ATR: Will Farm Bill Squeak By? Bird Flu in CA Dairies & Saving the Monarchs with @StandardGrain

Guest [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. Listen now to a sneak peek of the short film, A family's legacy interview experience and watch the full story at Legacy Interviews dot com slash experience. Listening to my dad talk about working too much or missing out on certain things, you know, like it means a lot to me. Hearing that he like regretted not being around when we were younger is not something I've ever heard. I was watching it. I was like, whoa, okay, this is like a new side of Jay that's coming out. I can see like how much excitement it brought him to share the things that he has a hard time talking about to be in that room with him as that's happening. Kinda like heartwarming that he does have that emotional side when you're growing up. You know, you hear little snippets here and there like how they met, but you don't have like the whole story. It was honestly a lot more meaningful than I guess I had originally anticipated. I think in a day-to-day conversation, you won't be provoked to answer questions like that. I do think that's very important to be clear and honest and say whatever needs to be said. Welcome to the Ag Tribes report, a breakdown of the top stories affecting the culture of agriculture with your host, Vance Crowe.

Guest [00:01:47] The report begins in 3, 2, 1. Let's begin.

Vance Crowe [00:01:53] Welcome to the Ag Tribes report. I'm your host, Vance Crowe. Each week I come to you with a new representative from a different tribe of one of the many groups that make up agriculture so we can talk about the news that is impacting the culture of agriculture. This week, I am joined by the one and only Joe Valla. Joe is the founder, president. Oh, close you were close. I every time. Joe is the founder and president of Standard Grain in Nashville, Tennessee. He started his career at the Chicago Board of Trade before relocating to Nashville, establishing himself as a key player in dealing directly with large scale agricultural entities across the us. His expertise lies in providing market commentary and analysis, which has made him a familiar place on places like CNBC, Fox Business, the Wall Street Journal, and many others. Joe is recognized for his deep market insights, particularly in grain markets, whether impacts and economic trends affecting agriculture. He hosts the podcast, grain markets and other stuff discussing market dynamics and agricultural news. Joe, yes, welcome to the Ag tribes report.

Guest [00:03:00] Some of what you said is, is slightly outdated, so I don't do, I almost, I basically do no TV at all anymore or radio. I'm like all in on independent media for the most part. So my own podcast, my own YouTube channel is what I do exclusively for the most part. Now, I had done a lot of, of what we'd call legacy media type stuff, and I still do a very tiny amount, but yeah, not, not for a long time, man.

Vance Crowe [00:03:25] Well, you know where I got all that is grock, everybody's bios comes from grok when I do this, the, the X ai and that's what it thinks that you, Brock

Guest [00:03:34] Might be a little out. You know what? My own website's probably a little bit outta date too, so that might be part of the problem.

Vance Crowe [00:03:39] Well, this week on the show, Joe and I are gonna talk about the spending bill, which has gone through some wild revisions. We're gonna talk about grain markets from the macro perspective. We're also gonna cover the bird flu, which California has now declared a state of emergency on behalf of dairy farms. And we will talk about the little monarch butterfly, which has, is just about to receive federal protections as a threatened species. We're gonna do all that. We're gonna do the Bitcoin land price report, talk about the Peter Thiel paradox, and find out who is Joe's worthy adversary. We're gonna do all that while live streaming in just 30 minutes. So let's get started. The spending bill has been cut way down, but farmer payments look like they are going to remain the same after huge pushback on people like A FBF President, Zippy Duval, Elon Musk is getting that spending bill cut and it appears that farmer payments didn't get cut. It's looking like direct payments and disaster relief includes 10 billion in direct payments for farmers alongside the 20.8 billion designated for disaster relief covering the 23 and 24 crop years. Joe, what do you think? Is this bill gonna pass and are farmers gonna be driving new trucks and boats this, this winter, or is it gonna be the thing that keeps them afloat from losing their farms

Guest [00:05:01] In some way, shape, or form? The direct payments are going to happen the way that it appears. They didn't really change the language. I guess the question now that this appears inevitable and whether they vote this through this week or it happens in January, I don't know. The question now that it appears inevitable is this, is, is this actually a good thing for farmers? I mean, you step back and, and Joe Public would tell you, yeah, 10 billion in direct payments, that's a good thing. But the farmers that I talk to, the majority of them tell me that this is not a good thing for a number of reasons. We've already got inflated cash, rents, inflated input costs, inflated land values, and we've got commodities that are below production cost. So what the, what the direct payments are gonna do essentially is continue to encourage large production, which is not necessarily what we need in, in this sort of marketplace. I mean, I guess it's better than nothing. I mean, if it was up to me, I had $10 billion to help us farmers, I would probably do something to help the demand base help improve our demand base for things like corn and soybeans and wheat that are oversupplied commodities where, you know, south America is, is outdoing us for a number of reasons. Soybeans in particular, you know, maybe we focus on things like more domestic usage, more domestic soybean processing, sustainable aviation, fuel government's given us nothing on that stuff and, and we really need it.

Guest [00:06:31] And we're seeing some, some investments come outta those spaces. That's my personal opinion. There are farmers who absolutely have told me the, the, the flip side, Joe, we need this money. It's been a rough couple of years, we're losing money. But that's not, that's not the, the opinion of, of everybody. And then when you get into the entire spending bill, I mean, I think the majority of people, especially on the conservative side, and a lot of farmers are conservative, I would consider myself to be conservative, but just a 1500 page bill with a lot of pork in it, as they said. I mean, people aren't for that. And that's, I mean, that's why, that's why the, the country as a whole collected Trump. They want, they, there's a mandate. We want less government spending, we want more efficiency. So I don't know, it's a mixed bag. It's a mixed bag, but it's definitely something to talk about. I mean, it's a big issue. Is it, is the direct payment a a great thing? I don't know.

Vance Crowe [00:07:19] Oh man. I mean I, I personally feel like, no, it's not a great thing. I, for all the same reasons that you've said that, it's just gonna go straight from that farmer right into the input cost. And there are, you know, if you're looking at selling a tractor and you think, hey, these farmers are gonna get a payment, you're not willing to bring that price down now until you find out, hey, is that bill gonna pass? I have heard to your point, that this is actually way more regional. Like the farmers that are really hurting aren't necessarily Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, corn, soybean farmers. These are really like cotton farmers down south have really been hit. But this is broad based, I would say even more than that. You know, people like Zippy Duval that came out and said, Hey, we're doing this for small farmers. They're the ones that are really hurting. But the truth of the matter is, the way farmers get into the market, the way a new person enters is because other people have to sell their land and they have to sell it in a, in an inopportune time. So that way they may be willing to take a lower price. This is the exact thing that keeps land prices high. Not just because there's more money going around, but it's because it makes it so people don't have to sell.

Guest [00:08:20] My honest opinion is that this is how we may already have the beginnings of some sort of farm crisis. I think this is how you accelerate your way into some sort of farm crisis. You've already got a potential, I'm not gonna say it's the 1980s, but I think there's, there's potential for a reinflation event, which could impact a lot of inputs, but doesn't have to affect the prices of corn, soybeans, wheat, you, you pair that with $10 billion going to the farmer. Just, it's, it's, I mean it's a, it's a check. They can do whatever they want with it. It doesn't have to go into any certain aspect of the business. It just, it feels, it doesn't feel right to me. Put it that way.

Vance Crowe [00:08:58] Yeah, I

Guest [00:08:59] Think, and there are farmers that, I'm not trying to speak for farmers, I'm just speaking for what I see.

Vance Crowe [00:09:04] Yeah. I have to say Jared McDaniel, who's always a great commenter on X, he was saying, look, if you're only getting $52 per acre for corn and 33 for soybeans, 31 for wheat, you're not actually buying a new boat with that. What you're doing is that's covering just some small amount of input costs and ultimately that's keeping those input prices up and high.

Guest [00:09:25] That's not the only problem. Another problem is, is the, and this is the, this is something that I hear from operators who granted are probably a little bit, should I say well off, or maybe I should say more responsible. They'll tell me, Joe, my neighbor's a bad operator. He goes around town, he bids up cash rents, he has new equipment every year that he probably shouldn't have. Maybe he can't afford it. This is a bailout for him. You know, the natural course of the business cycle is that for people like that to fail and they're not gonna fail because of, of things like that. So, I don't know. I mean, I, I see the, I see the good side and, and the bad side. I've, I've heard more about the bad side to be honest, from, from my crowd, which is substantial. But you know, it's, it's have your own opinion.

Vance Crowe [00:10:07] Alright, let's move on to secondary. I wanted to make sure that if we have the Standard Grain podcast host on that, we should get a little bit of time for the macro view of what's going on with grain markets. Yeah.

Guest [00:10:20] You

Vance Crowe [00:10:20] Know, if there's all these needs for payments, is the sky falling is what's going on with grain markets from a, you know, 50,000 foot view?

Guest [00:10:28] It's pretty bad. I think the US farm economy is in the midst of a recession. There's no, there's no economist that's gonna officially say, Hey, now we're in a re a farm recession. That's not how farm recessions work. Farm recessions happen in a lot of times opposite of like what's happening in the Joe public economy. The farm economy's in a recession, Joe Public might be doing really good, whereas when the farmer's doing really good, Joe public might not be doing so good. They, they tend to work kind of counter cyclical like that. So, I don't know.

Vance Crowe [00:11:00] Yeah, it seems like the, that right now, livestock producers, particularly cow calf operations, they're doing really well. You know, if you have lower grain prices, they're finally able to feed their cattle at a lower price. Same thing with poultry. So, you know, it, it's hard to say that there need to be payments to farmers because if you try and bolster one, the other one gets messed up too.

Guest [00:11:23] A lot of this just goes back, I, I think what you just mentioned kind of rang a bell for me, it just goes back to the government, like easy money policies and creation of currency in general. It's, it's, it turns into this like domino effect spiral of inflation and things getting more expensive. Not just at a farm level, like farm inputs land, I'm talking everything. I'm talking everything in your refrigerator, everything in your house, everything you buy. It's just, it's, it's gotten out of hand. I think that's a topic for a different discussion probably, but government spending and, and especially the, the creation of currency and, and low interest rates over the years, they've become a problem.

Vance Crowe [00:11:59] You know, one of the things that I've heard on your podcast, and the first time I heard it, it shocks me and now I hear you saying it quite often, is that Brazil has radically out competed the US and soybean production and you don't think that's coming back.

Guest [00:12:12] No, it's not. Brazil has currency advantage. The dollar's been strong, their currency's been very weak. That's an advantage for them. They're, they're able to sell their beans in US dollars, which is what they do. Beans on the global market are traded in dollars and they can reduce the price and go back and then convert it to their local currency and maintain the same buying power basically. So it's been to their advantage. But that's, that's not the big thing. The the big thing is just generally speaking, they're expanding production every single year and they're rendering us non-competitive on the export market. Now, make no mistake, we've still got a big chunk of our soybean crop that we export, but the percentage that we export is becoming less and less and less every year. If you run into a Brazil crop problem, at some point you'll, you'll see a spike in US exports, but that speaks to the need of more biofuels in the United States. We need to be crushing more soybeans for bean oil, for biofuels, that sort of thing. That's, that's probably how you fix our soybean problems. I think the soybean market, the supply and demand situation in soybeans, that's the biggest drag that there is on the global grain complex right now. When you're talking corn, soybeans and wheat soybeans are the glaring problem.

Vance Crowe [00:13:20] If there's no government subsidies, do you see soybeans being able to be a biodiesel? Are they able to contribute into that world?

Guest [00:13:28] I think that you need to see some without getting into a full like 45 z discussion. You need some government guidance on this and it's long overdue. I think it's gonna come eventually, probably after the inauguration, but we should have seen it a year ago.

Vance Crowe [00:13:41] Alright, moving on to headline three, bird flu. The CDC confirms the first human case of H five N one resulting in a fatality and California declares a state of emergency for the dairy industry on Wednesday, the CDC reported the first severe case, actually, I don't know that it was a fatality, but it was with a man that already he's over 65, had health issues. He was hospitalized and now they're saying, hey, this is somebody that's gone from the mild cases, which we've had before. At the exact same time, the California governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency because bird flu is now in the dairy industry. They were reporting many dairies having this. Now this this story's been going on for a long time. Oh yeah, it's been kind of in slow motion. Back in September, egg and poultry producers were asking for a vaccine, but Vilsack said, no, no, we're not gonna do a vaccine because that's gonna impact our export market. And that's so important to, to the poultry industry. We can't do this. So no vaccine, it's gotten into the wild bird populations and now it's spread into the dairies. What do you think, Joe, is California calling for a state of emergency? Is this a good thing or is it a power move by the government to control dairies?

Guest [00:14:56] You've gotta be suspect of anything coming outta the California state government. That being said, California is a big deal when it comes to dairy. 18% of the total US milk supply comes from California. That's the number one producing state. They've got 1.7 million dairy cows, they've got 1100 dairy farms. So yeah, I don't, I don't necessarily mind some intervention, but you know that there's gonna be some, some prob some excessive funds that'll be doled out at some point in time, would be my guess.

Vance Crowe [00:15:27] Yeah. This morning when I first started talking about this story, you're asking people, well what are they worried about? Are they worried about that this is gonna hurt the economics of the dairy cattle? Are they gonna worried about that in it's gonna get into the milk and somehow that spreads to humans. A lot of the dairy farmers I'm talking to, and there's a selection pressure on X for the dairy farmers that wanna stir things up and poke, they think this is big time overreach. It does hurt cattle in the fact that they produce less milk, they can get sick, they can have problems, but they do not think that that's how it jumps into the human population.

Guest [00:16:00] No, you're not gonna get bird flu by eating eggs or poultry or beef that was infected with the bird. As long as you follow, you know, your standard cooking practices, that's not gonna be a problem. Even the human to human stuff. I, I think there's, there's a lot of question marks about that. So I think for, for the general US population, it's a non-issue for the, maybe, maybe it some point it could result in more expensive prices, but what's not more expensive anyways, you know, for the dairy, I don't, I don't do dairy, not a dairy expert. But if, if I was a dairy person in California, this was affecting me, would I want the government to step in and help? Yeah, probably.

Vance Crowe [00:16:36] Well, we're now in the hundreds of millions of egg laying hens getting knocked out of the system and I know that that has to be a contributor to our high prices. Alright. Oh yeah. We're gonna move on to the final headline of the night. And this is Monarch Butterflies may get Federal protections as a threatened species. On December 10th, the US Fish and Wildlife Services quietly announced plans to add the butterfly to the threatened species list by the end of next year following a public comment period, the agency suggests that populations are shrinking for this beloved pollinator saying they may not survive climate change. Now, according to the Associated Press, the proposed listing would generally prohibit anyone from killing or transporting the butterfly people and farmers could continue to remove milkweed, which of course this is a key food source for monarchs from their gardens, their backyards and their fields. But they'd be prohibited from making changes to the land that would permanently make it unusable for the species. So there is some debate as to whether or not monarch butterflies really are experiencing a decline. Some people say as much as 80 to 95% of populations have dropped in their Mexican overwintering area, but that research is somewhat suspect and in other areas they've not only not seen a decline, but it's actually incline. Joe, what do you think? Should we be protecting this beautiful butterfly from, from the things that would harm it

Guest [00:18:02] As far as ag goes, I mean they're pollinators, but if 90% of 'em are already gone, what do we have left to lose at this point? I don't know. I feel like I used to see 'em when I was a kid and I feel like I don't see 'em anymore. Is that your experience also?

Vance Crowe [00:18:14] Well, we used to have a monarch butterfly parade when I was a kid. Yeah. So everybody went out and collected them. I can still find cocoons for 'em now that I know what I'm looking for. So where I'm at, I have not seen it. I think there's like a weird paradox here, right? They, they made roundup to get rid of milkweed, which was a, a genuine actual problem for a long time. And then when I was working at Monsanto, they used to go out and, and hand out seeds of pollinator habitat, which they called it, which was really just weeds that you're spreading around to another place. Seems like this is a hard one. It seems like the fact that they're trying to rush it under, they, they announced it quietly. It seems like this is a government move. It's gonna give 'em a lot of control over agriculture. I think if it gets through.

Guest [00:18:56] They've had some luck in the past with bringing back some of these endangered species. I think so. I mean, I'm not gonna say that that's impossible, but could there be some government ugliness under the, the surface? Yeah, very possible.

Vance Crowe [00:19:10] Yeah, I was talking, I

Guest [00:19:11] Sound like a conspiracy theorist today, and I'm not at all, but it just, we happen to be hitting on some of these topics.

Vance Crowe [00:19:16] Well, this is the big thing that it did seem to me like they put this in at the same time UFOs are going on and the farm act is going on. There's a lot in the world and they maybe just waited till the right time.

Guest [00:19:26] The aliens are here, man, there's no, there's no question about it.

Vance Crowe [00:19:29] Who knows what's going on with that

Guest [00:19:30] Story.

Vance Crowe [00:19:31] They're,

Guest [00:19:31] They're aliens, but whatever.

Vance Crowe [00:19:32] Is that what you, is that what you think?

Guest [00:19:34] I don't know, man. Drones with no heat signature, they just appear outta the ocean from nowhere. Government won't say a word about it. I, you tell me.

Vance Crowe [00:19:41] I mean, it is weird that the government won't talk about it. That's the thing that says like something, they're not

Guest [00:19:46] Even making up a lie. They're just not saying anything. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:19:48] That's, that's the craziest thing, right? Yeah. And if you wanna drive people crazy, I used to have the communications professor that said, if you wanna drive somebody crazy, don't tell them no, just don't say anything at all. Because people can't handle not having something to respond to.

Guest [00:20:00] I'll tell you what though, people don't care. Like people care a lot more about like Trump's new hairdo than they do about the aliens. You ask people about the aliens, they're like, yeah man, I heard about that, but I got a lot going on. You know, like, no, nobody really cares.

Vance Crowe [00:20:12] It's hard to believe that it's aliens. What I care about is the amount of drones that are around in the US already. Yeah. If this is just a, a way for the government to say we're gonna take away the drone ability of regular amateurs, but we're gonna hang onto this ability, I don't know, for me, I probably am getting pretty conspiratorial.

Guest [00:20:29] If they show up where I live, they shoot 'em down. I mean, people just in their backyards would shoot 'em down. But, you know, new Jersey's a different place I guess.

Vance Crowe [00:20:35] That's right. So if you have news you think we should cover on the Ag tribes report, send it to me on X at Vance Crowe. Moving on to the Bitcoin land price report. Joe is a pain in the ass because he lives in a place where there is no ag land. So we were trying to figure out how to do this, but Joe, what is a good acre of, I don't even, how do you wanna do this?

Guest [00:21:00] Okay, so I live in, I live in Sumner County, Tennessee, which is a county adjacent to Davidson County, which is Nashville. So we've seen an explosion in development over the last, call it five years post COVID. Especially before that you probably could have bought tillable farmland in this area at somewhat reasonable ish prices. But it's something that people aren't buying. If they're buying farmland, they're not buying it to farm. They're buying it to build subdivisions and strip malls and you know, there's a new target going in a couple miles down from us. I mean, stuff along those lines. Before that, was it five to $6,000 an acre? Maybe somewhere in that neighborhood. It's variable because you've got, you've got a lot of hilly stuff, but then you've got stuff that's good. It's, it's not like, it's not as commoditized, I guess the word is. Maybe land would be in some areas.

Vance Crowe [00:21:53] And now if you were gonna buy a house in this area, what would a house run

Guest [00:21:58] Standard call it, four bedroom, three bath, new construction, maybe 2,600 square feet. Every bit of 700,000. And they were less than half that pre COVID. So we've seen an explosion of people from outta state. And I'm not from here, I moved here from Chicago in 2018, but I moved here at the right time, like before the whole mess happened, you know, but there's a, a lot of, a lot of transplants, a lot of people from California, a lot of people from Illinois, a lot of people from New Jersey, New York, a lot of, a lot of blue state transplants.

Vance Crowe [00:22:28] Well, last week Bitcoin's price was $101,500. And today it is $97,900 as of press time, which is about a 3.5% drop. So with your numbers of it being about 700,000, it's looking like it's about seven Bitcoin to buy a good quality house in, in, in the area of Sumner County near

Guest [00:22:51] You could definitely get something cheaper. Like there's stuff that's cheaper. I'm talking if you want, if you want new construction, you want something, you know, that's in, that's more like, that's probably more middle of the road now, I'd say starter, starter house, you can go cheaper certainly, but it's, it's expensive. It's shockingly

Vance Crowe [00:23:04] Expensive. So now where are you at on Bitcoin, Joe?

Guest [00:23:08] Where am I at? So I've, I actually sold Bitcoin for the first time ever, just last week. Not because I think it's not because I'm bearish or because I have any opinion on the price. I got scared of how big of a percentage of my investment portfolio it had become. And I just rebalanced like slightly, I told you this before we started Bitcoin for me has been I think the trade of a lifetime. You only get one trade in your lifetime. That's, you can call it the trade of a lifetime and you shouldn't mess with it. So like I kind of broke my own rule and then I messed with it just slightly. And it's probably gonna be the last time I do it because I, I, after I did it, I reminded myself, I was like, why did I do that? This is probably the trade of the lifetime. Like, am I gonna be the guy who sold his, his stake in Apple in the eighties? You know, I I think that's, it could be that I'm not, I'm not like, I don't have crazy price projections or anything, but I just think that it's something that you may wanna own for the long haul. And I think that it's in its infancy and I don't know, I just, I'm, I'm an advocate.

Vance Crowe [00:24:08] Yeah. And when did you become an advocate?

Guest [00:24:10] 2018. And the story as it goes is like this. So when, when Bitcoin first was became known was after we bailed out the banks. And I think that it was largely a response to the banks being bailed out. Like, wait a minute, these guys can just print money. That's, that's how this is gonna work now. And that is how it, it's worked now. They did it again, you know, 12 years later. So anyways, I was working in Chicago at the time and I was at or around the Chicago Board of Trade for a long time. And I worked, you know, adjacent to and into offices with people who were really smart when it came to, to financial matters, much smarter than me. 'cause I was pretty young at the time and at the time, everybody, everybody, that's a scam. That's, that's you, you're buying a piece of air. I mean it's a Ponzi scheme, whatever, like of all the, all the great financial minds that I had come to know, not a single one bought the, bought the thing. And it took me until 2018 when I moved actually, that I just made a friend in Nashville that like kind of was, was big into it from the beginning and like convinced me just through conversation that like, you need to do it. And the timing was right. It was right after it had come off that like went to 20,000, went back to like three or four. And that's about when I was convinced to do it. And just really good luck on my part, I guess.

Vance Crowe [00:25:31] Well everybody that finally takes a look at it for a little while, they end up coming around to it.

Guest [00:25:37] They say everybody capitulates eventually, and, and you're, you're all gonna, everyone, that's what the Bitcoin people say. That's not what I say. They say everyone is going to capitulate eventually and you'll get Bitcoin at the price that you deserve. So the sooner, the sooner you do your research, the sooner you get to buy it. And that's the price you deserve.

Vance Crowe [00:25:56] Couldn't have said it better myself and you are in the wonderful place where there is Bitcoin park. You're in a community that is really exploding for, for that. All right, well thank you for that. We're gonna keep going. And now onto the Peter Teel paradox. This is where I'm gonna ask Joe, Joe, what is one thing that you believe that almost everybody in your tribe are disagrees with you on?

Guest [00:26:18] Tariffs. Tariffs. So Trump's gonna come in and he wants to do tariffs, right? And we're told, and I we've talked about a lot about this in the podcast. I don't know that I've ever made my opinion necessarily extremely clear. I try to leave that up to the listeners. We try to do a new show. I do some opinion, I add some color, but I think people are overly worried about the tariffs. First of all. They're not a guarantee. They're not a guarantee. Trump may very well use the tariffs as a negotiating tactic, and you could very well reach some sort of deal with China, Mexico, Canada, before any sort of tariff is ever instituted. And if the tariffs do happen, I mean, think to yourself, do do the tariffs really add or subtract bushels from the global balance sheet? Is anybody, do they result in anybody producing more, producing less? Right off the bat? They don't. China reduced their soybean purchases in 2018 when Trump started the trade war. Because they could. And why could they? It's because they had African swine fever. They had a drastically reduced hogger. They didn't have the demand. They didn't have the demand. So it, it, while, while the tariff story was, was part of the story, African swine fever was the bigger deal. And at this point in time, the bigger deal is just the fact, not the fact, but the projection that USDA has out there, global ending stocks of soybeans are gonna be record large. They're gonna be like three, the ending stocks at the end of this year in the world are gonna be like three quarters of one full Brazilian soybean crop, which is staggeringly large.

Guest [00:27:50] So the problem with soybean market is not that we have tariffs coming potentially, it's that the supply and demand situation is just incredibly out of whack. And tariffs are a distant second to that.

Vance Crowe [00:28:03] And so in your, people

Guest [00:28:04] Don't wanna hear that. People wanna, people wanna say, oh my gosh, tariffs, they're gonna kill Mar mark. That's just not my opinion.

Vance Crowe [00:28:11] So your opinion is they're just, they're not that big of an issue. Just there's not even something about,

Guest [00:28:16] I think they're an issue. But when it comes to any, when it comes to any issue, and you're talking about the action of the markets, the question that I always ask myself, is this going to add or subtract bushels from the balance sheet? Does this, does this add supply? Does it add demand? Does it reduce to supply? Does it reduce demand? Does not really, not really. Like it shouldn't, I mean, maybe China's got enough soybean stocks where again, they, they can buy from Brazil, they can avoid the us They could have done that. Anyways,

Vance Crowe [00:28:44] All right, I'm gonna give you a seven two. That was, it's an interesting one, but I think you probably didn't find that many people that would be just, you know, totally taken aback by it.

Guest [00:28:54] Oh no, people don't, they don't like that opinion at all. I know, I get, I get angry emails about it all the time.

Vance Crowe [00:28:59] That's good to know. The, I mean, that, that's in, in your, in your favor there. All right, the final segment, we're the adversaries. This is where we spotlight individuals that help us get out of our individual echo chambers. That can happen particularly on social media. So Joe, who is one person that you respect, but you strongly disagree with?

Guest [00:29:21] The, so I'm a, I'm essentially a professional podcaster slash YouTuber now. And who I picked is also a YouTuber. Peter Zion, the geo, the geopolitical commentator on YouTube. I can't stand the guy. He, his arrogance is very off putting, to me, he's so sure of everything that he says. He had a lot of bad stuff when Russia invaded Ukraine about the grain markets, his famous Bitcoin comments on Joe Rogan. Like, I just, I can't get over, I can't get over how unbelievably arrogant the dude is that you can go on and people are gonna listen to you because you're so 100% damn sure of everything she say. But at the same time, do I gotta respect the guy? Yeah, absolutely. He's got a bigger following than I do. And granted, he talks about geopolitics, I talk about corn prices on a daily basis, you know, like one 10th of 100th of 1% of the population cares what I talk about. He's got a much broader audience. But I, I do think he's smart. I think he's smart, but I think at the same time he's probably, he's figured out that he's gonna get more views by being outlandish. And I think he probably knows that. But I, I do respect what he does. I just don't like him.

Vance Crowe [00:30:30] I'm totally with you on that. I, I think

Guest [00:30:32] That's controversial. 'cause people love the guy people. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:30:34] I, I, I've seen him give speeches. I saw him one time stand up at the Alberta cattle feeders thing and say, I believe, and you know, he gives this whole presentation and he's like, and that's why Alberta should become the 51st state of the United States. And I was like, you're dead man. These people are gonna kill you. And they cheered and clapped and I was like, all right. Oh,

Guest [00:30:53] He's very convinced. He's great speaker. I think he's super sharp. I just think, I think it's a show. I think he knows it's a show, but I'm not, I can't get over the fact that it's a show. I just, just the, the, the arrogance and the the opinion, it's, they're not opinions. There I am a hundred percent right, but he's not, it's, it drives me crazy.

Vance Crowe [00:31:10] Yeah, I heard it once said that he is the inverse Jim Cramer of the geopolitics world. Like if he's betting one way, you should bet the other. But it's fun to watch, watch,

Guest [00:31:18] He's been good. He can write on some stuff. He's been off on other stuff. I think what he says is thought provoking, like absolutely. I think his stuff is thought provoking. I watch it sometimes. People send, people send me his stuff all the time. Joe, is this, is this gonna move the mark today now? Probably not, but it's interesting.

Vance Crowe [00:31:32] All, so that's gonna do it for this week's show. If you have a wanna see the list of where the adversaries, every time a guest gives us one, we add 'em to the list. You can see it. I will have a link to it in the show notes. Joe, I want to thank you so much for coming on. If people wanted to hear you and your show, where would they go?

Guest [00:31:51] Grain Markets and other stuff is the name of my podcast and also the name of the YouTube channel. So if you go to just, if you go to Apple Podcasts, Spotify into the podcast app, just type in grain markets. I'm the first face that pops up. Same thing with YouTube.

Vance Crowe [00:32:04] All right. I want to thank our sponsors farm test.ag, where you can test your own inputs on your fields to see if they are making an appreciable difference. And you don't have to wait around for the marketers to tell you and Legacy Interviews. This is where I sit down to record the life stories of your loved ones so that future generations can know their family history. If you're interested in learning more, go to Legacy Interviews dot com slash experience and you can watch a video of a family seeing their legacy interview for the first time. I think it really hits home what this is all about. Alright, we will be back next week. I'm gonna try and do one on the day after Christmas. We'll see what guest I can get to come on with me. Until then, make sure you feel free to disagree.