Trump CLAIMS cattle markets were from his tariffs with @JRcowfarmer

About this episode

Weekly Ag Tribes Report news roundup with returning guest JR Burdick, a Missouri raw-dairy/pastured-hog farmer and outspoken ag-Twitter voice. The news segment covers Trump's public post pressuring ranchers to lower beef prices (and the pushback from cattle groups), the looming freeze of SNAP benefits during the government shutdown, the AWS outage that knocked out John Deere's Operation Center and Burdick's own card-payment system during harvest, and FSA offices reopening to process $3B in farm payments despite the shutdown. Burdick uses the AWS outage to argue for redundancy and cash-on-hand resilience, and pivots naturally into the show's recurring Bitcoin land price report (land in his county running ~$7,000/acre, or about 15.7 acres per Bitcoin). In the Peter Thiel paradox segment, Burdick describes two young Gen Z men in his community who want to rebuild rural Main Street not for careers but for belonging — rejecting "placeless" cosmopolitan life. He can't name a true "worthy adversary" because he feels political polarization has replaced genuine disagreement with people who "don't want to reason together." Vance closes by praising a recent Farm Credit board meeting where group deliberation produced better ideas than any individual — a rare experience he says he's only seen in rural settings.

“Well, every politician is going to take anything good and claim, claim responsibility for it. So we have to, we have to stand back and go, well, that's politics.”

“So EBT payments, you're exactly right. Those SNAP benefits have to stay in the... USDA, they have to stay national, otherwise we, we really lose all of our cloud.”

“It's not held in somebody else's cloud that's gonna be lost and and you gotta get it off the exchange.”

Key moments

• Trump's social media post blaming/pressuring ranchers over beef prices sparks industry backlash; Burdick gives Trump "a little bit of a pass" on politicians claiming credit but objects to him moving live cattle futures markets with a single post.
• Vance and Burdick trace record beef prices to the smallest cattle herd since the 1950s, not tariffs — "when you know a lot about it, you can see that Trump's kind of being a blowhard here."
• SNAP benefits set to lapse November 1st amid the shutdown; Burdick predicts benefits will still be paid ("we still have a printer") but argues the standoff is a missed opportunity to push SNAP toward state block grants.
• AWS outage takes down John Deere's Operation Center and Burdick's own card-payment app mid-harvest, prompting a shared discussion of over-reliance on cloud infrastructure and the value of cash and backup equipment.
• Bitcoin land price report — land in Linn County, MO runs ~$7,000/acre (0.063 BTC/acre, ~15.7 acres per BTC); Burdick explains his "middle finger to the system" attraction to Bitcoin and hopes to trade half a hog for BTC.