Vance Crowe Podcast 021: Rob Sharkey & Megz Reynolds; farmers talk trade, China, & checkoff programs

Guest [00:00:00] Well, the way that it's affected us is that with extradition treaties, we had to detain the Huawei CTO, and that basically triggered retaliation from China. And so what they did was shut down our canola market, import market into China, and 40% of our canola products go to China. So for us, it's our largest shareholder of that market. This is the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:27] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. So, for the last few weeks on Friday, I've been releasing a bonus episode where I talk about communications lessons that will make you a tangibly better communicator. But right now, I actually have had so many good interviews, people stopping by and recording sessions that I wasn't even planning on doing that. I have a backlog of amazing and interesting interviews, and I want to get 'em out because I think they're just burning a hole. In my, my podcast pocket recently, two people, megs Reynolds and Rob Sharkey stopped by to hang out at my house, and we were having such an interesting conversation that I decided, wait, wait, wait. Let's go from the patio to the studio. Let's line up some microphones and let's, let's just do a podcast. Let's just record a conversation that we're having, and that's what we did. If you're in agriculture, these are two names that you are definitely aware of. And if you're outside of agriculture, these are two names of people that are making a huge difference in the ag communications world. Rob Sharkey has his own XM radio show, and up in Canada, megs Reynolds has actually run for political office and is a big voice for farmers trying to impact policy. During this conversation, you will hear us talk about trade with China, how the Huawei extradition situation between the US and Canada is now affecting canola trade. We'll talk about this concept called Think a Farmer, which is a really big deal in the ag world, and we'll be talking about kind of our impressions of how effective is it for farmers to try and tell their story to regular people.

Vance Crowe [00:02:08] This is a very interesting and incredibly rare conversation. I was so glad that Megs and Rob decided to stop by, and I'm really glad to share this with you. Before I get started, I wanted to let you know about a conference that you may be interested in, or you may know actually a college student that would be interested in it. It's going to be held at South Dakota State University because it's put on by the South Dakota Farm Bureau Collegiate chapter. This is a group of students that got together and said, we think that we can create a conference where students can get together, network, get their ideas put out into the world, learn who is doing what on other college campuses, and how can we get better at explaining the values, the technology, the ways of thinking that people in the agriculture world have, so that that way when college students are on campus and they run into a professor that doesn't know anything about agriculture, they can be more compelling or they can put on events that will engage kids that are on college campuses, that are from urban environments, and don't know anything at all about how agriculture works. I'm really excited to be going to this conference, and I think that the entire conference will be very interesting. I know Derek Josie, a dairy farmer from the Northwest will be there. As I look out at the landscape, particularly the political landscape, and I see things like people in the city calling for the abolishment of the electoral college. This is happening because there is an ever-growing divide between people living in the city and people living in the countryside.

Vance Crowe [00:03:45] And if agriculture, if farmers are going to do a better job of being able to explain how they're thinking about what they're thinking about the value of things like the electoral college and their influence over politics on the national scale, you gotta get together. You gotta meet people, you gotta have your ideas challenged, you've gotta learn things, you've gotta network. So I think this is a very big opportunity, and if you have a college student that you are connected with, help get them to South Dakota State University. It's gonna be held between October 11th through the 13th, and this is coming right up. So I will leave a link to this on both the show notes of the podcast as well as my website, Vance Crowe dot com. Or you can just go to Eventbrite and search for the Learn Grow Lead Collegiate Midwestern Farm Bureau conference. Without further ado, I'm gonna hand it over to the interview with Rob Sharky and Megs Reynolds. Thanks for joining me, Meg Reynolds. Rob Sharky, welcome to the podcast. Thanks

Guest [00:04:50] For having us. Yeah, it's fun to have an impromptu podcast every once in a while.

Vance Crowe [00:04:54] Yeah, you know, I've had about 19 episodes and I would say 15 of them have all stemmed from, I was drinking on the patio with my friends and then said, you guys should come back and do a podcast, but you two are in town only for a short time. So I thought I better not waste this chance, even though you've been drinking, I'm interested in getting your perspective down on video. So welcome to the podcast. And let me start with you, Meg Reynolds. You are a farmer from Canada?

Guest [00:05:25] Yes, Saskatchewan, Canada. So right above Montana.

Vance Crowe [00:05:28] And what does a farmer from from Saskatchewan farm?

Guest [00:05:32] Well, this year we've got in flax, lentils, barley and Durham wheat, which is used for growing pasta.

Vance Crowe [00:05:38] And you've been a farmer your whole life. You grew up in the farming world?

Guest [00:05:42] No, I grew up in a big city. I worked in the film industry for 10 years in Canada, and then I met a farmer and moved out to a grain farm.

Vance Crowe [00:05:49] Now when you say worked in the film industry, you were you, that that, that actually has kind of like a connotation. You, what were you doing in the film industry?

Guest [00:05:58] I was doing set deck and special effects, so everything behind camera to get ready for shooting the film and special effects was all the hands-on. So smoke, fire, explosions, all the fun stuff.

Vance Crowe [00:06:08] And to be totally candid, when we were setting up the cameras, it was you that we turned to to be like, Hey, how do we do this?

Guest [00:06:15] I might have taken over a little bit. That

Vance Crowe [00:06:17] Was great. I was great. And, and Rob Sharkey?

Guest [00:06:21] Yes,

Vance Crowe [00:06:22] You are. Hi Van, a farmer from Central Illinois. And while I have been on your podcast several times, this is the inaugural appearance for you.

Guest [00:06:29] I'm so excited to be here.

Vance Crowe [00:06:31] And so why don't you tell the listeners what kind of farmer are you and what, what's your backstory?

Guest [00:06:37] So my name is Rob Sharky. I go by the shark farmer in the digital circles. I raised corn and soybeans, so a stereotypical farm kid, grew up on the farm. And then, you know, eventually transitioned back to working with my dad. I tried my hand at hog farming, went to the verge of bankruptcy within the first six months of that, spent the next years of my life digging myself outta that hole. Three years ago I started a podcast and which you were on prominently, one of the, one of the episodes, it kind of took off and then we got an offer to do an XM show. And so we've kind of been building off that brand.

Vance Crowe [00:07:14] And for people that did not follow my career during Monsanto before I had a podcast, but have been listening to the podcast now, they probably wouldn't know. You actually made a huge difference in my life. So I was working for Monsano and I was making the case to them that podcasts were a deeply important thing and that if you, if you felt like the public didn't understand you, one of the most important things that you could do would be to get out to podcasts where even if the audience was not millions of people, there was a whole lot of value in getting to talk with people that were getting ideas out to a tightly knit group of people that we called tribes. And yours was one of the very first podcasts I ever did. And I don't know that I've ever told you how nervous the company was that I was doing that they were on the extreme. This

Guest [00:08:03] Was Monsanto. Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:08:04] Back when I was working at Monsanto. Oh,

Guest [00:08:06] Come on. Bunch of Nancy's.

Vance Crowe [00:08:09] So, but, but you did end up asking me if I was working at, what was it? The Death Star, I think was the,

Guest [00:08:15] I believe it. I believe it was the Death Star. I mean, I, I meant it nicely, but yeah, I it is, it's a different medium. It was a new medium. And I think even now, ag companies, ag medias don't know what to do with it because it's, it, ag media's been the same way since, since I can remember. It's kind of, you know, it's markets, it's weather, it's a little bit of farming news and what you do podcasts, you can, you blow the doors off of what you can talk about. And it made a lot of companies nervous. So I'm glad we shook Monsanto up. Are we the reason that they got sold?

Vance Crowe [00:08:50] I would, yeah. Probably put it singularly. No, I i i, I do think though that that is the, there is a symbol there about the companies that we're adapting and who will be ready for the future and who is, who are the companies out there now? Like, are they going to be, are you seeing with Bear, are they taking chances out there with getting on podcast?

Guest [00:09:10] Man? Boy, I did not put you on the spot like this on my podcast, but yes, because you're talking about potential advertisers, but I'm gonna say in general, agriculture is not a ready to embrace podcast. And I know damn well that agriculture advertising agencies don't even know what they are. So

Vance Crowe [00:09:31] That's, that's very interesting. Yeah. So Meg's, I think it's pretty important that we give a little bit of your backstory because you were sitting out on my porch and I thought I knew very much at all about you. And then we started talking about trains and all of a sudden you had an opinion on Canadian green lines and all of a sudden you had opinions on China. So why don't you talk a little bit about, you're not just an ordinary farmer, you are out there talking about agriculture. How did you get into this world? How is it that that you have, is it 22,000 followers on Twitter?

Guest [00:10:00] So this actually, you don't know this yet and it links in quite nicely to the story that Rob just shared and you shared, but I was at a conference in Saskatchewan and you were presenting about how important it is that we need to share our farm stories. No

Vance Crowe [00:10:14] Shit dreamy,

Guest [00:10:15] Isn't it dreamy up there and talk. And I, because I have that unique background of, of coming from the city, came to the farm with a lot of preconceived notions that were not correct, but it's that clickbait stuff you see, your friends, your family sharing on social media. And so, you know, over the course of the conference there was you, there was a couple other presentators that were talking about how it's so important that agriculture is part of that conversation and that we share what we're doing in our story. And I basically got on social media and started creating accounts to do that and to do it in a way that I would've understood before I came to the farm.

Vance Crowe [00:10:47] Oh my gosh.

Guest [00:10:48] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:10:48] Wow. And so what conference was that?

Guest [00:10:51] Women in Egg? It was in Saskatoon.

Vance Crowe [00:10:53] I definitely remember that. It was cold as

Guest [00:10:55] All. Yes. That is our winters

Vance Crowe [00:10:56] Out there.

Guest [00:10:56] Oh my God.

Vance Crowe [00:10:57] It was, so the big challenge of here is we could spend a lot of time talking about social media and the, the revolutionary change that's happened. I think you were definitely a part of it. You, you have a big role in it. But we were talking about some pretty interesting issues regarding the difference between Canadian agriculture and US agriculture. What's going on with farmers vis-a-vis China.

Guest [00:11:24] And

Vance Crowe [00:11:24] I think like, I don't really need to run this conversation. You guys are experts. Let's just go back to the conversation we were having just

Guest [00:11:30] 50

Vance Crowe [00:11:31] Feet away out on the patio about China, what's going on in the world, China, yeah.

Guest [00:11:35] In particular that big elephant in the room.

Vance Crowe [00:11:37] So the big thing that I was just watching was I am now seeing on YouTube and in podcasts that there is us led, you could even call it propaganda. There is definitely a drumbeat saying China is not as strong as everybody thinks that they are, they are actually weaker. And, but if you tell that to the American farmer who right now is watching the prices go or the U Canadian

Guest [00:12:03] Canadian as well. Canadian, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:12:04] So what's going on with the farming mentality? How do they feel about what's going on with the China War? What's their perception?

Guest [00:12:10] Well, the way that it's affected us is that with extradition treaties, we had to detain the Huawei CTO and that basically triggered retaliation from China. And so what they did was shut down our canola market, import market into China, and 40% of our canola products go to China. So for us, it's our largest shareholder of that market. Really important. We need that, that market there, especially for that crop. And so that's how it's kind of affected us. Those prices have gone down. It's now gotten into our, our beef and our pork and yeah, we're, we're looking at really low prices across the board. And canola's traditionally crop that you use to kind of make the money that you can justify still having wheat or other things in your rotation that maybe aren't bringing in as much money as that canola would.

Vance Crowe [00:12:58] What did the Canadian people think about the extradition of the Huawei? It was, it was to the us I mean, like this No, we're still holding her. Okay. We're still holding her. So what is the situation there? 'cause I actually don't, I don't know. Well,

Guest [00:13:09] It's for the US we were basically asked to detain her by your president and we're still detaining her. And and

Vance Crowe [00:13:16] You're required to by treaty, right? Yes. If the US asks for, for, Hey, we think that there is a reason for you to extricate this person, you gotta hold him. There are many, many things holding the balance. If Canada says, no, we're just not gonna do it. Yes,

Guest [00:13:29] There's a reason these treaties are in place and, and a reason that we respect them. And actually their first retaliation before they came after egg was to arrest two Canadian prominent citizens in China. So there was direct retaliation on that side.

Vance Crowe [00:13:43] Did you know this was a possibility? Like when you guys were first watching what's going on with Huawei? Were you the Canadian farmer sitting there being like, uhoh uhoh, this is coming.

Guest [00:13:53] I think a lot of people drop the ball, including government that's currently in power China retaliates through trade. That's what they've done over and over again across many decades. It should not have been a surprise. We should have had someone over there, in my opinion, the next day ready to, to kind of preempt this. And instead we waited for an issue to show up. And we got to the point where we were trying to send over government officials because they said it was a science issue. It's not. So they were trying to send over government officials and we can't even get a meeting. So

Vance Crowe [00:14:23] Wait, so when you say that they didn't actually overtly say you're not extraditing the Huawei chief, so we're blocking canola, they said your canola isn't pure enough.

Guest [00:14:34] We they found pests in the canola.

Vance Crowe [00:14:38] Oh

Guest [00:14:39] Yes. But no proof of said pests. Wow. But just basically the market shut down at that point. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:14:45] And so what has been happening to canola? Does it reroute to other places? Is there a demand somewhere else that can soak that up?

Guest [00:14:52] Not 40% of our market. No. I've heard there's a little bit of canola getting into China through Japan. I couldn't say whether that's true or not, but that's, it's, we've definitely seen a negative impact in our canola futures because of it.

Vance Crowe [00:15:04] So we'll come back to this, but Rob, I know you were just on Fox Business News talking about the American farmer and how did they feel about Trump and the China trade war? What, what did you say? What did Fox Business News want to know and what did you say?

Guest [00:15:20] You know, they were really good. They didn't wanna put words in my mouth. They, he kinda kept asking the question, and I guess if you've done this long enough, you know, they're kind of hinting towards something. So I said, well, you know, what do you really want? What do farmers think about Trump now that this has gone on for this long? That's kind of what they wanted to know.

Vance Crowe [00:15:38] And what did you say?

Guest [00:15:40] Well, and I, you know, I can only speak for what I've heard and I feel I'm hearing more and more farmers say, you know, this is enough of he needs to be doing something different, or we need to have somebody else in there that can handle this situation. That's what I've heard. But

Vance Crowe [00:15:55] Just like I said to you, if you look at the American farmer right now, is there any democratic candidate that could run against Trump that they would walk into the voting booth and vote for instead?

Guest [00:16:07] Come on, man. My opinion that's so individual of the ones that are at the top. I don't think so. Biden, it would be my guess. No. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:16:22] And so why is it, and, and I'd be interested, Meg, you had a good thought on this about why is it if the, if the American farmer is less than 2% of the population, the people that work in agriculture, probably less than four and a half percent, you know, if you include the people doing fuel and driving trucks and all those things, why is it that the American farmer stands so prominent in the US elections or in, in what Fox News wants to

Guest [00:16:50] Know? The way I see it as, as an outsider looking in is that the American farmer is, is that amazing symbol that you had mentioned. Right? And it's, you know, I wish that agriculture in Canada was supported the way that it seems from the outside looking in to be supported in the states where,

Vance Crowe [00:17:05] Oh, you aren't.

Guest [00:17:07] No,

Vance Crowe [00:17:07] There isn't like the Canadian farmer, let's run a Dodge commercial to, to,

Guest [00:17:12] No, not really. It's more like, we're not happy with what you're doing, please change it. So I feel like it, it's just, it's that symbol, right? It's kind of that symbol of our, our country was built on this, this work ethic and, and farming exemplifies that. And so I think it's a way to yeah. To hold that image and maybe, yeah. What

Vance Crowe [00:17:34] Is the image of the Canadian farmer then? How would you say?

Guest [00:17:37] I think most people don't think about them.

Vance Crowe [00:17:39] Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. It's not that they have an image, it's that they don't think of them at all. No.

Guest [00:17:43] Or it's a, that's almost

Vance Crowe [00:17:44] More brutal.

Guest [00:17:45] A negative, you know, why are you doing this? What are, why are you using herbicide? Why are you using GMOs? Why are like, it, it seems right now it's a more of a, a negative. Why do you want subsidies? Why do you want, why are we supporting you?

Vance Crowe [00:17:59] So do they, do the grain companies or the seed companies come to Canadians and say, you two need to be out there speaking because people are gonna listen to the Canadian farmer because that's what's going on in the us Is that also

Guest [00:18:11] Well, you did.

Vance Crowe [00:18:12] Yeah, that's, I know it because I did it. Yes,

Guest [00:18:15] For sure. It's a big conversation. But I think you guys will both know that it's, it's easy or kind of easy to get into that conversation and say, yeah, I'm gonna get online, I'm gonna track people down, have conversations, share my story. But it's really hard to get out of the bubble. So often we're just sharing our stories to other people that are in agriculture work. Somehow in agriculture, their grandpa used to farm. They wanna hear those stories. So you're not really, I don't feel like we're always getting to the person that we should be having that conversation with.

Vance Crowe [00:18:44] So if you were, and Rob you, this goes out to either one of you, let's imagine you're just a regular mom in the Midwest of the United States or in, in one of the provinces in Canada. I don't know, I was gonna name off the top of my head and, and you wanna know what a farmer thinks about things. How would they even find somebody like the, the, it's funny because, you know, like I definitely was out there like saying you gotta get out there and you talk.

Guest [00:19:13] But

Vance Crowe [00:19:13] One of the things I never really thought about is how does somebody ever find you?

Guest [00:19:18] I, yeah, I think a lot of people go, Facebook is huge, right? To go online and, and try to find stuff. But I feel more often than not, they're not looking for that person to have that conversation with. They're gonna see what they're, and that was me. I can say this because I was that person, their friends and family, or maybe it's that movie star. They look up to people, shared values, trust that they're sharing and that has a larger impact.

Vance Crowe [00:19:45] And how did you end up building such a following? What are you sharing that makes people wanna follow you?

Guest [00:19:51] I actually got into policy and starting lobbying for small business, lobbying for agriculture in Canada.

Vance Crowe [00:19:57] What were the things that, I mean, there are lots of people out there lobbying, you know, politicians and they don't have 22,000 followers.

Guest [00:20:05] I was making videos and I think I was just explaining things in a way that people outside of the industry could understand this is this policy they're trying to change, this is how it's gonna affect us. This is how it's gonna affect small business owners. I, I think that kind of hit home for people.

Vance Crowe [00:20:20] And you were pretty honest.

Guest [00:20:22] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:20:23] How so? Yeah, you have like a smirk on your face,

Guest [00:20:27] Fairly blunt. And because I'm not representing anybody, I'm not lobbying for the canola council, I'm not lobbying on behalf of whoever. I have the freedom to say something that an organization may not feel comfortable to say. So this spring, I testified before the Federal Standing Committee of Agriculture about the impacts of what was going on with China on farmers in Western Canada. And

Vance Crowe [00:20:47] No kidding,

Guest [00:20:48] I had the freedom to say a lot of things and to say, you know, this, this is, this has nothing to do with science, this is trade retaliation. All these things that maybe commodity groups that were there testifying didn't feel comfortable saying exactly the way that I said them. How

Vance Crowe [00:21:00] Did it go over?

Guest [00:21:02] Not very well with the current government.

Vance Crowe [00:21:05] So tell me more about that. What do you mean?

Guest [00:21:08] I pissed off a fair amount of the liberal mps that were there, but I was also running for the conservative party at the time. So that also didn't help the

Vance Crowe [00:21:17] You ran for political office?

Guest [00:21:18] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:21:18] How did that go? What, what what office?

Guest [00:21:21] So our riot, it would be federal. So the Minister of Parliament for the like Canadian,

Vance Crowe [00:21:27] Is it the equivalent of like a state governor?

Guest [00:21:30] No, US congressman. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:21:32] Okay. Thank

Guest [00:21:33] You for translating. Yeah, thanks.

Vance Crowe [00:21:35] And so, Rob, wanna the, an interesting thing, and this is gonna take a little bit of background, is that when you and I first met, there was very, very little ag alt media, right? Or I don't even know what you would call what, what you do. But, but as far as there were the instantiated successful Farming magazine and, and these various groups, and they were doing a fine job. What was it that made it, so why did people wanna listen to a guy making a podcast in the middle of central Illinois?

Guest [00:22:09] It is social media. I it's showcased people that were good at what they did. So you, you ever seen the movie Ouie?

Vance Crowe [00:22:17] I'm familiar with it, but no,

Guest [00:22:19] You, I guarantee you've seen the movie Ouie. All right. So it's about this, this chef that died and, but he had his always big quote that everybody can cook. And the, the bad guy in the film, the critic, he hated that because he is like, that's stupid. You're just pandering, blah, blah, blah. At the end of the movie, when the critics, you know, coming to his moment of clarity and everything, he says, I know what he meant. He says, not everybody can be an artist, but an artist can come from anywhere. So you can now look at what social media has done. And it is opened up the entire world. So the people that can showcase themselves well, like Megs is gonna get attention. I mean, before social media, you would've never heard of Megs, you just won it unless you maybe got in good with someone in the newspaper, you maybe got in good someone with the radio. That was the only way you could do it. And now social media has changed the game.

Vance Crowe [00:23:13] What does this do to the organizations that were originally designed to be the, the voice of the farmer, whether it's the Corn Growers Association or the various checkoff programs like people in the city have no idea what a checkoff program is. Yeah, maybe. So give an example of what a checkoff program is.

Guest [00:23:32] So, and there was a lot of reasons, there's a hundred different reasons they started in a hundred different organizations. But say like, when I sell a bushel of corn, a fraction of a cent goes to this organization, and then that organization is supposed to, you know, go out and promote corn by advertising, by research, by pumping money into companies they think are eventually gonna make a better market for that corn. So that's what the checkoffs are. So there's controversy whether you like 'em or not, they are taking money out of our paychecks. But in theory, we're supposed to be seeing a return and lobbying on your behalf. Correct. And lobbied on our behalf. Correct? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:24:11] Do you have the, the checkoff program in, in Canada?

Guest [00:24:14] Yes, exactly How Rob just described it. Same thing. It goes to research. Most of the research for our breeding programs is public. So it comes from checkoff and then it comes some from tax dollars as well.

Vance Crowe [00:24:25] I think one of the things, if anybody's sitting out there not realizing what a checkoff is, as soon as I say this next phrase, all of a sudden they're gonna got milk. Right? Like that is a dairy checkoff money. Went to a, an advertising firm that said this'll be a great program, ends up being one of the most,

Guest [00:24:43] You

Vance Crowe [00:24:43] Know, high re you, you even know they got milk protein.

Guest [00:24:46] I sure do.

Vance Crowe [00:24:46] Even in Canada. And so traditionally they have been the voice of the American farmer. Is that still true today? Canadian farmer is the checkoff program. What's yours called? The checkoff program?

Guest [00:25:02] Yeah, we just call it checkoff.

Vance Crowe [00:25:03] Okay.

Guest [00:25:03] Yeah, I would say they're extremely important and possibly still the most, I, I don't know if I'd say the most important, but now it's more like we have all of these things working together to be more effective. So I wouldn't say they're less effective or less important than they were when they first started, but now because of social media, myself as a farmer in Saskatchewan can be very influential with helping the lobbying effort as well. And it's all of those efforts and those organizations coming together where you have multiple voices, you have that echo chamber increase, that's when you actually start to make changes with government. And where was I gonna, what was I gonna say? Do you, so we also have provincial groups for policy, like a grassroots provincial ag thing. Do you guys have state run ones? Yeah. And yes, we do state and federal of, you know, the biggest one would be the farm bureau. Right? So that is the, the group. And when you were asking the question about, you know, where do people find information? I think I would say before social media really took off, I would say that's where people, even when you had Google, but before social media, if you Googled farm, you know, how do I learn about farms? You could probably get something about Farm Bureau. Yeah. Or today, I don't, I don't know. I I, I haven't googled anything about farms lately.

Vance Crowe [00:26:23] And, but right now you have moved from being a guy that started a podcast up to, you have your own satellite radio show and you're all over the place. What, what's going, who's watching you? Is it, is it all farmers?

Guest [00:26:38] I have different audiences. So the, my podcast, the Shark Farmer podcast is business to business. I'm talking to farmers. Farmers are listening. That's, that's what it is. I do another podcast called What? The Farm podcast with another Saskatchewan gout. Leslie

Vance Crowe [00:26:53] Ray Kelly. Yeah.

Guest [00:26:53] Meg's isn't my wife, by the way, for people that are wondering, my wife is blonde, but this isn't, oh,

Vance Crowe [00:26:59] I didn't even cross my mind to mention that, because it's, yeah,

Guest [00:27:02] Well, I remember, yes, a very long distance relationship. Well, that, I mean, it's been, people have asked about Leslie too, as Leslie, your wife? No, no. She's, she, and that podcast is more on the consumer side. We try to get farmers to think about consumer issues and we get consumers to think about farm issues.

Vance Crowe [00:27:20] So speaking of that podcast, it, it's funny you mentioned that. I remember I was in, I don't know, maybe New Orleans or something. I was somewhere, and I was listening to that podcast where you described to Leslie Ray about how for so long people had been telling farmers, go tell your story. Go tell your story. So you get invited to a whiskey tasting in Chicago. Yeah. And you walk right up to a group of people that are doing a whiskey tasting that's supposed to be Meet the farm.

Guest [00:27:44] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:27:44] Meet the farmer. And you just start telling them your story. How'd that go?

Guest [00:27:49] Okay. I mean, they were nice, they listened, whatever. But in that, I think what happened was then we approached the tables and we asked what they did first. So we were asked, I mean, anything from whatever, you know, I'm in sales, I'm in whatever. And then once they knew that I was interested in them, they would ask. And sometimes it would take 10, 15 minutes, they would ask, you know, what do you do? Well, I'm the farmer that grew the corn that you're drinking. Then they wanted to know all about it. So the tables that we approached where I said, Hey, I'm the farmer, you know, tell me I'm awesome, was a lot different than the experiences than we went up to the table and we said, Hey, what do you do? And then the conversation would turn,

Vance Crowe [00:28:29] And both of you are aware of, so in the ag industry, if you're in, in a city right now, you probably don't realize there are a whole bunch of movements out there that are, think a farmer, you know, let's have think a farmer day, say, say grateful things for farmer. And there's a bunch of farmer pushback on this right now. What do you think of that? There are farmers saying, don't thank me. I'm no different than the, than the meg.

Guest [00:28:54] What do you think about that? Yeah, I thought Rob got all the hard questions. I think everyone has their own, is own

Vance Crowe [00:29:00] Personal for people that are in the city. This is a controversial question. And so I'm not asking her something that's easy. Yeah.

Guest [00:29:08] I would say for me personally, I don't need someone to say thank you. I want someone to be interested in having a conversation and understanding what I do and why I do it. And allowing through that conversation, that person to be able to go to the grocery store and not be scared to buy food. I would rather have that than a campaign to say, I want someone to tell me that they're thankful because we're all out there doing important jobs. But it's more, to me, I would have way more validation to have an actual conversation, a genuine connection where we can talk about food and there's trust there, there's respect there. And to have positive gains where people aren't scared to go shopping.

Vance Crowe [00:29:48] So I don't know if you've taken a public position on this, but I get super frustrated by, I'm guessing maybe I'm walking into some, but I, I get actually really frustrated by the farmers that reject the thank a farmer like motif. And the reason that I do is because people are living in the city and they wanna be connected

Guest [00:30:07] With

Vance Crowe [00:30:07] Where their food comes from. And gratitude is, is a good human emotion. It's, it's a, it's a thing that makes you grounded into, you know, where do I come from? How is all this possible? And so when farmers are like, we've heard it too much and we don't want it, it's like, are you missing a chance to build a relationship with, with people that, that

Guest [00:30:29] I think, let me save you, Meg, so that you can run for future office and still get an ag vote. Here it is. Okay. Yes. It's not that we don't like the thank a farmer movement, but especially in the early days of social media, it was abused and it was, well, you have to listen to us because we're farmers or whatever. Yes. Without farmers you'd be dead. Right? Because you can't eat without electricity. In the winter, we'd be dead without soldiers. I mean, there's so many people that are critical to everything. So farmers are important, but we're not the end all be all. There were certain people out there that were acting like we were the end all be all. And I think that's where the pushback from a lot of farmers, especially in social media came from. Because we would have people that maybe weren't even active farmers were speaking for us, and you couldn't counteract 'em because, hey, we're farmers, we're untouchable. So I think maybe that's where it comes from on the agriculture side.

Vance Crowe [00:31:23] Okay. I mean, I can see that point of like, we don't want to get into the position where there are some people that believe that they're above other people because they, they keep being thanked all the time.

Guest [00:31:34] That's

Vance Crowe [00:31:34] Probably a good, good thing.

Guest [00:31:35] Well, and that's good background. 'cause I, I came to social media I think after a lot of that, you're so young, you're so annoying. But I, I see it as like what you mentioned, if there's a thank a farmer campaign that's a touch point of, Hey look, this is who's growing your food. Here's a connection point. And if you're, you know, meeting a farmer and you're saying thank you, that's starting a conversation that has potential to go somewhere and, and be positive and, and impact people and the way that they understand agriculture and support it and, and buy their food.

Vance Crowe [00:32:07] It never really dawned on me the challenge of the Canadian farmer being like, well, it's not that people don't want to thank a farmer, it's that they don't think about us. Right? Like, I think the American farmer in many ways has had, has at least been marketed to that everybody loves them. I, there's definitely, I mean, if I were to have a criticism of the thank a farmer movement, it's that it ends up being a marketing campaign to the farmers, right. To sell more seed as opposed to understanding where the balance is. But it is deeply important to me, the issue that you bring up, which is people were going to the grocery store saying, I don't wanna buy that one. 'cause that one may poison my family. Yeah, that's a real problem. Where did that come from in your, I, I have my own opinion, but where do you guys think that it came from?

Guest [00:32:53] I think when we have unknowns, we just fill in the blanks. And if we, you know, I didn't know anything about grain farming, so it was really easy to fill those blanks and by the little snapshots that I saw pop up, whether that was David Wolf or whoever, right.

Vance Crowe [00:33:10] Oh, were you afraid? Were you a David Wolf fan, would you,

Guest [00:33:12] No, but that stuff would come across. I thought, I thought GMOs were bad when I came to farming. I didn't like the fact that crops were sprayed. And then I came to the grain farm and realized why we're using these things, how we're using it, the timing of some of those products, how, you know, spraying to desiccate a crop, so to kill a crop after the wheat kernels say are below a certain moisture percentage, then you're not actually affecting or putting that product into that kernel of grain. So it was, it was learning all of that thing, those things that made me realize that's not something I needed to fear. So I think when we don't know things, it's easy just to take all of that clickbait stuff and jump to our own assumptions and then look at the side that's driving some of those conversations. And how do they do that? They use fear and we, we, as humans, we use emotions to make decisions.

Vance Crowe [00:34:00] Why, though? Why do they use fear? Like this is the thing that, one of the things that I would say people are afraid to say in agriculture is that there is so much money, billions and billions of dollars to be made by making you afraid of that other one. So that the thing that you are selling is no longer a commodity. It's a specialty product. Mm.

Guest [00:34:20] Oh v no, no. Okay. So yes, I think maybe I know where you're going. Especially when you talk about, yes, I'm going to bash conventional agriculture like you're talking about. Even though it's completely safe, I'm gonna bash it because it's gonna benefit me. I'm selling a product that competes with it. It's easy to use. Fear, fear, emotion, the, the, the pulling a heart string that's gonna trump fact and science on the marketing side every time. And it's, it's tough because we in agriculture don't feel like we can go that way. We feel like, all right, we're always gonna beat them with, with facts. We're always gonna beat them with science. When you hear who's at Sarah Mcgaughlin, when she sings that song and the, the arms of an angel, right? And you see the little, she's Canadian, puppy Canadian, of course she's Canadian. When I watch that commercial, I'm so mad because I'm like, man, they are nailing it. They are, they are getting people's emotions. They're gonna get people to call in and donate money. It's not to save puppies, it's, it's to lobby against livestock farms. But they use that fear, they use that heart that the tug on a heart strain. Wait, wait,

Vance Crowe [00:35:31] Wait. What? Okay, I didn't know that.

Guest [00:35:34] I didn't know that either. This commercial thing. Oh man, there's a rabbit trail. It just went. All right. So HSUS Right. Humane Society.

Vance Crowe [00:35:41] Okay.

Guest [00:35:41] I do

Vance Crowe [00:35:41] Know that

Guest [00:35:42] The,

Vance Crowe [00:35:42] They're supposedly not the good guys. That everybody thinks that they're

Guest [00:35:46] Okay just in the, oh man, just in the name. Right. Because there's a humane society in Humane Society in the United States. They're two different, and, and the one isn't lobbying organization that mainly goes against commercial agriculture, especially on the livestock side. But they use those commercials to get money saying that they're gonna give to shelters. And I mean, just a, a smidgen goes to the shelter, the rest of it goes to lobbying. So as an agriculture,

Vance Crowe [00:36:12] What are they lobbying for?

Guest [00:36:14] They don't like the CAFOs, the concentrated animal livestock facilities. The, they don't like modern agriculture, especially on the livestock side. I think they wanna do, to me, my, my mind is they're anti meat. They wanna do away with it. But what they want to do is they want to go towards having a meatless society. Would you, I don't know, would you agree with that? Yes. I would say we're seeing that a lot too in Canada in different ways that push to be, I mean, I was on a, I did an interview the other day about the UN's recent report, how we need to change the way we produce our food because otherwise we're not gonna have a positive impact on climate change. And it is, it's that we need to lose meat. And what's not part of the conversation is what we're already doing in agriculture. How in Canada, only 2.4 of our emissions are from cattle and we're actually sequestering carbon. So storing carbon in the soil by maintaining and properly grazing those pastures. So it's, but you see the other side of it, right? You just see the puppy, the sad eyes. And for somebody that doesn't know the backstory, which, why would you, unless you're talking to a farmer, do you think people know that Vance left? I think they'll see it on the camera that he ran outta here and we're just leading this by ourselves now. I don't, at what point do we start stealing his stuff? Oh, he, oh,

Vance Crowe [00:37:40] He brought beer.

Guest [00:37:41] I brought more beer, so

Vance Crowe [00:37:42] It couldn't be that bad. Okay.

Guest [00:37:44] Alright. Well you missed, missed some good stuff. So Meg was talking about the, the carbon se sequestration. It's a duffer. I wish I could remember the name of the guy we had on the what? The farm podcast. Oh, he's a German doctor. And he had the numbers to the T and I told myself, I'm gonna remember these numbers and the percentages. But I mean the percentages of, of, you know, the, how that cattle and livestock hurt the environment are like minuscule microscopic compared to, you know, transportation, cement production, stuff like this that we need, of course. But yet, certain groups, certain certain organizations have been able to portray livestock as the end all be all of climate change and how they're ruining the environment. It's all a push not to eat meat. It's all a push about people that want a vegan society. You can take that to the bank fans.

Vance Crowe [00:38:40] And what do you, what do you think of that? Because I mean, if you're not gonna eat meat, you're going to eat vegetables. I mean, it's still gonna be a farmer. Yeah. It's still like, I mean, I have my own opinion about this, but I, I, one of the things that I think is an interesting outgrowth of this vegan movement is it's not like you're saying we don't like all farmers because we're vegans. It's just you don't like those ones that are raising livestock. The other farmers that are raising tomatoes and carrots and those kind of things, they're all gonna be just fine. Okay.

Guest [00:39:11] The impossible burger, right? From Whopper.

Vance Crowe [00:39:13] Yeah. That's all soy,

Guest [00:39:15] Whatever. Yeah, it's fine. Okay. We don't have a problem with that. And the proof of it is, back in the nineties, McDonald's had the, what? The McLean or whatever it was a plant-based burger too. It never went, ever. The problem with the Impossible Burger is that they're saying, see you can have this now instead of having meat. And if you do this instead of meat, you're gonna be better for the environment. That's not true. Hey, you want to eat a soy burger? Go ahead. I'll grow soy. But don't sit there and bash the beef industry over it just to sell your soy burger. That's my opinion, but it's the right opinion. It's

Vance Crowe [00:39:46] Gonna be interesting 'cause this is gonna play out. Here's the thing that I see in agriculture that's gonna be very interesting here. You chose not to take, not you. I, I like farmers. See?

Guest [00:39:58] Oh yes.

Vance Crowe [00:40:00] I'm trying to be careful because

Guest [00:40:02] It's a great podcast by the way, Vince. Right?

Vance Crowe [00:40:04] We'll see, you're doing a great job. We'll see, I mean, farmers have been very careful not to say organic is bad. Right? They, they've been able to say, Hey, that's one way of growing it. And we grow this other conventional way. At its core, there's not a huge difference between somebody saying a vegan diet is good, or no, an omnivores diet where you can eat meat is, is good. But those are conflicting things just the same way as conventional and organic. But yet in right now, farmers feel completely fine saying f you to the people that are driving the vegan agenda. But you weren't willing to say f you to the organic agenda.

Guest [00:40:47] I, as, as a meat eater, I am all for everybody having options. You wanna be vegetarian, go for it. You wanna be vegan? Go for it. I, it doesn't affect me. I fully support that choice. You don't get to come over and tell me how to eat. Like I, I feel maybe that's where the difference is and that it's, that was organic attacking conventional.

Vance Crowe [00:41:09] Absolutely. They were putting out those article, those commercials that were going mainstream seen by millions of people that the conventional one, the old McDonald one. Right. So that's Organic Valley, you know, puts out where these kids are singing Old McDonald and they're spraying pesticides all over the place. And then when you came out with the organic farm, that one didn't have the toxic pesticides

Guest [00:41:29] Killing everything. Okay. I feel that didn't happen to the same extent in Canada.

Vance Crowe [00:41:32] Canada's got some really strict rules about whether you can say that kind of stuff or not.

Guest [00:41:37] So that would be maybe why it was a little bit different. But I actually sat down with a vegan when I was in Germany last November, and it was vegan and three farmers and we sat down, we had a open, honest conversation. And it was very interesting to understand kind of the ideology behind their decision making process where, you know, I want, so my friend who, who I was staying with and who was talking to the vegan with me, he is a pig farmer, a a pork farmer in Germany. And recently they had to put lights in their barns at night. So there's always light, a certain amount of light in, in every stall. And I asked about that, I said, that's not natural. You wouldn't have that in nature. And where it stemmed from was basically people vegans pushing, saying, well, if I got up in the middle of the night to find food and water, I would need light. So then the pig should also have light. Whoa. And so it's it's putting human needs and anthropomorphisation. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's what's going on.

Vance Crowe [00:42:38] I mean, that, that's scary thing. Yeah. What it's,

Guest [00:42:40] I don't know you and your big words. Well say it again.

Vance Crowe [00:42:42] Anthropomorphisation.

Guest [00:42:44] Even though the sound of it is something quite impressive. Alright, so we interviewed a vegetarian.

Vance Crowe [00:42:50] You should do more podcasts after having had a couple drinks. This is great.

Guest [00:42:54] This is, I'm not sure this is a beer. It's a Bud Light lemon tea. It's unusual. And you're drinking White Claw. What? Okay, now what do we got? Oh, now I don't have it. I got superfluous and not enough coasters. Okay, we'll try this one. You got big roots now.

Vance Crowe [00:43:09] Yeah, that's right. That's right. All of sudden

Guest [00:43:11] Rubs off. Sudden

Vance Crowe [00:43:12] Answer.

Guest [00:43:12] Okay, so we're interviewing, Leslie and I were interviewing a vegetarian and she told the story of why she became a vegetarian is because she had a friend that worked at a meat packing plant for a while. And she described, he described it to her in a way that made her physically ill when she ate meat, she didn't eat meat because of a belief. You can't change that. And if you're a farmer and you say, well, I'm gonna change her opinion by giving her a, a good steak, I mean, you're a jackass. It's her belief you can't change that. The problem is when she goes out there and says, everybody has to stop eating meat because of my belief, or we need to change the rules like having lights or whatever, that because of my belief, everybody's different. Everybody's gonna make the world go around. Vegans are a very, very small percent of the population. They're just, some of 'em are very, very vocal. So in my opinion, farmers spend way too much time concerned about vegans.

Vance Crowe [00:44:06] Yeah. I'm, I'm conflicted on this and I don't have a great perspective, but there is this thing, so there's a guy named Nasim Taleb who, he wrote a book that you might have heard of called The Black Swan, where it's, it's basically like there are occasionally events that happen that are so catastrophic that, you know, you have to, you have to accommodate e everything in order to avoid that happening. And that's his case against GMOs, that it might be a black swan event. What, how is that so, well, I I wouldn't go into it. This is just the precursor to say Nasem Talib is very anti GMO like has extreme feelings about it. Our friend Kevin Fulta has been a target of him. Like Nassim Tale is well known. One of the things that he says that is spot on though, that of all the things I disagree with is a concept called the intransigent minority. The intransigent minority is if we all went to a picnic, right, and let's say there were, you know, 10 people there, one of them says, if that orange juice is labeled not kosher, I will not drink it. I can't have anything here that I won't eat, that I won't eat that it's if, if I don't have that, you know, f you. Right? So that person now everybody could try and say either go away that person or if you wanna have 'em around and you find that there are some things that you could get in the store that have that little kosher label, you'll do it right. And that is the same thing that happens with GMOs because you could say, well, you know, I don't care whether I'm not gonna be pro GMO, I'm, I'm just gonna be, if there if it's easier for me to buy brownie mix that says it's non GMO.

Vance Crowe [00:45:46] Yeah. So that the kid at the PTA conference or the, the child of the PTA person doesn't fight against it. So herein lies the challenge of allowing the, the small group of people that are extremely angry, like you said, yourself, the vegans are a really small percentage of the population and yet we know all about 'em. Right. Farmers definitely know all about 'em because they, and

Guest [00:46:11] Not all of them are, are in your face either. Like not, not all vegans are going to be in your face saying, yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:46:18] You're

Guest [00:46:18] Doing horrible things. You're right. So there's a percentage that they're happy to make that decision for themselves and not try to overtly put it onto everybody else.

Vance Crowe [00:46:29] But you have to, you, I can understand why farmers would be so sensitive to the vegans because of that concept of the intransigent minority. Because a small group of people that will say, well look, just, I mean, 'cause like, and I didn't notice this until Nasim Taleb pointed out, do you know what the kosher symbol is?

Guest [00:46:46] No.

Vance Crowe [00:46:46] Find out what it is in Canada. Turn your orange juice around your milk, your, there there is a kosher label on so many of your foods. You would not believe it. And it's because if to put it on here is not that expensive, but it gives you back 2% of the population that will buy your things. Whereas if you don't right, there's no chance that they will buy your things. And that's, that's what non GMO is.

Guest [00:47:12] Yeah. I'd say in Canada what's more driving the, the anti meat would be the whole climate change conversation.

Vance Crowe [00:47:20] Is that a big deal in Canada?

Guest [00:47:22] Massive.

Vance Crowe [00:47:23] So tell me about what, what, what do you mean people are like really worried that the polar ice caps are, are you worried about the polar ice caps melting? Is that something that keeps you up at

Guest [00:47:31] Night? Well, I would say global warming, I would say climate change. Right? So that was like partially the prime minister. Like we have a federal

Vance Crowe [00:47:39] Election coming in. Wait, there's a difference between global warming and climate change. I'm not making a joke. I'm saying I've never heard that before. I thought they were synonymous terms.

Guest [00:47:48] Okay. So the, the term has been changed from global or from global warming to climate change because really

Vance Crowe [00:47:56] This is really,

Guest [00:47:57] This

Vance Crowe [00:47:58] Is news to we

Guest [00:47:59] Know something Vance does. Wow, this is not

Vance Crowe [00:48:01] Happening on my YouTube channel.

Guest [00:48:03] Yeah, this is, yeah, because that was the thing, right? Well it's not getting warmer here. The ice caps aren't melting. So it, it changed in a way to have a better conversation about it that it's climate change. It's not global warming, it's not this, it's that the climate is changing at a rate that is, that we are, and the climate's always changing, right? Whether we're on this earth as as humans or not, the climate is gonna continue to change and evolve. That's

Vance Crowe [00:48:28] Right.

Guest [00:48:28] To say that we're the only ones influencing, influencing it is absolutely crazy. Are we speeding up the process? Possibly.

Vance Crowe [00:48:33] The perfect example is if you drive in, in west, in St. Louis. So as you've come out closer from here,

Guest [00:48:39] So from the arch

Vance Crowe [00:48:40] There are rock out croppings, right? And those rock out croppings are limestone. Limestone comes from these little tiny shellfish trilobytes and all these things that fell at the bottom of the ocean and they were pressed on top of each other so much that you have giant rock formations that you can stand on top of and if you fell off of them, you would certainly die. That's how far they are up in the sky. It's 'cause it used to be ocean here. That's how much the climate can change.

Guest [00:49:09] So we actually had a, a federally forced carbon tax come into Saskatchewan, so into our province this April because what we had as a provincial planner, as what you guys would have as a state plan, was not deemed enough for the climate change conversation for what Canada was trying to achieve. And so the federal government forced a carbon tax into our province.

Vance Crowe [00:49:33] Why are people voting in favor of these types of taxes?

Guest [00:49:38] Because climate, like literally in Canada, climate change will be one of the hottest topics going into our fall election this year. And it was the last time that was part of the platform that got him elected. Justin Trudeau. Do you would think Canada would want climate change? Get it warmer?

Vance Crowe [00:49:56] Well, you, are you able to grow different crops where you're at because of the, I mean that, that, that's legit. There's no doubt. South Dakota, there are people in South Dakota right now growing corn, longer day corn than they grew in the past because of climate change.

Guest [00:50:14] I might, I might argue that all right there, there's a lot to do with genetics, a lot to do with plant traits, breeding traits that have come into that a lot to do with improvements on irrigation or have been able to irrigate different areas that haven't been irrigated before. So you're

Vance Crowe [00:50:28] The only that that the, that is not what I hear. Say, I'm not saying that you are, you're wrong. I'm saying in the, in the circles that I have run in, the reason they say that you're able to grow corn

Guest [00:50:39] In Canada right

Vance Crowe [00:50:40] Now is because climate change has made it so that the growing zone, do you have enough heat units that you can pull out 90 day corn. And so that's what people are doing.

Guest [00:50:49] So last summer we went up to a farmer up there in DODs land called Jeff Bennett's and he took us around on a little tour and yeah, you're growing soybeans up in your area, you're trying to, and you know, I would, I had the plant breeders right there from, I think they're from Pioneer and I'm, you know, chewing their ear and everything and we're like, well in five years we'll have it here. And it was all because of the breeding and the plant that they were doing nothing to do with the change in the climate. So in that case, that's what it was. I would say that we're not seeing a consistent, you know, okay, well we had three degrees warmer for this span of time, which is gonna allow us to grow different crops. What we're seeing is more extremes. So we went into this year being our third year of drought. So we had crops that we seeded at our normal planting time. So end of April that either germinated and then went dormant. So they stopped growing for four weeks or they didn't germinate at all until we had about five inches of rain come at the end of June. And that is not, you know, we have had cycles like that in the eighties, but in 2016 we had 38 inches of rain in that growing season. So we're just, we're just seeing more extremes happen more often that oh, that a hundred year old windstorm that only comes through once in a while. You don't have to worry about anchoring those bins down. They're never gonna fly away. We're seeing that every month or so, or every, you know, couple times a year.

Vance Crowe [00:52:20] So the, so then you're saying climate change is real, then what's your problem with the tax?

Guest [00:52:27] Oh, this is a good one. 'cause I have been, I've been lobbying against the carbon tax if, and it's the way that it's being done. So if, and I do not believe that carbon tax is the only way to make changes, if it was, then don't turn around and give it back to the taxpayer, which is what they're doing. Use it to do research, use it to help industry become more sustainable.

Vance Crowe [00:52:47] So, back it up. What, what do you mean they're, they're giving it to the taxpayer, that's what's happening.

Guest [00:52:52] Yeah. It's, it's 90% of the tax that's collected is going back as a rebate to taxpayers. And 10% is supposed to be for admin. No, 10% is supposed to go to industry to help them be more sustainable. And I'm not sure who's doing math, but that doesn't leave anything to cover administration costs of the program. And Canada is a country that depends on global markets for everything.

Vance Crowe [00:53:12] So people, so, so what you're saying is there are people that are incentivized now that if I really believe in climate change, I'm gonna get a check that comes back to me from the bad people that are putting carbon out there. I get that check.

Guest [00:53:24] Well, they also pay the carbon tax, so the carbon taxes on all fossil fuels or at different forms, things that will create emission. So natural gas, propane.

Vance Crowe [00:53:34] So people then are paying it when they go paying fill, fill out their, their car when they go to heat their house. And

Guest [00:53:38] So the thought process is with a carbon tax, then that's gonna force me to think, well, maybe I don't need to use my car today. Maybe I'm gonna bike to work, or maybe I'm gonna turn my thermostat down a little bit more during the winter. You know, try to save some, not burn as much natural gas. And if you, I've lived in Vancouver, it's a very moderate climate. It's great. It's easy to make those changes. There's a lot of bike paths. There's a really great transportation system. If you're in the middle of nowhere farming, you don't have those same options. Right? So it's colder. We need vehicles to drive the closest hospitals an hour away. We're bringing products from port a lot further. And in agriculture, every other business that we deal with can pass that tax on. Can say, okay, well carbon taxes cost me X amount. You know, we're trucking this product in from wherever, so when I sell it, I'm going to increase the price. I'm selling it to cover that cost. You can't do that in agriculture where price takers, not price setters. So it has a massive negative influence. And if you look on the other side of what we're doing in grain farming specifically, and even in cattle production, we're pushing for sustainable to be more sustainable all the time on our own. And you know, I'm a no-till farmer. The only time that I'm turning that soil is when I seed into it. And so I'm sequestering more carbon. We're basically carbon neutral with our practices right now. So

Vance Crowe [00:55:00] When you say no-till, so a lot of people that wouldn't have anything to do with farming wouldn't understand that one of the primary ways to get rid of weeds, particularly when you go to plant, is to drive a giant steel spike into the ground and drag it across so that you rip open the, the soil and tear apart the roots of weeds and, and make it

Guest [00:55:22] Broad readers. It's so violent.

Vance Crowe [00:55:24] Yeah. But, but then the downside is, and one of the things that people don't realize when you're doing that tilling is any of that carbon that was sequestered right in that first five, six inches, you're, you're cracking open the earth and literally throwing it up into the air. It's an interesting thing, which is why it's so funny that people that are so, that wanna fight climate change, they believe so passionately are not the biggest fans of glyphosate ever. Yeah,

Guest [00:55:48] I know, right? Because

Vance Crowe [00:55:49] Well, they're also not glyphosate makes it so you don't have to Exactly.

Guest [00:55:52] Run

Vance Crowe [00:55:52] That spike into the ground and and make that happen. Yeah.

Guest [00:55:55] Well, and look at what we've done. So we have, on our farming equipment, we have emission controls on engines. We have auto steer, so we have GPS that will run our equipment in the field up and down the field. So we're only turning it. So that allows us to be very precise with what we're, what ground we're covering. We have sectional control so that if our equipment passes over an area where we've already sprayed, we've already seeded, that section will shut off. We've done all of these things without governments saying, you need to be more sustainable. We've done that because we need to, that is the soil and the environment that having a stable environment, that's our, that's our biggest asset. We need that. Right?

Vance Crowe [00:56:36] Yeah. Were you in the world before There was no till farming?

Guest [00:56:41] What the hell kind of question is that? Do you think I'm that old?

Vance Crowe [00:56:45] I mean, there was a time before they were using glyphosate. There were certainly, you, you were certainly farming with your dad or somebody was farming before they had

Guest [00:56:51] All I know, I know what you're saying. When I was a kid we were still plowing. So that literally lifts, you go down eight inches, you lift up the soil, you turn it over. So I mean, it is the most aggressive tillage you could do. It's still done in throughout the country, throughout Canada. But it's, it is pretty limited. Wouldn't you say as far as how much it it's actually done. Sorry, just quick point. When we talk about sustainability, one of the things that we need to remember is that what is sustainable on my farm for my soil type, my climate is not necessarily what will allow somebody else to be the most sustainable farmer. So, you know, there's tillage that's used to help dry out the soil so that it's dry enough that you can go in and plant when you need to. Right. And so to say what's sustainable on Meg's farm should be applied as the most sustainable thing on Rob's farm. That doesn't work either.

Vance Crowe [00:57:42] I mean, I think the, the, the fact that sustainable, that word is the thing that we fight over or that farmers end up fighting over the scraps over is, is kind of my perception is because he who controls the definition controls the argument. So whoever decides what does the word sustainable mean, gets to decide whether or not you're meeting that. And it appears to me that farmers every single year are saying, I am, I'm using less fuel. I'm using less chemicals. I'm doing all of these things to ratchet down. And yet there's another person over here that just determines out of, out of a blank white sheet of paper

Guest [00:58:22] What

Vance Crowe [00:58:22] Is sustainable. And it's, it seems to me to be a losing position for farmers to be arguing, are we sustainable? Because you'll never be, it'd be like, am I beautiful? Like, am I beautiful enough? Am I more beautiful than that other person? Like,

Guest [00:58:36] But look at where it's coming from. It's what I see anyways in Canada is that it's consumer driven. So consumers are pushing. Do you think,

Vance Crowe [00:58:44] So do you think consumers really care about whether or not carbon is in their Cheerios?

Guest [00:58:50] They care about sustainability and health? Canada is actually working on creating front of pack labeling for food. Like you would have your nutritional label that is a sustainability label. So consumers will buy products at stores based off of how sustainable that product has been created and force companies to work with. Like Quaker Oats has basically a report card. So they work with farmers who they rank high on a set of priorities. I don't know what that is. I've just heard about the program. So it's basically that you're gonna, and the slide that I I was in a meeting was shown to describe how they see this happening was that the carbon footprint of creating or growing wheat in Saskatchewan was then compared to the carbon footprint of growing wheat in Manitoba, where there is more tillage that's happening. And if you're a consumer that doesn't understand why that tillage is going on and that you can't compare an apple with an orange, then you're gonna say, well, I'm not buying anything that's been made with wheat from Manitoba. It's not sustainable. Well, that's not true. It's just a different climate, a different environment. But it's, it's coming from the consumer and companies are picking up on it and they're starting to push it on us.

Vance Crowe [00:59:56] I think that a huge proportion of the sustainability movement is driven by PR firms. And I think that it's driven by them to be like, Hey, let us give you a new way to be advantaged in the marketplace and people are really gonna care about this because I cannot imagine very, a very large percentage of people when they go to buy oats for oatmeal care, whether or not there was, they, they, they care if they think glyphosate was used and that may cause them cancer that they care about. Right. But do they care about whether or not it's gonna make the earth,

Guest [01:00:29] That's why they're choosing to eat less meat. Like in Canada, it's a thing I I, I think a lot of the times we get caught up on the, the people that are concerned about this. If you poll people, and we've done it a lot, we've done it through farm bureaus, we've done it on social media, we've done it on podcasts, that thing, it comes down to taste and price. And most of the time when people make the decisions in the grocery stores taste and price the people that have the, the surplus and the income, that's where it comes into it. And that's where like the advertising agency and the PR firms, they're really pushing towards those people. Again, it goes back to, what's the word you use about the, the small amount of people making it and

Vance Crowe [01:01:11] The intransigent minority.

Guest [01:01:13] The hell it comes down to that. So they are, they are after those people and yeah, they, they have, they have a lot more income to deal with. And like say, you know, the, the single mom that's raising a couple kids, her, she's not gonna care as much. It is gonna come down to what is gonna take to feed her family and still have enough money to pay the rent. Yes. But those, those people that do have the extra revenue to make those decisions, they're the ones that are also driving policy.

Vance Crowe [01:01:43] I agree with that. I agree

Guest [01:01:45] With that. So I mean, look at GMOs being banned in Africa. You have affluential people that can afford to buy food. They're not worried about having a drought resistant GMO corn because they're not worried about feeding their family

Vance Crowe [01:01:55] There. There's a talk that an economist named Jason Lusk, who is at Purdue University gave, when he was, he received the cast award, which is at the World Food Prize. They give a communicators award and he deserved every bit of that award because he gave a talk that blew my mind. And the talk essentially came down to if you were to give people a hundred dollars and say you can put this a hundred dollars on whatever you want. Is it that to have cheaper food? Is it to have, like, does the price of food matter does the quality color branding, livestock, animal safety, animal welfare, whatever. And you watch until you get to $65,000 a year, the only thing you care about is price and quality. And then once you get over $65,000 a year, not only do you not care about price, you care about quality, but not you care about you all of a sudden start caring about the environment and start like whether the animals are treated well. And that's just a phenomena that is, I mean, really, really big. And you're right, policy is driven by those people. Rob, let's talk about China. You raised hogs for a long time. Mm,

Guest [01:03:10] Yes. My family did. I personally raised hogs for like six months and about went bankrupt. But anyway.

Vance Crowe [01:03:16] Well you're familiar with how it all works.

Guest [01:03:18] Yes.

Vance Crowe [01:03:18] And they have just had, what some people are saying 20% of their, their herd cold, some people saying 50. So as a, as an outlay, a huge percentage of what the Chinese diet is, particularly of the middle class and above is pork.

Guest [01:03:34] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:03:35] Why are they having to kill their, their, their pig herds and what is going on there and, and what Yeah,

Guest [01:03:42] I'm no expert on the swine flu, the African swine flu, no expert on it, but it, you know, it is as dangerous of a disease in pork as we've ever had. And we've always had one, I remember when I was a kid, it was suited rabies and then it was the mystery, the mystery disease, and it was purrs and you know, it's all, it's always something that's coming along. Circle virus. I, yeah, there's a bunch of reasons that we lost money. The Africans swine flu is a nasty one. And when you get it in a herd, the herd has to go. I mean, you just have to get rid of it.

Vance Crowe [01:04:15] What happens to the pigs when they get it,

Guest [01:04:17] Man? You would like to think that they are euthanized in the United States. What would happen is they would be euthanized in the most humane way and they would be buried or burned or

Vance Crowe [01:04:28] Whatever. I guess what I mean is in like, if somebody were asking me about African swine flu and some, what does it do to the pig? Do they cough? Do they, do they get runny nose? Like what happens?

Guest [01:04:39] You know, it even depends on at what age they get it. You know, there's age where they can get it and they're still able to make it to, you know, slot slaughter where they can get it to meet. But if it gets in the herd, I mean, it's a disease that can kill the pig. If it gets in the herd, it, the herd has to go. There's no way that you're gonna treat it, but it just, you just have to eliminate it. It's like the worst disease. It's like foot mouth disease really. That that was here in the states in what, 40 or fifties? You just gotta get rid of it because if that thing could spread and take over the entire country.

Vance Crowe [01:05:12] And so what are you hearing about what's going on in China then?

Guest [01:05:16] You hear a lot of stories. I mean, I've heard over 50% of the herd, you know, China is China for years, China has been less than honest with the rest of the world in their, in their trade and what's going on in there. So it's hard to tell what percent of the herd is actually, you know, I think it's, according to their numbers, it's fairly low, 10, 20%. You talk to people that have been over there and come back, you say, no, it's, you know, it's half, it's more than that. So it's hard to tell what China on anything,

Vance Crowe [01:05:47] What does that do to the American farmer if 50% of their herd is cold?

Guest [01:05:52] It depends on what kind of farmer. I mean, if I was a hog farmer right now, I'd feel pretty confident in the near future of what, you know, making money in that. As a soybean farmer, I'm looking at a lot of my market being gone because it, you, it's not like you can just immediately replace them. There's a, a breeding cycle that goes through, there's a growth cycle that goes through. It's gonna take a while to replace that.

Vance Crowe [01:06:17] And what are the Canadians thinking? Do you guys talk about the, the pig crisis in China?

Guest [01:06:23] It gets talked about. And I know that pork has come up on like, some of our trade issues with China, which is weird considering what is going on there. But I don't know enough about our own pork market to know what amount we would send to China in the past. Yeah. But as, as far as feed, that could be part of our canola issue to be quite honest. Yeah, because

Vance Crowe [01:06:49] That's used, do you feed canola to pigs?

Guest [01:06:51] The meal? So a lot of, when I say they're buying our canola, it's not just the canola seeds they would be buying, it's also oil. But what's used as feed is the canola meal. So once you crush the canola, extract the oil, you've got the hull left that's used as feed. So that's a big part of that. 40% of our canola market is China. I, I couldn't tell you the stats on how much of that is meal, but a fair amount of that is canola meal that's been crushed in Canada. And the, the meal is going to China for feed.

Vance Crowe [01:07:20] So

Guest [01:07:21] Speaking of Canada,

Vance Crowe [01:07:24] Do you guys have regular presidential elections in the same way that we do? Like I have no, I mean I know there's this prime guy, Trudeau minister. Yeah. I mean you have a prime minister. Yeah. And, and it's Trudeau, but like, I don't know how he gets into power. I don't know if he has the same power as our president. Should I just think of it as one-to-one Trudeau equals,

Guest [01:07:41] You know, do you know him Trump

Vance Crowe [01:07:42] Jr

Guest [01:07:43] Trudeau? I don't personally know him, but I know he does not like me. Actually was supposed to speak on a panel at a tech conference in Toronto in May. In May. What

Vance Crowe [01:07:53] Would be something you could say on this podcast that would catch his attention and he would not like,

Guest [01:07:58] Oh, it wouldn't be on this podcast. That's all happened. Like with small business tax changes and stuff, but we have an election every four years. No,

Vance Crowe [01:08:05] I'm asking you to say something.

Guest [01:08:10] No, he, he hears it all the time from everybody he's done. Okay. What I can say is he's done more damage in Western Canada as far as oil and gas industries go. Agriculture goes, the whole want to separate goes than his dad did in two terms. So he's done more damage in four years than his dad didn't need. And the how western Canadians, so Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, how they feel that they stand in the country. They have the lowest opinion of feeling connected with the rest of Canada that has been around since the fifties. And there's massive talk of separation right now. Wait,

Vance Crowe [01:08:50] What does that mean? Separation? How

Guest [01:08:52] That Western Canada would become its own country, like that is a conversation that is happening. And if he gets in again, wait,

Vance Crowe [01:08:59] Is that legit? Like, like seriously, literally we could see two countries out there.

Guest [01:09:03] I don't think we will actually see it and I hope that we won't. And it makes me really angry that there are so many people that that is how frustrated rated they are, that we feel like we have been completely not even completely ignored. We feel that a lot of the moves that have been made by his government, his party have been to alienate the west, have been to penalize. Oil and gas industries have been to penalize agriculture. And the way that our, our system works is it's based off, like seats are based off of population and the majority of Canadian population is Ontario and Quebec. So when we vote in Western Canada, we don't have a massive influence on who gets into power.

Vance Crowe [01:09:41] So you don't have an electoral college like a republic in the same way that the United States does? No, that's interesting.

Guest [01:09:49] So it's, yeah, I mean they actually used to, I think it was in the eighties, they stopped doing it because people stopped voting. They would announce who won the election before people in Alberta had even voted because of the time change.

Vance Crowe [01:10:01] Oh wow. Yeah. And it is just all around the country. It's just a straight up and down popular vote.

Guest [01:10:07] Yeah, it's you, you go mark your ballot, you've got the different parties, each party has a leader and the who leads that party is done by an election within the party. So the party votes, but also people who are card carrying members of that party would vote for who that leader would be. What

Vance Crowe [01:10:23] Is the Canadian impression of the electoral college in the United States?

Guest [01:10:28] I think it could, I don't, I wouldn't wanna replicate the system exactly. I don't think that would fit. But I would like to see something more like that in Canada so that there's more equal voices for all of across the country instead of just based off of population. Because what we have isn't working, you have provinces that feel alienated, but on top of that, it doesn't matter who gets elected, they can say they don't want to, you know, ignore Alberta, ignore Saskatchewan. But when it comes time in four years or three years to get reelected, who are you gonna cater to? You're gonna cater to the places where you have, you

Vance Crowe [01:11:03] Get your votes.

Guest [01:11:03] Exactly.

Vance Crowe [01:11:05] And Rob, are you hearing the same thing that I am on, on YouTube that people are saying we should get rid of the electoral college? Are farmers concerned about that?

Guest [01:11:14] Yeah, of course. I mean that, that would be a bad case for rural America, but I, I don't know if really anybody's concerned about it. It's kind of like the Civil War up in Canada. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of people talking about it, but I mean, would it actually come to that extent? I mean that would, that's what the constitution was based off. Our forefathers knew that was important. They knew the importance of having the rules, areas of the country represented as long as, as well as the urban areas. So yeah, we know it. I would, if you're asking my opinion whether farmers are worried about it, probably not.

Vance Crowe [01:11:49] Yeah, I, I had a chance to go to the American Enterprise Institute. I was invited to like a week long or weekend long seminar thing. And my big question, the thing I wanted to ask Charles Murray, one of their big scholars was do you think they're gonna abolish the electoral college? And I didn't even get the question fully out before he started laughing at me. And so I was like, all right, well maybe it's a silly question, but you hear it talked about, you hear people saying the electoral college is, you know, not the right system and we should get rid of it. I know that you would have to make a constitutional amendment, but you definitely hear people in the city feeling like why it's not fair that the people in the countryside get, get more power in their votes than I have.

Guest [01:12:33] I think George W. Bush actually ended up winning a popular vote against Al Gore, I think, and then you had Hillary that lost to Trump. So let's say the next Democrat loses to Trump but wins a popular reelection. Yeah, there's gonna be a lot more screaming for it, especially from the urban areas because just because their guy didn't get in right. And they're gonna figure that our guy's not gonna continue to get in because of these, these dumb hicks that keep getting our guy in 'cause of the, the electoral college. I could see that scenario, I would say in the United States. It's still pretty hard to change the constitution though.

Vance Crowe [01:13:11] Yeah, I would say it would probably be harder to change the constitution now than it has been.

Guest [01:13:15] Yeah, you're you're originally an Illinois guy, right? Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:13:18] That's right. So

Guest [01:13:18] In Illinois we hear all the time, right, we're gonna like slice off Chicago, we're gonna slice off those three counties up there and you know, the rest of the state's gonna live in harmony and we're gonna let them do their thing up there. It's never gonna happen.

Vance Crowe [01:13:32] So bringing up Illinois, you are less than six months away from having recreational pot legalized. Yeah. What do you think is gonna happen to your, the culture of, of the people you're around? Is it gonna change things? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing?

Guest [01:13:49] I don't foresee hardly any change at all. I mean, there's probably gonna be additional tax revenue come in because of how it's set up. Illinois, we're used to corruption. I'm sure the whole pot situation is gonna be corrupt as hell. But no, I don't see, I mean we've seen it in what Seattle? We've seen it in Colorado. It's not, I don't know, it's not, not the end all be all.

Vance Crowe [01:14:13] And how about Canada? You guys have legalized

Guest [01:14:16] Yeah, in October, the whole country legalized, which I think if you're gonna do it, you might as well do the whole country because otherwise you're not crossing state lines. You're not, you know, interprovincial. I don't think there was a massive change. There was a big kickback from the rule against it. I grew up in a big city. For me, maybe it makes it, I see it making possibly a safer environment for the teens that are gonna try it at that age to get it, which if they wanna try it. And I grew up with a lot of, you know, people in high school that did.

Vance Crowe [01:14:51] So I had a guy on that. The most comments I've ever gotten on a YouTube video or, or anything was a guy that I had on my podcast that built up a company and sold it. It was a cannabis company for $22 million. Right. Wow. He's probably the wealthiest 30 something year old I've ever met. He had business partners but did very well for himself. And he said, I didn't smoke pot that, you know, actually I don't drink alcohol and I, I've never smoked pot. And he said this, people were so angry with him on YouTube that I, I like, I didn't know if I should cut off the comments or not because people were like, he's a liar. And you're like, why is this such a big deal as to whether or not somebody has or hasn't? And if they say yes or no.

Guest [01:15:38] So that's what it takes right. To say I'll, I'll just say right now, I I don't drink either.

Vance Crowe [01:15:43] Yeah, that's right. Well anyway guys, this has been fantastic. I am so deeply grateful that two people that have risen to prominence in the ag sphere were willing to sit down and chat while we were drinking beers. Megs, I wish you all the best in your Canadian political aspirations.

Guest [01:16:05] I might have ruined them tonight. We'll see. No, I'm

Vance Crowe [01:16:07] Kidding.

Guest [01:16:08] Thank you. This is fun.

Vance Crowe [01:16:09] And Rob, thanks for stopping by and, and being on the podcast.

Guest [01:16:12] Oh no thank, thank you Vance. And so what is the name of the podcast?

Vance Crowe [01:16:17] This is just the Vance Crowe podcast. I know you guys are pushing for as the crow flies. As

Guest [01:16:21] The crow flies. Don't you think that'd be a better one? It would be good. It has a ring to it. I mean, you got the crow over there in the corner. Can't take it anywhere too.

Vance Crowe [01:16:27] That's right. Any

Guest [01:16:28] Topic? Yeah, you spelled that wrong though, with an, is that the European or the Canadian

Vance Crowe [01:16:32] Spelling? That is actually the way my name is spelled that. So any case, we will sign off for now. Thank you so much for listening.

Guest [01:16:38] Well, we wanna talk some more.

Vance Crowe [01:16:39] Well, we can always re-hit the record button again. Well that's gonna do it for the podcast this week. Thank you so much to Meg Reynolds and Rob Sharkey for stopping by. If you want, I highly recommend that you follow them on Twitter. They are both very compelling people. They've built up quite an audience. And what you can see if you follow them is conversations that farmers are having all over the world about various issues in the farming world, about trade, about politics. And it is an inside view that agriculture would be excited to see you there. If you're not a part of the ag world, they're always looking for new people to talk with and answer questions. And so if you do follow 'em, just make sure you tell Rob and Megs that you heard their interview on the Vance Crowe podcast. Next Wednesday I will be interviewing a man named Jason Bachman, founder and owner of an iconic St. Louis company called Strange Donuts. Now you could listen to this and say, well, what do I wanna listen to? The owner of a donut shop. And yeah, they're strange, but what could he say that's so interesting. I would venture to say that this is one of the most compelling and spell binding interviews I've ever seen. Not that I've ever conducted, I mean literally that I have ever seen. From the very beginning, Jason opens up and he just starts talking about his successes and his failures and how he got to where he is. At the very beginning of the podcast we're talking about how did he learn the lessons to become the boss that he is today?

Vance Crowe [01:18:14] And it takes a little while, but he ends up explaining that when he was 14 years old, he had a pretty rough childhood and he was exposed to a world that most of us will never see any, any closer than on the movies. And when he was 14 years old, he was an enforcer at a crack house. Meaning he was the guy that when the crack fiend couldn't pay, he would throw them out of the house. And he moved from being that to being an award-winning business owner that runs multimillion dollar contracts all over the world. He is beloved by everyone that he interacts with and runs one of the most famous companies in St. Louis. I was deeply honored to have met Jason and will now vow to try and do everything I can to be friends with this guy because his philosophy on life is absolutely amazing. So I hope you will tune in on Wednesday to listen to that interview because it's gonna blow your mind the way that it blew mine. So thank you so much for stopping by and we'll see you on Wednesday.