What RFK Jr Could Change in Agriculture: Raw Milk, Glyphosate, and the Farm Bill

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] The Ag Tribes report is brought to you by Farm Test, a field trial design, execution, and analysis service that makes it easy to ask your fields which management practices perform best to start your field trials, visit Farm test, ag and Legacy Interviews, a video service that captures people as they really are, so the future knows who they really were. Here's Legacy Interviews customer, Dave Helen on the value his mother found in the experience.

Guest [00:00:32] I bought a legacy interview because my mom said she wishes she had that for her. Grandmother was so grateful to have their thoughts of their own life on video, and we've got that forever.

Vance Crowe [00:00:50] Welcome to the Ag

Guest [00:00:52] Tribes report,

Vance Crowe [00:00:53] 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 invite a different co-host from one of the many ag tribes to discuss the things that are impacting the culture of agriculture. This week has been an absolutely wild week with Donald Trump winning the presidency. And of course, everybody in ag knows that RFK has had a profound chance to be able to impact agriculture, and he is making no secret that he is going to make big changes. That's why I decided to invite on podcast, past podcast guest John Kemp, CEO, of advancing eco Ag. If you're a listener of John's prolific podcast, you know that he has both been on RFK Junior's podcast, as well as had him on the podcast as well. So I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity to have somebody on that could speak to RFK, what he's, what he, he and RFK have talked about and John's own opinions on what needs to change in agriculture in order that it be vibrant in the future. So John Kemp, welcome to the Ag Tribes report.

Guest [00:02:15] Thanks for having me on, Vince. It's been an entertaining week and I promise to be an entertaining ride, I think, for a lot of people, and I'm quite optimistic that it'll be very positive.

Vance Crowe [00:02:24] Well, that's good to hear because the reason I called you to invite you on was I had started getting phone calls, I got text messages and dms that people are pretty concerned with the change that may come with this administration. So I know that these are just your opinions, but I think that you have a unique voice in this space. And when Joel Saletan came out with a letter saying that, that he was one of the people tapped to work on Thomas Massey's administration, or part that might be with the USDA, this has caused a huge amount of energy to go into this. So I thought, hey, we better have somebody on that that I know is respected by RFK to see what do you think? So we're gonna go straight into news stories. We're gonna do a few topics that I think are of interest to agriculture and and your way of thinking. Then we're gonna go and do your, the Bitcoin land price report, the Peter Thiel paradox, and your worthy adversary. And we're gonna do it all in just 30 minutes. So to begin, John, this week when we watched Donald Trump win the election, there was video of Amish buggies with Trump flags flying. This was totally

Guest [00:03:37] Extraordinary. I You never expected that.

Vance Crowe [00:03:39] Yeah. Tell me about that. What happened? What was going on there? Why did the Amish get involved in this way?

Guest [00:03:45] Well, I was not on the ground in Pennsylvania, so I don't know the details, but I'm intimately familiar with a culture, obviously, and I have many friends there. I suspect that the, there were, obviously, there were people on the ground. Scott Pressler is widely credited. There were people on the ground that were really working to mobilize the vote and get it out in a significant way. But, and also Kennedy was there like a week prior to the election speaking on Amos Miller's farm, and I suspect that what really mobilized the Amish community, perhaps more than anything else, was the way a Miller has been treated for the last decade. He has had multiple FDA raid on his farm inventory lockdowns for selling raw milk under a herd share agreement. And it's my understanding that he is licensed and is legal in the state of Pennsylvania with the raw milk certificate in his, but he's, he's been under the FDA has really been trying to make an example out of him. And I think the, so Kennedy hosted a rally at his farm. Many Amish people showed up, and I think his commitment that this demonization of healthy local food would go away with his engagement and his involvement is what shifted the tide because the Amish community is fed up with being targeted from regulatory overreach as they perceive it.

Vance Crowe [00:05:13] Yeah, I mean the, what I've heard is there was something like 200,000 Amish voters that entered the system that o oftentimes if they are involved in elections, they're very quiet, but oftentimes don't even participate. So that had to have a profound impact on the state of Pennsylvania.

Guest [00:05:28] Yeah, I, I don't know if ibel, I don't believe those numbers, and I'm not suggesting that there, there may have been those numbers that were in the plain communities in general, perhaps including Mennonites and other denominations, but not that many Amish alone. The reason I don't believe that number is because I know the Amish population, the Amish population in all of the United States is a tiny number. It's 360,000, and that includes adults and children scattered all across the country. And Pennsylvania, I think is the third most populous, second or third most populous state. So 200,000 doesn't compute, but was it significant? Was it enough to turn the tide? Apparently. So,

Vance Crowe [00:06:10] Yeah. So let's jump right into some of the actual issues that I think people are concerned about. Maybe people are cheering on. I know I, for one, believe that the USDA has a huge amount of overreach and ability to control things like people being able to process their own beef and be able to sell it across state lines and, and raw milk being not being allowed to be sold. What do you think, what, what is the potential for these sorts of things to get cleaned up in a Trump RFK administration?

Guest [00:06:43] Well, one of the things that we know is important, and we, we have this, what's the word that I'm looking for? Not monopoly, but a related word in the, in the beef space, one of the things that we know is important is facilitating market access. Like if, if you really want growers and farmers to be competitive and to have the opportunity to decommoditize themselves, we need to facilitate market access. And right now we have rural developments spending large amounts of money building firehouses rather than putting grants forward for processing facilities that can be well used by, that can benefit farmers and growers. So there's, there's lots of opportunity. I mean, there's about 50 different things that I could talk about. But I think in general, the Kennedy, you know, it's interesting when you look at what Kennedy has posted online on X around the FDA, he's been very clear and he believes there has been significant overreach and that there need to be consequences for some of the very challenging choices they have made around public health and people's health, particularly over the last four years. And in one of his tweets, he was very clear and very direct that keep your records and pack your bags. But you know who he hasn't said that about. He hasn't said that about USDA and he hasn't said that about a farmers why not for the very good reason that he understands. He is sympathetic to the plight that farmers find themselves in.

Guest [00:08:14] And he understands that to a large degree the farming community is, they have been guided to a system and a model of agriculture that they have adopted as a result of policy directions and so forth that they are to some degree, like I personally believe that all of us have our own autonomous responsibility, but we also understand that we have been guided to adopt this system. This is, this has been the system, the model of agriculture that we have. Farmers care deeply about the land, they care deeply about their legacy and preserving land and their future for the next generation. And so we have adopted a model of agriculture that does not align with public health, but it is not the fault of farmers that we are in this situation.

Vance Crowe [00:09:02] So as you think about some of the changes that farmers are worried about that you might say they're, they're caught in this system, glyphosate is a big part of that. You have genetically modified crops that can withstand glyphosate and RFK has made no secret of the fact that he does not like this chemical. Do you imagine that during this administration that chemical might get banned?

Guest [00:09:26] I, I'm hesitant to speculate. I would imagine that there, there are some things that we can change quickly, some things that can be changed quickly from a policy perspective, such as making the use of cover crops easier for crop insurance, for example. There are other things that for in the interest of the farming community, we might have the interest of removing glyphosate collectively. Like I think all of us in the farming community, we want to produce healthy food. I think the, the one issue that we can all unite around, that we can all unify is we want to produce healthy food for our children. No one is going to disagree with that. And so when there are harms that are demonstrated by glyphosate or any other pesticide, then obviously we would chose to continue discontinue using those. The question is what are we going to replace it with? And when we look at what happened in Germany here a couple of years ago and throughout the eu in in several nations, there was this directive to discontinue glyphosate, but it was too quick, it was too rapid. And so I think there is definitely going to be pressure to find a pathway to discontinue the use of those pesticides. But also I hope there is some recognition and appreciation that it can't happen and occur with the flip of a switch. And I believe that to be the case.

Vance Crowe [00:10:53] Well that, I mean I think there are a lot of farmers right now that have farmed under the glyphosate, certainly the larger chemical system that would be really concerned because they don't know another way to farm. Exactly. How do you imagine a transition to, you know, a different cropping system where the people for the last 30 to 40 years, this is the way that they've been able to raise crops successfully?

Guest [00:11:18] Well, I don't want to, this, this is not something that one person should all, the reality is that there are many people around the country. There are certainly in a minority, but there is a small minority of people who has figured out how to farm effectively on a large scale without the use of glyphosate. Is it harder? Yes, absolutely. Are there new technologies coming that make it easier? Yes, that's also true. So I think there is a great deal of existing knowledge that needs to be pulled and we collectively need to figure out what the pathway forward looks like with reduced glyphosate in the future. And the reality is, if we are, if we unify, if we as farmers and growers, if we truly believe and are committed to producing healthier food, then this is something that we should want to do. We should be willing to invest our own time and energy into figuring out how can I figure this out for my operation? What, who are the people that I can learn from? And when we engage authentically in that way, there is, I believe there is grace for figuring out what the pathway looks like.

Vance Crowe [00:12:27] Yeah, the pathway, if you get rid of chemical agriculture likely includes either huge amounts of technology or labor. And right now the wages that are able to be paid to workers that create food that people are willing to at a price people are willing to pay. You know, we've got a real challenge with that. What do you anticipate is going to happen with labor in a new system that might might be born that goes away from chemical agriculture?

Guest [00:12:56] Oh, Y yy, you pick the easy questions, don't you, Vince? So look, I think robotics are developing extremely rapidly. And I fully expect when you look at some, there's just a couple companies that I'm have some passing familiarity with. One of them is carbon robotics, which has these cool laser machines to, that can laser weeds as it moves through a field and completely leave the crop untouched. It's a pretty remarkable a Star Wars type device. Then we have greenfield robotics out of Nebraska that has these tiny mini robots that are capable of, capable of driving through fields and doing weed control. So there obviously needs to be incentives to rapidly develop that technology. And so I see the pathway to reducing dependence on chemicals is more of a technological innovation than going back to having high labor requirements. I believe that we need more stewards, we need more people on the land who have loving, caring relationships with the landscape, but that's not going to happen overnight or in four years.

Vance Crowe [00:14:01] Yeah, this may seem a little bit outta left field, but during Legacy Interviews where I sit down with people to record their life stories, many people told me about the hugely negative impacts that CRP programs had on their communities because it used to be that a farmer that had extra land that didn't want to farm it himself would rent that out to other people. And when you implemented these CRP programs where you're essentially letting the ground go fallow, they could still make money, but now there wasn't that land to farm. I recognize that RFK has talked a lot about environmental causes. Should people be concerned that there's going to be more acreage put towards CRP programs that might take even more land away and and empty our communities out of farmers that are tenant farmers?

Guest [00:14:47] I don't have a perspective on CRP specifically, but I have a perspective on food production generally. And this, this kind of also speaks indirectly to, to the question that you asked about labor. And I wanna be clear that this is, this is my personal perspective and I've not had this specific conversation with Kennedy at any point. I find it slightly appalling that we consider it appropriate to import 65% of our fresh fruits and vegetables internationally from a food security perspective and from a national security perspective. And I understand that some of that is bananas and pineapples and coconuts, et cetera. And I understand that some of that is from

Vance Crowe [00:15:31] Yeah, but most of it's tomatoes and yeah,

Guest [00:15:34] A lot of it's from Mexico, tomatoes that are off season and so forth. But the majority, the, the reason that a lot of this has occurred, you know, one farmer articulated it to me very well as a reflection of a conversation that he had in dc. He said, we have to come to grips with the reality that our fresh fruits and vegetables are going to be picked by foreign hands or by, yeah, by foreign born hands. The only question is whether it will happen inside our borders or outside our borders. And this, this speaks to our generally screwed up immigration policy and the need for massive reform.

Vance Crowe [00:16:14] Yeah. And what do you think that looks like in immigration reform? I mean, right now it seems like we added, I think something like 14 million immigrants into the country just in the last four years alone.

Guest [00:16:26] How many of those do you think are interested in working in agriculture? I would speculate not very many.

Vance Crowe [00:16:30] Yeah, virtually none. You know, another big issue that farmers, when I was doing a little poll before the show got started, people brought up waters of the US was a, an act that farmers really pushed back on because they thought it gave a ton of government overreach. On the other hand, RFK, I think signaled a lot of support for TIS when it was going on. And if he were to have, you know, more authority here, I think there are a lot of farmers worried that there'll be more government control people coming onto their land saying, you know, if you can walk in water, then that's something we have oversight over. What do you think about that?

Guest [00:17:08] Well, this is a political process and there's a lot to play out. So I can speculate. We know that publicly, publicly trump's commitments to Kennedy have been that he will have a significant voice and a significant influence in everything that is related to health, to human health as in the health H-H-S-F-D-A, et cetera. And also the USDA. And at the same time he has said that he doesn't fully align with Bobby on EPA and on liquid gold on oil. And so that he has to, from his perspective, he has to keep Bobby at arm's length within the EPA. So if I recall correctly, waters of the United States was under the EPA, so we'll see how that all shakes out. I, I don't, don't particularly have a perspective and opinion on how that might evolve, but I think, look, if we sat down and had an authentic heart to heart conversation, the country right now is very polarized. It's very divided. Half the country think has had a really horrible, have had a lot of fears and trauma the last couple of days. I don't particularly agree with that extreme reaction, but I try to empathize with it and I try to understand it. But if we sat down and had a heart to heart conversation, I think we would discover that the issues we agreed on are many. And the issues that we disagreed on are few. And if agriculture and farmers can come to the table and can say, yes, we desire to make, we, we understand that we are in this system, we understand that it is not perfect, that it is not ideal, and we actively desire to move away from as intense dependency on pesticides as where we currently are.

Guest [00:18:59] I think that that engagement, that commitment will be respected. And when we live that in the field and we are good stewards in the field, then there is going to be a lot less pressure from, for regulatory oversight. You know, we look at Iowa, I'll look at Iowa as an example. We have had for how many years, I'm not sure exactly, a decade plus we have had voluntary water control, or excuse me, water quality compliance and the voluntary compliance has been meaningless. We have ridiculously high nitrate levels in, in Iowa River watersheds and, and it, I don't need to describe the whole political process, but the rest of the country looks at this and they say, farmers, you are actually polluters, you are not living the code that you, the ethos that you describe ascribe to as being good stewards of the landscape. And they have a response to that that we should expect. You know, in my podcast interview with Vern Peterson, who's a peach and stone fruit grower from California, an organic, a remarkable farmer, he made an interesting comment that has really stuck with me. I forget the exact frame of reference. I think it was something called the consumer Trust index or something like that. But he said that farmers rank close to the top of the consumer trust index right alongside the clergy agribusiness ranks close to the bottom of the consumer trust index, along with pharmaceuticals, companies and big agribusiness knows this, they're smart about this.

Guest [00:20:41] This is why they train farmers to go lobby for them on Capitol Hill. So we look at what has happened in Iowa as an example, if farmers show up, the, the public will trust farmers, but they don't trust agribusiness and they have good reason historically not to.

Vance Crowe [00:21:05] So I want to ask you one last news question. We're going over time on this, but I'm very interested, this is something that I believe really tilts agriculture in a single direction, which is the ethanol mandates. You know, there are a lot of states inside of the United States that say you must blend ethanol into the gasoline and that accounts for 40% of the corn crop. Do you imagine a, a Trump RFK administration doing anything to change the ethanol mandates?

Guest [00:21:36] Well, what can they do? I mean, this is obviously, the ethanol mandates are obviously a purely political process. They make no sense from a carbon budget perspective for anyone who pays attention to the details and dig in digs into them. It's, it's purely politics that is keeping ethanol alive. And I agree with you that I would be in favor of it disappearing, but also then if it disappears, what does it get replaced with and how do we, how do we support farmers in and how do we do this in a manner, how do we facilitate a transition that is healthy for the farming community from a financial perspective? So that's one conversation, but I, I'm not intimately familiar enough with the political process to know like what really can a federal administration do? Is this a state by state issue? Like I, I don't know. Would it, would it be desirable to influence that? In my personal opinion, yes. Will that actually happen? I don't know. I have no idea.

Vance Crowe [00:22:29] Yeah, I mean, that's gonna be something to be seen. I can imagine that that would be a political third rail right now. But I think that that's gonna be one of the largest impacts on improving agriculture in the United States is to make it so we're not burning 40% of our, our corn in, in people's gas tanks. But many, many farmers will disagree with me on this. So moving right along. Oh, go ahead. We

Guest [00:22:56] Should, we should ask the question why will they disagree? And it's because it affects their livelihood personally. But let's stop and ask the question, what is the purpose of agriculture really? What is it really? It's not to grow crops and livestock and fiber. That's not the purpose of agriculture. The purpose of agriculture is to support people. Does ethanol serve that end really?

Vance Crowe [00:23:28] Yeah, I think it's a great starting point and it makes people have to recalibrate. What are you trying to optimize for? Because if you're only optimizing for, can I continue to take out larger and larger loans? Can I continue to have, you know, a bigger balance sheet than, than ethanol makes a ton of sense. If you're trying to raise it for people, it, there's only a few very, very small number of people that benefit from ethanol and everybody else is paying a tax in order to create something that is not a net benefit.

Guest [00:23:53] Well, you look at who really benefits the most from the Farm Bill as it's currently written. You know, I was really intrigued by Austin for Eric's book. I was published a year or so, oh, not less, eight months, eight, nine months ago titled Barons. And as I don't, I also interviewed Austin on the podcast. I don't fully agree with all of his perspectives, although I think his perspectives are very interesting and worthwhile having a conversation about, but he wrote something in the, he wrote a sentence. So there was a concept in the book that really caught my attention. And that is that the farm bill is not written for the benefit of farmers. It is written for the benefit of Cargill. And you stop to think about that and dig deeply into it. And the answer is yes, that's absolutely right. Farmers appear to be the beneficiaries, but they are being farmed by Cargill. And I'm using Cargill as an example here. They're not the only, they're not the only culprit by any means.

Vance Crowe [00:24:48] Yeah, I mean, well as long as we're gonna go long and we're gonna talk about farming farmers, what about the current crop insurance situation? You often help people transition away from typical row crops going into a, a variety of crops. One of the reasons people don't wanna leave the row crop situation is because to go to another crop means they might not have insurance, particularly insurance that's subsidized by the government. Do you foresee change coming to the insurance situation?

Guest [00:25:18] I think the insurance situation needs to change. It's my personal opinion, I think it needs to evolve and it needs to evolve to facilitate the adoption of what are generally called region regenerative agriculture practices. I don't particularly care for that term, but they need to evolve to facilitate the adoption of cover crops and water conserv. There's, there's a number of ways in which they need to evolve. Should it go away entirely? Not again, there has to be a transition period that doesn't crucify farmers or cause them economic duress to the point of losing their farms. There needs to be a wise and careful transition. Now, within that, whenever there is a transition, there are always people who lean into change and progress quickly and move quickly, that emerge as winners. And there are other people who are resistant to change, who emerge as losers. That happens all the time that that's a, that's a result of of change. So I fully expect that with the this, this coming administration there, I expect there will be change in the USDA. There will be change in many federal agencies and who emerges as winners and losers is all a personal choice that we are responsible for. We can't delegate that responsibility to other people. That's something that we have to choose.

Vance Crowe [00:26:49] Well John, thank you so much for going through the news. We are gonna continue onward with, even though we're a little behind time, I think this was well worth it. Now we're gonna turn to the Bitcoin land price report. So John, what county do you live in and how much does an acre of high quality land go for there?

Guest [00:27:09] I think some farmers would debate about the quality of the land in the county, although there is some in the area, but highest quality land in Juga County, Ohio runs about 13 to five 15,000 an acre.

Vance Crowe [00:27:20] Alright, so we'll call that about 14,000 an acre this week upon the election of Donald Trump, Bitcoin soared to $76,015. So at 14,000 per acre, it seems like right now 0.018 Bitcoin will buy you one acre of high quality farm ground in your area, or in other words, one Bitcoin would buy 5.4 acres of farmland in what was the county you said

Guest [00:27:48] Jaga County.

Vance Crowe [00:27:50] Jaga County. How does that sit with you?

Guest [00:27:54] Oh, vans, I'm gonna come after you for some of these questions. You know, sometime when I have the chance, how does it sit with me? Well, you know, when I look at the, the country of El Salvador, they went from supposedly being insolvent to being, having a very high credit rating and very high credit worthiness because of their investment in Bitcoin. And it seems to me that's something that a lot of farmers would benefit from.

Vance Crowe [00:28:17] I agree wholeheartedly. And I think that at some point people will be able to use Bitcoin as collateral for new purchases that they wanna make when they're doing with the bank and not have to risk their own farm property for it. So, alright, moving on. Now I've gotten even tougher question for you, John. One of my favorite questions to ask somebody like you, a real thinker, somebody that's willing to push the envelope a little bit, which is the Peter Thiel paradox. What is one thing that you believe that almost nobody in your tribe agrees with you on?

Guest [00:28:50] Oh, well it depends on how you define my tribe because I'm surrounded by many people that I think are generally aligned by this in my day-to-day work. But you, you and I had a quick discussion about this in advance, I'll go with this answer. I believe that genetically modified organisms are an excellent solution to the wrong problem or saying it differently. They are the wrong solution for the problem they're pointed at. And I'm referring specifically to plant production, crop production agriculture. When I look at what happens within crops or what is needed, I have a a ton of experience. Obviously part of our claim to fame in our work at advancing equal agriculture is producing crops that are resistant to diseases and resistant to insects and all kinds of challenges. And when I look at the requirements that, or, or the requirements is not the right word, the conditions that facilitate the disease and insect susceptibility plants have an immune system much in the same way that we do. That immune system needs to be supported with a proper microbiome and pop proper nutrition. And when it is, those plants become completely resistant to diseases and insects. So producing GMOs such as BT corn for example, or BT cotton for an insect problem is we, it was one of my mentors used to say, we've become incredibly accurate at hitting the bullseye of the wrong target.

Guest [00:30:22] This is, these disease and insect problems are not a genetic problem. They're not even an epigenetic problem. They are a problem of imbalance nutrition and an imbalance microbiome. And if we fixed those problems, then there would be no need for the GMOs. There is no need for the GMOs as we've demonstrated on millions of acres. And so, and by the way, fixing those problems at their cause at the root source is a whole lot less expensive than paying technology fees every year.

Vance Crowe [00:30:53] Well, as somebody that has represented big ag, particularly around GMOs, I can tell you that that is a very, very sophisticated and I would say beautiful argument. My my one concern when people start talking in the way of like, we could move on from things like GMO or glyphosate, and I just wanna check with you, is that it is very important to build the parallel system. The the other way if you decide, hey, we don't want to use these chemical options or these genetically engineered options, but it's very important that we build another system and, and climb over to it as opposed to rip out the system we have and just hope that we're a new system will emerge from it. Would you agree with that?

Guest [00:31:34] I completely agree with you. We have to earn the right to discontinue the use of pesticides and herbicides and all these bandaids because we, we now have soil and cropping ecosystems that are simply put drug addicts, they are addicted to these drugs. And just as with any drug addict, if we just stopped cold Turkey, what do you have? You have major drug withdrawal symptoms, you have breakdowns, the system dysfunctions. And so you're absolutely right. There is a need to, you have to earn the right, you have to build the transition.

Vance Crowe [00:32:09] Well the final section is the worthy adversary section. And this time, instead of me asking for your worthy adversary, I think I wanted to ask you, you know, Joel Saladin, he is a guy that actually he was one of the first people that introduced me to agriculture. I remember reading about the lunatic farmer salad bar beef, but I think a lot of farmers see that he might be appointed to a small committee and say, oh my gosh, this guy even is a self-proclaimed lunatic farmer. If people are worried about somebody with what they would see as as extreme views compared to their maybe more mainstream agricultural views, how do you think they should approach it to make sure that their voices are heard in this time of change?

Guest [00:32:55] I'll go back to a comment that I made a bit ago. I think this is true. I, I, as I've interviewed a lot of people on the podcast and I just engage with people in conversations. I've come to the conclusion that practically everyone, I believe everyone, every single person knows something that I would benefit from knowing. And I enjoy trying to figure out what that is and draw that out of people. And if we sat down to have a conversation with people who you, you use the term a worthy adversary. If we sit down with people who appear to have views that are very contrary to our own then, and we really discuss what is important to us, what we value, what we really care about, we will find that the, the number, the proportion of the things that we agree on are likely to be far greater than the things that we disagree on. And in order to have stable governance and good governance, you cannot have stable governance and simultaneously tick off the majority of your constituents. So I think, and this goes back to my previous comments on Kennedy, I think he is very empathetic to the fact that many farmers feel stuck and trapped in a system and uncertain of exactly how to move forward. And so there needs to be a balanced approach to governance and will Saladon have a role in that?

Guest [00:34:29] That remains to be determined. This is, you know, to to his blog post and, and the how viral that went on Twitter, it was quite remarkable. Was looking at this afternoon, had like 140,000 posts or in about a 24 hour period or something like that. So definitely has gotten a lot of eyeballs. But the, it's, it's premature. Massey even responded to it on Twitter and said, no, I, I have not been, I would, I would be open and willing to serve, but I have not been asked to serve by the Trump administration. And it is, it's to anyone who's paying attention, who looks and is familiar with the political process saying no, there cannot be cost, possibly have been a confirmation because this is two days after the election, you don't get a confirmation until there's a presidential appointment and senate hearings and, and all of that stuff. So there's, there's still quite a process. Will Massey be Secretary of Ag? We don't know that at this point will s be involved. We don't know that at this point either. It's too premature.

Vance Crowe [00:35:30] Yeah. Well one thing we do know for sure, because I saw Alex Jones post-it that he is going to be the press secretary for the, for the White House serious. Actually, I don't know if that's true at all, but he did post a, a photo of it in my book. Did you? Sure

Guest [00:35:43] It's not satire. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:35:45] I think it might be, I think in my book it should be Julie Kelly as the press secretary. But whoever it is, it is interesting to see a shakeup and John on my vote would be, even though you and I have some differences on the way we think about things, I would definitely like to see you having a hand in shaping policy. I think you're very balanced and I'm for 1:00 AM so grateful that you were willing to come on. If people wanted to learn more about your style of agriculture, some of the thinking that you do, where would you send them to?

Guest [00:36:18] Check out our website@advancingecoag.com. I have a personal website, john kemp.com and I also host a podcast where I have a ton of fun regenerative agriculture podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:36:27] Your podcast is excellent. I found myself needing to go to the pharmacy today and listening to you describe about the value of eating healthy so that you know the plants having a healthy immune system so they don't need medicine. That was not lost on me as I stood behind in line with people that look like their health was off on several different levels. So I think that you have really, really great content and it's fun to listen to. Alright, that is going to do it for the Ag Tribes report this week I want to thank our sponsor farm test.ag, where they allow you to test different products on your farm to see if they really do live up to the marketing that you're being sold and Legacy Interviews where we record your loved ones telling their life stories so that future generations can see them as they were. Then go to Legacy Interviews dot com, schedule a call with me, we'll figure out what exactly it is that you wanna capture, and then we'll find the right time for you and your loved one to do it. So go to Legacy Interviews dot com. All right there. That's it for this week. As always, feel free to disagree.