ICE Raids Hit Farm Labor as GMO Trait Costs Rise: Steve Conaway on Agricultural Reality

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] Support for the Ag Tribes report comes from river.com, an online platform for buying Bitcoin in the United States. Use the affiliate link provided in the show notes to purchase Bitcoin directly from River to grow your Bitcoin investment and support the podcast river.com. Invest in Bitcoin with confidence and Legacy. Interviews, a video service that captures people as they really are, so the future knows who they really were. Here's Legacy Interviews guests, Darryl and Jill Stamp on the joy of filming their legacy interview. What do you think you'll tell your kids about the experience? Oh, I'm gonna thank 'em a lot. I realize this is more for them and their kids and their kids than it is us, the grandkids, right? Don't know these stories. I can't wait to, for us all to get together and see it. This went better than I thought it was. Gonna I, let's go fast. So it's, what time is it? It's almost three o'clock. No way. Yes. God, you talked so much. I know. Welcome to the Ag Tribes report, a breakdown of the top stories affecting the culture of agriculture with your host Vance. The report begins in 3, 2, 1. Let's begin. Welcome to the Ag Tribes report. I'm your host Vance Crow. Each week I find check in with a member of one of the many ag tribes that make up US agriculture.

Vance Crowe [00:01:32] And this week we have Steve Conaway, otherwise known as Steve Conaway, one on X. Steve is a farmer with an interest in agricultural economics, real estate, and the financial aspects of rental properties. I had one of those rare opportunities to meet Steve at the first field day I ever went. That was put on by Jason Mock, one of these farm weird field days. And I can tell you that any person you meet at a farm weird event has got a story and knows interesting things 'cause you don't show up to those places by accident. So Steve, welcome to the Ag Tribes report.

Guest [00:02:08] Well, thanks for having me, Vance. It was, it's an honor to be a part of tonight's report.

Vance Crowe [00:02:14] So talk a little bit about why you share on X. What is it that you're kind of having expertise in? What are you interested in hearing about from other people?

Guest [00:02:23] So, yeah, so a little bit about me. I am a real estate appraiser for a large agriculture bank here in Kansas. I'm in the process of getting my real estate appraiser's license and I grew up on a large family farm where I still farm with my family there as well. And then I got married last year and my wife and I are partial owners in ag real estate as well as own some rental properties as well. So my emphasis is very much in real estate, agriculture, real estate, agriculture, economics, and just kind of agriculture financing. My wife's has a PhD in agronomy and so that is definitely her side of, of things. She knows agronomy, I don't really know agronomy. So yeah, I just share on X and online, just the economics side of agriculture, production, agriculture, real estate.

Vance Crowe [00:03:19] When I originally asked Steve to come on, I said, Hey man, would you also send me a photo? And he did this thing where he is like, Hey, can I, he sent me a photo of him with his beautiful wife. And I was like, no way, man. I'm not giving you any advantages here. I'm not gonna let people see that you have this drop dead gorgeous wife. So to find out she also has her PhD and you guys work closely together is is pretty impressive.

Guest [00:03:41] Yeah, yeah. My family definitely gives, gives me a hard time. They're like, yeah, you really married up, you out kicked your coverage. It's like

Vance Crowe [00:03:48] That's, that's actually true. That's, this guy is not lying about that. So there must be something special about him. And we'll find out as we go through this week's headlines, which we're gonna start off by talking about Iowa soybeans defending their USDA grant in the land of Doge Mexico is gonna drop restrictions on us, US GMO corn imports. And we're gonna talk a little bit about if ICE raids are really gonna him back to all of our farm workers or is it all just hype? We're also gonna talk about the Bitcoin land price report. We'll hear Steve's Peter Thiel paradox and we'll find out who is his worthy adversary. And we're gonna do it all in just 30 minutes. So let's get started. All right. Headline number one is kind of a big deal. Iowa soybean defends USDA grant that was suspended after Doge rolls through. So a guy named Benjamin Reich ish, I've never met him before. He posted on x an image of the USDA giving a $97 million grant to the Iowa Soybean Association. eSSH initially thought that it was A-U-S-A-I-D grant and Iowa SOY was so concerned about the claims that he was making that they called him up to present their side of the story. So from their perspective, they're saying the program matched by private sector funding was intended to create new markets and revenue for farmers adopting climate smart practices that benefit soil health. So some of the, the programs impact 9,000 thousand acres of conservation practices enrolled across 12 states.

Vance Crowe [00:05:23] 600,000 acres have been enrolled across Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. It just kind of goes on and on. It says average farmer payment of $33 per acre. And it's ostensibly for putting down things like the reductions in soil erosion, nitrogen, phosphorus. So they are putting it forward as, look, we are, we, the USDA contributes $1 and the program ends up paying farmers a dollar 20. So there's this giant grant, but it's not from U-S-A-I-D and they're saying it has all these good impacts. Steve, this is all money that's being paid from by taxpayers designed to get farmers to do something they don't have an economic incentive to do. Do you think this, that Doge is gonna start coming after subsidies like this one?

Guest [00:06:17] Well, I mean, I think eventually, but it's kind of kind of hard to tell how, how, how much will doge actually go for things like are are farmers gonna be impervious to, to these budget cuts? And kind of my problem of kind of what you talked about there, and you sent me a news article to look at as well, is it kind of seemed like these farmers were not doing the conservation practices first, but with this money that they now are, to me that kind of sounds like bribery of kind of like, Hey, you don't wanna do this, we're gonna give you money so you will do it. Or, and it's like, hmm. If it doesn't stand on its foot by itself, like why are we subsidizing this in the first place? But at, at the same time, I can understand why it's probably good for soil health and maybe why there's some die in the wool farmers who always wanna do extensive tillage all the time, that they need a little bit more economic incentive that that changed their practice as well. So I can, I can debate both sides of it here.

Vance Crowe [00:07:25] I mean, I strongly dislike the, the, you know, using taxpayer dollars to fund anything that people could be doing on their own. If it is actually valuable, they'll do it on their own. But I would say even outside of that, you know, if people right now have a part proportion of their income that's reliant on subsidies that come from fighting climate change, well, the Trump administration just went in and said, we're, you know, crossing climate change out of all the documents. So if you're, if you're getting paid subsidies to fight climate change when, when we're no longer fighting climate change, I think those will be pretty easy subsidies to cut.

Guest [00:08:01] Yeah. Yeah, I, I definitely think the cuts are coming, but my question is, if you're not getting subsidies from the government, could you do the same practices and maybe a giant corporation are paying you to offset their carbon as well? Who knows? Like,

Vance Crowe [00:08:20] Yeah, I mean it's all, that'll be really interesting to see. 'cause if the government gets outta carbon markets and they aren't sitting there helping to, you know, be the air traffic controller for companies to do this, you gotta ask yourself, are they gonna continue to do it? I think it also brings up a larger question is how much are farmers going to be upset when they find out some of their organizations have been accepting big government grants? And does that end up impacting what those organizations are advocating for? What, what agendas they're pushing forward? Because who you, who you pay, who pays you, ends up they are your customers, those are the people you're gonna please.

Guest [00:08:56] Yeah. And then I think the other thing that concerns me a little bit, just because my background in ag finances, if a farmer's getting 10%, 15% of his revenue from these government programs and they're suddenly cut, that can really hit the bottom line. And what, what is your banker gonna say? Or your loan underwriter is, if you lose 10, 15% of your revenue already on a down year, like we're seeing the past couple years, that's, that's really gonna gonna cause some concern for some guys.

Vance Crowe [00:09:26] Yeah. And I think it's, it like, I don't think there's any group that's safe. I, for a while there was thinking that, you know, Trump didn't wanna upset ag, but I think there's gonna be so much money being funneled through USDA to prop up projects that have nothing at all to do with agriculture. But when you start cutting them back, I think there's gonna be a whole lot of organizations that have been able to grow to the size that they are, that are, that are gonna really struggle when they're not getting those government dollars from USDA or U-S-A-I-D or whoever.

Guest [00:10:01] Yeah. Yeah. I I, I agree. And I think sometimes we in ag think we're so important and we're better than everyone else, but you know, you look at across the whole nation, I think ag ag is pretty small compared to how much GDP is is produced by say the healthcare industry or something like that. You know, they're, they're gonna get, they have much better lobbyists than than we do here in the ag industry.

Vance Crowe [00:10:30] Yeah. Well, it's gonna be interesting to see how money being uncovered groups getting funded. It's going to, it's gonna pan out in interesting ways. I think there's gonna be a lot of people called the task on why they took money from who. So moving on to headline number two, Mexico has formally dropped restrictions on GMO corn imports. Previous plans to ban such grain could have significantly reduced US corn experts exports. So this was reported by Karen Braun, the global agricultural com columnist at Thomson Reuters, and she's saying, Hey, Mexico is repealing the import restrictions on genetically modified corn for humans livestock and industrial uses following the North American trade panel, putting in, in their judgment. So this is the U-S-M-C-A and they said, Hey, you can't do this Mexico. So Mexico agreed to comply with this agreement, which means now they're going to be accepting GMO corn when they said they didn't want to. Steve, what do you think of this? Should the US view this as a win because we're able to push the doors open in Mexico, or what, what do you, where do you fall down on that?

Guest [00:11:37] Well, I, I think historically, I'm pretty sure Mexico's been one of our biggest exporters or one of the biggest people we export our corn to. So that, that's gonna be great that that kind of wrinkle is smoothed out and that we can keep exporting our corn down there. And I think that's really gonna help drive up maybe just in the temporary, the, the corn market, it seems like it's really been on a rally in the past month or two, so maybe this helps push it a little bit higher and it makes the guys a little, a lot of the guys across the traditional corn belt, a little bit more optimistic going into this 2025 growing season if we keep seeing corn rally. But at the same time, it's like, is is this just gonna be a temporary setback in a couple years or are they gonna kind of claw this back and, and try to say that no, no more G-M-O-G-M-O imports from you guys United States.

Vance Crowe [00:12:31] It seems to me like the Mexican president who went on to say, Hey, we may put the, the banning of cultivating GMO crops into our constitution. I believe that they have the potential to turn this into a cultural thing where the people don't want GMO crops. But until then, should the, do you think like, good the US should be cheering it on that, that a group said, we don't want this, and yet now they have to take it. We wouldn't want our door kicked open and have somebody shoveling in crops we don't want. Yeah,

Guest [00:13:03] Yeah. And I, I don't wonder how much, how much is it the Trump administration putting leverage on them as well of, of kind of, hey, we'll we'll look the other way on a couple things over here if you reinstate this or, or agreed to that, how much is there going on behind closed doors that we don't, we don't really realize. But yeah, you do bring up a good point. If, if the tables were turned, we would be really upset about that. And, and yeah, I think long term, I think it's more of a cultural issue, not just for Mexico, but probably in the entire world of how long do we want the these GMO type products in our, in our foods.

Vance Crowe [00:13:46] I think that this question went away for a while, and the ag companies and all the different ag, you know, commodity groups, they kind of said, all right, looks like the GMO fight is over. But the reality was it just morphed. It became a glyphosate fight and now people are back. And I think the Maha movement is definitely gonna blow oxygen onto people not wanting GMOs. So it'll be interesting to see what, what gets grown and what gets demanded, because I think a lot of people don't care, but if you can get culture riled up, it can, it can really have big impacts. All right, headline number three, are ICE raids impacting farms? There are endless news stories about ag workers not showing up from fear of being deported, but few stories of people actually being deported. So I was looking through fast company and they, they were putting forward this like, well, there's up to 800,000 farm workers in California and half of them, according to Governor Newsom's office may be undocumented and they aren't coming to work and they're afraid. And, you know, if they don't go get our food, people will starve to death because we won't be able to harvest enough food. But when I go and look around, I am not hearing of farm workers being picked up and put in paddy wagons and flown to Columbia. What are you hearing, Steve? Is the ice immigration is, are farmers worried about this?

Guest [00:15:07] So far, I haven't heard very much concerned where I am. I, I did see on XI think last weekend somebody reported that one of the, the Packers, they had ice ice enforcement officers outside of the packing house to, to kind of, I, I don't know if it was the scare or, or what exactly it was going on, but that, that's kind of been the only thing I've ever heard about ice enforcement coming after agriculture workers or suppliers where, where I am in my area of Kansas, we really don't have any of your typical industries that you would think about would, would have migrant workers in their working form. We don't have big slaughterhouses where I am. We don't have big feed yards or, or dairies or anything like that in, in my area of Kansas. And so I might be a little bit insulated of, of hearing from that. So yeah, it, it's kind of hard to tell.

Vance Crowe [00:16:05] Yeah, I mean, I I, the reason I brought that story up is because we heard for weeks running up to this that there's like a big, big issue, but when you start to dig in, you're like, this is clearly, they're, they're ramming down the doors of, you know, apartments in Denver. They're not where they're gangs everywhere. They're not trying to, to come on to dairies and, and round everybody up. They don't, they're not trying to stop the orange harvest in California, but they may. What do you think, do you think eventually the, the ICE raids move from criminals to getting farm workers out so we have more jobs for Americans?

Guest [00:16:41] Well, eventually it might lead there, but I think the next issue you start running into is how many Americans are gonna wanna do those jobs anyway? You know, is it, are we potentially shooting ourselves in the foot doing this? I do think it's a good idea and I do think it's, it's, it's probably something that needs to be addressed, but it, it's like, well, is it gonna make inflation even worse? Is it gonna drive, drive up the cost of producing, you know, dairy, vegetables, anything like that? Even more, you know, especially, you know, in in California and Arizona, southern Texas, Florida where they do a lot more, I would call labor intensive ag agriculture with vegetables and fruit production and stuff. Is is that gonna make things different?

Vance Crowe [00:17:30] Yeah, I guess there are, what there's been 60,000 federal workers that have accepted the buyout, maybe in eight months they'll, they'll consider a, a life of doing farm work, of picking crops and stuff instead of their, the government job that they didn't, that they took the buyout from.

Guest [00:17:46] Yeah. Yeah. I've seen some people speculate that about that online, but I don't know, you go from making $150,000 a year sitting in your climate controlled office. I I really don't think you wanna be picking cucumbers or strawberries in a hundred degree days all day.

Vance Crowe [00:18:01] Yeah. And those people weren't even in their office. They were in their jammies at home also watching their kids. Yeah. You know, working. Yeah. So anyway, all right, onto headline number four, this is from Grain Stats on X. How many Ukrainian farmers were waiting for U-S-A-I-D for spring planting in 2025? The story posted in 2023 U-S-A-I-D continued its support by supplying $12 million worth of equipment to enhance grain export capacities resilience under its economic resilience activities. Additionally, fertilizers and seed were distributed to over 8,200 farmers across 15 regions. The agency also allocated 250 million for 2023 for future agricultural growth through its harvest program. Steve, US tax dollars going to help the Ukrainians produce grain that potentially competes with our grain in the United States.

Guest [00:18:57] Yeah. That, that just seems really backwards to me. We're funding our competitor so they can create grain that would compete against us in the world market, the world stage, once again, I think, I feel like I've said it a couple times today, I feel like we're shooting ourselves in the foot doing that. We're, we're making things harder for our local farmers, our people across the United States, making it harder for, for them to grow their corn, soybeans, and wheat. When we're propping up this agriculture industry in, in new Ukraine, it, it just seems very backwards to me.

Vance Crowe [00:19:37] Yeah, I I strongly think that we are just at the beginning of, of uncovering so much of the waste and fraud and sending money to certain partners. One of the things though that struck me, I had a buddy tell me this today, that all of this information that's come out about U-S-A-I-D was already posted by WikiLeaks. So you, we could have gone out and found out that this stuff was going on. I'm sure somebody was bragging about how much work they did with the Ukraine, but it's only just now that people are listening and that the stories are bubbling up, I, I think there's a bunch of stuff that we're, we, we are years behind a media that is hungry for ripping apart the people that are supposed to be the ones that are in charge. And we just haven't had a media doing that. So I think this is only the beginning of stuff we're gonna find out that our government has been funding our competitors.

Guest [00:20:29] Yeah, you you bring up an interesting point, like this was all public information already and it makes me wonder what other things are out there are public information that we're just not bothering to look at and, and, you know, make, make things even worse, make things look even worse. And nobody's just gotten there yet because they're, they're rightfully so, maybe just too busy with their own lives, don't really have time to, to go digging down giant rabbit holes, seeing waste. But then when somebody does bring it up to the surface, everybody's up in arms about it. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see how much more gets brought up and, and more of the cutting, cutting block falls and where people are gonna slash next.

Vance Crowe [00:21:13] Alright, well thank you Steve for running through the news of the day. If you have news that you think we should cover, you can always send it to me on X. These are some of the best stories. In fact, the ones that I, I get sent to me are almost always the ones that help me find like, what should we be talking about tonight? So send it to me on X or Vance at Legacy Interviews dot com. Alright, now onto the Bitcoin land price report. So Steve, you live in Riley County, Kansas. Where is that?

Guest [00:21:41] So that, that is Manhattan, Kansas, which is home to K State, is in Riley County, Kansas. And yeah, I live here. It's kind of the, between northeast north central part of Kansas. It's just north of I 70, about eight, 10 miles and right in the heart of the Flint Hills. But we do have some pretty fertile row crop ground in the river bottoms.

Vance Crowe [00:22:07] Okay. So considering the, the type of soil and the planting and the life out there, what does an acre of high quality farmland cost in Riley County, Kansas?

Guest [00:22:16] So, about where I am on average, considering everything going on in all the surrounding counties as well, I'd say on average the high quality farm ground probably sells for $8,000 an acre. And that, I do wanna say that is with irrigation most of the time.

Vance Crowe [00:22:34] All right, so last week's Bitcoin price was 103,000 at press time and today we are sitting at 96,000, which is down 6.8% from last week. But if you've been watching Bitcoin's price, it is up and down and up and down right in that band. So it has been to Bitcoiners totally steady and to people that are new to the market, this is like wild fluctuations of 6%. So in Steve's county, if $8,000 per acre that equals 0.083, Bitcoin would buy you one acre of ground or another words, if you had one Bitcoin, it would buy you 12 acres of farmland in Steve's county. Steve, how does that sit with you?

Guest [00:23:18] Well, knowing what Bitcoin was three, four years ago, that, that is kind of, kind of depressing. I remember listening to you probably four years ago before COVID, you were pushing Bitcoin back then and, and man, you, we should have been buying Bitcoin back then because we, we could be buying quarters of farmland at a time now for, for about $10,000 back then.

Vance Crowe [00:23:44] Oh man, thank you. I I there's not many people that have that can make those references, so I appreciate it to this last week, you and I had a pretty fun experience. You downloaded a, a wallet, a lightning wallet and then got some satoshi. So why don't you talk a little bit about that? How'd that go? Yeah,

Guest [00:24:01] Yeah, you asked me to download a wallet and you sent me some Satoshis and I was very surprised about how easy it was. I it very similar to other brokerage account apps that I have on my phone and it operated very much the same and I'm like, wow, this, this is very similar to what I do or things I've done in the past trading stock, but it's just with Bitcoin or Satoshi. And it was like, wow, if I would've known it was this easy, I should have done it a long time ago. So if if,

Vance Crowe [00:24:32] Have you had a chance to send the, so, so I sent 500 SATs to you. Did you get a chance to get anybody to download it and, and accept some stats from you?

Guest [00:24:42] So I was talking to a coworker yesterday telling him we should do it and he was, he was very defensive about it. He's like, no, no, no, that's all speculation. It's like, well you never know until you try. Exactly.

Vance Crowe [00:24:55] Yeah. I mean I had a blast this week, 17 people ended up writing me and getting the app and downloading it and me sending them SATs and I know that blew past my 10, but I was having so much fun and I actually was learning a bunch of stuff I didn't know. So I finally found out like in the US you want to use the strike wallet, the the strike app. That's the one to use. And in Canada we've had a bunch of people trying it and they love wallet satoshi, but the best part about it is there's all these people now and we're like flinging SATs around back and forth and you're like, you can, you can do something with this that you can't do with a credit card, you can't do with anything else. It's, it's like so much fun.

Guest [00:25:35] Yeah, yeah. It's, you know, it's, it's almost like trading Pokemon cards or baseball cards back, back when you were a kid, you know, and, and look today how, how much some of those are worth. It's, it's kind of the same same mentality going along.

Vance Crowe [00:25:51] Well I don't know that I would make that comparison. I think that, but I, I appreciate it, right, like that it can appreciate in, in value but the, the excitement of it is like Pokemon, the excitement of it is like, Hey, can you do this? So that's very clever. Alright, if you are interested in getting involved in Bitcoin, download one of those lightning wallets I mentioned or if you'd like to support the show and you think you'd like to buy Bitcoin, you the app, the exchange that I use is river.com there. If you set up a reoccurring buy for Bitcoin, they actually take away all the fees. I have an affiliate link with them. So if you use the link that I provide, then if you buy a certain amount of Bitcoin, then it sends me a little bit of Bitcoin, the show and that helps us grow. So if you're interested in doing that and once you do it, then start slinging SATs around and having fun. All right, up next is the Peter Thiel paradox. Steve, what is one thing that you believe that almost nobody in your tribe agrees with you on?

Guest [00:26:50] So I think come 20, 40 years from now, the things that are driving the value of agriculture real estate today will not be the same things in the future. Today it is mostly row crop production, livestock production. I think in the future people will be flocking to agricultural real estate for things. Besides that, it kind of goes, goes against the first, the first news article we talked about today. But people may be investing in it for carbon credits, for government subsidies, for, I know this is really gonna make some people upset, but for the, the carbon pipeline, for solar farms, for wind energy, you know, things, things that we're just on the cutting, cutting edge now. And i I do know a lot of those are supported by government subsidies as well and they wouldn't be sustainable on their own. But it's amazing how many people, just the institutional investors are looking to farm land saying, wait, I can buy this for several thousand dollars an acre, put a solar farm on it and make $500 per acre per year. This is, this is a good investment when I stack it together. And so I think that's gonna prop up farmland in the long term way more than, than just growing grain or growing your livestock on it.

Vance Crowe [00:28:17] Well, I I gotta give you some credit here because I do disagree with you. I mean, I think that Doge is gonna be one of those things that shows farmers and really landowners, hey there's a bunch of subsidies. We used to be able to go through here and get money. The price was all distorted on land and now there's a real strong chance that it's gonna go down if you end up betting that way. It's a pretty big gamble 'cause we don't know what's gonna happen between now and July 4th, 2026.

Guest [00:28:44] So do you think if, if Doge does come through and starts cutting all sorts of things, do you think we'll see agriculture, real estate prices go down substantially? Or do you think they're, they're kind of, there's enough demand out there that we won't really see a drop?

Vance Crowe [00:29:00] I think you would see a drop almost certainly. And it really depends on which ones you're talking about. I mean, if you cut out the renewable fuel standard now all of a sudden, like you have so much supply, you couldn't, you couldn't possibly justify it. And so then you'll start seeing people say, well I'm not, I'm not gonna keep farming. I can't do this. Yeah. So I think there's, this is a real chance, I think there's a potential for a revolution in land prices, but whether they're up or down, I don't know.

Guest [00:29:24] Yeah, yeah, I, I'll definitely agree with you. If the renewable fuel standard starts getting cut, that's gonna cause some issues. But I guess, I guess I'm kind of bullish that that's, that's gonna stay there and the cuts aren't gonna be that drastic but that's something where you and I disagree on I think.

Vance Crowe [00:29:44] Well that's good. I'm gonna give you an eight eight 'cause you found one I didn't, I didn't necessarily agree with, but you didn't convince me, but I'm glad you brought it up so we'll, this will be a good question to ask going forward. Alright, and finally onto the worthy adversary section, Steve, who is somebody that you respect on social media, but you completely disagree with.

Guest [00:30:06] So there, there's a guy on X, his name is, his handle is Barefoot and farmer, he is outta of South Dakota. I think his real name is Louie Nig. I, I think I'm pronouncing his last name correctly, but I'm not quite sure. But he, he is v kind of the opposite of what I am. I'm very bullish long-term land ownership in that. I think it's a great long-term play to own, own farmland for a variety of different reasons. But he is, he is pushes back on me quite a bit and not just me to other people as well, saying that no, you're better off doing, going long term in the stock market, just putting all your money in the stock market, you're you're gonna make way more money long term. I do think he's right. I know if, if you're looking at from a purely investment standpoint, I think putting investing in the stock market long term might be better. But I don't know, I, I know my family's made a substantial amount of money owning, owning farmland through the years due to farmland appreciation. So it, it's hard for me to, to, to go a hundred percent into the stock market and you know, basically going a hundred percent on the stock market would mean selling everything you have in ag and just doing all that. And I can't do that.

Vance Crowe [00:31:32] Well, I I, that's a great one man. It's not every day that somebody brings a good one that makes me wanna take another look at him. I actually do see Barefoot and Farmer all the time. He goes at Louis dn and ever since you turn me onto him, I'm, I find him to be very interesting. Good, good choice there. So if you'd like to see more worthy adversaries, you can see it on a list on my X page. Well done there, man. I I like that one. I wanted to throw out that Cory Hillow from Farm for Profit said Local 40 came up listed for sale for 0.17 Bitcoin per acre. And a local realtor told me he had more offers above asking price. So very interesting. Corey, do you think you'll see any more land coming up for a sale there where you're at in Bitcoin?

Guest [00:32:22] I don't, I don't know if it'll come up in Bitcoin that, that's kind of, I've been thinking about this too. You know, a they say a lot of the land that's gonna sell in the next 10 to 15 years is owned by older, older generations. And I think you and I had a, had an exchange on XA couple weeks ago that until a new newer generation comes in that much rather hold Bitcoin than farmland, I think it's, it's gonna be hard to convince the older generation, like say, Hey, I'll give you a couple Bitcoin for what it takes to, to buy this land. I, until a younger generation comes along and says, I'd much rather own Bitcoin than farmland. I don't know, I don't know how that'll go.

Vance Crowe [00:33:06] I mean, I gotta say that my experience over the last couple of days, the last week has shocked me because it is the 60-year-old plus farmers that it did lightning wallets. So I send 'em 500 Satoshis, they go away and play with it. They, you know, get their wife to download it, they send 'em back and forth a couple days later they write me and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm now starting to get it. I understand, oh, there's only 21 million. And then they have all these questions, they are so much more engaged and many of them make reference to the savings and loan crisis and all the inflation that's happened over time. So to me it seems like there is a pocket of older farmers that are more willing to try things than I think they're given credit for. So I I see that that group of people buying Bitcoin faster than I think most people think could happen.

Guest [00:33:57] Yeah, yeah. It's definitely interesting. I know my wife and I have, we have right of first refusal on a couple pieces of property that'll be selling in the future. And for those of you who don't know what right of first refusal is, it's when the seller gets prepared to sell, they have to come to us first and then we can decide if we wanna buy it or not. And so I that's definitely will be happening in the next couple years that he'll have to come to us and say, Hey, I'm ready to sell. Do you wanna buy? And so it'll be interesting if I said, yeah, but instead of giving you cash I'll give you Bitcoin instead just, just to see what his response would be or, or what the real estate broker's response would be if I said that to them.

Vance Crowe [00:34:39] Well one of the interesting things just happened in the Czech Republic, they made it so if you hold Bitcoin for three years, they consider that a long term and they don't pay capital gains on it. So there could be a way to own property and not be paying capital gains and also not being paying property tax, which is one of the things that farmers have to do, is they have to pay a lot of property tax in order to be able to hold onto that land. They don't actually own it, they're just renting it from the government.

Guest [00:35:04] Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then, and then especially like, especially if you're in one of these government industries or subsidies that we've talked about before, like let's just throw out CRP that you gotta maintain it and make sure it doesn't get grown up with trees or anything like that. And so not just property taxes but management expenses in there as well.

Vance Crowe [00:35:25] I think there's a lot of people that are older that once they understood the value and the virtues of having Bitcoin, they would say, Hey, maybe I don't have to hold onto this land in order to be able to maintain my assets and my standard of living. There's gonna be other ways to do it. So I think that, I think ag is going to change faster than other industries. 'cause I think that they see things about inflation, they know about trading so much deeper than just the general public.

Guest [00:35:53] Yeah, yeah. That, that's probably true. And, and if you're right there, if, if we see a bunch of farmers who much rather own Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, whatever it might be more than they rather own ag land, there's definitely gonna be a lot of ag land coming the come come up for sale and as people try to balance out their portfolio or divest themselves with the ag land and then we're definitely gonna see a, a market crash then.

Vance Crowe [00:36:21] Well Steve, this has been a fantastic conversation. If people wanted to interact with you more, see more about what you're up to, where would they go? Yeah,

Guest [00:36:29] I'm mostly just interact on X under Steve Conway one, and yeah, people DM me quite often asking about different things, so feel free to, to slide into the dms. I am on Instagram, but I'm not very active on there either. And those, those are about the only two social media platforms that I, I do much interaction on. And I'm sure after my Peter Thiel paradox that there might be quite a few people up in arms against me and saying how I'm all wrong and everything. So yeah, feel free to, feel free to gimme your opinions and I, I am kind of busy, so it might take a couple days before I reply to you, but yeah, I'd love to hear other people's thoughts.

Vance Crowe [00:37:12] Good. Yeah, man, you found a, a point of view that hopefully will strike up some conversations. So Steve, thank you so much for coming on.

Guest [00:37:20] Yeah, thank you Vance.

Vance Crowe [00:37:22] All right, I'm gonna sign off here in just a moment, but I actually wanted to do something real quick. I, if you're watching this, you probably can see that I am wearing a vest. It says FCS financial, and I wore this on purpose. I don't normally wear things with logos on it, but the reason that I wore it is because a few months ago I was invited to be on their board as an outside board member. And when they approached me, I actually had very little interest in it. You know, I'm, I'm not super into the US banking system, there's all kinds of challenges that I see with farming and I, I kind of understood vaguely that they have some relationship with the government. So I only went along with it because I was like, Hey, it's interesting that they would, you know, call me up, they would ask me to be a part of their board. And I went through a series of interviews that concluded with an interview with the entire board, and I actually in my entire life have never been through a more intense and rigorous interview process. I found out that the people that were on that board were very serious about who they were bringing in as outside board members. They wanted to know all about how I thought about things and what, what was important to me, what, what I would be able to dedicate to it, and why I would even dedicate anything to it. And after that happened, I, I went from being somebody that said like, I don't, I don't have time for this. I've got my business, I've got all these things going on to being like, actually, I would really enjoy talking with these people month in and month out, getting to know them.

Vance Crowe [00:38:52] They know about things I don't know about. And when I'm in St. Louis, I don't get to hang out with my tribe. My tribe is ag. I, I talk about agricultural issues, I talk about what's going on in commodity prices, this is what I care about. And so I decided to take that role and what the, I wrote about that on, on LinkedIn, but I never actually came here to the podcast to say that I had done it. And the reason I'm doing it now, and the reason I wore this is because we all kind of see that joke about, you know, when senators take money from lobbyists, they should have to wear it on as like a decal on their, on their, on their shirts, right, on their dresses, on their suits. They should have to say, who's giving me money? Because who you get money from can impact how you feel about things, what ideas you're exposed to, what ideas you wanna propagate. And I think that this is a deeply important thing that needs to happen in our culture and our society. And that is what Doge is truly uncovering. And even if the this was already known, they're shining a spotlight on it so we can see how is our money getting spent, who is being influenced by various, you know, political actors and government and organizations. And I don't think that there is anything inherently wrong with getting paid for offering your services, for getting paid, for being a part of, of a group that's contributing effort to move something forward. But the reason that I wanted to wear this here and talk with you about it is because there is way too much going on in the shadows.

Vance Crowe [00:40:26] And I believe that we are going to see some big time lights shown on some of our largest institutions, some of ags media groups. And, and I think that like, hey, let's just have a conversation about what's going on with our tax dollars, with what our government is supporting, with what messages they are forcing groups to put out there. I heard from many, many listeners this week about things that were coming out in Doge and, and it really, you know, pointing at some of these large institutions, things like commodity groups, things like checkoff programs, and I think that this is important that everybody just comes to the table, talks about where they get their money, and then talk about, hey, does this influence you in some way that it shouldn't? Does this make it so you're advocating for one thing as opposed to another, or that you're on the side of, of people that are in competition with us? Whatever that is. I think that this is an important discussion to have. And so I wanted to lead with it. I didn't wanna be a person that said, Hey, if you're getting paid by somebody, everybody should know it. I, I'm letting you guys know because I think that this is what we should expect of everyone that has, you know, a big public voice. Everybody that is on, you know, boards, everybody that is running institutions, we should be talking about how do you get funded and what is that influence in you. Anyway, I just wanted to close up with that. I didn't want to, to make Steve have to sit on here for it. But I'm gonna wrap up by reminding you if you are interested in Bitcoin, I believe that it is a deeply important technology and if you would like to get it, you can use river.com.

Vance Crowe [00:42:03] I'll have a link in the show notes that if you buy it from there, you'll be helping not only yourself procure Bitcoin from a good exchange, but also helping the show because we will get a few Bitcoin for it. Also, if you have been thinking about doing a legacy interview, this is where I sit down with your loved ones to record them talking about their life stories so that future generations can know where they came from and the stories that make up who you are. Then go to Legacy Interviews dot com and book a call with me. We are doing many, many interviews a week. We're now definitely two months out on being able to schedule. So don't wait around. If you have somebody that you love, you wanna capture their stories, contact me and we will have a great call about it. Thank you so much. I, I hope we can continue this conversation on XI think the next few weeks and months are going to be absolutely wild. So have fun, be kind to one another and always feel free to disagree.