The Farmer's Life | Brian Scott popcorn farmer from Indiana | The Vance Crowe Podcast | Episode 38

The Farmer's Life [00:00:00] It was our first combine we bought that started with a four at the beginning. So in the 400,000. Whoa. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:00:08] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. We're gonna have an interview with Brian Scott of The Farmer's Life. And it is a great interview. It is a totally different pace than the farmer Jason Mal that I interviewed last week, but you'll hear some inner workings about the mind of a person that grew up knowing he was gonna farm and then his life taking a change and what brought him back to the farm. Now, when you hear Brian Scott, you're hearing a guy that is written blog posts and posted videos on Facebook about his farm in Indiana that have been seen by millions and millions of people. Brian's done stuff like read, showing what the contract si says that he signed when he was buying seeds from Monsanto, and he's done drone photography of how big his fields are and kind of how much herbicide goes over top of those crops. The really interesting videos, the interview is great, so if you wanna just skip ahead to that, you, you feel free, you know, that's okay. But for people that are wondering, Hey, what's going on with the podcast? How are you doing Vance with your business and speaking, are there places I can see you at? I wanted to kind of address those. And I also want to talk about the book club because that has been amazing this month and anybody that wants to get in on it, you have a few more days to read our book. So I'm just going to, to jump right into it. The podcast has been going great, but I am finding ways to streamline it as much as possible. I wanna do the interviews.

Vance Crowe [00:01:40] They expose me to incredible people. I hear from you all the time how much you love them. And so I'm gonna keep doing those every single week. I am probably going to cut out some of the introduction stuff I've been doing because to add that in actually adds a lot more time. And I don't know how much you, you enjoy this. I'll pop on here when I can, or, but I won't be doing it as a regular part of the course. What I wanna do is get good at in enough at interviewing that just by starting the conversation, you could pick up wherever we are and you could get to know who this person is and why I think they're interesting. Let me know if, if that's changing your experience of the podcast so dramatically that you want me to go back. But give it a few weeks. Let's just try it, see how it is, and if you like it, it's really good for me because it allows me to work much, much faster. The next thing is that I've been doing these as the Crow Flies episodes on Friday, and I was really excited to, to have accomplished that every single week that I start since I started it. But I've also recognized that that was a good goal for me, but it's not necessarily the right goal for me to have in 2020. Just doing one every single Friday isn't exactly the, the thing that will help me the most. And I also don't think it's probably going to produce the type of content that's the most helpful to you. So what I'm gonna commit to is that I will keep doing them and I'm gonna find ways to integrate them into my travels so that instead of it being a big effort to make it happen, it's a part of what I do and how I travel.

Vance Crowe [00:03:13] And I think that'll make it more enriching for me and it'll also bring you along. This is a quite an adventure and I have been going on it with you guys all along. So I'm, I'm happy to share that. But I did wanna make sure that you guys had the expectation that I'm not gonna be delivering those every single Friday, and that nothing's wrong. It's just not working out time-wise. And this will help me really think about some of the subject matter that I really want to cover, and that it might take a little bit more than just a few days to be able to turn it around that I want to put some more time into it. So I will keep doing that. The business has been absolutely exploding. I just got back from the, probably one of the most cutting edge conferences I've ever been at, at least the one that made me both the most excited and the most uncomfortable. It was called the Land Expo 2020, and it was held in Des Moines, Iowa. And one of the big media sponsors was Successful Farming. They were out there talking and tweeting about it. It was an exceptional group of people every single night, everywhere I turned all at every corner there was somebody that was building something. There was somebody that had experience putting together funds or projects or knew where good deals were or knew how to do the science to discover whether or not a deal was good. So I absolutely loved that conference. I heard things that blew my mind. I heard things that I really disagreed with and everything in between. So it was a, it was a fantastic event and everyone, everyone, everyone could learn from the people that that brought that whole conference together.

Vance Crowe [00:04:49] The The People's Company is their name. So anyway, that was a great experience and I have a few more big talks coming up. I'm gonna be doing a tech tour with Real Agriculture. For any of you Canadian listeners, you of course know Sean Haney and his real agriculture media empire. Well, they are gonna take me on a four city tour across Canada. We're gonna, I'm gonna fly into Winnipeg. They're gonna pick me up and another speaker, and we're gonna travel on a four stop tour across the grain planes of Canada. And so I'm pretty excited about that. We're gonna have a motor coach and go from town to town and talk about issues that are important to Canadian farmers across the Greenlands. So that'll be exciting. I think I'm gonna start posting some of the more public talks on a calendar on the podcast. So be looking for that in the next couple of weeks. I'm gonna put that up there 'cause I'd love it if I was ever in your town that you would come by and let me know. I've been seeing more and more podcaster podcast listeners at every show. I love getting the tweets about it. It's been really exciting. A big part of why I'll be able to record from the road is because of the, the sponsorship from St. Louis Bank. So you guys know that I'm a member of the board of Directors, and actually their president is a very good friend of mine and a mentor of mine. And I've actually had several of their people on the podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:06:20] But they had asked me, what would it take to do more of this? How could, how could we help you see this project through so that, so that it grows and gets people to hear and meet a lot of the great people that are either living here in St. Louis or pass through here? And that was equipment. I needed some equipment and they hooked me up with that. And I am so grateful to them, and I hope you guys are too, because that's what makes doing this podcast possible. So St. Louis Bank is one of the sponsors, but even if they weren't, I would be talking about how amazing they are and how much I've grown to love the people that are there because they, they are really interested in me and what I'm working on and my future and my goals. And I, I think that that's just in their nature. It's the type of people that are there. So thank you so much to their sponsorship for making so much possible here with this podcast. I'm gonna wrap up talking about the most exciting thing that I've done in a while, which is this book club. So for those of you that are new to the podcast, we have an as the Crow Flies book club where each month we try and read a book that has a deep, deep message to send people. And that message is measured by how long the book's been in print. We're trying to read books that we know have been out there for a while. They've taught people lessons that are hard to learn but that are applicable across the ages.

Vance Crowe [00:07:51] And while in December we read Dante's Inferno, we read one that was a a lot easier and a lot more recent. All quiet on the Western front. So we're gonna get together at the end of the month to, to have a conversation. I think what I'm gonna do is hold it on like a Google Hangout, but what I wanna do is put in a little bit more forward notice about when that will be. So on the day of this podcast being released, I'm gonna put out a poll on Twitter. I'm gonna let that, that Twitter poll run for 24 hours. I may run it twice just to make sure people all get a chance to vote, but I wanna find out when it's gonna be good for you this month to sit down and and do a book club discussion. The first time we did it, it worked okay. It had some flaws. If anybody knows how to hold an online book discussion, let me know. But I am really keen to talk about this book. It was recommended by Lyle Benjamin, a grain farmer up in Montana. And we're gonna be looking for February's book here coming right up. So if you're interested in participating in the book club, check out the poll on my Twitter handle, which is just at Vance Crowe. I'll also probably throw up a poll on the Facebook page. So if you wanna check it out there and, and definitely if you have a good book that you think is Lindy enough for us, send it over to me. I'd be interested to hear it. We're considering all kinds of things and we wanna make sure that it'll be a book that gets the most people excited about it.

Vance Crowe [00:09:25] So I'm gonna now turn it over to the Brian Scott interview. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so glad you're here. And yeah, we'll see you next week with an interview with my executive coach from back when I was at Monsanto Bear. Her name is Peggy Guest and we'll be talking with her about Jung and Psychology and Dreams and all kinds of things next week. So have fun and we'll see you on the other side. Brian Scott, the Farmer's Life. Welcome to the podcast. Hi

The Farmer's Life [00:10:04] Vance. I'm

Vance Crowe [00:10:05] Glad you're here, man. You are in town for the no-Till conference. That's

The Farmer's Life [00:10:09] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:10:10] Where are you in from?

The Farmer's Life [00:10:11] I am from northwest Indiana. Monticello or Adelphi, depending on which town I pick halfway between India and Chicago. That's what I tell most people.

Vance Crowe [00:10:20] And you have this very slow, monotone, mellow voice. Is that an accent? Does everybody up in Northern Indiana sound like that?

The Farmer's Life [00:10:31] Well see, I think of it as, it's like a neutral.

Vance Crowe [00:10:36] Okay.

The Farmer's Life [00:10:36] Like Indiana's like, well, until you get down to like Bloomington where that other school is and they talk funny. But I think we're pretty neutral. And then you get up like Lake County, they start talking Chicago, Wisconsin type

Vance Crowe [00:10:52] Actually. Yeah, with the UHS and the, yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:10:53] Yeah. My wife does that.

Vance Crowe [00:10:55] Interesting. So you're proposing that your accent is more of like a beige then? Well, the, I think it's a fun way to start because you are one of the most understated people that I know. But you're also one of the probably best known farmers around in the United States. I mean, you're in the top 5% of farmers that people have an experience with.

The Farmer's Life [00:11:17] Yeah, I might be right. I say I'm not as, I'm not as cool as I used to be. There's a lot of new people out there. But

Vance Crowe [00:11:23] How did you get into the world of consumers? Just regular people knowing the farmer's life? Brian Scott.

The Farmer's Life [00:11:30] So it was in 2011. I think I kind of had to figure it out after. I think it was the magazines, like the trade magazines were talking about getting out there a little bit. And that sounded kind of interesting to me. I didn't even have Facebook. I didn't wanna get Facebook. And then we were actually on vacation in Hawaii and my mom has family that actually farms out there and Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:11:59] That's not bad. It

The Farmer's Life [00:11:59] Was the last day before we went back. I was in bed, couldn't go to sleep before we went to the airport. And I was like, I'll download the WordPress app and start my blog 'cause I can't sleep. And I think my first, I think I've gone back and deleted those since my first post was probably three sentences or something like that.

Vance Crowe [00:12:15] Was it something you'd thought about or just like a meteor of an idea

The Farmer's Life [00:12:19] Hit you? Yeah, no, I had thought about it probably for a few months. And then just in that downtime, bored ness, I was like, no, let's, let's do this and see what happens. Because

Vance Crowe [00:12:29] You, that's early enough that there was a time when when people started a blog, it was like, okay, that guy's got a blog too.

The Farmer's Life [00:12:34] Yeah. But

Vance Crowe [00:12:35] You're talking about the time, or at least within the industry, that this would be extremely rare. There were not probably very many farmer blogs or if there were, you didn't know about it.

The Farmer's Life [00:12:43] Well, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have known about him either. Right. And I probably had the blog before I had Facebook, not, not too far apart.

Vance Crowe [00:12:52] And any idea where, where this is all heading, do you have a, a concept of like, I'm, I'm gonna start this No idea. And this will take me all over the world and Nope. Okay. Nope.

The Farmer's Life [00:13:03] Just, I don't know, something to kill time or put my tractor cab or shower thoughts, whatever you wanna call 'em.

Vance Crowe [00:13:13] Well, it's interesting because you're, it's, it's an incredibly extroverted thing to do and maybe not extroverted in the sense that you're not gaining energy from other people right in front of you, but Right. It's like a really social thing to do.

The Farmer's Life [00:13:25] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:13:26] And you're a peer in, in, in the years that we've known each other, I've kind of always thought of you as an introvert. You know, you're very fast on the draw with texts and messages and things like that, but you're kind of quiet.

The Farmer's Life [00:13:37] Yeah. And I get that from my dad. My wife gives us a hard time 'cause dad and I can be in the same room with a bunch of people and have a conversation and nobody knows what either one of us said. 'cause they're so quiet.

Vance Crowe [00:13:49] Oh.

The Farmer's Life [00:13:50] So I just come back with, well, maybe you're not supposed to know.

Vance Crowe [00:13:53] Wow.

The Farmer's Life [00:13:54] But no, yeah, I'm pretty fairly introverted. I don't know, not like, like I want to go out and be with people and stuff, but like, I don't mind being alone.

Vance Crowe [00:14:09] Yeah. I guess if you're gonna be a farmer of some acres, you've probably gotta be comfortable being alone.

The Farmer's Life [00:14:15] Yeah. I mean, there'll be days that the only people I see are my dad and the three people that live in my house.

Vance Crowe [00:14:24] Days where you're like

The Farmer's Life [00:14:25] That. Yeah. When I'm, you know, harvest and planting. Not super long periods, but

Vance Crowe [00:14:30] You know, that's something that I didn't understand about farming until I got deeper into it. And I grew up in a small town in central Illinois. Right. So there were, there were fields within walking distance of my house, like with a, you know, as a little kid, I was near a dairy farm maybe every other day. So I was around it, but I didn't understand that when it goes time to plant, it is like a bell goes off and everybody has been priming their tractors, their planters, their everything to go. And then you go as long and as hard as you can until all the fields are planted.

The Farmer's Life [00:15:03] Yeah. So like, what's January 7th today? Yeah, it's ready to go right now.

Vance Crowe [00:15:09] Your stuff is

The Farmer's Life [00:15:10] So in three and a half months when it's Right, it's go time.

Vance Crowe [00:15:15] I already, I mean I saw you this just this last week. You were polishing your tractor. Was that on Facebook or YouTube?

The Farmer's Life [00:15:22] The combine.

Vance Crowe [00:15:22] The combine,

The Farmer's Life [00:15:22] Yeah. So, and

Vance Crowe [00:15:23] That was, it looked like this beautiful shiny green. Yeah. Is every farmer keep their stuff that shiny?

The Farmer's Life [00:15:30] I mean a lot, a lot do. Well I guess we kind of have a reputation for being really clean in the neighborhood, but then if you follow a hashtag Andy Clean on Twitter, it's like multiple levels above what I do.

Vance Crowe [00:15:46] Really

The Farmer's Life [00:15:47] Like what you saw of my combine. You can get underneath his and it looks like that.

Vance Crowe [00:15:54] So is he, is he actually like a feature somebody that's out there on social media talking about how he cleans his tractor? Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:16:01] I don't know if he started that hashtag or other people started it, but like Andy Clean is a hashtag.

Vance Crowe [00:16:06] Oh that is funny. Because

The Farmer's Life [00:16:08] He there nobody, and I, if I say it right, Andy past, I think is his last name.

Vance Crowe [00:16:14] Oh, I know Andy from

The Farmer's Life [00:16:15] Canada, right? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:16:16] Yeah. Well I don't know him, but Oh

The Farmer's Life [00:16:17] Yeah. He's like, my cleanliness doesn't hold a candle to what Andy does. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:16:22] That's interesting. And this is just like with cars or anything else, like,

The Farmer's Life [00:16:25] Oh yeah. When

Vance Crowe [00:16:26] Somebody gets really, really good at something, if they post photos of it, their tribe comes around and says,

The Farmer's Life [00:16:31] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:16:31] That's respect for that. Oh

The Farmer's Life [00:16:33] Yeah. And we, we even did a, a combine trade one time and we cleaned stuff pretty thoroughly. Not like Andy, but getting down to the nitty gritty on price. And I was like, Hey, you've seen our stuff. You don't have to pay a guy to be in the wash bay for two days. It's ready to go, so give us another thousand bucks or whatever.

Vance Crowe [00:16:55] Hey, that's, and did they pay it? Yeah. Hey, there you go. I mean, that's true of everything in life, right? Like if you care about cleaning things up. And I didn't learn this until I was in my thirties. Like my family that I grew up with has this sense that I'm like, you know, pigpen, you know, like there's always like a little cloud of dust and everything full on me. But in my life now, I am super organized. Like all my clothes are folded, everything is put away, the bed is made because I figured out that if I can, if I just follow those rules, then that's done in my life. And I don't have to worry about, you don't have to remember it. Finding things or remembering or, or wear, you know, the, the weight of having something on your, on your mind of like, ah, I know I need to get that done, but I just don't, I'm not doing it. All of my house chores are like that.

The Farmer's Life [00:17:46] Yeah. But see, my wife, Nicole's gonna listen to this and she will tell you that does not

Vance Crowe [00:17:53] Translate to home,

The Farmer's Life [00:17:54] Translate to home for me. Which is pretty much true. Like if, if you go to our shop when we finish doing something, every tool is back in its home. Everything, the shop floor, anytime you take a picture of the shop, like it's, people give me a hard time for how clean the floor is. I'm like, we didn't clean it yet. But yeah, I get, I kind of get in trouble.

Vance Crowe [00:18:16] That's interesting. It

The Farmer's Life [00:18:17] Doesn't transfer for some reason

Vance Crowe [00:18:20] For me. Like things in the, in the, when I, when I started to get into this like habit of cleaning, yeah. It was almost like a competition with myself. It was like my wife was like, you know, whatever my level was, she was fine with it. But I probably probably annoy her on the being too organized because I'm like, let's play a new game called Clean Out the Closet. You like. And your son, is he an organized guy?

The Farmer's Life [00:18:46] The oldest is, he has always been organized ever since he was little. Matthew's the oldest. He used to, especially when he was little, he'd take all his tractors or cars and like line 'em up against the baseboard in the hallway. If you turned one around backwards when he wasn't looking, he would know it.

Vance Crowe [00:19:06] Really?

The Farmer's Life [00:19:06] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:19:07] And he wanted him put in the right order.

The Farmer's Life [00:19:09] Yeah. So, and he's still like that. He just turned ten two days ago. And we have a 4-year-old too. And everybody says they're opposite. So we always say like, Matthew needs to know before he does something new. He wants to know everything about it.

Vance Crowe [00:19:24] Oh,

The Farmer's Life [00:19:24] Before he tries it.

Vance Crowe [00:19:25] Okay.

The Farmer's Life [00:19:26] And then Andrew is like, what if we set it on fire and push it off a cliff? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:19:31] I'm like, what happens? That's like me. I was that way. Can we just do it faster? Can we just try now? Can we go now? Yep. And are you prepared for the challenging of the challenge of parenting that that brings? Because you're gonna clearly

The Farmer's Life [00:19:44] Right

Vance Crowe [00:19:45] Side with one and pit them against each other would be your natural.

The Farmer's Life [00:19:48] Yeah, we'll see it. It's different. Andrew, he's kind of mellowed a little bit, but it's so funny because Matt, it's good on both of them. He's Mr. Super organized planner. But just the other day we were watching a basketball game and Nicole gave Andrew a bath during halftime and after halftime it was pretty much bedtime after halftime, he was just like totally naked in the living room on the rug, like making up stuff with his imagination and all his toys and calling him different things that they aren't physically what they are. And Matthew like never did that. And we were just supposed to look at each other. Like, ma he like, they're just so different.

Vance Crowe [00:20:29] Wow.

The Farmer's Life [00:20:29] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:20:30] That really is like a, like a creative brain or something like ticking in there that isn't like the other one.

The Farmer's Life [00:20:36] Yeah. So they both got, and who knows, maybe they'll be coworkers someday.

Vance Crowe [00:20:41] Your son Matthew is actually kind of famous because he, yeah, he was in a Facebook video of him driving a tractor and or com. He was, he combining,

The Farmer's Life [00:20:50] He, the first video was back in 2016. He was turning the planter around.

Vance Crowe [00:20:57] That's right. And and so you, you see him in the seat? Yeah. Well why don't you describe it. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:21:02] So I st if you look at the windshield in the track, there's a metal strip. So like the GoPro magnet fits really nice up there. You get a whole view of the cab. So I had it with me and this, so 2016 I'd been doing the Facebook for like five years and I'd gotten up to 17,000 followers. I had no, no plan or anything. I was just like, well the GoPro's here, I'll turn it on when he turns around here at the end. And

Vance Crowe [00:21:29] Your Facebook is mostly just you doing videos and posts about it's

The Farmer's Life [00:21:33] Day-to-day farm stuff, right.

Vance Crowe [00:21:34] For

The Farmer's Life [00:21:34] The most part. And then blog posts or whatever. Which I don't, the blog I don't really use hardly anymore. But anyway, so I'm sitting in the, what you call the buddy seat. He's in the driver's seat. So it's his fir It was literally his first time not sitting in my lap doing it. Like that video is the first time. Like we didn't do like a few rounds. Wow. So I'd get a good video. Like this was the first time

Vance Crowe [00:21:57] It looked like he'd been doing it a long time and

The Farmer's Life [00:21:58] You just stuck the camera out

Vance Crowe [00:21:59] There. He's

The Farmer's Life [00:22:00] Super observer guy too.

Vance Crowe [00:22:02] Oh, so

The Farmer's Life [00:22:02] He is soaking in everything that you do. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:22:05] Like, 'cause what you're describing is actually like relatively technical movement. It's not just that it's in a big tractor, which would already be intimidating for most people. And he's how old at this point? He

The Farmer's Life [00:22:16] Was six. He's

Vance Crowe [00:22:17] Six years old. So he, he's feet are hanging straight off of the chair. Right,

The Farmer's Life [00:22:21] Right. So like Yeah. And the way this tractor works, it has a clutch and a brake pedal. But like in the field you don't need them the way it operates. So, and like my dad would say, like it was almost hard to teach me 'cause the equipment was so much bigger. Well the tractor Matthew's driving is a huge tractor and the planter's 60 foot wide, which would've been enormous when I was 10. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:22:48] It'd be enormous for a full grown adult.

The Farmer's Life [00:22:50] Like half that size would've been pretty average right at the time. Right When I was that age. So anyway, I just click the goer on, I think the video's like 59 seconds or something like that. He just goes to the end of the field, clicks the hydraulics planter goes up, makes his turn, clicks it down and throttles it back up. He hadn't got up to keeping it going full throttle the whole time. But did that, didn't think anything. I'm like, this is just another one of these videos I'm gonna post. So that was a Friday night. I had over five years amassed 17,000 Facebook followers. I woke up Saturday morning and I had 42,000.

Vance Crowe [00:23:29] Wow. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:23:31] It was crazy.

Vance Crowe [00:23:32] And how many people watched that video?

The Farmer's Life [00:23:35] It had, I don't even, I could look it up. It had

Vance Crowe [00:23:40] In the millions, right? In

The Farmer's Life [00:23:41] Millions. Yeah. Several million.

Vance Crowe [00:23:44] So what was that experience like to go from being like, Hey, I'm putting this stuff out here, A few people can see me. A lot of it, my friends and family and people I don't know.

The Farmer's Life [00:23:52] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:23:52] But then exploding and then having, you know, your son is right there that is immortalized. Yep. Forever.

The Farmer's Life [00:23:58] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:23:59] How did that feel?

The Farmer's Life [00:24:00] I mean, it was like, like, whoa, I really did something. Right. Your first thought is like, how do I do that again?

Vance Crowe [00:24:06] Right.

The Farmer's Life [00:24:07] Which you just, you can't intentionally post something viral.

Vance Crowe [00:24:12] Right.

The Farmer's Life [00:24:13] I don't know.

Vance Crowe [00:24:14] I mean it's, it's kind of like, well it's like a virus, right? Yeah. And the conditions are right. Yep. For that specific thing. It's gonna work. But there's billions and billions of viruses that never get a shot. We

The Farmer's Life [00:24:24] Have the pathogen and the host and all

Vance Crowe [00:24:25] That's right. All that's right. The medium.

The Farmer's Life [00:24:27] But no, it was crazy. And that was the, the first or maybe second time, like, I was like, okay, I like don't read the comments 'cause I can't keep up for the main thing. And I posted a longer version of it on YouTube, which wasn't, it's actually caught on more now it's not, still not as big as the Facebook. It made it a little longer and showed him doing like farm kid stuff. But that, that video was really just, that's probably why it was viral. It was just like a in the moment, no editing, here's a kid driving a tractor.

Vance Crowe [00:24:59] And that was the first time that you'd had a, like a viral experience.

The Farmer's Life [00:25:04] Probably second time. Second

Vance Crowe [00:25:05] Time.

The Farmer's Life [00:25:05] Second time.

Vance Crowe [00:25:07] So why don't we go all the way back to Hawaii when you're putting up this, this blog. So you, like, we are eventually gonna get to the point where you are having, you combine being turned around, be viewed by millions of people. But you're in Hawaii. What are you imagining you're gonna write there? Are you gonna write poetry? Are you gonna write like,

The Farmer's Life [00:25:25] No. So I think, man, I think a lot of us start this way. Like we're gonna teach people what's going on. Like we're gonna get on the lectern and tell you how farming works.

Vance Crowe [00:25:39] And why, why is that a drive for you? The electrical guy doesn't feel like, Hey, I'm gonna get on Facebook and explain the electrical to you. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:25:45] And I've had a lot of time to think about this. There's the whole, there's only 2% of us or whatever. But then I don't know how many percentage of people are electricians. I

Vance Crowe [00:25:53] Don't know.

The Farmer's Life [00:25:53] So like,

Vance Crowe [00:25:56] But there is

The Farmer's Life [00:25:56] A difference. It's a, it's a different job. Different

Vance Crowe [00:25:58] And it's a

The Farmer's Life [00:25:59] Different way of life. But I don't think we're probably not as special as we'd like to think we are. I don't know. But you have a, you'd have a different view on it. I've never been away from it.

Vance Crowe [00:26:09] I mean I think that the interesting thing about the migration of farmers being down to 2% is a really big deal because in the 19 hundreds it was 40%,

The Farmer's Life [00:26:22] 42%. Yeah. It's changed rapidly. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:26:24] And so when you're talking about electricians, there was never a time when 42% of every electrician, his wife and his children were going out in and in Right. Intimately involved in farming.

The Farmer's Life [00:26:36] He didn't subsistence. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:26:37] Electrify. Most of which was by the hand. And, and if you talk about the history of human civilization, most people have been peasant farmers Right. In the last 10,000 years. Sure. And we watched that expand in the US because you had so many people move out west and then, you know, kind of conquer and start farming. That that took all labor and then it, it it it changed so fast that we've never seen a larger migration of humans until China started draining their agrarian society

The Farmer's Life [00:27:08] Into

Vance Crowe [00:27:09] Cities.

The Farmer's Life [00:27:09] Yeah. And there, there's a video that goes around every once in a while, probably from the really early 1900. I don't whenever you can get a video, but it's horse drawn dressing machine.

Vance Crowe [00:27:21] Oh yeah. Cutting

The Farmer's Life [00:27:22] Wheat on a hillside. And every time I see it there's probably like 10 guys climbing all over that thing. Right. Like losing fingers in the belts and whatever and getting emphysema. But I'm like,

Vance Crowe [00:27:32] Man,

The Farmer's Life [00:27:33] Those guys probably thought that was awesome. That looks horrible to me.

Vance Crowe [00:27:37] But a lot better than what they were doing before. They

The Farmer's Life [00:27:39] Were doing it with thes before that.

Vance Crowe [00:27:40] Right, right. And like I've been to, i I will occasion, so when you're driving around in the countryside, you can be like, it can be a burden to you. You can be like, oh I just, I gotta get from point A to point B. Or a lot of these little towns have things that make them them. Right. Right. And there's some women's guild or some club that gets together and they put together tractor museums or old farming museums. Right. Yeah. I go stop into those things all the time. Really. And in particular, there's one out near Manhattan, Kansas and they've got the ones where they were like tractors where you would throw coal into it to give the steam power enough to run the tracks. Yeah. And you think they must have thought this was the greatest thing in the world. Oh

The Farmer's Life [00:28:23] Sure. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:28:23] And now if you tried to harvest that way, people would quit before an hour.

The Farmer's Life [00:28:27] Oh yeah. We, we have an old John Deere 45 combine. It's like a 1955 roughly. And we, we got it running and we cut a couple acres of wheat with it.

Vance Crowe [00:28:40] So what does it happen? It has a PTO blade or like a spinning rod on the back

The Farmer's Life [00:28:44] Or what? So it, it's funny 'cause it's not a lot different than a current combine. It's just smaller and like we used an extension cord to put a new wiring harness on it and it's got a lot less wires.

Vance Crowe [00:28:59] Oh I bet. Like

The Farmer's Life [00:29:00] It has,

Vance Crowe [00:29:01] It

The Farmer's Life [00:29:01] Has like ignition and like a headlight. That's about it. But, but there's no cab on it so I couldn't, I mean my dad and my grandpa did that without cabs for a while. But I got no interest in harvesting with no cab.

Vance Crowe [00:29:18] Do you think if we went to downtown St. Louis tonight and we stopped people on the side of the street and we said, draw for me or describe for me what, what a farmer rides around in the tractor.

The Farmer's Life [00:29:30] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:29:31] Would they still think that you're in an open air tractor?

The Farmer's Life [00:29:34] Probably. That's what you see in all the children's books. Actually I have a friend, we haven't done it yet. We've talked about it for like three years about like writing a children's book that shows the modern farm without preaching. That that's what it is. Do

Vance Crowe [00:29:54] You know who is publishing a children's book about farming? Well you probably know several, but the one that I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump in and

The Farmer's Life [00:30:01] I know one person,

Vance Crowe [00:30:01] Matthew Slager.

The Farmer's Life [00:30:03] He is Rice

Vance Crowe [00:30:04] Farming tv.

The Farmer's Life [00:30:05] That guy right there.

Vance Crowe [00:30:06] Right there. That guy. That's right. That's right. That's right. And you knew exactly where it

The Farmer's Life [00:30:09] Was. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:30:09] So that dude, he just had his second child and produces YouTube videos that are how to plant rice. And they're creative and they're clever and he is publishing a children's book. And I could not be more That's very excited. Well that's

The Farmer's Life [00:30:23] Very, he he would be good at that.

Vance Crowe [00:30:24] He would. And he found an illustrator and like Yeah, I remember when he was driving on his tractor and when, when Matthew is driving his tractor, his is not GPS guided, which we'll come back to. Well,

The Farmer's Life [00:30:35] And I've I've been to his farm.

Vance Crowe [00:30:37] Oh you have?

The Farmer's Life [00:30:38] I have. And what struck a lot of us from my part of the country that were in that group was there wasn't anything new in California.

Vance Crowe [00:30:50] Right. Oh, that's interesting. 'cause you think of them as so forward Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:30:53] Leaning

Vance Crowe [00:30:54] And so tech friendly.

The Farmer's Life [00:30:55] Yeah. And I don't say that in a bad way,

Vance Crowe [00:30:58] It's just that, that the technology that you guys have in, in Indiana is the same as what they have out there.

The Farmer's Life [00:31:04] Well no, I'm saying like all the equipment was older, even on like the bigger farms and stuff, at least where we were.

Vance Crowe [00:31:10] Oh, that's interesting.

The Farmer's Life [00:31:12] So like I keep a combine like the la our last combine we ran for four years. That was a long time for us.

Vance Crowe [00:31:18] Really?

The Farmer's Life [00:31:19] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:31:19] What does the combine cost?

The Farmer's Life [00:31:22] The one we just bought is the first one we, and it was a year old actually two. It, it's a 2017. It harvested 2017 sat on the dealer lot through 18. So it's second actual harvest was with us this year. It was our first combine we bought that started with a four at the beginning. So in the 400,000. Whoa. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:31:45] And and your bank is covering that and you're just paying a note. Is it like financing a car? Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:31:50] Yeah. It's,

Vance Crowe [00:31:52] I mean and you don't have to talk about your specifics. You can say this is what people do.

The Farmer's Life [00:31:55] No, there's different finance. Like the reason we buy 1-year-old machines is because John Deere Financial has a better interest rate on new or used machines than they do on new ones.

Vance Crowe [00:32:07] Interesting. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:32:07] Well 0% is pretty good. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:32:10] So there's, this goes to my point and I said it last week. Yeah. Involved with

The Farmer's Life [00:32:13] Banking and everything.

Vance Crowe [00:32:14] Well I, I am, I am afraid of, of inflation. And I think that a, a big place that inflation has gone is in farming and agriculture because who knows how much, oh it's land is worth, it's worth

The Farmer's Life [00:32:28] Whatever. People

Vance Crowe [00:32:28] Are willing to pay for it.

The Farmer's Life [00:32:29] So at our previous house we lived in a little neighborhood which I'd never had like neighbors that you could, like their house was next to yours. That was weird. Then I got, and then I missed it when we left. But anyway, so my neighbor, he used to be in the early eighties like, like city council or Chamber of Commerce, something like that, involved in town. And he goes, I remember in 1983 he goes, John Deere had this thing. He goes, if you bought a $60,000 tractor, you got like a $3,500 Chevy pickup. He's like, whoa. He's like, what's that stuff cost now? I was like, well first the truck is $60,000

Vance Crowe [00:33:10] And

The Farmer's Life [00:33:10] That, that must've been 2013 'cause we just bought a tractor. I said, we just bought a brand new John Deere row crop tractor and it was $304,000.

Vance Crowe [00:33:20] So this may be this, this may be helping me figure out where is the inflation going because they, the, the federal government just prints money all the time. Right. But people say, but my prices aren't being inflated. My food still costs the same or it's within. But I think that we have food costs that we are pushing the, the price down and it's been able

The Farmer's Life [00:33:41] To

Vance Crowe [00:33:41] Keep up with inflation. But you talk about bigger ticket items, the person eating up that inflation are the people that are doing big business in farming. At least in

The Farmer's Life [00:33:50] Part. Yeah. And then maybe on the consumer end, we keep getting better at what we're doing on trend line yields.

Vance Crowe [00:33:58] Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:33:58] Generally go up. So we're probably reducing overall costs on the wholesale side.

Vance Crowe [00:34:05] Yeah. That's prob that's exactly, you're keeping up with inflation on that side. You've

The Farmer's Life [00:34:08] Got the whole what the JFK thing where the farmers the only one that buys everything retail and sells it for wholesale.

Vance Crowe [00:34:17] Do you think that?

The Farmer's Life [00:34:18] Which is pretty true.

Vance Crowe [00:34:19] Which is true. And, and it's just gonna happen 'cause it's a commodity and

The Farmer's Life [00:34:22] Anything they get

Vance Crowe [00:34:23] Straight like that. That's worst worse. Just like if you were in mining, that's the way it would be.

The Farmer's Life [00:34:25] I kind of get on people, you'll see farmers and stuff online getting upset that, or you always see some graphic about this is what farmers share of a loaf of bread is. And I always kind of fight back about that. Like, well so what I care what it cost me to produce a bushel of wheat and what I sell it for. I didn't process it, bake it, package it, and haul it to the grocery store.

Vance Crowe [00:34:51] I just gave you the one component wheat. Right.

The Farmer's Life [00:34:53] That,

Vance Crowe [00:34:54] That I was selling you into it. If,

The Farmer's Life [00:34:55] If you want a bigger piece of that pie, you have to value add to it.

Vance Crowe [00:34:59] Yeah, that's right.

The Farmer's Life [00:35:00] So if you're just growing the commodity and sell it in bulk, don't complain. Do something. But

Vance Crowe [00:35:05] That's like a really common thing you see on college campuses. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:35:09] And

Vance Crowe [00:35:09] It's when the ag school is like taking the position of like, oh have pity on us. Look, we don't make enough money. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:35:16] I hate that.

Vance Crowe [00:35:17] And and it doesn't bridge the divide that they think that it's bridging.

The Farmer's Life [00:35:20] I did. And I think there's a pretty large crowd anymore that we'll fight back on that from the farm side. Now when we see it, like everybody, not everybody, but farmers hate the thank a farmer thing and

Vance Crowe [00:35:33] Well I think the Yeah, that's right. Farmers hate the thank thank a farmer thing. And I think that the other thing is that if you go this route, you end up handing some of your biggest critics the most ammunition. Oh

The Farmer's Life [00:35:43] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:35:43] Right. Because those are the same people that are like, that's why evil Monsanto shouldn't be there and that's why we shouldn't

The Farmer's Life [00:35:48] Have

Vance Crowe [00:35:49] GMOs. And the monocropping is the problem. Like

The Farmer's Life [00:35:51] My stance on that is if industry's doing thank a farmer, like if Bear's doing it or a pioneer, whoever I That's, that's fine. 'cause they're, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:36:05] That's their customer.

The Farmer's Life [00:36:06] They're talking to their customer. Right. Yeah. They're pandering to the customer. It's when a farmer is like, you know, the whole whatever, you can't eat three times a day without me or

Vance Crowe [00:36:17] Well, and I think that that's where the, the really delicate line of the tell your story thing got got all

The Farmer's Life [00:36:23] Confused. Yeah. Like there is, that isn't untrue. But we talked about this a little bit on text. If I quit farming tonight and well, and my dad, but anyway, if we quit farming tonight, Scott Farms quits. All our land will be farmed this spring.

Vance Crowe [00:36:45] Right. Right. There's no, there's no shortage. We

The Farmer's Life [00:36:47] Are not irreplaceable. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:36:50] I I think that that all got turned around when the, the, a collision of things happened at the same time, which was you still have seed companies trying to make good relationships with their farmers. So they do thank a farmer campaigns. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:37:03] And

Vance Crowe [00:37:03] At the same time Monsanto realized we have people that are so afraid of us and so angry about what they think we're doing, that they're going to literally tear down our factories. They're going to threaten our workers. They're gonna stop us from doing so we need to get farmers to go out and tell their story. To say, because we need to, if you're from Monsanto and you go out and talk to a farmer, somebody's like, okay, you're from Monsanto. I know.

The Farmer's Life [00:37:29] Yeah. I

Vance Crowe [00:37:29] Guy from Pioneer, a guy from Bear. This is, this is just in the olden days of Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:37:33] Six

Vance Crowe [00:37:34] Months ago or 18 months ago before Bear, but Monsano. But that, that then you started saying, we need farmers to go out and tell their story, which is what you were doing. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:37:42] But

Vance Crowe [00:37:42] Then they started mixing it into thank a farmer campaign. So it became Right.

The Farmer's Life [00:37:46] Let

Vance Crowe [00:37:47] Me tell you my story so that you can thank me. As opposed to Right. A real hero's journey. Like an actual, like this is what's gone well. This is what didn't work. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:37:56] This

Vance Crowe [00:37:57] Is where things are moving.

The Farmer's Life [00:37:58] And I still don't think, I don't do it as often as I should. I try to post when I remember too. It's kind of hard 'cause sometimes you get quite a bit of backlash from inside the community. But we need to post when we screw up 'cause we don't hit a home run every time.

Vance Crowe [00:38:17] Well that's a, that's a tough one, right? Like what other industry shows their, their broken shoes and there Oh

The Farmer's Life [00:38:25] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:38:25] And like not nobody. So it's, it's a tall order to say farmers should be doing that.

The Farmer's Life [00:38:30] Yeah. But we, I don't know. We need to show that we're fallible I guess.

Vance Crowe [00:38:35] I think the fallibility it

The Farmer's Life [00:38:37] Gives you more credibility.

Vance Crowe [00:38:38] That's right. I think that one of the things that I've learned is when farmers say we used to do it this way and we thought that this was the best thing. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:38:48] And

Vance Crowe [00:38:48] Then we realize like, wait a second, we didn't realize these knock on costs, so now we do it in this other way. Yeah. 'cause if people say, why do you do it this way? What they really need to know in order to get on your team is what was the thing that led you to that decision? And usually it's a suboptimal, we were in a suboptimal place.

The Farmer's Life [00:39:06] Yeah. We had, when I used to work in town, right before I left, they hired a big wig that retired from Walmart. Like he had, like, he had 150 stores under him. So Okay. He knew how to retail.

Vance Crowe [00:39:23] Right.

The Farmer's Life [00:39:25] The one thing you didn't want to say to him when he said, why do we do this if you said, because that's how we've always done it. You'd grab your ankles the rest of the day.

Vance Crowe [00:39:38] Oh that's a good, that that's actually a really good way of thinking about things. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:39:45] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:39:45] You shouldn't do something because you don't know. That's a, that's I like that mantra.

The Farmer's Life [00:39:51] No, I liked it too. So I learned not to give that answer.

Vance Crowe [00:39:54] So when you would, you're, you start this blog.

The Farmer's Life [00:39:57] Yeah. And

Vance Crowe [00:39:57] What happens when you first start putting stuff out into the world?

The Farmer's Life [00:40:01] Nothing. Nothing

Vance Crowe [00:40:03] For how long?

The Farmer's Life [00:40:03] Probably, man, I don't know. On the blog Facebook was slow. Like I bet it took me a year to get to like a hundred likes.

Vance Crowe [00:40:13] Oh. And

The Farmer's Life [00:40:13] Maybe like a couple more to get to 500.

Vance Crowe [00:40:16] Okay.

The Farmer's Life [00:40:17] And then, but

Vance Crowe [00:40:18] But you kept doing it.

The Farmer's Life [00:40:20] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:40:21] Was it a lot of work?

The Farmer's Life [00:40:22] It was a lot of work. IUI used to do, I called it farm week in pictures. I did like five or six pictures every Friday of what happened during that week. But then as I built like a library of other posts, most like more issue based posts, I started looking at the data on the backside of my blog. Those farm weekend pictures posts they were being looked at like that day and the day after. So it was like the evergreen content kept going. So I was like, that's a relief because I don't have to do this. Like I don't feel like I have to do this post every week now. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:41:01] Interesting. You could put it down because you said if I put more time into the other thing. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:41:05] So I quit that five years ago probably.

Vance Crowe [00:41:08] And so what is the evergreen content that you're posting now?

The Farmer's Life [00:41:11] So, well I really haven't posted anything on the blog in like three years. Just 'cause I think that's a kind of a trend. Blogging isn't quite what it used to be.

Vance Crowe [00:41:20] Yeah. It's almost gotta be an extremely special thing. Well this right, this

The Farmer's Life [00:41:24] Has exploded.

Vance Crowe [00:41:25] Right.

The Farmer's Life [00:41:25] Of course. So that's podcast is the new blog maybe. And it, it probably takes less work 'cause we're just sitting here talking,

Vance Crowe [00:41:33] Well this takes less work. I I mean I was telling you the, the as the crow flies.

The Farmer's Life [00:41:37] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:41:38] Like I would say it's a three to one time commitment to do an as the crow flies versus an interview. Yeah. Because it's just so much more work. Yeah. Because

The Farmer's Life [00:41:47] Here

Vance Crowe [00:41:47] People want the spontaneity. They wanna know what does he think, how are we responding? Right. With that one, I have to distill everything down into this is the idea that I want to compress. Yeah. And people, if they don't feel like they're getting it compressed fast enough, valuable information.

The Farmer's Life [00:42:03] Yeah. They

Vance Crowe [00:42:03] Just click out.

The Farmer's Life [00:42:04] So on my blog, if I couldn't knock out a rough draft in one session at the keyboard, I delete it and throw it away.

Vance Crowe [00:42:14] Okay. Because

The Farmer's Life [00:42:14] It did, I wasn't making any money or anything. So I was like, how much time do I want to, and there was one point where I was like really, you know, trying to build it and trying to do this stuff and like I was like, I need to close his laptop and play with my kid before he goes to bed. You know?

Vance Crowe [00:42:29] Right, right. That'll miss out on that time.

The Farmer's Life [00:42:32] That's more important.

Vance Crowe [00:42:33] Right. And and so how many years between when you're gaining steam to when you have the, the two big viral things that happened to you? Yeah,

The Farmer's Life [00:42:44] So the video we talked about, that was 2016. So that was like five years in. So it was like a a year in. So our mutual friend Janice.

Vance Crowe [00:42:54] Janice person.

The Farmer's Life [00:42:55] Yep. Hi Janice. You know she's listening.

Vance Crowe [00:42:58] I hope so. Janice's old school G. We should talk about her. Yeah, but you, so

The Farmer's Life [00:43:02] She's of the first people that were doing this, she was in that group, but she was one of, if not the first person to find me online. Which was a great stroke of luck. And I've told them both this, we were all eating at. So by Southwest together one time Janice. And if you know a lady named Peg Fitzpatrick, she's a pretty big deal in social media world and also in dry cleaning, which is a weird thing. They, they have a new corn product where she got some pictures from me. They using their advertising.

Vance Crowe [00:43:40] Oh really? Yeah. Interesting.

The Farmer's Life [00:43:42] So, but she's like really a big deal goes to all the big blogging conferences and all this stuff and you know, guy Kawasaki. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:43:49] Sure.

The Farmer's Life [00:43:49] Like she was side by side with him like touring the planet, promoting go Google plus.

Vance Crowe [00:43:55] Oh wow. Back

The Farmer's Life [00:43:56] In the day. She was whoa. Yeah. So like Janice and Peg were like the first people that found me, which was extremely helpful. And Janice and her, Janice Peg and her business partner used to run a website called 12 most. So she asked if I wanted to contribute. So it was every post was a list of 12 things. So it'd be like the 12 most St. Louis things to do in St. Louis, you know, something like that. So that helped me build my following outside of agriculture. 'cause that's who's reading that blog? I remember one, I did several of them, but one I did, it was like the 12 most game changing ag technologies or something at the time. And it went up on 12 most the same day as I think I have this right. Most people blogging probably heard of Chris Brogan. He's like a big time blogger. He had a 12 mouse post the same day and mine got more hits.

Vance Crowe [00:44:58] Oh really? Yeah. Okay.

The Farmer's Life [00:44:59] So that was kind of crazy.

Vance Crowe [00:45:01] And so as you're starting to do this, you're a bit of an anomaly because there are very few other farmers at all.

The Farmer's Life [00:45:09] There wasn't a lot.

Vance Crowe [00:45:10] Yeah. And so you're, what are you talking about on, on your social media that's making people

The Farmer's Life [00:45:15] Interesting? So I was trying to figure it out and like originally I didn't even have pictures on my Facebook post probably when I started and I Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:45:21] Nobody it used to take so long to upload them. Oh

The Farmer's Life [00:45:23] Yeah. And then I know I didn't have pictures on my blog for a while and now I know like, oh you have to have a featured picture with text on it so you can put it on Pinterest. And people are like,

Vance Crowe [00:45:32] Right.

The Farmer's Life [00:45:33] It's like if I go back and think of all the stuff I learned, it's kind of crazy. All the stuff I kind of know somewhat now. But anyway, so when I started I think this has kind of died down some. We can talk about that maybe. But GMOs was the big thing back then.

Vance Crowe [00:45:52] People were scared of him.

The Farmer's Life [00:45:53] Yeah. Bigger than it is now, I would say. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:45:56] I think that fight is over.

The Farmer's Life [00:45:57] I kind of think it's like,

Vance Crowe [00:45:58] Yeah I think that you've got the residual and you've got the policy stuff that's all getting,

The Farmer's Life [00:46:02] You really find me talking about it Right.

Vance Crowe [00:46:04] Anymore.

The Farmer's Life [00:46:04] 'cause I think that one, I think I've said like everything I'm gonna say about it. And so, but anyway, it was pretty hotly debated at the, this was seven, eight years ago.

Vance Crowe [00:46:16] Like if you told people that you what? Like what, what, when you say they're hotly debated, what were they upset? What? What were you answering that would

The Farmer's Life [00:46:23] Blow up the main thing, now I can timestamp this now. The main thing was what our farmers would beholden to when they use GMO crops. So it actually came back to the Occupy movement if you remember all that.

Vance Crowe [00:46:40] No kidding.

The Farmer's Life [00:46:41] So Willie Nelson wrote a post about occupy on farm aid about how Monsanto or slaves or whatever all or Monsanto farmers or slaves are all corporations and whatnot and all that stuff. So originally this post was centered on like, there's a whole introduction about the occupy movement and it was called I Occupy, I think maybe his post was, I occupy the food supply or something like that. And I played on that and I asked Janice, I was like, I know there's no like guys in black suits and black helicopters, but if I scan a PDF of my technology use agreement and put it on my blog, will that be okay? Which I guess we say Janice was working at Mount Santo.

Vance Crowe [00:47:29] Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:47:29] So she asked some people and she's like, yeah that'd be fine. I think it took her like a couple minutes. She's like, yeah, that'd be fine.

Vance Crowe [00:47:34] Well 'cause she knows everybody.

The Farmer's Life [00:47:35] Yeah. So just, I got this idea and everybody's arguing about what farmers can and can't do when they plant Roundup ready beans or smart snacks, corn, whatever. So it's like, well what if I just take the actual agreement? 'cause I, you can't, I can't find it anywhere.

Vance Crowe [00:47:53] What does the agreement say? Tell me what was on there that was surprising to

The Farmer's Life [00:47:56] Do. Yeah, we'll go through that. So I mean there's a bunch of stuff on it. So I, I scanned it, put it on my blog so anybody can look at a PDF of an actual Monsanto tech use agreement. And then I went, my blog is line item through each section of the contract. What I think of it as a farmer. So it's like, you can read this, this is my opinion of it. Or if you really could give a crap about what I have to say 'cause I'm a shill or whatever, here's like the actual stinking thing. You read it and draw your own conclusions. And that became like, somebody actually called it one time, it was like the definitive post on the topic.

Vance Crowe [00:48:40] I think so too. And it, I think I, I agree with that. It

The Farmer's Life [00:48:43] Was the number one post on my blog for like five years after I wrote it.

Vance Crowe [00:48:46] And how many people do you think read it?

The Farmer's Life [00:48:48] Quite a few. I mean, people are still sharing it.

Vance Crowe [00:48:51] Really?

The Farmer's Life [00:48:51] Yeah. Not as much as it used to be.

Vance Crowe [00:48:54] Like in the millions you think?

The Farmer's Life [00:48:56] No, like my whole blog just passed like a million views a while ago. Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:49:00] It's, it's hard for me to have a gauge on this because some of your videos have gone like Yeah,

The Farmer's Life [00:49:04] Huge

Vance Crowe [00:49:05] In the millions. But

The Farmer's Life [00:49:06] I, so a year later, I think it was just right at a year later, you know, you know Ryan Goodman?

Vance Crowe [00:49:14] Yeah, sure. Beef Runner. Yeah. Beef Runner. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:49:17] So I

Vance Crowe [00:49:18] Just, I just wrote him the other day and was like, dude did, dude, next time you're in St. Louis come, come stop by. I wanna talk about you. Did

The Farmer's Life [00:49:22] You run down here from Montana or whatever, ultra run. But, so Ryan was writing a contributor at CNN's Autocracy blog. Do you remember that?

Vance Crowe [00:49:36] I vaguely remember this type of stuff. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:49:38] So he threw my name out to Kat Kinsman who was the editor at Autocracy at the time. And she's gone on to do a couple other things. I gotta meet her in New York one time. That was pretty cool.

Vance Crowe [00:49:51] This was as there was a big movement growing in the media to be like, we wanna be a part of the food conversation.

The Farmer's Life [00:49:56] Yep. So that was her thing. CNN had like a food just blog basically that had outside people like me and Ryan contributing. So I think maybe I'd written one or two posts and like, it was really cool, I was getting all this, I'm on CNN writing stuff. So then I approached Kat, I was like, Hey, go look at this thing I did about the tech use agreement. Can we just copy and paste that on CNN and see what happens? And she said, yeah. And I think I reword it 'cause the, I've it's been rewritten on my blog the first couple paragraphs and like a link from the old one redirects. 'cause the Occupy thing is dated.

Vance Crowe [00:50:37] Oh yeah, yeah. People, a lot of people wouldn't understand this

The Farmer's Life [00:50:40] Thing. I changed the, like the first paragraph or two to make it like a timeless thing. So took the whole Willie Nelson occupy thing out of it. But anyway, so I changed it a little bit, but it's essentially, you know, 99% the same. And Kat and I put it up on CNN and ironic, Dow had put a group of 10 or 12 farmers together and we were going to DC to basically lo well I say lobby, but we weren't paid, we were treated nicely, but we definitely weren't paid to push enlist through like two four D tolerant soybeans.

Vance Crowe [00:51:23] So this is a chemistry. Were you were advocating for the GMO or you were, you were advocating for the pesticide or for both?

The Farmer's Life [00:51:29] Both.

Vance Crowe [00:51:30] Okay. So for anybody that doesn't know you can make a crop able to resist a certain type of herbicide. Right. This herbicide two four D has been around for a long time, but it's not been where the beans were made so that they could resist them, which means you can go over top spray the beans and the weeds, the weeds die, the beans live.

The Farmer's Life [00:51:46] Right. Like if you sprayed a sprayed non, unless beans was two 40, you just smoke 'em.

Vance Crowe [00:51:51] Right.

The Farmer's Life [00:51:52] So anyway, so we're in DC for that and we're on our bus that's shuttling us around to like the capitol building and the, you know, the federal building and EPA and USDA, all this stuff. And that is the day the thing went live on CNN.

Vance Crowe [00:52:12] Oh. So you get to be the man, we

The Farmer's Life [00:52:15] All are reading it on our phones on and like, you can't keep up with the comments. And I, I text Kat and I was like, so how's the post going? I think she said it had like 80,000 views or something.

Vance Crowe [00:52:27] Oh man.

The Farmer's Life [00:52:28] She's like, I never seen anything quite like it had, it got like 800 comments the first day. Oh

Vance Crowe [00:52:34] Man. And

The Farmer's Life [00:52:37] They were pretty entertaining. And very few of them were pro me.

Vance Crowe [00:52:43] Yeah. Isn't that, isn't that weird? So I one time wrote a, a post that went on M-S-N-B-C or C-N-C-N-B-C and it was about how Warren Buffett was wrong on Bitcoin. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:52:54] And

Vance Crowe [00:52:54] Like I had seen things get a little bit of a pop on social media. This is before I went to work at Monsanto, but never before in my life had I seen something shared and, and this was then whatever case syndicated. Yeah. And posted in like Yahoo Finance and you go read comments that people are writing if people that don't know you Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:53:12] And you're

Vance Crowe [00:53:13] Like, what in the hell is wrong with this person? Like,

The Farmer's Life [00:53:16] Oh man,

Vance Crowe [00:53:17] How could you have enough emotion about this subject?

The Farmer's Life [00:53:20] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:53:20] And then throw it at me.

The Farmer's Life [00:53:22] The two I remember were one was somebody went to my blog and I looked at one of those farm weekend pictures posts. They're like, go to this guy's blog and look at his truck. Like he's not making that much money farming. Which I thought it was hilarious. Like one side, like now I do have a pretty nice truck and I'm not gonna like apologize for doing well.

Vance Crowe [00:53:49] Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:53:50] As long as I didn't come by it by Ill means, but that was only a couple years after I came back to the farm and I, so this was probably 20 13, 20 14 when I came back to the farm. I didn't have a truck for like a year. I bought this truck. It was a 2004 Chevy with 220,000 miles on it. And I bought for 10,000 bucks. Like four years later. This guy's like, look at this guy. He's barely making truck. It's a fancy truck. Like he couldn't afford that truck farming. I was like,

Vance Crowe [00:54:26] Man,

The Farmer's Life [00:54:26] This is like the biggest piece of crap I've ever bought. You know?

Vance Crowe [00:54:29] But I mean, do I, so that's actually a good thing I for us to talk about. I think that, so I've been thinking a lot about the perception of the city versus the country, which I know you have for years. Yeah. But something dawned on me the other day that I really didn't understand and I wanna explore it further. 'cause I don't think my initial perception is right. But I, I wanna talk more about it, which is have you seen that CG Cgp gray link where he talks about the sneaky plan to subvert the electoral college?

The Farmer's Life [00:55:03] No.

Vance Crowe [00:55:04] So it's gotten, I don't know, maybe 3 million views, maybe not even that much. But it's basically, you know who Cgp Gray is, right? Sounds He's the YouTube

The Farmer's Life [00:55:12] Guy.

Vance Crowe [00:55:13] He makes these like stick figure drawings Okay.

The Farmer's Life [00:55:16] Of different complicated

Vance Crowe [00:55:17] Ideas

The Farmer's Life [00:55:18] Like schoolhouse rocks kind

Vance Crowe [00:55:21] Of type thing. A little bit like that. Yeah. And his is like clever. It's got similar music and he's got like a punchy thing. He's got millions and millions of followers. Okay. He put up one about the sneaky plan to subvert the electoral college. And it's about creating states that essentially join a treaty that say when we get enough states together that that hold electoral college votes, then we will automatically trigger and instead of necessarily voting the way that our state voted,

The Farmer's Life [00:55:52] We're

Vance Crowe [00:55:52] Gonna vote the way that the popular vote around the country voted. Because what we wanna do is invert that where, where we're saying one person, one vote and the electoral college system is representing an antiquated system.

The Farmer's Life [00:56:04] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:56:05] With landowners.

The Farmer's Life [00:56:06] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:56:07] And I think that this is an important concept because it goes to that a problem that people could not have foreseen when in the 19 hundreds, 40% of the population lives and works on farms and now it's less than two.

The Farmer's Life [00:56:20] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:56:20] In that you, the, the people living in the city don't own property in the same way that farmers do.

The Farmer's Life [00:56:29] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:56:29] And if they don't own property the way that they will view how it should be treated, who is in control of it? Who's responsible for it, what sort of tests do you have to get through? Right. What are you allowed to do on it? That balance of power completely shifts to being in the cities and in particular being on the coasts.

The Farmer's Life [00:56:50] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:56:50] And the power is sucked out of the, of the most valuable asset in the us which is our land, our ability to grow crops.

The Farmer's Life [00:56:57] And you come from rural Illinois, right.

Vance Crowe [00:57:00] That's

The Farmer's Life [00:57:00] Probably always the best example. Like you always see the map and like every county but cook in the collar counties is red.

Vance Crowe [00:57:08] That's right.

The Farmer's Life [00:57:09] But,

Vance Crowe [00:57:10] And so then they have a government,

The Farmer's Life [00:57:11] The rest of the

Vance Crowe [00:57:12] Counties that is, that the governors go preside, go prison, vote

The Farmer's Life [00:57:14] Doesn't matter. Illinois is

Vance Crowe [00:57:15] A great example of that because it's a red state.

The Farmer's Life [00:57:17] Ohio's a little bit like that too.

Vance Crowe [00:57:18] Yeah. And, and they, the, I don't want to get into politics. My politics are not important. But my my it's a great example of saying you have an entire state of which a really small portion of it living right by the Great Lakes dominates how so much is done in the state.

The Farmer's Life [00:57:36] Right. And

Vance Crowe [00:57:37] That we're giving up more and more of like local control of your school board and your Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:57:43] These

Vance Crowe [00:57:43] Various things. Because there's,

The Farmer's Life [00:57:45] There's like a disconnect. Like yeah, there's way more people. But like my buddy Josh in Chicago doesn't own in farm 2,500 acres of the country like I do.

Vance Crowe [00:57:58] Right. So I didn't realize until I started working at Monsano, like I really had no scope of how important and huge the agriculture industry is on the United States. Like the advantage that we have by having the Mississippi River is Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [00:58:19] Almost

Vance Crowe [00:58:19] Unspeakable that that how, how amazing it is that we have it. Because even if we could grow all this, you could grow a lot in Russia. You can grow a lot in Africa, but you can't transport it. Like we can't in the US because

The Farmer's Life [00:58:31] Of

Vance Crowe [00:58:31] Mississippi

The Farmer's Life [00:58:32] Couple. I have a couple things on that. So when Dow had that group together, they was sending guys to DC They had some act ag reporters, they worked for newspapers, but they were ag reporters from Brazil. They come like once a year or something like that. So they were coming through Chicago and they said, can, can their first stop be your farm? And Ken, she's great. One of the ladies from Dow came up and so they, they came out to the farm and you know, I did the whole just standard interview stuff and then they had some time. So we went out to lunch and I always remember I was talking to one of 'em, I said, you know, we're really, we worry about you guys down there 'cause you get to do everything we do. You get to do it twice. 'cause they get two growing seasons a year. And I'd never heard

Vance Crowe [00:59:21] Down in Brazil, you're saying?

The Farmer's Life [00:59:22] Yeah. I'd never heard the other side's perspective on that. He said, we worry about you guys 'cause you're really damn good at it.

Vance Crowe [00:59:30] Oh.

The Farmer's Life [00:59:30] And I'd never heard it like that before.

Vance Crowe [00:59:32] That's a nice thing

The Farmer's Life [00:59:33] To hear. Yeah. So go back. There's, he's been out with a group twice to our farm now. There's a guy in Uruguay, Gabriel, maybe you've come across him on, on Facebook. He brings up a, a group of farmers this year. Everybody was from Uruguay last year. There was some Argentina and stuff like that. But anyway, it was just dad and I the first time this time I thought, well I'm gonna invite some of the neighbors over be better conversation and whatnot. More interesting. So we kind of got to talking more and we got got to talking about trucking and yeah, Gabriel gets to grow two crops a year. But he has, he has no trucks. Like we have three semis. He has no trucks and like I can probably go 20 places within 20 miles of my farm to deliver my crops.

Vance Crowe [01:00:23] Oh. So this is important. If you're not in farming, it's, you don't just get to grow your crops and then you're done. You actually have to

The Farmer's Life [01:00:29] Yeah. Put

Vance Crowe [01:00:30] Them in a grain truck and take them. Either you store 'em yourself. Right. Somebody else stores 'em or you sell 'em right away. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:00:35] But you

Vance Crowe [01:00:35] Gotta do one of those three things.

The Farmer's Life [01:00:37] So I have probably, you know, 20 places I can go pretty easily and yeah, we store about 175 truckloads grain on the farm.

Vance Crowe [01:00:48] Wow.

The Farmer's Life [01:00:48] So we're, when people ask what we do in the off season, like I'm trucking a lot of it. But anyway, so we were asking Gabriel about getting crop to market in Uruguay and he said it takes, he hires custom trucking. It takes the guy an entire day to go from the farm to the elevator or wherever or the barge. Maybe they're taking, I think they might be taking it to port or something like that. But it takes an entire day for one truck and he pays about $1,200 for it. Whoa. Which is

Vance Crowe [01:01:28] A, I

The Farmer's Life [01:01:29] Don't what size of his grab was. It might be pulling a couple of trailers maybe. I don't know. But so like

Vance Crowe [01:01:36] The time thing is the thing

The Farmer's Life [01:01:37] At today's prices.

Vance Crowe [01:01:38] Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:01:38] A truckload of corn for me is 4,000 bucks. So you ain't taking 1200 bucks of that from me. Right,

Vance Crowe [01:01:45] Right. I'm not giving you a quarter just to, just to transport it. No

The Farmer's Life [01:01:49] Kidding. And that, that's 4,000 gross. So

Vance Crowe [01:01:52] You

The Farmer's Life [01:01:53] Gotta take my costs outta that too.

Vance Crowe [01:01:54] Last week I had Jason Mal on and he was talking about trying to do some interesting innovation in agriculture in Africa. Yeah. And I think there's no doubt one day Africa will be farmed. It's, it'd be very, very surprising to me. Which,

The Farmer's Life [01:02:08] But

Vance Crowe [01:02:08] They're a long way off of

The Farmer's Life [01:02:10] That. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:02:11] The infrastructure is so profound that we built in the United States that it's hard to imagine Right. How it will happen again in Africa. But it, it, it is, we have the huge advantage of the Mississippi River because there's so much work that gets done by flowing water to move the grain from one place to another that see that we could spend money in other parts of it.

The Farmer's Life [01:02:32] I'm just in Indiana and I'm jealous of the guys that can go straight to the river because like farms that can take grain straight to the barges, they can also backhaul bulk dry fertilizer.

Vance Crowe [01:02:44] So say more about that.

The Farmer's Life [01:02:46] Well, it's way cheaper.

Vance Crowe [01:02:47] Okay.

The Farmer's Life [01:02:48] 'cause they're picking it up right off the barge

Vance Crowe [01:02:49] And they don't have a middleman to charge. I can't

The Farmer's Life [01:02:51] Do that.

Vance Crowe [01:02:51] So you've gotta pay a middleman Right. To sell you some fertilizer. But

The Farmer's Life [01:02:54] Then like if you go back to Brazil, I've read like, you know, in the interior it, it takes a truck 30 days to go from farm to market.

Vance Crowe [01:03:04] Oh man.

The Farmer's Life [01:03:05] On dirt roads on the side of a cliff or whatever. And I'm like, well I can haul, if I eat lunch in the truck, I could take four or five loads of town by myself in a day. You're, that's a huge difference.

Vance Crowe [01:03:17] It's, it is interesting. My picture of you is, it's funny 'cause when you showed up, you're in Brian in bright, shiny, clean clothes. Because normally I see you in like a, you know, thick, I don't know, like canvas carhartt jacket in a truck because you're a hauling grain most of the winter it's gray and dark out and you're

The Farmer's Life [01:03:34] Yeah. Doing

Vance Crowe [01:03:35] Video.

The Farmer's Life [01:03:35] I was talking to somebody about this the other day 'cause I did the math once and I, I think I included Sundays. And then you gotta take out all the other things I'm doing that aren't trucking roughly average start and end dates between the end of harvest and beginning of, between the end of harvest and the beginning of the next harvest with our on-farm storage. I gotta, I gotta average one and a half, two trucks a day off the farm. So when people wonder what we're doing, let alone doing, you know, end of the year taxes and financial statements for the bank and other business stuff and you know, planting and fertilizing and taking care of weeds. I am like, we basically have a, a small trucking company of three trucks where dad and I are also the drivers.

Vance Crowe [01:04:24] The, the, if you've never run your own business, you don't have any idea like the amount of paperwork you have to do just to keep your head above water. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:04:32] But

Vance Crowe [01:04:32] Then you're talking about a business like farming where you've gotta buy from different vendors, all sorts of things. Whether it's, you know, chemicals to keep insects off or weeds. You've gotta put fertilizer out. Some of those you can apply yourself. Some of them you've gotta pay somebody else to put 'em on.

The Farmer's Life [01:04:48] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:04:48] You gotta buy seeds, you gotta do all these things and you've gotta make all the accounting work out. And if you don't Yeah, you do something wrong. You're not paying attention to how many seeds you received. Counting everything you, you could get behind in a hurry. You could start Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:05:03] Working

Vance Crowe [01:05:03] In a situation where you're making less than you're,

The Farmer's Life [01:05:06] I I need to, we're not bad at it, but like I could, our accounting could probably be like more professional if you wanna say it that way. But you know, it is the boring part.

Vance Crowe [01:05:19] Yeah. I mean I, the

The Farmer's Life [01:05:20] Driving tractors is fun but that's like, it's like we actual

Vance Crowe [01:05:24] What percentage of your life is

The Farmer's Life [01:05:26] Actual actual field work?

Vance Crowe [01:05:27] Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:05:28] It's like a lot less time than I'd like to think it is.

Vance Crowe [01:05:31] And the rest of it is what it takes to run a farm business. Right. Of in order to maintain a, maintain trucks and

The Farmer's Life [01:05:38] Yep.

Vance Crowe [01:05:38] And paying for things. A lot of trucks.

The Farmer's Life [01:05:40] This was 2019 was the year of the truck.

Vance Crowe [01:05:43] Didn't you light a combine on fire

The Farmer's Life [01:05:45] A little bit?

Vance Crowe [01:05:46] What happened?

The Farmer's Life [01:05:47] So we, we got that new combine this year, not brand new. I think it had 3, 341 engine hours on it when we bought it harvested the first 125 acre field of beans. So a couple days worth of work and got, I don't know, 20 acres into the next field. And so I'm in the cab and we, we had this happen in 2018 because there was a lot of down corn, a lot of dirt causing problems. So I'm driving along and I get a zero speed warning on my tailings elevator, which we don't have to explain what that is, but I'm like, oh my god. We snapped that auger into again just like we did last year on the other combine. Like, ah, crap. So I, I stopped

Vance Crowe [01:06:38] Is that's gonna be expensive or it's gonna take a long time.

The Farmer's Life [01:06:40] It's just annoying.

Vance Crowe [01:06:41] Okay.

The Farmer's Life [01:06:42] Like, and actually nobody had that auger. We had to drive halfway across the state to get it. But anyway, so I'm like, oh crap, okay, I'll stop. Let the machine clean out. Maybe it's just plugged and like the slip clutch was engaging or something started up again. Everything's going okay. I go, I don't know, another 50 yards or something. And then I'm like zero tailing speed. I'm like, no, come on, we're just starting here. This new machine to us, it's really low hours, doesn't need anything. And then I'm like, okay, now I'm like, I can't even look at my screen anymore 'cause it won't stop giving me warnings. It's, it's because my main wiring harness was on fire.

Vance Crowe [01:07:21] Oh man. So

The Farmer's Life [01:07:22] All the wires were getting cut into and it was like inside. So like I didn't look in the mirror and I'm like, holy crap, I'm on fire. I'm just like, I'm just driving. And

Vance Crowe [01:07:33] How big were the flames?

The Farmer's Life [01:07:35] Not big like

Vance Crowe [01:07:36] Size of a candle.

The Farmer's Life [01:07:37] A couple basketballs,

Vance Crowe [01:07:38] That's pretty big.

The Farmer's Life [01:07:40] But if

Vance Crowe [01:07:40] It's a $400,000 search

The Farmer's Life [01:07:43] Tractor fire on YouTube. It wasn't very big. And I tell people, I said the one thing I was disappointed in is the first thing I did was I got out the extinguisher and put the flames out before I took any video of it.

Vance Crowe [01:07:53] That's exactly what I told you. Remember I, as soon as I saw it, I was like, oh did you get video of

The Farmer's Life [01:07:57] You? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:07:57] Your burning combine. But,

The Farmer's Life [01:07:59] And and then you have the thought of, well just burned to the ground. Like, 'cause what kind of problems are we gonna have? Like, and there was actually, there was hydraulic fluid leaking. 'cause the some, a couple of the hoses, it started kind of weeping. They didn't really burst but they'd got enough heat on them. And they're like, come on.

Vance Crowe [01:08:18] So what's the return just light up. Come on. What's the return policy on a tractor like this?

The Farmer's Life [01:08:22] Well you've got insurance to cover repairs some of it. So like it's just like your car, we have a deductible. It's like, it's like that. So what it, once we got the fire out, the fire department came out and got it one, our neighbor was the first one there 'cause he is a volunteer fire department. He's telling the city fire department where to go and all this stuff. So they basically flooded the inside of the combine with foam. I had to get in there and disconnect the batteries. 'cause the wiring harness. So it's like the wiring harness is like, it's probably like two inches around and it's full of skinny little wires. So all the installations melting off. They're all touching each other.

Vance Crowe [01:09:01] Oh man. Shortening everything out. So

The Farmer's Life [01:09:03] It just kept relighting itself. So what it ended up being, once everything got put out was there's a bearing right behind that and the bearing went bad. So the bearing got hot and where that wiring harness is, it makes kind of a 90 degree turn. It collects a lot of dust. So that could have ease. Like one spark could have lit that up.

Vance Crowe [01:09:22] And you're dealing with that level of risk all the time, huh?

The Farmer's Life [01:09:26] Yeah, I guess.

Vance Crowe [01:09:28] Well I mean just so, and on your way in, Jason Mal was on his way out 'cause you guys were both here for a no-till conference. Right. And you guys both said there's been a lot of deaths with grain elevators in the last few weeks.

The Farmer's Life [01:09:42] Yeah, there was one. A guy, I died two counties over from us yesterday, the day before.

Vance Crowe [01:09:48] How does that happen in a modern age?

The Farmer's Life [01:09:50] They are almost always, and I won't say I've been 1000% safe every time I've been in a grain bin. So cut this part out. So my wife didn't hear it. She doesn't like those. She knows it's farming is dangerous. So, well it's usually like number two behind firefighter or something like that.

Vance Crowe [01:10:10] Oh, I didn't know that.

The Farmer's Life [01:10:11] Yeah, it's, it's up there. So it's, I didn't read on that one. I usually don't like to read them. I don't want to know a lot of time. But usually a grain bin accident, almost every single one of 'em is totally preventable. Which is the worst part about it.

Vance Crowe [01:10:33] But explain for people that don't. So when you're driving out in the countryside Yeah. You see these towers, the cylinders. Yep.

The Farmer's Life [01:10:40] They

Vance Crowe [01:10:40] Are filled with either corn or soy or

The Farmer's Life [01:10:42] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:10:43] They could be other things. But in the Midwest that's what it is. So

The Farmer's Life [01:10:45] What happens a lot of times, and there's probably gonna be more of it this year, because very late planting a very late harvest, a very wet crop, it couldn't dry naturally in the field, you know, before you can't let it sit out there all winter. Gotta take it off sometime. So we've actually already had two bins with problems and it's only January 7th and we finished harvest in the middle of November. Getting hot or getting too wet. So you've got all that grain in the bin and a lot of times what happens, this isn't our problem. But, so the stuff on top will kind of glue together as it goes outta condition. And it can form a crust. When you take a truckload out, there'll be a cavity under that crust. Now if you decide to go in the top of that grain bin and check it out and don't realize that's a crust, it, it won't hold you up and you go,

Vance Crowe [01:11:45] Oh my god, you

The Farmer's Life [01:11:46] Go down.

Vance Crowe [01:11:47] So it'd be like falling off a giant skyscraper. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:11:50] Depending on how far it is. And then the other thing is, oh,

Vance Crowe [01:11:52] You're not a giant skyscraper. It'd be like, yeah, you

The Farmer's Life [01:11:54] Don't, you don't go in a bin when it's being unloaded. It is, I don't have all the details so don't quote me. But it's, it's like, it's stronger than water. You can't, you cannot pull yourself. Like if you were had a harness up to the roof that you couldn't pull yourself up with the rope. There's no way.

Vance Crowe [01:12:12] What do you mean? I, I don't, I'm not

The Farmer's Life [01:12:14] Sure. It's like, Ima imagine being in like mud or quicksand. It's just, it's the same.

Vance Crowe [01:12:20] Oh, if you fall into the, into the elevator. Yeah. So even if the yard's off, sometimes

The Farmer's Life [01:12:24] Even when the auger's off, 'cause we, we have to go in there for some things. Like if you get like up to your knee, you're like for a second you're like, oh this is scary.

Vance Crowe [01:12:37] Yeah. I did one of those experiment things where they have like this big thing and you sink in. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:12:42] And

Vance Crowe [01:12:42] At first you're like, oh, isn't this funny? I can pull my feet out. And then all of a sudden you're like, wait, no, maybe I, maybe I can't.

The Farmer's Life [01:12:47] Yep. Yep. And

Vance Crowe [01:12:48] Then you start going deeper and deeper

The Farmer's Life [01:12:50] The

Vance Crowe [01:12:50] More you struggle.

The Farmer's Life [01:12:51] And then like we have to get in most of our bins to clean them out. When we run outta gravity flow, we have an auger, a sweep auger that goes around the bottom. So we kinda have to push it and clean up behind it. Which that's, you stay on the backside of the auger behind the shield. You don't get in front of it. But sometimes you hear about kids getting killed in grain bins. And I'm like,

Vance Crowe [01:13:12] Yeah, I heard one a couple weeks ago.

The Farmer's Life [01:13:14] And I'm just like, everybody's different. I don't know everybody's kid and how they are experiencing everything, but I'm like, I don't know if you're under like 12 or 14. Like I don't, I don't care how responsible, but you shouldn't be in there.

Vance Crowe [01:13:31] This is, it's

The Farmer's Life [01:13:32] Just not

Vance Crowe [01:13:33] Worth, it's

The Farmer's Life [01:13:33] Such a hard worth

Vance Crowe [01:13:34] Thing. So I, you know, not a parent, but I can see that you want to protect your kids. Yep.

The Farmer's Life [01:13:41] But

Vance Crowe [01:13:41] You know, two years ago today I was with Jordan Peterson at the American Farm Bureau and he talked about making sure your kids are ready to go to college and how do you protect them? You protect them by teaching them how to be responsible around dangerous equipment. Yeah. And kids have been around dangerous equipment for a long, long, long time.

The Farmer's Life [01:14:02] Yeah. And kind of my saying on the farm is like when the boys are riding with me or whatever, like you, you can relate to this like this tractor combine, whatever. Like this is the ship, I'm the captain, my word is the law. Like you do what I say.

Vance Crowe [01:14:18] Yeah. Yeah. You probably have to be that way. Right?

The Farmer's Life [01:14:21] Yeah. Like because, because

Vance Crowe [01:14:23] They don't, if they're ambitious, they're getting excited about things. Yeah. But they've gotta listen to you right away. They'll

The Farmer's Life [01:14:28] Tell I, it's great when my wife and both boys come out and like bring dinner in the combine. But a few years ago I read a story. It was a daughter or granddaughter, just a freak accident. The windshield shattered. She fell out and into the head and that was the end of it.

Vance Crowe [01:14:47] Oh my God.

The Farmer's Life [01:14:48] So like I get pretty snippy if the boys get close to the windshield.

Vance Crowe [01:14:54] Yeah. That ma I mean it makes a lot of sense.

The Farmer's Life [01:14:55] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:14:56] So talk about there's not very many businesses. I mean there are a lot of family businesses. I don't wanna say that in cities, you know, you go to laundromats, you go

The Farmer's Life [01:15:05] To Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:15:06] Restaurants. But it's different in farming because

The Farmer's Life [01:15:10] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:15:10] People are owning an asset together. There's what, what is it that that goes on in a family farming operation that somebody that doesn't own property and doesn't farm wouldn't know

The Farmer's Life [01:15:20] I'm not gonna be good at this. Okay.

Vance Crowe [01:15:22] 'cause

The Farmer's Life [01:15:24] We are, we're like super, we're really boring. Like there, there's no, I said one, well actually I got a call from some TV producer one time wanting, they were wanting to do kind of like a Gordon Ramsey type.

Vance Crowe [01:15:40] Oh. Like farm

The Farmer's Life [01:15:41] Thing. Like, and one, I couldn't do it. Like I just couldn't. And like I wouldn't want that out there. Reputation

Vance Crowe [01:15:51] Yeah. In

The Farmer's Life [01:15:51] The world.

Vance Crowe [01:15:51] Yeah. Right. Like

The Farmer's Life [01:15:52] We don't need a show where some farmer goes and screams at other farmers

Vance Crowe [01:15:57] Like

The Farmer's Life [01:15:59] Let's paint it in a good light, you know? But like I sold somebody one time, the

Vance Crowe [01:16:04] West coast choppers were farming.

The Farmer's Life [01:16:05] I was like, yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:16:06] I guarantee it exists now. Yeah. Dead. It's gotta be out there

The Farmer's Life [01:16:08] Somewhere dead. And I are not in that meme. Both the West coast choppers guys. But I told somebody one time, I was like, you would have to have a TV crew at Scott Farms for like 10 years to get a couple things to put on tv. Probably

Vance Crowe [01:16:29] So is you two have an interesting,

The Farmer's Life [01:16:31] So we're, we're a bad example.

Vance Crowe [01:16:32] Is it because you guys don't fight? No. Is it because of the way that you fight is so much more constructive? I you must disagree about things.

The Farmer's Life [01:16:42] I can't think of a time dad and I fought.

Vance Crowe [01:16:44] What about disagreed?

The Farmer's Life [01:16:47] Maybe we always just compromise on it. I mean there's, we've, I don't think we've ever truly butted heads over anything

Vance Crowe [01:16:55] That's, that's extraordinary. Yeah. That's not, that's not the norm.

The Farmer's Life [01:16:59] I understand that. That's weird.

Vance Crowe [01:17:02] Do you think it's because you both have a temperament of being highly agreeable? Or what

The Farmer's Life [01:17:06] Is it? No, my grandpa wasn't like that.

Vance Crowe [01:17:09] Oh.

The Farmer's Life [01:17:09] And we, we had a hired hand for 20 years. That was a little hotheaded too. So they, they butted heads, that's for sure. And then there was one because grandpa would, he would get on you and there was one time I'd be something weird. Dad was backing a truck outta the tool shed. And like he, he turned it a little bit 'cause he wasn't gonna, he, I don't know, he is gonna bend it around the bin or something instead of backing out straight. Grandpa was screaming and yelling at him and I don't, he, I think he'd been building up through the week and hired hand was there and I was walking across the way. I just kept walking and yeah dad, dad got out of the truck and let some words fly and punched the tool shed. And that's probably the most exciting thing that's ever

Vance Crowe [01:17:58] Happened at Scott Farms, you know, come to thinking. And

The Farmer's Life [01:18:01] I was like, I just, I'm just gonna keep walking. And Randy came over and talked to me later. He's like, I saw you just kept walking on by. I was like, eh, grandpa had it. Come on.

Vance Crowe [01:18:10] That's a good family story man.

The Farmer's Life [01:18:12] Yeah, we actually had, that reminds me, we had my 20th class reunion last summer and one guy and a couple people came up to me and talked about my dad. 'cause we had people that were in school with me that would come out and walk beans before Roundup came out. So some of my friends and stuff would come out. But this one guy, he, he was, he wasn't a bad guy but he was like a troublemaker

Vance Crowe [01:18:39] In

The Farmer's Life [01:18:39] School and he, like I said, my dad's just like me or other way around or whatever. He came up to me at the C reunion and said we were walking beans one day. He goes and I was over by the side ditch like

Vance Crowe [01:18:54] That walking beans is when you walk up and down the roads and you're pulling weeds outta there.

The Farmer's Life [01:18:58] You got a

Vance Crowe [01:18:58] Hoe or a hook

The Farmer's Life [01:18:59] Cut weeds in July. Yeah. And yeah, I've people that don't like herbicides, I've told 'em we still have the weed hooks come out in July and August. We'll walk some beans. That's right. And nobody showed up yet.

Vance Crowe [01:19:10] Nobody would put their 14-year-old out there anymore. Oh no. Like, like I, I did it for years,

The Farmer's Life [01:19:14] Years Dad, dad says he doesn't remember but I know he paid me a dollar an hour or less than everybody else.

Vance Crowe [01:19:19] Oh he

The Farmer's Life [01:19:21] Says he doesn't

Vance Crowe [01:19:22] Remember that. Oh.

The Farmer's Life [01:19:22] But I know he did.

Vance Crowe [01:19:24] Oh that would burn because you're just out there in the sun just like everybody else is. Oh yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:19:28] It's terrible. But anyway,

Vance Crowe [01:19:29] It is pretty fun for a kid from like me from town because

The Farmer's Life [01:19:32] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:19:32] But you get to go out and break things. Where

The Farmer's Life [01:19:34] Were we going with that? You

Vance Crowe [01:19:35] Were telling about the fights and then the

The Farmer's Life [01:19:38] Oh yeah. So this guy comes up to me at the C reunion. He goes, you know, we were supposed to be doing this. And I was over on the side of the field doing this, screwing around, throwing rocks in the water or whatever. He go and your dad came up and yelled at me. He says, I knew if John Scott yelled at me I really screwed up.

Vance Crowe [01:19:58] And he go

The Farmer's Life [01:19:59] And then he said this was like pretty kind of deep. He was like, and I needed that that day. 'cause he was always kind of getting in trouble doing stuff all the time.

Vance Crowe [01:20:09] Do you think there's something lost in society when we've completely removed the ability for adults that are around in a situation? Not to correct kids. I mean, I would never correct a kid if they were doing something way off. I would just leave whatever the situation is. But unless I know the parent really closely,

The Farmer's Life [01:20:27] I wouldn't

Vance Crowe [01:20:27] Do, I would never touch that.

The Farmer's Life [01:20:29] Yeah, that does seem like you'd end up in court today or something like that.

Vance Crowe [01:20:34] I mean I think you, you're really taking a gamble on how are the parents going to interpret it and what and to what level do they feel grizzly bear protective of their kids.

The Farmer's Life [01:20:43] Right. Yeah. So yeah, I don't know. See it's one of those things I often say I have a hard time knowing what people from town or even people in the country that don't farm think. 'cause I, except for a really short span, I never didn't do it or wasn't around.

Vance Crowe [01:21:05] What was the short span? College?

The Farmer's Life [01:21:06] It's after college. I,

Vance Crowe [01:21:08] Where'd you go to college?

The Farmer's Life [01:21:09] Purdue.

Vance Crowe [01:21:10] What did you study?

The Farmer's Life [01:21:11] I started in farm management for, I did that for two years. And then, that's kind of a funny story. I went to my first week of classes my junior year and realized, looking at going forward the next four semesters were, all I was doing was financial statements in balance sheets.

Vance Crowe [01:21:35] Welcome to farming. Yeah,

The Farmer's Life [01:21:36] Welcome to

Vance Crowe [01:21:37] Farm management. Of

The Farmer's Life [01:21:37] Course now I'm like, I should have

Vance Crowe [01:21:39] Stayed,

The Farmer's Life [01:21:39] You know, because now I do ha I have to do that stuff.

Vance Crowe [01:21:42] Right.

The Farmer's Life [01:21:43] But no, I was like, it just just isn't like, I like science and plants. So I switched over to agronomy and it was funny 'cause I went to the whole first week of classes and like I can't, I can't do this. I had to switch academic advisors and everything. Which the Purdue ag program is really cool.

Vance Crowe [01:22:02] Oh. And it's an amazing

The Farmer's Life [01:22:03] Program. At least when I was there, it was the, of all the schools on campus, the professors, the ag professors are the academic advisors.

Vance Crowe [01:22:14] It's

The Farmer's Life [01:22:14] Not like somebody that, that's their job is to schedule people for classes. So you go to your professors

Vance Crowe [01:22:20] And then they're gonna be really aware of what the other teachers are doing and, and Right.

The Farmer's Life [01:22:24] And they also had a thing, I never knew how they did this. Every ag class you had the first day of the semester, at the end of class, after it goes through the syllabus the first day or whatever, you wrote your name on a sheet of paper and you stood in front of the chalkboard and they took a Polaroid picture of you. And the next day and forever after that, every professor in the school of agriculture knew your first and last name in your hometown.

Vance Crowe [01:22:55] Wow.

The Farmer's Life [01:22:56] So whatever device they were using, I mean ev every professor in school is like that.

Vance Crowe [01:23:02] That would have, that would have a profound impact on the way you learned. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:23:06] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:23:06] If you went from being a number to being a person,

The Farmer's Life [01:23:09] I had a Dr. Lee Schweitzer, I had several classes with him and I'd never spoke in class or anything. And I'd had probably two or three classes with him. I was walking through the middle of the campus one day we passed on the sidewalk and he goes, Hey Brian, how are things going to Delphi? I'd never talked to the guy before

Vance Crowe [01:23:25] I, and it's pretty impressive. And clearly it left. Yeah, it left a mark on you. Right. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:23:28] So anyway, I switched majors and takes him two weeks to place me in classes. So for the second and third week of my junior year, I didn't go to class 'cause I didn't have a class to go to. So I didn't do anything. So luckily every class I had taken, counted for something on my new major and I didn't lose anything. I did have to take some extra humanities credits 'cause I was in the jazz band for a few semesters at Purdue. But since Purdue doesn't have a music school being in jazz band as a kind of humanities credit, which is dumb. But anyway, so I had to take like sociology and like art appreciation or something like that.

Vance Crowe [01:24:10] What, what did you feel like you learned in college that you use now?

The Farmer's Life [01:24:14] So I, I have thoughts about that but I, I gotta finish this other story.

Vance Crowe [01:24:22] Oh.

The Farmer's Life [01:24:22] So the fourth week of class I'm, I'm placed in all my classes for, I'm in soil and crop management now I'm in the agronomy school. So most classes at Purdue you have three exams in a semester. But this botany two 10 class was one of the rare ones with four exams. So the second day of class I had an exam. My second day of class I had an exam like a month into school. So the professor, there's a class of like 20 people. So he is like, just try to get somebody's notes and do the best you can. So I did that. We take the test, come back my third day of class, I'm sitting dead center in the middle of the room. He's got all the exams. He's like, I'm really disappointed. He's like the average for the class was a 67.

Vance Crowe [01:25:12] Ooh.

The Farmer's Life [01:25:14] Except for Brian, he got a 97.

Vance Crowe [01:25:17] Whoa.

The Farmer's Life [01:25:18] I felt like such a jerk because like showed up the day before and I'm sitting in the middle of everybody and then everybody wanted to borrow my notes for the rest of the semester.

Vance Crowe [01:25:27] Did you just cram like your mind off of what?

The Farmer's Life [01:25:29] So that gets to what sometimes I think what I learned in college, I kind of joke and other people have agreed with me on this. I say sometimes looking back my four years of college was just four years of graph of where the point of diminishing returns is at. Like that was like in every class, which is what you do in farming. You

Vance Crowe [01:25:55] Learn just enough to Right

The Farmer's Life [01:25:56] How much fertilizer I put on before I don't get more corn and I'm just losing money.

Vance Crowe [01:26:03] That's a great point.

The Farmer's Life [01:26:04] So like sometimes I sound like that was my whole four years was that one graph. But I also go back and,

Vance Crowe [01:26:11] And and what was your what? What was your GPA you were shooting for? Was it that you needed to get all

The Farmer's Life [01:26:16] A's? Oh, I wasn't shooting. I think I graduated like a three two.

Vance Crowe [01:26:19] Okay. Something

The Farmer's Life [01:26:20] Like that.

Vance Crowe [01:26:21] So you were like I'm gonna get a's mostly a's and

The Farmer's Life [01:26:24] A couple

Vance Crowe [01:26:24] B's and Yeah

The Farmer's Life [01:26:25] Because I always really enjoyed school. I was not that our high school, I think I had 180 people in graduating class. I know 'cause they took a picture. It's still up in the hallway. I was in the top 10 in my class and I always thought it was kind of funny because I wasn't doing any ag stuff in high school. I was in jazz band in high school and when I was a senior I took music theory. So one, I couldn't take ag classes two, I think all the other people in the top 10, they gotta take some other AP classes. I didn't have time for where we had a 12 point instead of a four point grade scale. So you could,

Vance Crowe [01:27:01] That's weird.

The Farmer's Life [01:27:02] If you got an A plus, you could get like a 13 GPA in an AP advanced placement class.

Vance Crowe [01:27:07] Okay.

The Farmer's Life [01:27:08] So like a lot of them took Latin and physics. But since I was doing like jazz band and music theory and also a concert band, I didn't take those AP classes. So I was like, oh man, I wonder if I could have been number one, I wouldn't have wanted to give the speech. But

Vance Crowe [01:27:21] Do you what, so what do you think is what you learned in Cal? How,

The Farmer's Life [01:27:25] How much are you So what I learned, oh I mean I use it. I have all my binders in the office at the farm.

Vance Crowe [01:27:32] When was the last time you pulled one out?

The Farmer's Life [01:27:34] I pull 'em out every once in a while. Like my favorite class was, it was actually kind of a graduate level class. Senior year you took like agronomy 5 25 plant pathology. And I love that class. Most people

Vance Crowe [01:27:48] Dunno what agronomy is.

The Farmer's Life [01:27:50] Yeah. So like agronomy is ju I always thought that was weird. I was in soil and crop management and agronomy was also a degree and I never knew how they were different.

Vance Crowe [01:27:59] I don't know either. Either.

The Farmer's Life [01:28:00] I don't know. They're basically the same. But soil agronomy is just like the science of farming

Vance Crowe [01:28:05] Science slash economics. Right. There's

The Farmer's Life [01:28:07] There's

Vance Crowe [01:28:08] Like an, there's like a business aspect to it.

The Farmer's Life [01:28:10] Yeah. And I always say farming is just like, it's just applied science.

Vance Crowe [01:28:16] What it is, it's engineering, right? It's biological engineering.

The Farmer's Life [01:28:18] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:28:19] Only you are not on the part of, of engineering the genetics. You're on the, how do we put these little solar radiation factories out and orient them to the sun so that they can

The Farmer's Life [01:28:29] Produce

Vance Crowe [01:28:30] More

The Farmer's Life [01:28:31] Fuel. So like probably several months ago I pulled out my agronomy 5 25 binder and I'm flipping through it. I'm like, when I was doing this every day, like I was a genius. Like I could do half the stuff in that now. 'cause I just don't apply it at that deep of a level every day. It's

Vance Crowe [01:28:48] Like mixes of different herbicides or?

The Farmer's Life [01:28:51] No, I mean this was like going through plants at the cellular level.

Vance Crowe [01:28:56] Okay. And you don't have to know them all

The Farmer's Life [01:28:57] The pathways. Like

Vance Crowe [01:28:58] It's, it's good to know a general overview, right?

The Farmer's Life [01:29:01] Like

Vance Crowe [01:29:01] So you don't get hosed by the

The Farmer's Life [01:29:02] Salesmen. I'm sure like deep in my brain that stuff is valuable but I can't just regurgitate it all for you. Right. You know, look almost 20 years later.

Vance Crowe [01:29:10] So,

The Farmer's Life [01:29:11] But what I think I learned, one thing I always think I learned in college is I learned how to make the system work. So my roommate was a high school friend a year behind me and he was a engineer, which in Purdue, big time engineering, big time ag school. And they, they have like crazy stupid homework and engineering. Oh

Vance Crowe [01:29:37] Yeah. And

The Farmer's Life [01:29:37] We had hardly any in ag. We did it all in class. And so he was always just like slaving away and like he had study groups to get for exams. Like there just, and like I just learned what worked for me and I learned, I think I learned this kind of what my dad did too and made it made Mike so mad. 'cause I like acce the test or whatever. How do you do that? I'm like, 'cause I wouldn't go to, I didn't go to any study groups or anything or work with other people. I just like, I learned what worked for me was I took really good notes every day during class and on exam day I'd read 'em like five times an hour before the test.

Vance Crowe [01:30:19] And it was enough for you.

The Farmer's Life [01:30:20] Yep. And then I'd go in and then as I moved on it was, it got worse or better when I changed majors. So as a junior I had to go back and take some 100 level classes that just to meet the requirement. But I'd had several classes like above that. So like I knew the material.

Vance Crowe [01:30:40] So would you say that farming is something that you have to have a deep education? I mean, it sounds like

The Farmer's Life [01:30:46] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:30:46] I want the engineers to be studying their asses off. I want them to be You don't fall

The Farmer's Life [01:30:50] Down when you

Vance Crowe [01:30:51] Driving across. That's exactly right. But the farmer, like if you don't study and do well and you don't do well, like you just get picked off in the, in the real world.

The Farmer's Life [01:30:59] Yeah. But it's like, this is, this is like a YouTube video. I've been trying to hash out like I might talk to some other people but like do farmers need to go to college? Like if I did all over again, I would go again. But it's like, I don't know that you, it's not a requirement and of course you don't need a license or anything. But

Vance Crowe [01:31:23] I

The Farmer's Life [01:31:23] Think depends. It depends on the person. Like I really, I, if I did it all over again, I'd probably go to college again. But I a lot of times am in the shop and wish I'd went to trade school.

Vance Crowe [01:31:37] Oh that's super interesting. Because

The Farmer's Life [01:31:38] I don't have any of that kind of training. Be,

Vance Crowe [01:31:39] Be good to have some welding and

The Farmer's Life [01:31:41] Some Well and you know, you know Brent moan up in Minnesota? Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:31:45] He

The Farmer's Life [01:31:45] Is an unreal fabricator. I mean, I wish I had a 10th of his skills. He's got a, he farms and then he has a fabricating business on the side. She look at his, some of the stuff he's making is, it's crazy.

Vance Crowe [01:31:58] Well, I'll put that up there. I'll put it up here.

The Farmer's Life [01:31:59] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:32:00] The, I, I, you know, Heather Haart the artist, she actually painted that and gave it to me at the Oh,

The Farmer's Life [01:32:04] That's her

Vance Crowe [01:32:04] At the podcast party.

The Farmer's Life [01:32:06] That's cool.

Vance Crowe [01:32:07] And she said that, you know, with art you can learn a lot about art, but they should have made it 50 50 with art and business. Because you, I remember her

The Farmer's Life [01:32:17] Saying

Vance Crowe [01:32:17] Thatt. Yeah. You can't be an artist as a professional. Yeah. Unless you are way off the charts an extreme anomaly. What you really need to know is yeah, what are gallery fees and how, what are my costs?

The Farmer's Life [01:32:28] And I mean, I would notice some things like dad and I both went to college. Excuse me, grandpa didn't go to college. So like occasionally I noticed like he knew that we did something but he didn't have a deep understanding of like why it was, 'cause dad and I had that science education that he didn't.

Vance Crowe [01:32:46] But

The Farmer's Life [01:32:48] At the end of the day, doesn't matter. It, I keep, I come back to this thing with farming, like a lot of times, whether I do well or not is like, did it rain or not one day, the first week of August when it was hot outside.

Vance Crowe [01:33:08] Really? Yeah. Does that despite

The Farmer's Life [01:33:12] All my plans.

Vance Crowe [01:33:13] And and how do you feel about having your, your luck run on, you know, whether the clouds open up. Yeah,

The Farmer's Life [01:33:20] It, it is fine. People have asked me about that since I quit my town job, which is coming up on 11 years ago. But what were you

Vance Crowe [01:33:31] Doing in town?

The Farmer's Life [01:33:32] I was working in retail. I was a retail retail management

Vance Crowe [01:33:36] For at a like a store?

The Farmer's Life [01:33:38] Yeah. Rural king Supply.

Vance Crowe [01:33:40] Oh, okay. That makes more sense. I thought you

The Farmer's Life [01:33:42] Were

Vance Crowe [01:33:42] At Old Navy or something.

The Farmer's Life [01:33:43] No.

Vance Crowe [01:33:44] Okay.

The Farmer's Life [01:33:44] Well, but clothing was like the biggest department though. Oh

Vance Crowe [01:33:47] Really? So

The Farmer's Life [01:33:48] That was a learning curve.

Vance Crowe [01:33:49] Oh that's interesting.

The Farmer's Life [01:33:50] And it is a tough department to work in just so, especially when you're hanging up, when you get like a couple pallets of Carhartt stuff.

Vance Crowe [01:33:58] Oh, I bet

The Farmer's Life [01:33:58] That's physical labor.

Vance Crowe [01:34:00] I never thought about that. Oh my gosh. Yeah. The clothing would be way heavier. Everything

The Farmer's Life [01:34:04] Comes in a cardboard box. Every piece of clothing is in a plastic bag and then it's folded together with pens and it's got tissue paper in it. It's an enormous amount of garbage. Huge amount of garbage. And then you're lifting like these insulated coveralls and it's tough. And you got the little old ladies over there doing it. 'cause nobody else wants to go over there.

Vance Crowe [01:34:28] Huh. And so what prompted you to leave the city job or the Yeah, the city job to go back to the farm.

The Farmer's Life [01:34:34] So I got, I did not like it. Like I, I did it initially. I, my last semester of college before Christmas break was over. I, I'd probably been thinking about it for a while, but I just told mom and dad like, I'm not gonna farm. And like that was always the plan forever. There was never another plan I was gonna farm.

Vance Crowe [01:34:57] Was this your rum Springer? Were you running away sewing your sowing your wild oats?

The Farmer's Life [01:35:02] Yeah, it was. So one of those TV shows

Vance Crowe [01:35:05] That

The Farmer's Life [01:35:05] Was me. No, I don't, I think some of it has to do, I don't think I knew at the time why is like a gut thing maybe. But I was a, of course a farm kid growing up on the farm. But like my core group of friends were all from town. So like when high school and college finished, everybody left but me.

Vance Crowe [01:35:34] Oh.

The Farmer's Life [01:35:35] So like it was, it was like me and Nicole and that was it.

Vance Crowe [01:35:40] Was it embarrassing? Did it feel like they had gone Well they had gone out and

The Farmer's Life [01:35:44] It was more like, I don't like what, what am I gonna miss?

Vance Crowe [01:35:48] Oh. Because I remember when I was young, like being like, oh, the people that stay in Eureka Illinois, like yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:35:57] How

Vance Crowe [01:35:57] Silly. They're so small minded now that I'm almost 40 I can be like, they didn't get the ticket for like going out and, but they have deep relationships in their community. People they know for generations. Those

The Farmer's Life [01:36:11] Are my friends now. They're like, if I could find something that pays me as well as I do in Chicago or Indianapolis, I'd come back home.

Vance Crowe [01:36:21] Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:36:22] So they're, they want to come back home, but they can't. I found that out. But then now that getting into it, there's others that stayed too. So it's like, you know, my dad was the farmer and now I'm the farmer. The guy that was in my mom and dad's class that ran the jewelry store in town. His two boys run it now. My friends or one of my classmates parents that ran the big real estate place in town. Now

Vance Crowe [01:36:53] He's at the real estate place. So you, you must be in a, in an unusual town, somewhat like mine. But you know, you talk to somebody like Jared McDaniel and he points out

The Farmer's Life [01:37:00] Yeah there's

Vance Crowe [01:37:01] Like,

The Farmer's Life [01:37:01] I'm rural and then there's, that's different.

Vance Crowe [01:37:05] So how far away are you from a town?

The Farmer's Life [01:37:07] I'm 10 minutes from Monticello, which is like five, 6,000 people. And then

Vance Crowe [01:37:11] You can get groceries there and a couple fast food restaurants

The Farmer's Life [01:37:13] In Illinois. You've probably, Indiana Beach is in my town.

Vance Crowe [01:37:16] Okay.

The Farmer's Life [01:37:16] So

Vance Crowe [01:37:17] I didn't realize you were that far north.

The Farmer's Life [01:37:18] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:37:20] I guess I didn't realize that. So

The Farmer's Life [01:37:21] Yeah, the whole, there's more than corner Indiana if you've heard that. That's where I'm from.

Vance Crowe [01:37:25] Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:37:26] Yeah. So we're,

Vance Crowe [01:37:27] When I was up at that Notre Dame game, I wasn't that far from your house.

The Farmer's Life [01:37:29] I don't care about Notre Dame.

Vance Crowe [01:37:30] Yeah, well I I was at a Notre Dame game and I I didn't realize how close you were.

The Farmer's Life [01:37:35] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:37:36] So when you, when you came back to farming. Yeah. Was this just like giving up or did you like Oh my city thing?

The Farmer's Life [01:37:46] No, this was,

Vance Crowe [01:37:47] What were you doing at the farm supply store?

The Farmer's Life [01:37:49] So I got hired, they had a job fair. 'cause they were opening a new store in our town. There wasn't, they did a lot of, they went into old Kmart as Kmart was falling apart. Right. So they went into the old Kmart in our town. So the only thing, I never would've thought about working retail like ever. I think what? So after I graduated I just kept working on the farm like I did every summer while I looked for a job. And then this real king thing came along and I was like, well I'll go, I'll apply. I like, I think the only other interview I had was like at a car dealership sell cars. And I was like, I went to the interview, I was like, why am I even, why am I here? I hope they don't offer this job to

Vance Crowe [01:38:33] Me because

The Farmer's Life [01:38:33] I really don't want it. You're

Vance Crowe [01:38:35] Extreme Would introvert now he

The Farmer's Life [01:38:37] Comes to would Oh yeah. Like this would be

Vance Crowe [01:38:38] Horrible. This would be literally prison for Bryan Scott.

The Farmer's Life [01:38:41] Oh yeah. Like I'm like searching monster.com or whatever.

Vance Crowe [01:38:45] Wow. For

The Farmer's Life [01:38:46] Anything but any, so this came along if you got hired on, on the management crew, like you gotta work at the store for several months before it was open. So that's what interested me. Like I really like, like behind the scenes

Vance Crowe [01:39:01] Yeah. Stuff you would get a big view of that. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:39:04] So like I was one of the first five people hired and so for like three months there was just five of us like moving the Kmart shelves into the rural king position and setting up cash registers with the IT guys and stuff. So that, that was cool. And it was different. And I really did like it at first. And I found out my manager Kelly, he came from Kmart and a lot of guys came from like Lowe's and Home Depot. They were managing those stores. They really liked Rural King. 'cause at the time when they, 'cause our store was store number 27.

Vance Crowe [01:39:38] Okay. Before they got really big.

The Farmer's Life [01:39:40] Yeah, they, they're down in Florida now and all kinds of stuff. But because they, if you were the store manager, they let you run your store. If you came from one of those huge places, like

Vance Crowe [01:39:52] You're just a cog in a wheel

The Farmer's Life [01:39:53] Your entire day was on a spreadsheet for you. Right.

Vance Crowe [01:39:57] Basically.

The Farmer's Life [01:39:58] So they really enjoyed the freedom of it. So I remember going into work the first day Kelly sat me down, he's like, do you know why I hired you? And I hated making a resume 'cause all I ever did was work on the farm in the summer. I didn't do an internship in college. I didn't do anything. I worked on the farm in the summer. That was it. And but

Vance Crowe [01:40:17] What does somebody need to know more than that? Like farm kid working the farm. Yeah. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:40:21] So he was like, I was like, I don't know why you hired me as assistant manager. And he is like, he goes, you don't, and he'd been in retail like forever and he's like, you don't have any bad habits. He goes, I don't have to break any bad habits that you have.

Vance Crowe [01:40:38] Oh that's so interesting.

The Farmer's Life [01:40:39] I you don't know anything.

Vance Crowe [01:40:40] You don't know anything. I hired you 'cause you're a blank slate.

The Farmer's Life [01:40:42] I could mold you.

Vance Crowe [01:40:43] That's good.

The Farmer's Life [01:40:44] So then he went back to the store that was in his hometown a few miles away about a year. And then I became the store manager or that store.

Vance Crowe [01:40:53] Oh.

The Farmer's Life [01:40:55] So, and actually in between there, the position for ag department buyer came open and I was encouraged to take it 'cause I didn't have buying experience, but I knew what I was talking about with the stuff I would be buying. So I, I thought about it for a few days I think. And there's about a year after I was outta college. So Nicole and I were getting married in a couple months and she had a really good job that she liked. And I was like, well we don't and I didn't know if I'd like it to.

Vance Crowe [01:41:32] This would require you to move.

The Farmer's Life [01:41:33] Move. I had moved to Illinois to, I learned it's like two, it's Matt Toon.

Vance Crowe [01:41:39] Yeah. It's

The Farmer's Life [01:41:39] Not Mattoon, it's Matt Toon. That's where headquarters is at. So yeah, I would've had to move to Mattoon and worked in the corporate office there.

Vance Crowe [01:41:47] And so, and

The Farmer's Life [01:41:48] I don't even know if I would've got it. I didn't even try to apply for it. How long

Vance Crowe [01:41:51] Did you do? Did manager job.

The Farmer's Life [01:41:52] So I ended up moving to another store a couple towns over and I ran that one for almost three years. And the last two years I really, I was looking for a job constantly. The last two years. Is

Vance Crowe [01:42:07] It a job that paid well?

The Farmer's Life [01:42:09] Mm, it wasn't awesome. I would, if I got all my bonuses and everything, 50 to 55.

Vance Crowe [01:42:20] Okay. So a few years outta school. That's not bad. No, it's not bad

The Farmer's Life [01:42:23] Because it was kind of funny. It's

Vance Crowe [01:42:24] Not that Wall Street money.

The Farmer's Life [01:42:25] My my favorite thing. Yeah, my favorite thing was, 'cause I was store manager, I was like 26 or something was, I'd be out in the middle of the floor and somebody asked me for some like ridiculous deal on something and I'd be like, no. And then like five minutes later, like the store manager after the service desk and I'd walk up there and like, eh, still no.

Vance Crowe [01:42:47] So people try and make deals with the,

The Farmer's Life [01:42:49] Oh man. My favorite one was I did learn a lot and I became, my wife will tell you I just, I had to become less introverted. Like I had to deal with people had 35 people under me. I had customers coming in all the time. Right. And so the one, so we sold, like in ag we sold like those a ace rotor, mold tanks, the big plastic tanks for fertilizer or whatever, stuff like that. So a guy was looking for one of a certain amount of gallons and the what you call a pickup tank. Like it fits over the fenders in the bed of your pickup takes up most of the bed was the right gallons or no, it was the right right shape. It was the shape you needed. But next to it was a, what you call a leg tank, which takes like metal hoops over it. It's a lot more heavy duty. There's a lot more plastic in it. It's a lot more complicated shape. And I think that the pickup tank was like $300 and the leg tank was like 700 some dollars or something like that. And he's like, well he, they're not, neither one of 'em is really what I need, but the leg tank works better. So why don't you give me that for the price of the pickup tank. The saddle tank because

Vance Crowe [01:44:07] It doesn't fit with

The Farmer's Life [01:44:08] You needs. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:44:08] I'm like, no.

The Farmer's Life [01:44:10] And he's trying to do this to him. I'm like, can you make deals

Vance Crowe [01:44:14] At places like that if somebody came

The Farmer's Life [01:44:16] In? They actually, I think at one point they did weigh with it. 'cause it real king ran pretty lean to begin with.

Vance Crowe [01:44:24] And if you got, if you got a store manager, we would, we

The Farmer's Life [01:44:26] Had pretty regular sales. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:44:28] Like

The Farmer's Life [01:44:28] 10% and like a bag sale like Menards does or whatever. So, and then my saying I came up with working there is whenever I hear somebody say, the customer is always right, I'm like, no. I said, because some of them are wrong. Like that guy, some of 'em are just wrong and a surprising amount of 'em are trying to steal from you. I learned that was pretty shocking. How many people steal.

Vance Crowe [01:44:59] Really?

The Farmer's Life [01:45:00] It's a lot. It's a lot.

Vance Crowe [01:45:03] I,

The Farmer's Life [01:45:03] I almost went into, if I had stayed there, I probably would've gone into loss prevention. 'cause I liked catching people stealing stuff.

Vance Crowe [01:45:11] Were you good at it?

The Farmer's Life [01:45:13] I was. Okay. Not like the loss prevention people. We didn't have people, like every 10 stores had like a loss prevention person. So like we didn't have one in the store all the time. But man, when you watch them come question somebody and just see how they would trip people up.

Vance Crowe [01:45:30] Really

The Farmer's Life [01:45:31] Like asking the same question 20 times with different words

Vance Crowe [01:45:35] And eventually somebody, if they're lying gets the right answer. It's

The Farmer's Life [01:45:38] Pretty, yeah. I really liked catching probably especially employees stealing.

Vance Crowe [01:45:44] And your employee stole from

The Farmer's Life [01:45:46] Oh, quite a few. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:45:49] And like what are they trying to do? They're tucking shirts in and they're, they're grabbing

The Farmer's Life [01:45:52] Shoes or, oh, it'd be different stuff at each store. I got a high school kid stealing the refills for vending machine, like Mountain Dew and

Vance Crowe [01:46:03] Stuff like that. Oh okay. Yeah, of course.

The Farmer's Life [01:46:05] And we used to have that like at Christmas time we'd have like that $5 DVD bin We went. That was a fun interview. With the loss prevention people, he rang out a bunch of them for like a dollar instead of $5. And just 'cause somebody else at the store knew him. The customer was his mom. So, so like that's what the loss prevention people did. They were going through this whole thing. Like it wasn't until the end, until they showed the video and like, well that's your mom. Right? And he was like, oh God, but see, but they didn't know the cash register as well as I did. They're like, can you just change the price really quick? Because I think we had the thing, if it was under $5, a cashier could do it. 'cause it saves time.

Vance Crowe [01:46:51] Right.

The Farmer's Life [01:46:51] If it was over $5, a manager had to come do an override. So he was able to do it 'cause the item was $5. But I hadn't lost prevention, had me go through like, can he just like, can he do that by accident? Like he just accidentally did it 'cause he was talking to his mom and I was going through it. Like in my head I was like, I was like, no, it's like 12 keystrokes. So it wasn't in that and he had to do it like 10 times.

Vance Crowe [01:47:16] And how does somebody react if they just got caught to helping their mother steal something?

The Farmer's Life [01:47:21] He was pretty worried. And he, we did this a few times. He was 18. So basically we fired and trespassed him. 'cause the policy was kind like, unless it was really bad, like you don't need to send a 18-year-old to jail

Vance Crowe [01:47:38] Or

The Farmer's Life [01:47:38] Adult.

Vance Crowe [01:47:38] Yeah. Is he on his way? Is he on his way to prison at this point? Doubt, doubt, doubt. Was he that type of life or,

The Farmer's Life [01:47:43] I doubt it. He did come back in the store a couple times and I was like, I just pulled him aside. I was like, Nathan, you cannot come in here or I will have the police take you out next time.

Vance Crowe [01:47:56] And he just was like, Hey, I really need something.

The Farmer's Life [01:47:58] No, that finally got him Okay.

Vance Crowe [01:47:59] Ticket

The Farmer's Life [01:48:00] Out of there. And I don't know, I do have a lot of funny retail stories,

Vance Crowe [01:48:04] So, so I, I'm, I'm a little, we we probably won't be able to go that much longer. Right.

The Farmer's Life [01:48:10] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:48:10] But, but I, but this is fascinating and of course you can come back. We had talked a few months ago about how fun it would be to do a, I'm a farmer in the change my mind kind of mentality right now. What are the issues that people have with farming that, that you find that they're interested in hearing about?

The Farmer's Life [01:48:30] Yeah, like I, I do think the GMO thing is, it's seems like it's really died down.

Vance Crowe [01:48:35] It's

The Farmer's Life [01:48:36] Either died down or I've just avoided it. 'cause I feel like I've

Vance Crowe [01:48:41] Set my piece. It, it definitely feels way, way calm to me. Yeah. And, and it did, it did a few years into me working at Monsanto.

The Farmer's Life [01:48:47] When you have people like Mark Linus switching sides on that conversation.

Vance Crowe [01:48:51] Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:48:52] Remember that?

Vance Crowe [01:48:52] Yeah. He

The Farmer's Life [01:48:53] Was a big, what was he, he started something like, or he was,

Vance Crowe [01:48:57] He's a part of that Cornell Alliance for science. It was, it was good. But I mean like all the energy is out of that. Right. Anybody that was gonna flip on GMOs, like

The Farmer's Life [01:49:05] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:49:05] Who, who else out there would need to.

The Farmer's Life [01:49:07] Yeah. And

Vance Crowe [01:49:08] So what are the issues then?

The Farmer's Life [01:49:10] A lot of it's, there's still a lot of people that think farming is corporate and like,

Vance Crowe [01:49:20] And when they say they think it's it's corporate, what do you think? They think

The Farmer's Life [01:49:25] They, they think like I am an employee of a seed company. That I'm doing the same thing I did at the store. I'm running this for someone else. Which is the case for almost nobody. You get, some of you get into, you're getting into that with livestock a little bit. We've been outta livestock for a long time.

Vance Crowe [01:49:47] Or farm managers, which they, then they become

The Farmer's Life [01:49:49] Employees. Yeah. I mean there's some of it, but most of it's just like my farm. It's, except when we get help in the fall, it's me and my dad. That's it.

Vance Crowe [01:50:00] Yeah. Do you think that, well I was just gonna give you a leading question. I'll just say what I think. I think that that farmers run the risk of being perceived as if not corporate farmers or if not run by corporations, then they are corporation or corporate fat cats themselves.

The Farmer's Life [01:50:17] Yeah. And then

Vance Crowe [01:50:18] I, I think one of the dangers of, so Jason Ma talked about the, the subsidies for insurance.

The Farmer's Life [01:50:25] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:50:26] And I think one of the vulnerabilities that the farming community has is talking about those things because it does look like those subsidies limit risk for people that are already instantiated and you don't have turnover. So new farmers, it's a lot harder for new people to get in 'cause you don't have some farmers failing. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:50:44] And I've haven't thought too hard about that for a while, but so for people that don't know, crop insurance is subsidized. So, and like when I get my bill or my policy statement, I see it on there, but it's not free to me either. So it's roughly, so

Vance Crowe [01:51:07] If it was a hundred dollars of policy, how much of it would be subsidized?

The Farmer's Life [01:51:11] 60 to 80.

Vance Crowe [01:51:13] That's pretty subsidized.

The Farmer's Life [01:51:14] It's a lot. It's a lot. So, but the price of crop insurance changes every year. It's complicated. It's market prices and the spring price and fall price and what your level of coverage is. But we're on a roughly 2,500 acres out of pocket. We're paying 40 to $50,000 every year out of our pocket. So it's not even subsidized. It's not cheap. And I do wonder if the subsidy was gone,

Vance Crowe [01:51:45] If the price was returned. But if

The Farmer's Life [01:51:46] It, if it was gone in a vacuum and I was paying 80 to a hundred dollars an acre

Vance Crowe [01:51:51] Right.

The Farmer's Life [01:51:52] I probably just wouldn't buy it. But surely if it goes away, that doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Vance Crowe [01:52:00] Something will

The Farmer's Life [01:52:01] Come, something will take its place. Somebody will innovate something. I don't, I'm not an insurance

Vance Crowe [01:52:06] Expert. But I mean, to me, like when you start having the, like the government's gonna kick in a certain amount of money and make it possible for you to spend 40, the the, there's every incentive for the insurance company to keep raising up that price because the amount it hurts you not that much. The amount that it hurts the government, they don't care. It's not their money. Right.

The Farmer's Life [01:52:25] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:52:25] So they're just skimming right off the top. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:52:27] And then now you have this, these market facilitation program, which is Trump's thing of, you know, trying to keep us happy during the trade war. So, which,

Vance Crowe [01:52:43] How's it going? Are farmers happy over the trade war?

The Farmer's Life [01:52:45] Well, so I'm only gonna speak for corn and soybeans 'cause I'm not gonna pretend to know about anything else or even the same thing I do in other states. 'cause the MFP payments varied by county. How they figured out how much you're hurt by trade, by county in several weeks time. The way the government normally works. I have no idea. 'cause the two counties we farm in were $10 an acre different.

Vance Crowe [01:53:13] Really?

The Farmer's Life [01:53:13] Yeah. So, but it's one of those things like, I can't come out looking good on this, I don't think to non-farm people, but put it out there. So we, we've gotten two rounds of these MFP payments and it's, and you, you have to jump through a few groups, but not much. And this is, this

Vance Crowe [01:53:37] Is thought of to to, to make sure that the price support for soybeans, which China bought a ton of

The Farmer's Life [01:53:43] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:53:44] Stays there.

The Farmer's Life [01:53:44] So roughly before the trade war started, beans were $10 a bushel. Shortly after they were $8, now they're getting back up towards nine. So they, they're trying to kind of make that difference up to us. Which it's fine. I've never found a farmer yet that like nobody, I don't know who was asking for those payments. Like I don't think it came from the farm. And I'm not like a farm bureau guy or anything. Maybe that was involved too. But it seemed like it came from the Washington side. Not people asking for it. Because we just want the market back. That's all we want is to be on the playing field. But do

Vance Crowe [01:54:30] You think you're gonna have the market back when China has 50% less hogs because of

The Farmer's Life [01:54:34] Yeah. See African

Vance Crowe [01:54:36] Swine fever

The Farmer's Life [01:54:36] That doesn't make the news is not the bulk of it because the trade war's a big deal. But them losing half their hog population, they were eating those soybeans. That's a big deal.

Vance Crowe [01:54:50] That's right.

The Farmer's Life [01:54:50] Without the trade war, that's a big deal.

Vance Crowe [01:54:52] I think so I've been following this African swine fever for months and I keep trying to to, to bring it up because one I, you don't wanna panic. Like it's not like it spreads to human beings. Right. And you have to worry about that. The challenge is a huge amount of global stability is based on can poor people get access to meat protein in particular? Yeah. In China. If they can't, we don't actually know what will happen. If you, if you knock out 50% of the pork population now Brazil, their market for soybeans goes down as well. I mean like they're all sorts of weird knock on effects.

The Farmer's Life [01:55:32] Yeah. And like if, if you're in the top ranks in China you can't, you can't let a billion people get hungry.

Vance Crowe [01:55:41] No, that's right.

The Farmer's Life [01:55:41] You'd be gone. Which I remember when that whole Arab spring thing happened, after it was kind all over, I read an article, you know, everything you read was like political and all this stuff. It got traced back to basic Egypt had a bad wheat crop and people got hungry. Yeah. So they took to the streets.

Vance Crowe [01:56:02] Well and the, from what I heard it was, it was just a slight like between one to 5 cent per kilo change, but that amount for wheat changing and these people knew they weren't gonna be able to eat or they eat or the, the poorest of them and or people forget when they're at the top of the, when they're at the top of the food chain. You're, you're shopping at Trader Joe's. You can go to Target. You don't have to worry about putting gas in your car.

The Farmer's Life [01:56:27] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:56:28] Is that there are people that if they don't have, if if the prices go too high, they literally can't eat.

The Farmer's Life [01:56:36] Yeah. Like

Vance Crowe [01:56:36] That. That's not something that I have ever faced in my life outside of college when I'm, you know, if I really needed to, I could. But like in their circumstance, they went from having pork once a once a year at a holiday. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [01:56:49] To

Vance Crowe [01:56:49] Then once a month, once a week, once every day. Now it's a part of their culture. If it starts going where they can't, they're gonna start feeling poor.

The Farmer's Life [01:56:56] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:56:57] People don't wanna feel poor.

The Farmer's Life [01:56:58] Well, so we grew a couple hundred acres of popcorn and corn is not a big deal. And like corn and exports to China with corn is like, not even on like the chart soybeans, it's number one like corn, it's pretty low. But with the popcorn, we just contracted our acres yesterday. So we were talking about it a little bit with our field guy. We,

Vance Crowe [01:57:24] That's saying somebody bought a futures contract on the popcorn you put out there.

The Farmer's Life [01:57:28] Well no. They contracted our acreage Right.

Vance Crowe [01:57:31] To plant this much corn. This is how much we want out of it

The Farmer's Life [01:57:34] Basically. Well, popcorn's popcorn's nice because we cannot over or under deliver, we're only contracting the acres. They'll take whatever we produce.

Vance Crowe [01:57:45] Oh that's interesting.

The Farmer's Life [01:57:46] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:57:46] So there's

The Farmer's Life [01:57:47] No risk on that side of it. But anyway, so as China's middle class comes up, they're, I can't even tell you the rate. It's like, it's ridiculous. Like the amount of movie theaters a day that would open that is huge for the popcorn industry.

Vance Crowe [01:58:03] Oh.

The Farmer's Life [01:58:04] So if you can't ship a container of popcorn, that's a big problem right now.

Vance Crowe [01:58:10] Wow. Where else grows popcorn?

The Farmer's Life [01:58:13] So we used to be number one.

Vance Crowe [01:58:17] When you say we, you mean Indiana?

The Farmer's Life [01:58:19] United States.

Vance Crowe [01:58:20] United States.

The Farmer's Life [01:58:21] Yeah. Indiana's number two in the states. And my buddies Ryan and Zach in Nebraska will tell you Nebraska is number one. And I will tell you they cheat because they irrigate it. So, but several years ago, like Argentina really ramped up and they grow like twice as much popcorn as we do.

Vance Crowe [01:58:39] Interesting. So

The Farmer's Life [01:58:39] Argentina and then the United States.

Vance Crowe [01:58:41] Okay.

The Farmer's Life [01:58:42] So, but it's, it's huge. As they get more middle class, they're doing what you and I do. They go to the movies on Friday night or whatever. Right.

Vance Crowe [01:58:48] And

The Farmer's Life [01:58:49] They eat popcorn. So it's a, it's a huge, huge market over there. 'cause there's a thing, we have a grower meeting every year. Like your popcorn sales here really only like go up as there's more people as total market share. 'cause like forever Americans have ate X amount of popcorn.

Vance Crowe [01:59:09] Right. And you're not gonna have wild changes to that. Right. There may be some popcorn fad that ink

The Farmer's Life [01:59:15] It up. They, it's, it's died down. You see all this pre-pop stuff now with all the crazy flavors like potato chips?

Vance Crowe [01:59:21] Oh yeah. Actually my my buddy. Yeah. Hot Charlie. Have you ever had his popcorn?

The Farmer's Life [01:59:25] No.

Vance Crowe [01:59:26] We gotta find a way for you get it. I had it and I was like, I'm only gonna have a couple of kernels. Yeah. And like I wake up 30 minutes later with like popcorn all over my face. I, and I'm not saying that just 'cause he was on my show. Yeah. I was really, really good.

The Farmer's Life [01:59:39] I think it's died down some, but when we grow for a weaver popcorn and when they started doing the pre-pop stuff, there was like a few years in a row. Like it was sales were like 300% up each year. So the pre-pop,

Vance Crowe [01:59:53] I believe that pre-pop

The Farmer's Life [01:59:53] Stuff did kind of, well

Vance Crowe [01:59:55] I don't, I don't like, I don't like popping popcorn and I, I I think I still have it. I moved it yesterday. I had your popcorn in the

The Farmer's Life [02:00:03] Other. You eaten it because

Vance Crowe [02:00:04] I cleaned up. Yeah. I don't have a microwave. Do you have a microwave? Well you have kids. Yeah,

The Farmer's Life [02:00:07] Yeah

Vance Crowe [02:00:08] Kids. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [02:00:09] But some people like to do it on this stove or the air popper or whatever. All our stuff is microwave that we grow. So that's what I

Vance Crowe [02:00:14] Buy. What's the difference in, in growing for microwave popcorn versus stove top? It's

The Farmer's Life [02:00:21] That part's not different. Like, like what hot Charlie's is probably gonna have.

Vance Crowe [02:00:26] So

The Farmer's Life [02:00:26] There's two types of pop, there's butterfly, which is what we grow. That's what blows up. And like you get at the movie theater and then all this pre-pop flavored stuff is mushroom. It's more like a ball because if you put all that flavoring on it after it's popped and it packages the butterfly is not, it's not strong enough. Like it falls apart.

Vance Crowe [02:00:47] Oh. So

The Farmer's Life [02:00:47] Like if pop like you can kind of squish

Vance Crowe [02:00:50] Thet

The Farmer's Life [02:00:50] Break. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [02:00:50] Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [02:00:51] Yeah. It's tougher.

Vance Crowe [02:00:53] No kidding.

The Farmer's Life [02:00:53] Yeah. So that's why the microwave and the movie theater is fluffy stuff and the pre flavored stuff is, and like caramel corn is like the mushroom.

Vance Crowe [02:01:04] Oh man. And

The Farmer's Life [02:01:05] They'll say the movie theaters like the biggest pop volume. So they can sell you like a bucket of air for 15 bucks.

Vance Crowe [02:01:15] Whoa. Give me your prediction on the biggest issue of farming, like in the public in the next five years. If it's not GMOs, what's, is it pesticides? What is it?

The Farmer's Life [02:01:32] Maybe some on pesticides. We always water and pollution is a big deal. And that hole kind of corporate false mindset thing. Well, well water, water is a big one and we, we do play a part in it and we need to be responsible. I think farming's getting better about that all the time. Which I like to say if nutrients are going down the Wabash River to the Ohio, to the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico for my farm, like I don't want that because that fertilizer costs me money.

Vance Crowe [02:02:07] Right.

The Farmer's Life [02:02:08] So that's just money leaving that didn't do anything for me. Right.

Vance Crowe [02:02:11] So

The Farmer's Life [02:02:11] I don't want it leaving either. But I also think cities aren't taking as much responsibility as they could. One, one thing I remember is, you know, we always get hit for the golf dead zone and then there's like a Lake Erie or whatever problems up there. I remember a few years ago, Buffalo New York had like seven feet of snow in like one event. And then a couple days later it was like 60 degrees or something. And like it all melted. And I remember seeing the mayor on TV saying it might have even been Governor Cuomo said, from the city of Buffalo X, many millions and millions and millions of human sewage is going in the lake and there's nothing we can do about it 'cause we can't handle the snow melt. But nobody cares.

Vance Crowe [02:03:06] This you are saying

The Farmer's Life [02:03:07] If an announcing nitrogen runs off my farm, I'm the worst person in the world. I

Vance Crowe [02:03:10] Had Dwayne Fa on and he said the exact same thing. He was like up in, up in Washington State, they had huge amounts of rain.

The Farmer's Life [02:03:19] Yeah. They

Vance Crowe [02:03:19] Had to discharge and, and and I think he even discharged it even when there's not huge amounts of rain, they're going out

The Farmer's Life [02:03:25] Right. And

Vance Crowe [02:03:26] Putting it out in the ocean. And he's like, if you guys took your own medicine, you know, I heard something on.

The Farmer's Life [02:03:32] Well, and then sewage has antibiotics and heavy metals in it.

Vance Crowe [02:03:35] Oh yeah.

The Farmer's Life [02:03:36] Which, I mean the farm stuff is, it is regulated.

Vance Crowe [02:03:39] Yeah. The, I I heard a really good piece of advice the other day. I was, I actually told Jason last, on the last episode about this guy that I've been watching on YouTube. So I'm gonna give you my guy. I said it on the podcast before and you'll have to give me some new person that I haven't

The Farmer's Life [02:03:56] Looked

Vance Crowe [02:03:57] At before. I think this is a good game to play with your friends. The guy that I've been listening to, his name is Wes Watson. And he is a, he's, he's a paroled convict. He was in federal prison for 10 years and he has a shaved head and he goes shirtless on his podcast and he's like huge muscles and tattoos all over the place. And like you can tell that he was not a good man. Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [02:04:22] Like

Vance Crowe [02:04:23] Not not a good guy. Right. And that he, it's really similar to Dante's Inferno in the sense that it's like he was in hell for 10 years and he came back and is like, Hey, I know how to, I know how to straighten out your life. And it's to do these, put this kinda structure in your life.

The Farmer's Life [02:04:39] Right.

Vance Crowe [02:04:39] And I, I think it's worth checking out. Yeah. So Wes Watson is his name.

The Farmer's Life [02:04:43] Okay. Wes Watson. Alright.

Vance Crowe [02:04:44] It, what's yours?

The Farmer's Life [02:04:45] So my oldest son and I, we watch quite a bit of, he likes educational stuff.

Vance Crowe [02:04:51] He's

The Farmer's Life [02:04:51] Kind of a geek like me a little bit. We watch a lot of Guy has a YouTube channel Smarter every Day.

Vance Crowe [02:04:57] Oh yeah. Destin. Yep.

The Farmer's Life [02:04:58] You know

Vance Crowe [02:04:59] Him. Oh yeah.

The Farmer's Life [02:04:59] That's a really good one.

Vance Crowe [02:05:00] When I started my company Articulate Ventures, the one that I run now, way back when I was living in DC I started a blog and my blog was at first 'cause I didn't have any content. It was giving awards quote unquote, to people that were explaining things simply. And it was just a picture of a puppy with a ribbon or something. And I, he was the first one I gave and this is when he was just getting started. He maybe had like 10,000 followers. Right.

The Farmer's Life [02:05:28] And

Vance Crowe [02:05:29] He wrote me, he was great. I think that guy Destiny's.

The Farmer's Life [02:05:32] Yeah. He's tweeted me a couple times. Really? Because he did, he did this whole thing where he like poked a hole in the side of like an inflatable pool and he's all about Laminer flow.

Vance Crowe [02:05:40] Yeah. Yeah. He is.

The Farmer's Life [02:05:41] And then we went to a waterpark and stood under a thing. I took a picture of me and Matthew like, this is laminar flow. And we tweeted smarter every day. And he's like, yeah, it is so

Vance Crowe [02:05:50] Cool dude. You should invite him out to your, to your farm. There's no doubt he would love that.

The Farmer's Life [02:05:54] Yeah. I would like to get,

Vance Crowe [02:05:56] Get Purdue to bring him out. He's an engineer extra. There you go. And then, and then have him come out to your farm.

The Farmer's Life [02:06:01] I think one thing that'd be super, I've tweeted him a couple times and not got any feedback, but the farming simulator game is a pretty big deal.

Vance Crowe [02:06:09] Yeah.

The Farmer's Life [02:06:10] And my son, my son plays it a lot. And there's a, he watches YouTube channels of

Vance Crowe [02:06:16] Just people playing farm, simulating

The Farmer's Life [02:06:17] Guys that are doing like, let's play. Millions of people

Vance Crowe [02:06:18] Watch that stuff.

The Farmer's Life [02:06:19] Oh he,

Vance Crowe [02:06:20] It's insane.

The Farmer's Life [02:06:20] The one Dagger win is the one guy he wa he's got millions of followers. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [02:06:24] I'm

The Farmer's Life [02:06:24] Like, if I, it's like giant software I think is who makes it again, it's like if I could get them to like get a couple of those, let's play guys to come out and drive the tractors, that would be freaking awesome.

Vance Crowe [02:06:36] Oh yeah. That's a great idea, man. That's a great idea. We'll, we'll snip this and you can send it to 'em. And what's the name of the company that runs that? I

The Farmer's Life [02:06:44] Think it's Giant Software. Well

Vance Crowe [02:06:46] I hope it is 'cause you're giving somebody a shout out. So Giant Software, bring some of your people that are doing, let's play videos and tiktoks about farming simulator. We'll put

The Farmer's Life [02:06:56] 'em in a real attractor.

Vance Crowe [02:06:58] Right. And have 'em have a real Indiana summer with some, some cool. Like look around and how things work. There

The Farmer's Life [02:07:04] You go. That

Vance Crowe [02:07:04] Sounds great. Well, if people wanted to find you on social media, how would they do it?

The Farmer's Life [02:07:10] Go find me. You know, Instagram, Twitter at The Farmer's Life facebook.com/the Farmer's Life. Just the farmer's life. You'll find me

Vance Crowe [02:07:18] And they'll find videos of like what it's like to be farmer. Yep.

The Farmer's Life [02:07:22] Trying to get more video centric in this 2019, 2020.

Vance Crowe [02:07:28] And I feel like we should give a big shout out to JP Loves Cotton on Twitter. That's Janice. She is a woman that I would say is probably the most under-recognized figure in helping change the conversation about things like GMOs and corporations. She was just a woman that started a blog and then when Monsanto got into their existential crisis where they were like, oh my God, people hate us enough that they'll tear down our fences. We need somebody that can help us figure out how to do blogs and social media. And they, they gave her a chance to do something really cool. Yeah. I think the biggest mistake was that she was not put in charge because, and

The Farmer's Life [02:08:08] She,

Vance Crowe [02:08:10] She was, she

The Farmer's Life [02:08:11] Was, I think a lot of people, a lot of people know, but maybe it is a little under there. She did so much with non-farm bloggers.

Vance Crowe [02:08:19] Right.

The Farmer's Life [02:08:19] Which anybody that's been in online agricultural advocacy for a while, the phrase is always preaching to the choir. And how, how do we talk to people that are off the farm? 'cause it's, it's hard, it's hard to get 'em, like I say, if I put in pictures of big green tractors on Facebook, I'm gonna attract a bunch of farmers.

Vance Crowe [02:08:44] I think the, the biggest credit that I can give Janice is when I go out and give a speech. I'm talking about philosophy and I'm talking about these big picture ideas. Yeah. She shows up and she helps people figure out, how do I be like Brian Scott, how do I start a

The Farmer's Life [02:08:58] Yeah. She's

Vance Crowe [02:08:59] A thing. She's

The Farmer's Life [02:09:00] Great at that or so I can just, I can hear her voice saying it. Like, if somebody's on the opposite side of something, Janice would I hear, I hear that You're really passionate about that. Yeah. She's so great at bridging that gap on two totally

Vance Crowe [02:09:17] Opposite sides. I I, so I worked very, very closely with her and I am extremely disagreeable and she's highly agreeable. And I don't know that I'd ever met anybody that was able to get me to be like, all right. Yeah, no, I see their point now. Good,

The Farmer's Life [02:09:31] Good

Vance Crowe [02:09:31] Job. Yeah. So anyway, we've done,

The Farmer's Life [02:09:33] We've done

Vance Crowe [02:09:33] Enough. But I, I am grateful to Janice because she introduced me to you. And I think you have traveled all over the world talking about farming, reaching millions and millions and millions of people. And for those that are never gonna get out and actually get to go on a farm, they get to see what it's like to be a farmer in the United States in 2020. Yep. And so thanks for all the work you do, and thanks for being a real good friend to me, man.

The Farmer's Life [02:09:57] Yeah, thanks for having me, Vance. Good to know you

Vance Crowe [02:10:00] Good man. Thanks. Yep.