen to them to the market if you have these giant price swings?

Jason Mauck [00:14:18] Well, i I, you know, maybe a tangent here, but the first part of that where, you know, we're paying for feed and all this stuff, you know, this is a big part of farm we is, can we multipurpose our land and the people farm in small acreage that has a small cattle herd. We gotta figure out ways to get those herds out on the land and grow corn and do other things. And that's going to really create resilience and staying power and scale, scale that down. And that's, that's what we need is we need a lot of people with 50 cows instead of, you know, these conglomerate feedlots.

Vance Crowe [00:14:55] I think a lot of cattle producers would say like, yeah, you can be producing smaller amounts, but you still gotta sell 'em into a market where somebody else is able to do this at scale. And you're not getting that much more for, for producing, you know, the, in the smaller scale way.

Jason Mauck [00:15:13] Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, it goes back to design. What, what are you, what are you actually feeding them? Are you feeding them wet bale tri and you know, stuff off the grain dryer or are you buying it retail and selling your product wholesale? I don't know.

Vance Crowe [00:15:34] All right, well let's move on to headline number four. The USDA reopens, the sterile fly facility to combat the screwworm threat. The USDA announced plans to reopen more Air force base near Edinburgh, Texas with an $8.5 million investment to deploy sterile flies against the new world screw worm. A parasitic fly that is, that was eradicated from the US in the 1960s, but now spreading Northwoods from Mexico. The screw worm causes severe tissue damage to livestock in a mortality rate of 50 to 70% in untreated herds and a potential economic loss of over $9 billion nationally. The sterile insect technique releases sterilized male flies to mate with wild females producing no offspring and disrupting the pest lifecycle. More Air force base was originally used for this purpose in 1963, helping to eradicate screw worm through innovative biological control methods. But recent detections, 700 miles south of Texas have triggered urgency for this proactive defense. Jason, is opening a sterile fly facility, a type of farm weird concept, or is this Frankenstein?

Jason Mauck [00:16:44] Frankenstein for me, I don't understand it enough, but seems like we need to let nature takes the course a little bit. I don't know

Vance Crowe [00:16:54] Really. So you think like just, just no, no interventions just let the screw worm come and and hack away at the Texas herd?

Jason Mauck [00:17:03] I I don't know. I I, I was, I, I don't know. I don't know. But yeah, we don't need to like engineer some GMO bug to like fight it or something like that. So I, you know, I we're, we're messing with things a lot sometimes.

Vance Crowe [00:17:24] Yeah. So I looked into the screw room 'cause I've heard people talking about this. I was actually at an event last week and there were some venture capitalists that were like, Hey, I've heard this issue is really big. Is there, where can we invest into this? And so it's clearly going to be an issue and you know, when we think about Central America and Mexico, those cattle, they really do, they are hurt. Their entire herds are really getting decimated by this. You gotta do something. I think like, I think like this is a part of, of like national herd upkeep or, you know, national defense is to try and do what you can to keep parasitic diseases out. I to, you know, and I'm, I I'm probably more open to GMO than you are.

Jason Mauck [00:18:08] Yeah, I, I I don't know. I don't know. I'm not gonna give you a good take on this.

Vance Crowe [00:18:16] Yeah, clearly not. So I mean, like, if this was going on with, with hogs, I mean you, you, you protect, you have bio facilities there. Like, like what do you think you've gotta have some kind of a take. There's, there's just no nothing you should do, just let it run its course.

Jason Mauck [00:18:36] Well what, what do they thrive in? Like the, the problem is like there's one hot center and then somebody will just turn it into this fear fearmongering where it just goes beyond where it, it's really relevant.

Vance Crowe [00:18:53] I can appreciate that you, like, right now the reason you're not able to give a good take is 'cause you can't come up with anything creative if you don't understand the problem.

Jason Mauck [00:19:00] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:19:01] And that, like, if you don't know, like is it that it's a drought, is it that it's like things are too wet? Is it that cattle are too close together? Like without understanding the actual issue, the only thing that's that's given to you can either be thumbs up or thumbs down and that's not a very good thing to, to analyze a problem with.

Jason Mauck [00:19:19] Right, right. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:19:22] Shit, I'm pretty good at this farm. Weird stuff.

Jason Mauck [00:19:26] I'm not good at everything.

Vance Crowe [00:19:29] That's gonna do it for this week's headlines. If you have stories that you think we should be covering on the ag tribes report, you can send it to at Vance Crow on X or Vance at Legacy Interviews. Now onto the Bitcoin land price report. Last week Bitcoin sat at 107,000 and today we're sitting at 105,000, which is down 2% from last week. So Jason, you live in Delaware County, Indiana. How much does an acre of good quality farmland go for up there?

Jason Mauck [00:20:01] We had a auction 560 acres go for 18 five about three weeks ago.

Vance Crowe [00:20:09] Wow. And and that seem high to you. Did that seem the right price to you? What did that feel like?

Jason Mauck [00:20:15] Yeah, it's way outta reach. I mean, it makes no logical sense. You pay 6% interest on that. You're paying a thousand before you put a dollar towards principal. I mean, it doesn't make any logical sense if you're going to farm corn and beans on there or

Vance Crowe [00:20:29] Are they going to, I mean, do you think it's gonna stay that or is this going to be turned into houses and, and

Jason Mauck [00:20:34] Taken outta? No, it's, it's staying farmland. It somebody that has a big egg factory over in Ohio does very well bought it and second in line, there was a big group of, of Amish, I don't know if it's an Amish church, but they were running it up trying to get it. And that's a big deal. I mean, whether it's the Church of Latterday Saints or Amish or, or you know what, whatever. There's just a lot of, a lot of competing, competing bids getting it up there.

Vance Crowe [00:21:07] Yeah. And people that can work together can pay a lot more for it. All right, so let's run this through. If bitcoin's at 105,000 and the land was at 18,000, that means that 0.17 Bitcoin would buy you an acre of farm ground in Delaware, Indiana, or in other words, one Bitcoin would buy you 5.83 acres of of land. What do you, what do you think about that Jason? How does it, that price comparison in Bitcoin strike you?

Jason Mauck [00:21:38] I wish I would've bought it 10 years ago, but you know, it, it feels just like that acre of land at this point.

Vance Crowe [00:21:47] Do you own any Bitcoin now?

Jason Mauck [00:21:49] I don't. I'd like to,

Vance Crowe [00:21:51] I mean, this is one of those things that for an experimental guy, just buying a hundred dollars worth and then figuring out how do I get it, how do I buy it, and then how do I get it from the exchange to a wallet. Would would be something that once you got that education, then you'd be like, oh, I can do this, I can do this over and over and over again.

Jason Mauck [00:22:08] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:22:10] You wanna, you wanna do that after the show. You wanna buy a hundred dollars worth of Bitcoin.

Jason Mauck [00:22:14] Sure.

Vance Crowe [00:22:15] All right, great. Well if we do, we will use the river, which is where I buy my Bitcoin and I'll put a link in the show notes. If you buy your Bitcoin on using that, that link, you will both use a great product, but you'll also support the show. All right, moving on now to the Peter Thiel paradox. This is where I'm gonna ask Jason, what is one thing that you believe that almost no one you know agrees with you on?

Jason Mauck [00:22:43] Yeah, so it's, it's let live, that's what farm weird is all about. And I, you know what, what I believe is that Monocropping is a huge waste of our natural resources. And you saw it this week, I mean the water's running off, it's killing crops because we're basically dropping a, a baby, a baby boy, you just had a baby. We're dropping it right by the fire firehouse garage door. And when it gets ran over we just, you know, we just complain to all our friends that the weather sucks. So the market sucks and I just think that we can take on weather, we can do a lot more with our assets if we figure out how to grow multiple things at once. And not even, I I I'm even against, not against cover crops, but it's just not a financial advantage. There might be some long-term things, but you know, what I do is figure out the math and science behind growing multiple things at once and let them live their life out. And you know, something like stock cropper, we can grow 20 things at once and they're all growing at the same time and that's the only way we're gonna be able to A, get young people on a farm and b, have a chance.

Vance Crowe [00:23:49] So you said something, you said a couple of things that were pretty interesting there, but the cover crops one I think is pretty counter-cultural because this has become huge. This is like everybody's saying, Hey, the only way you're gonna increase carbon in your soil, this is the way you're gonna make sure you organic matter is going up is if you do cover crops, you're not for cover crops.

Jason Mauck [00:24:07] I mean some people use it well and some people need it, you know, with specific use, but for the most part people exploit the system. You know, they're half-assed doing it. My dad always said, if you're gonna do anything, do it. Don't do it half-ass. I just see people, you know, plant rye in November and then they kill it off before it even grows and then they cash some $50 an acre check or whatever it is. And then, so they bought the cover crop seed, they bought the Glo glyphosate to kill it and you know, it just really didn't do anything. And you know, what I do is I have a significant cash cover crop that I can harvest and create, you know, five, $600 a revenue per acre. And I've figured out a way to sustain soybean yields and lower the cost of production on that. And I can't do that if I just kill it off early. And then the other thing, when I'm harvesting, I'm actually creating a cover crop with harvest loss. So, you know, 15, 20 bucks an acre and wheat and I have a cover crop that I didn't have to pay somebody and I didn't have to kill it.

Vance Crowe [00:25:09] Man, this is truly counter-cultural because I remember when it was seeming like big ag finally capitulated and they, they gave into cover crops and they started supporting it. But then you realize actually if you're selling glyphosate, cover crops are a great thing, right? You, you get somebody to go out there and they plant a thing that they're not actually trying to grow. And then when you want to terminate it so you can plant into it, you just knock it all down in the poly cropping system, what is the first one outta the ground? What are you, what are you able to plant that you don't have to just kill with glyphosate?

Jason Mauck [00:25:42] Wheat, wheat for the most part, I mean we do this alley crop corn is has huge legs where we're, you know, growing a significant cover crop and wider, wider cornrows but blocks of corn, you know, it's all evolved but you know, going back to $18,000 an acre, you know, we're all competing. So, you know, we've got to, whether it's pumping out yield or, or creating more value for our product, we've gotta compete. And, and it's just, you're really behind the eight ball. If you're delayed planting and if you're starting something from seed later than everyone else, then you're actually more vulnerable to weather than you are of maybe if you, you could have planted it earlier. So, you know, and, and then you got the whole drought thing, you know, we're actually, we're not, farmers are getting paid commission on the water that they can sell and the, you know, the sunlight that they can capture and there's just another dimension of efficiency if we, if we figure out the math behind letting live.

Vance Crowe [00:26:50] Wow, that is a fascinating way to do to say that farmers are getting a commission on the sunlight and water that they can capture.

Jason Mauck [00:26:57] Yeah, we, we get to sell 13% of some 15% of others and if you've got multiple crops in there growing substantially way before anyone else, then I'm, you know, I'm actually making money when, when everyone else is just working it for the third time trying to grow this glorious corn crop. And you see it right now, you know, we got eight inches of rain, I'd say 20% of the landscape is dead right now because we had nothing significant to, you gotta stop the water where it is and you gotta figure out a ways to slow it and spread it and get it in the soil. And you can't do that by killing something and then starting something else. You've gotta let things grow and have something substantial out there. And I don't care what we're doing, you know, we could do, we could do anything a lot better if we, if we just think in a different lens.

Vance Crowe [00:27:47] And what is your crop doing in all this rain? Are you, are you faring any better than the mono croppers? Yeah,

Jason Mauck [00:27:52] We're gonna blow the doors off our records this year. We just phenomenal. Our beans are phenomenal in there. And, and, and we've got several fields where, you know, one down the road here we've got 150 acre field, half of it's monocrop soybeans no tilled. The other half is this relay, probably 30 40% of it has had three or four foot of water on it. And the monocrop beans, because all the water just ran off after an inch, didn't lose anything in the relay. We're gonna harvest a hundred bushel wheated out of it and our beans will probably kick the shit outta the mono crops by 25 30 bushels. So we're looking at 5, 6, 7, $800 more per acre and it's not, you know, five or 600. It, it's like this might be in the red $200 and this might be in the black $500. And that's, that's, that's the whole thing about being competitive is we can't just rely on crop insurance or some government subsidy or some biomass standard or whatever it is to get us whole. We've gotta innovate on our farm and figure out how to be profitable. You know, if you're gonna still be doing this,

Vance Crowe [00:28:56] What percentage of your acreage is in this poly cropping system?

Jason Mauck [00:29:00] We're at 400 right now out of our 3000 in the wheat and beans, but we're doing alley crop corn, we're doing some wet be triticale, which I'm really excited about what we're doing with that. So we're, we'll grow triticale up to about my chin and we'll cut it on May 10th and we'll bale it and we got about 400 bales and we planted corn in there and with, with the moisture, I think that corn will be just as good as our regular corn. So you know, the market value of all them bales are about six or $800 an acre and that'll feed a cattle herd. So we'll take that wet bale biomass and then we'll take all of our screenings from our grain dryer. So we'll run, you know, half a million bushels of corn through there and we might have 20 thou 10, 20,000 bushel of, of corn hearts and bees wings that we can mix with the biomass and you feed cattle for like next to nothing. So it's just resourcefulness. You know, Jared McDaniel's a real good guy about growing stuff all the time and feeding in his cattle and when we got away and we got into special a specialization in ag, not only did you lower the value of your corn 'cause you didn't ha own the livestock to get it in there to value add, but then you took the manure off the farm so you kind of got hit two or three different times and, and, and we're just becoming very, you know, reliant on this welfare welfare system to become whole. And I think the next step is the, the, the whole structure of the pork industry, which no one owns their pigs, we don't own our pigs.

Jason Mauck [00:30:32] That's coming to ag. And the problem, as I said, people will love it because, you know, they might park a new John Deere tractor in there, they bring your seed, they give you a crop in crop protection and you're just like, oh, just do what I always did. I just don't have to of the risk and that's not my future. I'll fight.

Vance Crowe [00:30:50] And do you, when do you think the 400 acres will turn into 3000 acres that you'll be able to implement this

Jason Mauck [00:30:56] System? That's never the, you know, that's never the goal. And you know, I would say that I've scaled this to over a hundred thousand acres when I, when I look at my, all the people that I've persuaded to do it on their farm. So I scale exponentially just on my influence and it's never my goal to do one thing. I mean, that's goes against everything that I, that I wanna do. I just, I I want to come up and, and, and do a lot of things and then by watching it come up with better and better ideas year, year out and, and, and then, you know, my goal is to have 10 or 20 different concepts in our farm that are substantially better than just planting a seed and praying.

Vance Crowe [00:31:37] All right man. Well I'm gonna give you a straight 9.0 on your Peter Teal paradox because it's not fair to penalize you that you've convinced me a long time ago I got to see your field day. We've known each other for a long time and, and I think, I think you do actually believe things that nobody else agrees with you on. Alright, moving on to the worthy adversary section. This is where we try and get out of our ideological echo chambers by, by trying to focus on who is somebody out there that you respect but you strongly disagree with.

Jason Mauck [00:32:09] I'm gonna go with Randy Dowdy

Vance Crowe [00:32:11] And,

Jason Mauck [00:32:13] And, and the disservice, you know, we sell this dream and, and

Vance Crowe [00:32:17] Well first, who is Randy Dowdy? He's one of the, the greatest high efficient farm corn farmers in the country in the world maybe.

Jason Mauck [00:32:24] Sure. And I, and I'm sure he is a great guy and he does value, but the disservice is, you know, if you've seen Talladega Nights, you know that Ricky Bobby, if you don't chew red then f you and, and these people, you know, know they get sponsored and, and you know, their crops are on IV and, and it's this perceptive play that, you know, if you would just farm like me, you could have 600 bushel corn too. And that's a big disservice to farming because going back to, you know, farmers get paid on commission that a lot of people don't have irrigation and, and unlimited funds because sponsors just know that, that there's such a, a big, big mouthpiece to, to their sales and the disservices, they get all these people to pay $5,000 to be on a zoom call with them to say, Hey, throw the kitchen, seek at it. And, and the reality is we've gotta manage our free things way more than the, the shit that you gotta buy.

Vance Crowe [00:33:24] What does that mean? Manage the free things,

Jason Mauck [00:33:27] Water, sunlight, sequencing, plants. Time, time is the most valuable thing. It's just always be doing something, you know, on the land. But you know, this idea that I'm just gonna, you know, go to Florida and then I'm, I'm going to grease the planter and do, I'm gonna do everything right And then, you know, if if mother nature doesn't work out, then, then it was her fault, you know, and it's just, it's just, it just propels this idea that, that we're gonna solve everything and yield. We're gonna feed the world and we need to figure out how to feed our family, feed our community and, and kind of do, you know, I'm an old soul, but I, I see the future and I I don't like it. So I think we've gotta create our own future. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:34:10] All right, I'm gonna add Randy Dowdy to the list of worthy, the adversaries that you can find on my x If you want to see a list of people, I think that is some of the best follow on X because it's constant churn there. A lot of people believe in a lot of different things. Alright, well Jason, I wanna thank you for coming on. I did invite you on this week. Originally I was gonna have John Kemp that didn't work out. And so then I was like, oh, well Jason has his field day coming on, so I'd love to give you a chance to talk about your field day. Where is it? Who should come, what's, what's going on with that?

Jason Mauck [00:34:44] Yeah, so Friday, tomorrow is our VIP, which we'll have a really nice dinner. First we start with a golf round, then the VIP dinner, then a private tour. And then Saturday is the main event. I've got 10 different projects around the farm all demonstrating how you can let live, how you can have multiple things growing, creating value on your farm, and not just the revenue side, but the ancillary benefits, you know, soil health, soil wealth, livestock integration. And I'm inviting all my friends that, that believe in the system and, and it's a, it's a paid ticket event. It's 99 bucks to get in VIP's 3 49. But, but I love it because everyone that's going to be there, you know, we didn't pull our hands to get CUE credits or anything like that. They want to be there. They think this way and we're creating our own tribe. And that's the only way that we're really gonna make a difference is through numbers and, and, and sharing and group think and, and kind of bottom up. It ain't gonna come from top down. We're we're not, we're not doing anything, you know, we're not gonna get anywhere with that.

Vance Crowe [00:35:56] So what's the kind of person that shows up? Are these gonna be a bunch of people with dreadlocks and driving Priuses or who shows up to a farm? Weird.

Jason Mauck [00:36:05] Yeah. Well if, if you ask the people around here, they think it's just gonna be incent candles and produ, you know, hippies and all this shit. But it's actually the people that just like to think and they like to try things and you know, they, they're in the grind. They, they wake up and they, they want to farm in a way. They're looking at the kids and they actually, you know, tough love is actually the real love and, and you've got to be engaged in farming if you want to give that to the next generation. These are the, the people that make that a top priority.

Vance Crowe [00:36:40] Yeah, I think the best example of the type of person that comes to your field day, I, I've come before I, I love it, but is a guy named Wes Carney. I did a podcast with him last year at Zach Smith's podcast. He is like an engineering type that probably built with Legos, right? But like he looks at the world, he see, he's like, oh, there's a different way to do things. I can experiment. Great guy to talk to. And when you find out that at the farm, weird events, it's like hundreds of west carneys, everybody there has a purpose. They're not just showing up for the free seed hat or the CEUs. It's, I I can't recommend it enough. We just had a new baby boy, so I'm not going anywhere, but I would encourage anybody to go to this. It's, it's an experiment e experience. Even if you're not farming, you, you'll get to learn and see things you, you don't get to see every day

Jason Mauck [00:37:28] Day. And it's turned for me, it's turned it into this huge resource pool and I think the more and more people that join it and, and they make those connection relationships one another, they get to access one another. And, and that's, that's a huge, huge value to the farmer. You know, when you can, you know, someone's very good at something and you can reach out to them and they're gonna be forthright in their knowledge and that's, that's why we do it.

Vance Crowe [00:37:56] And you are planning to have the communist Zach Smith's stock cropper on, on display there? Yeah,

Jason Mauck [00:38:03] You talk about a tough week for that. I, I had it in the low spot because I was trying to grow this 600 bushel corn down there and I had water gushing down there and chickens in there. And, and boy, I learned a valuable lesson. Let's just put it along a little bit higher ground.

Vance Crowe [00:38:22] So for anybody that doesn't know that is the stock cropping system is where you actually graze animals in between rows of corn and you see how well the, the, the crops respond, how well the animals are doing. It's a fascinating thing and I, I hear Zach Smith, the stock cropper will be there, so yeah. Alright, Jason, thank you so much for, for coming on. I really appreciate all your time.

Jason Mauck [00:38:47] Thank you.

Vance Crowe [00:38:49] All right. That's gonna do it for this week's AG Tribes report. But before I go, I, I wanted to mention something I've been working on a couple of years ago. I had a business partner and he and I worked great together. And then it was time for him to head out into the world and he started his own biotech firm and then he went around the world and raised tens of millions of dollars and when he came back, he assembled a team of scientists and he said, Vance, I want my scientists to be able to communicate the way you taught me to communicate. So I put together a class, it was five sessions and it was great. We covered everything from how to negotiate to how to introduce yourself, storytelling, how to ask better questions, how to manage conflict, and how do big organizations like bureaucracies make decisions. It turns out a hedge fund here in St. Louis heard about the class and invited me in to do it. And they have told me in no uncertain terms that they want to do this for more of their people. They wanna do the class in a bigger way. And I've really been encouraged to move this forward. So many people have asked me questions like, Hey, have you ever written a book or have you ever done something? I think I'm going to do this class. I'm certainly gonna do another one in St. Louis, but I'm thinking about doing one online. The in-person class is a thousand dollars a seat. I don't think I'll charge that for online. But if you have ever thought about taking a communications class with me, you wanna learn how to articulate your point, how to communicate with people in a deep and profound way, then send me an email vance at Legacy Interviews dot com and I will put you on a list and we'll figure out how many people we think we could do for an online class and the right price.

Vance Crowe [00:40:32] And we'll go from there. I'm not sure when I'm gonna do it, but I, I had that little voice in my head say, Hey, you should, you should really throw this out to podcast listeners, so send me a note Vance at Legacy Interviews dot com. And I would love to put a, put an online class for you also, if you're thinking about doing a legacy interview for your loved one, this is where I sit down with individuals and couples to record their life stories. Then go to Legacy Interviews dot com and learn more about the service and about how we can record your loved one. Alright, that's gonna do it for this week's show. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you have a chance, go to Jason's Field Day. It's gonna be great. And as always, feel free to disagree.