Missouri Farmer Destroys Tariff-Funded Farm Aid: 'Most Ridiculous Idea I've Ever Heard'

Guest [00:00:00] The Ag Tribes report is brought to you by Legacy Interviews, a video service that captures people as they really are. So the future knows who they really were. Here's Legacy Interviews guests, Darryl and Jill Stamp on the Joy of filming their legacy interview. What do you think you'll tell your kids about the experience? Oh, I'm gonna thank 'em a lot. I realize this is more for them and their kids and their kids than it is us, the grandkids, right? Don't know these stories. I can't wait to, for us all to get together and see it. This went better than I thought it was gonna, I does go fast. So it's, what time is it? It's almost three o'clock. No way. Yes. God, you talked so much. I know. Welcome to the Ag Tribes report, a breakdown of the top stories affecting the culture of agriculture with your host Vance Crow. The report begins in 3, 2, 1. Let's begin.

Vance Crowe [00:01:04] Welcome to the Ag Tribes report. I'm your host Vance Crow. Each week I bring on a member of one of the many tribes that collectively make up US and Canadian agriculture. Today I have Blake Hurst. Blake is a seasoned Missouri farmer and former 10 year president of the Missouri Farm Bureau. Known for his insightful writings on agricultural policy and rural life. As a third generation farmer growing up in corn, soybean, and greenhouse plants. This week's ag advocate caught my attention when he wrote an article about a Peter Teel paradox that he'd always wanted to be asked about. So Blake, I'm excited that you're here.

Guest [00:01:41] Alright, well it's good to be here. Good to, good to be on the show.

Vance Crowe [00:01:44] So, have you started harvest yet?

Guest [00:01:47] Yeah, we've been in for about three days. Intermittently. We've had a couple of showers and a couple of breakdowns. So it was a pretty slow start.

Vance Crowe [00:01:55] And what prompted you this year? What, what meant go time?

Guest [00:02:00] Just the calendar really we're, our corn is a little bit wetter than we normally, normally would pick, but, but it's time to go and all the, like everybody else, all the neighbors were running and I got nervous.

Vance Crowe [00:02:13] Oh man, that's that. I hear that from everybody. Nobody wants to be the first one, but they certainly, as soon as they see one combine fired up, it's go time.

Guest [00:02:22] Yep.

Vance Crowe [00:02:22] Well, speaking of go time, we should get on with it tonight on the show we're gonna be covering John Deere's latest layoffs due to a sales downturn, a potential Trump administration plan to use tariff revenues to support American farmers. The USDA's effort to boost ethanol exports to the uk. And concerns from a Canadian panel about immigrant wage subsidies impacting local youth employment, particularly in agriculture, will also explore the value of Bitcoin compared to farmland. And we're gonna dive into Blake's perspective on his Peter Thiel paradox and his worthy adversary. And we're gonna try and do that in all just 30 minutes. So let's get started. If you're interested, you can always throw up a comment or retweet it so we can get a large audience and a good conversation going. Headline number one, this comes from Ag Web. Just this morning, John Deere announced further layoffs affecting 141 Iowa employees with 101 at Waterloo operations. And 41 at the Des Moines works, citing fewer machinery orders from farmers due to a tough farm economy, expected to persist well into 2026. This follows recent cuts impacting over 200 workers in the Quad cities region. Despite the downturn Deere plans to proceed with the $20 billion US investment strategy. The company's August earnings call, warned of a $600 million in tariff costs for fiscal year 2025 with net income down 26% and sales down 9% year over year.

Vance Crowe [00:03:55] Layoff benefits include recall rights, supplemental unemployment pay, transitional assistant profit sharing, healthcare coverage. So while it seems like they are taking care of their people, this is another big hit to John Deere. Blake, what do you think is, is this gonna be endemic? Are all the companies gonna do this or is this rare just to John Deere?

Guest [00:04:16] Oh no, I think there are other agriculture companies that are, are making cuts. My, this, this hits me two ways. Obviously I'm a consumer of John Deere products, but my grandson's a senior up at Iowa State in ag engineering. And the company where he had his internship last year, I think laid off 30% of their employees. I called him up and I said, Hey Aaron, you still got a job? And he said, yeah, they were standing by their contracts to interns. And of course he's nervous about getting a job when he graduates in May. This is no surprise, you know, we're in a cyclical business. This is the down cycle. Some of it's caused by huge crop in the field and, and, and some of it's caused by government policy. So there you go. We're going to be living this life for a while.

Vance Crowe [00:05:05] Yeah. One of my buddies that does is in the retail sector, said that when they're, it's easy to sell equipment to grain farmers regularly. 'cause most of the time if they ever make profits, they're trying to get 'em off the tax rolls. And right now it's the cattle guys that have been buying stuff hand over fist. But not these big combines. Not planters, not sprayers. 'cause that's grain. And, and grain. Guys are not spending money.

Guest [00:05:29] Yeah. Good, good for the cattle guys. I'm happy they're getting their, their turn in the sun.

Vance Crowe [00:05:35] Well, story number two, Trump administration explorers tariff funded farm aid. This is from the Financial Times. The Trump administration is considering a plan to use revenue from new tariffs, particularly on Chinese imports, to fund a support program for American farmers facing economic pressure from trade tensions. Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins recently indicated in an interview that the administration is developing this initiative, which could provide aid to offset declining exports and rising input costs. The proposal aims to make the program self-funding through tariff collections, potentially avoiding additional congressional appropriations thca. This echoes past emergency payments during the Trump's first term, but with a focus on using tariff dollars directly. Farm groups are lobbying for relief amid a projected 20% drop in net farm incomes for 2025 on X. This was stirring quite a bit of, of comments from people saying they don't really want payments. What they want are good high prices. Where are you at Blake? Is this a necessary thing or

Guest [00:06:42] What? Well, this is the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard. So we put on terrorists, on Chinese imports, we take the money and then we give it back to the people that are hurt because of the tariffs we put on Chinese imports. I've got a great idea. Let's get rid of the middleman and just sell our soybeans to China and make a living that way.

Vance Crowe [00:07:04] I mean, it does seem like if you're putting on these tariffs and this is what is causing or prompting low prices, I mean, not least of which is China has not bought a single soybean this year and this is not, you know, this is not something that helps out the economy, it seems like, to your point. Totally ridiculous.

Guest [00:07:21] Yeah. We're, we're running the money in a circle and the government's gonna take their cut of course. And it makes no sense at all.

Vance Crowe [00:07:29] Do you feel that the tariffs have done any good for us agriculture?

Guest [00:07:33] Nope. I feel they've been a disaster for agriculture. They have, you know, you start off with a, with a John Deere story, I'm looking at who's gonna pay that center million dollars in tariffs costs. Well, it's gonna be me and my family, but if and when we can afford to buy John Deere equipment, if we win, we can afford to buy a new combine. I'm running a 13-year-old combine. I'm ready for a new one. But 50% tariff on aluminum, almost as much on steel. That's pretty, pretty large hit for a, for a combine. And so, so I'm getting hurt that way. And at the same time, as you mentioned, 2019, we'd sold 10% of our soybean crop by this point to China. That's how much they'd booked outta the new crop. The crop that was in the field this year. Zero. Can you imagine what the markets would do if tomorrow the USDA announced a 10% cut in acreage that they'd made a mistake and there was 10% fewer acre, they'd be limited up for a week. So that's what they've done to us. And the benefit is totally, I can't see the benefit yet. Can't find it. I I, you know, the, the, the, the, the theory is that we're going to out negotiate that everybody, every single person that has negotiated on the behalf of us trade in the past 40 years has been an, an idiot weakling or in the pay of a foreign government has never made a good trade deal. Now we're gonna make great trade deals.

Guest [00:09:05] Where are they? We've had tariffs since 2018. That's seven years. We haven't seen any great trade deals. All we've seen is a huge increase in what the agriculture trade deficit and a huge decrease in particularly our soybean exports.

Vance Crowe [00:09:23] I remember talking to a guy one time about whenever the government is issues these payments back to regular taxpayers and they make this big announcement, Hey, we're gonna send you a check for $200, a thousand dollars. One of the reasons they allow there to be such a lag is because people will spend that two or three times over. And I think that's kind of what we're doing with the tariffs. We keep talking about we're gonna get all this money from the tariffs, we're gonna spend it on this, we can spend it on that. And really it's going to the way out, kick their coverage and not be able to keep up with all the promises they've made on what they're gonna do with tariff payments.

Guest [00:09:57] Yeah. Well, I mean the, the argument, there's two arguments made for tariffs. They're gonna raise revenue, we're gonna get all this government money. That's great. Or they're going to, in incentivize us production, we're gonna bring all these factories home, all these jobs home, all this work home. Well, they can't do both. If we're importing things and buying, paying those tariffs, then we're not buying those things from US producers who don't exist. And if us producers can in some of these instances in Gary's production, then there's no tariff revenue. So either make your argument for terrorists, but use one or the other argument because you can't use 'em both at the same time. And I'm ticked off 'cause my coffee's gone up in price too.

Vance Crowe [00:10:48] That's true. I mean, everything has, well except for eggs, because when those got too high, the US government decided they were going to cut the knees out from the other egg producers and import from Turkey in South Korea. So they'll let the prices of some things go up, but, but not others.

Guest [00:11:01] There you go. There you go.

Vance Crowe [00:11:03] BJ McNeil wanted to point out about the John Deere story. Let's not, let's all remember that John Deere is still gonna make $4 billion this year. Their big moves are because they're not hitting their original target. And that's the crazy thing about forward-looking statements. Alright, on to story number three, the USDA trade mission to UK spotlights ethanol export push in mid-September. I saw it early this week. Secretary Brooke Rollins led a trade delegation to the United Kingdom meeting with top officials, including counterpart Emma Reynolds to promote US agricultural exports with a key focus on ethanol. She was joined by under Secretary Luke Lindbergh and leaders from the Renewable Fuels Association, US Grains and Bioproducts Council and Growth Energy. The group discussed opening UK markets fully to US ethanol, highlighting immediate export opportunities and potential for E 15 blends. Secretary Rollins emphasized putting the US farmer first by expanding market access for American products amid global demand. The industry identified $370 million million gallon opportunity for the UK with Rollins trying to allow advance this collaboration. Blake, what do you think? Should we be exporting the, the, the ethanol all over the world? Should this be the, the great hope that'll buoy demand for I hope

Guest [00:12:25] I, I hope I I wish her well. I hope it goes well. I hope we sell a lot of ethanol. Gosh knows we've got plenty of corn in order to grind ethanol. You know, one of the things that IIII think is interesting, and it might help people when they're thinking about ethanol, 'cause it gets a lot of criticism from outside agriculture. But when you think about it, it's a huge grain reserve in the sense that should we ever decide we were short of food, God forbid we can change, you know, a third of the corn acres can go into producing corn for corn for feed or, or soybeans for feed and, and oil or other goods. It's a huge reserve that we've got out there to protect our domestic food supply. And I, I think it'd help people who are critical of ethanol if they thought of it in that way.

Vance Crowe [00:13:16] Well, I mean, the flip side of that though is that if you look at all the corn production as, as, hey, we're you, we're holding this land for food production if we need it, right? I mean, right now the way that we're holding that is we are paying out for farmers who are not able to make their ends meet because the grain prices are too low and the input prices are too high. So it's a very expensive program if we calculate out all the, you know, quote unquote transfer payments to farmers to keep 'em farming this acreage.

Guest [00:13:45] Yeah, but my my point was if we weren't, if we weren't farming ethanol for ethanol selling ethanol or producing ethanol that then obviously the price of corn go down, there'd be less corn grown. Some of that land would be another thing. So, so I guess that's my, that's my rationale for being happy when we sell ethanol, and I guess I need one,

Vance Crowe [00:14:07] I'm delighted to see that they are trying to export ethanol to somebody else. Far, far better to get the British to say, yeah, we'd love to, you know, power our cars with corn instead of, you know, either coal through electricity or whatever. But you know, the, the challenge has been most of the demand created for ethanol started through legal mandates in the United States. Like people didn't choose to put E 85 in their

Guest [00:14:32] Car. That's, that's true. But we always have to remember that ethanol's cheaper right now than gasoline. So when you're just looking at the rack, when you're looking at a gallon, ethanol, a gallon of gas, obviously, I understand it doesn't have quite as much energy, but it's cheaper too. You take ethanol out of the gasoline surprise supply and you're gonna raise the price of gas at the pump for two reasons. One, because ethanol's cheaper, and two, because there'll be a 10% cut in the supply. We don't have enough refining capacity to supply the gasoline without ethanol. So, so anyway, but, but I, I get the criticism and

Vance Crowe [00:15:05] I've never heard that before. You think that it would, it would make the price kick up considerably. Like we talking

Guest [00:15:12] 20 cents

Vance Crowe [00:15:13] A dollar, how much did, I don't know. I

Guest [00:15:15] Mean, yeah, ethanol's cheaper. I don't know how much cheaper it is, but it's 10 or 20 cents cheaper in gasoline. So, so there's, there's, there is, as you said, a financial mandate or I mean a, a regulatory mandate to, to use ethanol. There's, you know, renewable fuel standard, but there's no subsidies. It's cheaper than gas. Hey, we can make it cheaper than gas with corn prices at this level. Obviously a couple years ago when corn prices were $7, it wasn't quite that way. But, you know, you can get almost three gallons of gasoline outta a bushel of corn. A bushel of corn today is three 90 here, so that's only a dollar 30 for the corn that goes into a gallon of ethanol. And that doesn't even count the dried triage grains that are fed to cattle. So there you go.

Vance Crowe [00:16:02] Hey, it's, there's always multiple sides to any argument and I'm glad to hear somebody sticking up for ethanol. Okay, moving on to our final story. This one comes from the great white North Alberta panel warns immigrant wage subsidies hurt local youth jobs. I was stumbling around on X today and saw this video of a man talking about what's going on in Alberta with their labor. So I'm just gonna go ahead and play this video

Guest [00:16:29] Again. You covered one of my points here, Daniel. Thank you. I had a, I hired a 16-year-old kid just before school started. I just needed help for a few days. I'm self-employed in construction and I asked him, why did you sit at home all summer? Why didn't you go to work? And he said, I applied at 53 places. I didn't get an interview because the government has programs for immigrants where they pay partial wages so they won't hire. He said, none of my friends got friends, have jobs. So if we are doing that and taking the work away from our young kids, we are creating a huge problem for the future. Yeah. I am very in favor of immigration. If we can do it at a sustainable rate where they don't take the housing for, from our seniors and don't take the jobs from our kids and where we do it in a way that they integrate into our society. If we put too many into one place, they will not integrate. Thank you.

Vance Crowe [00:17:20] So I know this is totally different than the United States, but as I was watching that and thinking, I think we've seen a very similar thing in the United States, and this is in large measure, similar to having illegal immigrants. I know where I grew up, for example, I used to de tassel corn. So did everybody I knew that wanted to make as much money as possible. I was home this summer and asked some kids why they don't de tassel. And they said, you can't get those jobs. They're already taken by what the kid said was illegals. I don't know if they are or not, but what do you think, Blake, is the problem that Canada's facing similar to what we're facing with illegal immigrants?

Guest [00:17:56] I I, I think, I think probably the detasseling jobs have been taken by machines rather than, than immigrants. But as you mentioned earlier, we have a greenhouse business. We'll hire eight to 10 people seasonally to work in the greenhouse. Been doing this for almost 40 years. Up until three years ago, everybody we hired was, was local. And one Saturday, if you know anything about the flower business, mother's day's, a very big day. And Saturday for Mother's Day, I looked around and we didn't have a single employee on the farm, not a single one, not a single one had shown up for work that day. And we were waiting on customers loading trucks and trying to keep plants from drying. Since then, we, you know, doing watering. Since then, we've used a couple of H two A employees. We go through the process, we do illegally, which is very expensive, by the way. And they're not subsidized. They're, they're my most expensive employees by far. But it was the only way we could fill our workforce. So I don't think that, I mean, we'll, we're gonna see, we're gonna see whether there's a huge increase in domestic demand for labor because we are, you know, we are cutting down on the number of, in the legal workforce. I can tell you the H two A program we've been doing it for three years, is much, much more paperwork than there was two years ago. Last two year. I think most of that was the last administration made some changes, but, but it's more difficult to get temporary temporary workers than it was.

Guest [00:19:28] So we're gonna find out, but by, but we couldn't hire people. I mean, we can't, we couldn't get enough. The people that we hire good help. We're glad to have 'em. They're good friends. We've got folks that have worked here for 20, 25 years, but we couldn't find enough help. And that's all there is to it.

Vance Crowe [00:19:45] It, I mean, this is, you are saying something, I've heard this over and over and over again from farmers all over the United States from people, whether it's on the Ag tribes report or doing Legacy Interviews and, and you look at it and you say, well, this is insane, right? What, what, what do you mean there aren't, because people are claiming that the unemployment rate, the number of jobs available to people keep going up and up and up. And in fact, this is what is prompting the, the Federal Reserve to say, this is why we need to go start, you know, lowering the interest rate in effect to make it easier to, to print money and, and inflate the economy. And at the same time you're sitting there saying, we can't get anybody to work and these are more expensive workers. So obviously we would pay local workers if we could. Yeah. What's the way outta this?

Guest [00:20:30] Yeah, if we could get I don't, well, I mean, again, this is just totally anecdotal, not, not particularly useful to make large, large generalizations, but, you know, we're a small town and, and you know, I graduated from high school with 65 kids in my class and my kids graduate from high school with, with 25 or 30 kids in their class. And my grandkids are gonna graduate from high school here, here with 18 or 20 in a class. There's just fewer people here to do the job. So, so, you know, and all this, all the reasons, you know, it takes less people to farm. You know, people move away from the small towns 'cause city, city pays better, more exciting life, all those reasons. But we just have a people problem now. That's clearly not what's going on in urban areas, but that's our problem.

Vance Crowe [00:21:19] Well, that sounds fair enough. All right, that's gonna do it for the headlines today. If you have headlines you think we should cover on the Ag tribes report, you can always send them to Vance at Legacy Interviews dot com or hit me up on X at Vance Crowe. Moving on to the Bitcoin land price report. This is where we take a look at how much farmland costs in our in Blake's area, and then we compare it to the price of Bitcoin. So Blake, where do you live and what does bit, what does an acre of good quality farmland cost there?

Guest [00:21:51] I live clear in the northwest corner of Missouri, so we're just south of Iowa and east of Nebraska. And an acre of good ground bring, I've seen it sell as high as 17,000, but if I just a typical sale held tomorrow, my guess would be 10 to $11,000 an acre.

Vance Crowe [00:22:08] Alright, so we'll call that 10,000. And you're in, is it Atchison County? How do you pronounce that?

Guest [00:22:13] Atchison County. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:22:14] Alright. Atchison County. So as of press time, Bitcoin was 11 $117,500. So that means that for 0.085 Bitcoin, you could get one acre of farmland or one Bitcoin would buy you 11.75 acres. How does that strike you, Blake?

Guest [00:22:34] Well, I should have bought Bitcoin, but I didn't.

Vance Crowe [00:22:38] Where you at on Bitcoin? What, what are your thoughts on, on its role in the future?

Guest [00:22:46] So, I don't know. I-I-I-I-I think that it's a huge specialty bubble right now. I don't think there's any doubt about that. If you look at the charts, if you look at the increase in price, I think I would be very nervous about in investing my, my kids' inheritance into, into Bitcoin. But that doesn't mean it, it doesn't have a use and, and, and isn't useful. And we shouldn't be glad we have it. When I read about stable coins, they strike me that the use coins for an actual stable coin you could trust strikes me as really, really good, really important. And if, and if everybody, anybody ever comes up with a stable coin that people can, can trust and ties that to the blockchain, then I'm gonna have to sell my stock in American Express because credit card companies are gonna be in big trouble, in a big hurry.

Vance Crowe [00:23:49] Wow. So tell me, tell me about this. Why do you prefer stable coins over Bitcoin? Well,

Guest [00:23:54] I didn't say I preferred 'em right now. I think,

Vance Crowe [00:23:56] Well, you weren't selling your

Guest [00:23:58] American Express for

Vance Crowe [00:23:59] Bitcoin. No,

Guest [00:24:00] No, I'm not. I'm not. But, but, but the, the thing about stable coins is if I can make an instant, instantaneous transaction across borders in time for nothing, that is a huge deal. You know, I mentioned the H two A workers that we've had the same, same kids for, you know, young men for a couple of three years. They've gotten to be, we, we provide transportation or living quarters here, we build a, build an apartment for 'em. They've gotta be family friends and we, you know, we help 'em when they need. And, and both of them send mother money back to one of them, to their, to their, to their mother and one of 'em to their, their spouse. And it's hugely expensive. I mean, they just go to Walmart, you know, and it's, I don't know, six, eight, 7% and it's bulky or I mean, cumbersome. It's a mess. And, and the same thing happens if I want to buy, I tried to buy a Canadian stock a couple of years ago and it got to be a huge mess. And 'cause it wasn't registered in the US I didn't realize it at the time or I had never done it, but, you know, I had to buy Canadian, you know, loonies make the transfer, Montana, oh, if I got, if I got stable coin, if I got Bitcoin, except that Bitcoin makes me nervous because tomorrow may be worth 10% less than it was today. So how can I do those payments over, you know, if I have a long-term relationship with a Canadian supplier, how can I do those payments with a currency that's, or with an item that's really been used right now as a speculation, as a store of wealth rather than of a means of exchange.

Guest [00:25:42] So that's, that's where stable coins, I think kind of catch my imagination. Because, because they don't, their value doesn't change.

Vance Crowe [00:25:50] Well, I mean it does because you're buying it in US dollars. So the US dollars lost 11% of its value just in this year alone. So if you had purchased Stable Coins and held onto it, it's, it's, the purchasing power has gone down by 11%. But I will say, if you like the idea of doing that cross-border payment, I, I currently was trying to get paid by some people in Canada and we have had to go through so much rigmarole and wire transfers and

Guest [00:26:14] That's terrible and,

Vance Crowe [00:26:15] And somebody's gonna pay for it, right? They're gonna pay for it, I'm gonna pay for it. And it's not an insignificant amount of money. The cool thing about Bitcoin is you can actually have your bank account connected to a, a Bitcoin service. You can buy the Bitcoin and immediately send it if you already have your bank account hooked up. And so you would be able to say, I will give you this at this price, or we'll choose a strike price. And you get all the benefits of being able to send it without an

Guest [00:26:43] Intermediary. Yes. I, I, I guess, I guess I guess my point would be, would be this, I have, if, if I buy the Bitcoin today, make the transaction and amount of the Bitcoin market tomorrow, then no problem, I'm that's great. That'll do it. But you say that US dollars depreciated 11%, well, I mean, official inflation rate's, you know, closer to 3%. But, but whatever, 10, 10%, no doubt it's depreciated. But Bitcoin can move that much in a day. And that's what, as a store of a value, I've got to have an, and and, and if you told me that Bitcoin is gonna be worth more than it is today in 50 years from now because you know, there's a limit. And if they, you know, a limit on how many it could be produced, I would say I absolutely agree with you. You tell me it's gonna be worth what it is today, 10 days from now, six days, six months from now or a year from now. I, who knows, who knows?

Vance Crowe [00:27:40] Fair point. I mean, the only thing I can say is that if you look year on year, you, you can say there's a positive trajectory, but anybody that's trying to get in and get out of the market quickly, it's, it's foolish, I think to try and trade Bitcoin. It's not, it's not a game I could play. Yeah.

Guest [00:27:54] Well,

Vance Crowe [00:27:55] Fair enough. All right, Blake, moving on. Oh, if you are interested in purchasing Bitcoin, there has been a flurry of activity. I will include a link to River who supports the show. Whenever you buy Bitcoin on River, you support the show by them sending us a little bit of Bitcoin and there has been a lot of people buying in the last week or so. Moving on to the Peter Thiel paradox, Blake, what is one thing that you believe that almost nobody in your ag tribe agrees with you on

Guest [00:28:24] That we're, well, I have a whole bunch of things, but I'll start with the one I wrote about a couple of weeks ago that we're in imminent danger of running out of productive farm ground. I don't think we are. And the reason is because the price of corn is $3 and 90 cents a bushel here in Turkey, Missouri today. And that's below, you know, not below my cash cost of production, but certainly below my total cost of production. If we're producing such a huge surplus that we can't do it properly, then we aren't, we don't need as much ground farmed as we have farmed. And there's lots of ways to get ground outta production. We can sweat it out by just grinding, grinding prices ever lower and farmer's margins ever tighter. Or some of it can go into, some of it can go into shopping centers, some of 'em go into subdivision, some of 'em go into solar power. And some of it can go into, heck, I don't care, recreational areas, whatever. But when, when somebody says, oh, we can't let 'em use all of our good farm ground for use X, I think, well it'd be okay if they used just a little bit more of it so my prices would be better.

Vance Crowe [00:29:43] Hot damn Blake, this is one of the best Peter Teal paradoxes I have ever heard. There is minds exploding all over the United States and Canada right now. People like losing their minds. And I gotta say, 'cause your, your paradox is challenging orthodoxy and the orthodoxy is save farmland, do what we have to do. That's why we have to do payments, that's why we have to pattern tile, you know, any swampy area. We gotta clear it and make sure we can get enough more corn on there. And you're saying the opposite, maybe we have too much acreage going towards. So production,

Guest [00:30:17] You know, my favorite AG economist, a guy named John Newton, and he came out with a big report just last week or last month, it's two months ago, whatever recent past. And since we've already reached or very close to reaching peak population, and we're gonna start heading down, I think that demographics are backing up. We may have, we may have g you know, GP one is cutting food consumption, the people that are using it by what, 10, 12, 18%. So people that are taking diet pills just to eat less, which makes sense, I guess, you know, we, we, we may have seen the peak food demand already, and I, I, I don't think so obviously as people get, have more money and move in the middle class and in developing countries, they eat more meat, they upgrade their diets, they consume more food. That's a great good thing. That's a good thing, good thing for us, good thing for them. But, but at some point we're not gonna need to produce, you know, you and I and everybody else in agriculture has grown up saying, well, by the year 2050 we've got a double production. Maybe not.

Vance Crowe [00:31:31] Yeah, I mean I think that I, I've been saying for a while that the, the push for, hey, we've gotta, we've gotta feed the world. This is gone. And I'm very interested to find who's gonna be the first ag company that's gonna come out and say what we need to do is create higher quality crops or we need to create a wider diversity of crops. But none of 'em are saying that right now. Now they're saying, you know, high density get packed in as, as much as you can.

Guest [00:31:56] Oh, I'm, same way. I'm, you know, I took me a, well, it's embarrassing, so I'm not gonna talk about it, but I had some, some combine setting mistakes and as soon as I got my combine tuned in on Monday afternoon, I'm getting some really good yields here, which I know in a lot of the corn belt, there's various problems from disease or, or this dry, dry August that people have seen. But we're getting great yields and I'm like, that makes me happy. And so I'm like everybody else, I'm trying to get that last bushel squeezed out of every acre. But, you know, we've got to think about our markets as well.

Vance Crowe [00:32:35] Well, I am gonna give you a, a cool 9.2. This was a great one. And bravo, I good for you. All right. Moving along to the worthy adversary Blake, who is one person that you respect but you strongly disagree with?

Guest [00:32:52] Well, I, I'm not gonna, I I'm gonna cheat and I'm not gonna say one person Farm Journal did a survey here a couple months ago and found that 70% of my fellow farmers are full agreement that the, our president trade policy will be successful. I think that, and we could come up with obviously spokesman for various groups that are, that are saying the same thing. I think that's, that's wrong. That we're gonna have to learn, learn from history, learn from the history of pastored wars and change course and the sooner the better.

Vance Crowe [00:33:30] So, so who is your worthy adversary here? You named a collection of people?

Guest [00:33:35] Yeah, 70% of my fellow don't, don't blame you gotta put a finger

Vance Crowe [00:33:38] On something.

Guest [00:33:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well my second choice was to say Vance Crowe and then argue with you about Bitcoin. But we already did that, my first choice, so I had to go to my second choice.

Vance Crowe [00:33:51] Yeah. You know, Blake, there are a lot of people out there that when we're doing the podcast they say, you know who my worthy adversary is, it's you. So I'm, I must just have viewers that are sitting there that just hate listening to, to

Guest [00:34:02] Whatever. Yeah. Whatever it takes to get viewers. That's important.

Vance Crowe [00:34:06] All right, well you did great on the Peter Teel paradox, but you failed utterly on the worthy adversary. But I,

Guest [00:34:15] I can think of, I can think of about six guys on X that, that, that are, that are beating the ground. I mean, this idea that we have to make everything here and that we can't trade is, is the denial of every bit of economic progress we've made for thou in a, you know, for, for it since, since since people climbed out of the Primorial Swamp. It's crazy. And there is one country that is totally self-reliant, depends on nobody else for anything, make everything they use at home. And that's North Korea. And people there are hungry enough, they're eating grass. We, we, we succeed by trade. We grow by trade. We benefit from trade. We've known that, used to know that. I mean, you know, we're gonna learn the same lesson about the measles vaccine, but whatever it takes, we're gonna, so, you know, somebody said once that experience is a school of mankind, he will learn from no other, I, I'm convinced that they should have changed that to screwing up is the school of mankind. He'll learn from no other. We're making some big screw ups and we're gonna learn some lessons.

Vance Crowe [00:35:30] Well, I, you know, I'm a firm believer, and I, I know this from interviewing people about their life stories is that the only real wisdom is, is getting yourself back up after you failed. Like, there is no way to get

Guest [00:35:41] Wisdom. Yeah, I'm afraid so. I'm afraid. So we gotta live it. You can't, you can't, you can tell the kid and tell the kid that what's gonna happen if he does a certain thing, but he's just gotta go do it.

Vance Crowe [00:35:52] Yep. That's the dad's job is to keep mom, you know, from, from jumping in there and, and stopping 'em.

Guest [00:35:58] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:35:59] Well, Blake, if people wanted to engage you with you more, where should they go to read things that you publish or interact with you?

Guest [00:36:07] Well, you know, obviously if you're a subscriber to Agri Poste, I write in there. I, I'm, I'm, I'm lucky enough to get maybe two, maybe three op-eds in the Wall Street Journal every year. I have a relationship there. I'm on Twitter at, at Hearst Blake and I have a substack at Blakehurst or at Hearst Blake where I, where I put out more personal stuff about, about the kids in the farm. So, so I, I hope people will go to the Substack. It's not, it's free and nothing is said on there that's very important, but I try to have a little fun with it.

Vance Crowe [00:36:42] Well, I had a lot of fun with you today and if you send me a link I will include it in on the show notes. All right. So thank thanks so much for coming on Blake. Alright, that's gonna do it for this week's Ag Tribes report. This has been a, a, a wild ride with Blake. Next week I will be coming to you live from Manhattan, Kansas. I have been invited to give a keynote speech at the Flinch Bow Forum in Manhattan, Kansas. For anybody that doesn't know, Barry Flinch Bow was a prolific AG economist or ag policy analyst and he invited people in from all over the world and we'd have challenging conversations with them and I'm quite excited to be doing this. So I'm gonna do the ag tribes report on the road with Jake Joad. And yeah, as we head out I wanted to share this little video my team put together on why it is that I can help people solve their conference problem, you know, when the challenges of finding the right speaker for that. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to Blake for coming on and as always, feel free to disagree. So the conference organizer has a terrible challenge. The audience can pull out their phone and pull up anyone talking about anything. How do you find somebody that is both going to reach every single person in that audience and yet still have that spike of energy where people are electrified 'cause they're hearing about things that they aren't used to or that make them think about things in a different way?

Vance Crowe [00:38:13] The most important question that I ask a conference organizer is, what is it that you want people to feel? What emotion do you want them to have When we leave this talk? What's their disposition? How are they gonna interact with one another? What does this prompt in the people that are there? It's not just the information, what you're giving them is energy, a reason to be there in that moment. Now they take that energy and they share it amongst each other. For me, the best speech is when people walk away being like, I now have a tangible skill. But they didn't necessarily readily accept it and they had to grapple with it. They set their phone down, they leaned forward, they said, how do I feel about this? And through that, an energy is created that is not about the speaker, it's about the person listening to the speech. It's far beyond motivation. It's actually giving people skills.